THE
BROTHERS GRIMM
How
else do you start a film called The Brothers Grimm? “Once upon a time”
reads the caption in the opening moments, and “They lived happily ever after”
is the last thing we see. In between is a strange, murky movie, not a spoof but
possessed of a dark sense of humour as you might expect of director Terry
Gilliam (once of Monty Python). It’s a bit too eccentric for the Lord of
the Rings crowd and a bit too intense for fairytale – and it sure hasn't
been a real-life fairytale for Gilliam.
2005
should’ve been his year, if only because his triumphs have always coincided
with years ending in ‘5’: Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975, Brazil
(his greatest personal achievement) in 1985, Twelve Monkeys in 1995.
More importantly, after years in the wilderness – including the much-publicised
collapse of his epic Don Quixote – Gilliam was back with two films, Grimm
and Tideland. Alas, it all went wrong. Tideland, widely
disliked as nasty and grotesque, remains unseen apart from the occasional
festival; Grimm, by far the ‘bigger’ project, was a flop, making less
than half its $80 million budget in the States. It’s unlikely that Gilliam,
now in his sixties, will ever be trusted with a big-budget movie again.
Why
did the film flop? Partly, no doubt, because it looks so dark – literally dark,
set in a sepulchral haunted forest, and metaphorically dark, in the sense of
being oppressive. The visuals are claustrophobic, daylight often blocked by
flame-orange filters; Gilliam’s compositions are cluttered and he has a taste
for the baroque – not just broad performances (Peter Stormare hams it up as
the villainous Cavaldi) but details like giant close-ups of people leaning into
the camera. Most of all, the film looks (deliberately) uninviting. It’s dank
and rather dismal; there are no pretty pictures.
The
look fits with Gilliam’s sensibility, which is seldom kid-friendly. (Grimm is
a ‘12’ but a strong ‘12’; even some early-teens may find it disturbing.)
There are fairytale elements, certainly – a house with an old mill, a princess
in a tower, a vial of “baby’s tears” – but also streams of slithering
cockroaches, a girl without a face, another girl falling prey to a magic horse
that entangles her in sticky web-like tissue then lifts her up and swallows her
whole (!). There’s even a kitten caught in a propeller-blade, albeit
fortunately offscreen.
Yet
the film isn’t trying to be sadistic, just recalling the (yes!) grim side of
the titular brothers; often the horror co-exists with the fairytale elements, as
when a slime monster emerges from the ground and turns into a Gingerbread Man.
Gilliam’s main asset has always been his extravagant imagination, working in a
wilder register than most other filmmakers – and he makes Imagination the
cornerstone of Brothers Grimm, not just in its style but in its message.
The
Grimms aren’t famous yet in this incarnation. They’re not storytellers but
hustlers, creating supernatural events so they can ‘exorcise’ them, like
Michael J. Fox in The Frighteners. Yet, ironically, they are
artists; in fact, they talk like filmmakers, especially when checking out the
magic in the haunted forest which they assume must be the work of charlatans
like themselves (“These guys are much better funded than we are”). Their
problem is that they create their Art for money, and money alone. Wilhelm (Matt
Damon), the older, more obnoxious Grimm, is contemptuous of bookish younger
brother Jacob (Heath Ledger) and his faith in “magic beans” – i.e.
imagination. Only when Wilhelm gives in to Jacob’s way of thinking, says the
film, will the Grimms really find themselves – when they delve into the “old
ways” and start telling stories about folk magic, not just using it for empty
spectacle.