Once Upon A Curious Time (The Brothers Grimm (DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	The Brothers Grimm (DVD)
Date:	14/04/06 (236 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Visually stunning at times

Disadvantages: Bizarre and incomprehensible script.

Terry Gilliam makes remarkable movies. In most of his post-Python celluloid ventures he’s proved time and again that he operates on a different plane to the rest of us. I’m particularly fond of “Brazil” with its “1984” influenced tale of man’s struggle in a dystopian world, wonderfully imagined and beautifully executed. “Brazil” was hardly a flash in the pan; with amazingly convoluted stories locked up in “The Fisher King”, “Twelve Monkeys” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” to cite more examples. So when I started to pick up on all the tell-tale signs of another hallmark movie from Gilliam, I couldn’t help but reflect on “The Brothers Grimm” in a “Once Upon A Time” sort of way.

The Brothers Grimm are a couple of con artists operating in French-occupied Prussia. Preying on gullible villagers and easy-to-fool priests, they rid mainly peasant-inhabited towns of all types of curses. From witches to evil spells, they sell their services like a medieval team of Ghostbusters until Napoleonic General, Delatombe (Jonathon Pryce) catches up with the pair and forces them to investigate the real-life disappearance of a group of children or suffer execution. Faced with a very real enchantment in a forest brimming with malevolence, the brothers face up to the most difficult challenge of their chequered career, all whilst Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) notes down the latest folklore in his little, bound book of tales (just in case you'd forgotten that they were story-tellers/writers). Overseen by Delatombe’s henchman, Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), the brothers find themselves becoming immersed in a strange world of fairytale and Occult as they struggle with the forces of nature and the bizarre essence of magic.

As far as genre goes, then “The Brothers Grimm” is a curious mix of old Hammer House horror and Danny Kaye’s “Hans Christian Anderson”. Critics have even suggested that Gilliam has never really moved on from his Holy Grail days with the pythons and maybe that’s what underpins this and so many of his other movies. However, it is a departure from the more recent psychedelic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and back to the staples that the director is arguably more comfortable with.

Visually, the movie is a delight. With scenes reminiscent of Jordon’s “The Company of Wolves”, the movie quickly moves from playful deceit with the brothers depicted as playful carpetbaggers to a brooding assault of forest-bound fairy tales. Shot in the Czech Republic, Gilliam’s stereo-typical vision of dirty pig farms and post-medieval hardships are simply trademark. With past influences of his previous works in “Jabberwocky” and, to a certain extent, “The Fisher King”, Gilliam takes the more obscure route in taking the movie down a purely imagined story line. By simply plonking the leads in the middle of one of their own fairy tales as opposed to anything more factually based, we get an audacious story made up of lots of sub-tales and dark children’s stories rather than the biopic most people might have expected instead. With the ease of spotting so many past Gilliam influences, the movie almost becomes a retrospective for so much of the director’s previous work. Maybe there’s something in that given the twisted takes on tales like Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and so many others. You can’t help but wonder whether Gilliam would re-write every historical event that’s ever gone before and turn it into a blended world of surreal, make-believe Python comedy and romp that would engage many but completely confound everybody else.

The leads play their roles in the strangest of fashions. Matt Damon as Wilhelm Grimm is the live wire of the two whilst Heath Ledger’s Jacob Grim is a bumbling, incoherent, almost middle-English, foil for Damon’s exertions as the driver of the pairing. It took me a while to recognise Damon who appeared to have put a lot of weight on, at least on his face, whether intended for the movie role or not. Ledger’s side burns and glasses make him look all professor although his actions often suggested otherwise with ridiculous inventions and indecipherable motives hampering any believability that the role might have had. The strangest thing about both the script and the dialogue in general is the way the movie simply starts with little explanation and its up to the viewer to work out the plot. Given that we are expecting something more to do with the brothers’ life and works rather than the fantasy that we end up with, the lack of visual direction is only partly compensated for by the mesmerising art and design imagined by the brilliance of the director. There are certainly flashes of brilliance in the film. Whilst the CGI wolf isn’t the best, the black gunk that turns into the Gingerbread man is creatively sublime and the artistry that goes into making the forest genuinely sinister is all about special effects and off-beat cameras angles. The story does finally come together to make sense towards the closing frames although the snippets of Grimm fairy tales that are dotted throughout the plot seem to fade away before ever becoming whole adding to that overall atmosphere of claustrophobia at times.

The script is pure nonsense coming from Ehren Kreuger who’s recent credits include screenplays for The Skeleton Key and both the recent Ring movies. With character development sacrificed for story and effect, the supporting roles manage not much else other than playing stooges to the leads for the most part. Angelika (Lena Headey) is the love interest in the movie although neither brother manages to get past her robust exterior with her macho mission to find the missing children coloured by the fact that two of them are her sisters. Stranger still is that Mackenzie Crook gets yet another bizarre cameo to add to that of his one-eyed pirate in “Pirates of The Caribbean” and his part time TA, office idiot part in the David Brent centric “The Office”. Perhaps the most bizarre of the lot is Peter Stormare’s Cavaldi playing the toady to serial Gilliam player, Jonathan Pryce’s general (inspired by Ian Holm’s Napoleon from “Time Bandits”?). For the most part, utterly incomprehensible, in many ways both Stormare’s role and, in particular, the surreal scenes in the general’s torture chambers sum up the odd dimension that the director operates in. Often throwing the viewer off balance with his strange take on the plot, backed by unsettling but original cinematography, Gilliam flirts with genius but often descends into an area that will be just too strange for some.

Rated PG and with a running time of 118 minutes “The Brothers Grimm” is suitable for older children and adults with the occasional flash of violence but nothing too untoward. I enjoyed the movie although I did find the plot hard work; you can’t help but admire Gilliam’s imagination and the craft that has gone into the film but it’s certainly not one of his best. However, it's well worth an engaging couple of hours of most people’s time as long as you don't expect too much. "The Brothers Grimm" is visually brilliant, funny, imaginative but ultimately all very strange.

Thanks for reading

Mara

Summary: Write up of movie