What In The World…Terry Gilliam?
Take fairy tales, Gothic, gore and Rapunzel and mix up with Heath Ledger and Matt Damon doing Brit accents. Plus some flying in the air with daggers and it’s Grimm up (or maybe down) in Napoleonic-era occupied Europe.. Yup, we’re in Terry Gilliam country.
Maybe it’s the budget, maybe it’s the editing — it can never quite go fully into its convictions and hurtle into Angela Carter Company of Wolves territory. Which is where I think it wants to go — but never quite girds its loins to get there. We meet the Brothers Grimm (yup, them); only they’re con merchants faking witch attacks — which they then defeat. Here you have to compare and think Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters did the whole comedy fairy tale action thing better.
Bizarrely, this is also the era of Napoleon and we encounter a whole French army ready to fight an evil child stealing witch in a tower. Like Rapunzel she’s beautiful; like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty she likes to sleep and put others to sleep. Like Sleepy Hollow, she’s beautifully sinister. There’s even a Red Riding Hood in the woods moment and like Tolkein or Green Knowe, evil trees which are very much alive — and greedily devouring.
Monica Belluci embodies a wonderfully devouring Mirror Queen in a tower — with a magic mirror and some dodgy enchantment. She has eternal youth. but not eternal beauty or life: a mirror obsessed Elizabeth Báthory. Due to canny cinematography, we never quite see her shape shifting — only hints of it, and are enchanted by her beauty, with hints of the horror and ruthlessness literally sleeping beneath. She seems like a wonderful whispy Sleeping Beauty dreamed up by the Pre-Raphaelites - only she really isn’t — and has some beautiful high medieval costumes. Somehow, she seems to have turned a village family’s father into a werewolf and besotted swain — soon she seeks to replace him with besotted and somewhat sleazy Matt Damon. Ice Queen-like impaling hearts as she goes on her way. Snow White and the Huntsman-like too — for there are crows!!!
Lena Headey also gets a great part as a feisty rescuing sister, Angelika, and prototype Sleeping Beauty about to be turned into the Queen’s next beauty fix. All of this causes the Brothers Grimm to be put into the field to witch hunt — for real. Plus there’s a Napoleonic army, perhaps lost, perhaps in retreat — it was never clear why they were there or how they got involved, or why they needed quite so much screen-time. It could have been a growing concern as the ‘occupiers’ get invaded or occupied, unsettled, but no…
The CGI lets the film’s ideas and atmosphere down — a inventive very nasty (and hungry) gloopy ‘Gingerbread Man’ who flees down a well is contrasted with an oily looking witch’s hat — with eye balls (and a large empty stomach), which is easy defeated by a rake. More impressive is the hungry horse who swallows a small girl alive and we get a thrilling shot of her being swallowed whole. However, we do get a touch of magic in Byrne-Jones set-piece as the sleeping captured girls and the light of the moon are about to meet to fuel the Queen’s next anti-ageing beauty treatment. We also get a terrific set piece of a woman becoming mirror — and disintegrating.
Whilst the flying around with daggers is very Baron Munchausen. and a marvel, there’s also too much gibbering about by terrified soldiers, often in ‘I shall say zis only wunce’ Frenchese and a capering Italian henchman ((without and without toupee), bogging down the plot, much like the mud person, and indeed as the forest tries to do to the characters. It doesn’t (unlike Time Bandits, Stardust, Neverwhere, Willow, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Lady Hawk, Van Helsing or Angela Carter) truly embody its world all of the time. There’s also an uneasy third way as the script can’t decide if it wants us to die laughing or of fear of Gothic terrors — and so tries to do both. Nor can it quite work out who it’s audience is as we have disguised small girls hiding from unknown kidnappers, feisty heroines who are surely going to reveal that they are Princesses in disguise (or atleast Belle) and then at the other extreme a sleazy man treating women badly. Prince Uncharming if you will; (whereas Heath Ledger’s brother is most definitely heading towards Cinderella territory). A lot of fun could have been had with these fairy tale character tropes, particularly as the Queen seeks to beguile the brothers at the end — instead what you see is what you get!
Nor does it have the opulent whole-hearted fantasy excess of Munchausen or the bravado style of Legend or Company of Wolves or the charm and whimsy of Stardust. At one point, having pledged to rescue the girls and destroy the Queen, the soldiers (one of whom has a book) and the brothers entirely forget all about their mission — as the tower collapses. There’s some half-hearted rescue later on, when they remember that they need to tie up that bit of plot to get the movie to end. Meanwhile, there’s an intriguing subplot about the brothers both falling for the same girl, their character clash, fratricide and an enchanting evil Queen who (mirror bound ) can’t see how evil she’s become as the world and Plague pass her by and merely soothingly craves comfortable live, life, coziness and love (at any cost). Her husband and all her court die below — and does she look bovvered?
Watch it though for Heath Ledger — who despite the film’s limitations is absolutely charming. It’s fun (despite the painful accent at points) to see Matt Damon playing against type — as anti-hero — and the film almost pushes the boundaries with Sleeping Beauty kissing all over the place. See it too for the mirror cracking and the spectacle of the tower collapse.
Much of the squawking soldiers could have been cut in favour of more Gingerbread Man escape (with better Shrek-like styling), more crows and more of Lena Headey being awesome! and Monica Belluci being enchantingly evil, Fisher-Queen like in wrinkles and cobwebs. Watch those heart-piercing clutching nails! We could have also had more conflicted relationship between father aka werewolf slave of the Queen — and his own children (who he captures and enslaves for the Queen). Apart from a ‘gasp…it’s you’, we never really get any more emotional impact than that. The revealed father then is entirely abandoned and killed off fairly quickly. Absolutely no interrogating of the fact that he’s been kidnapping his own and his neighbour’s daughters to milk their blood to feed the Queen back to full beauty regime for some time. No remorse from him or even a bit of shock, shame or horror of being recognised by his own daughter — just ‘ta dah! and on we go. No Wolf Man, Dracula or Jeykll/Hyde contrast here.
In a unique twist, Angelika decides she won’t choose between the brothers, instead enchanting them both. Though for most of the movie it mostly seems she wants Heath Ledger and to dance with her rescued sisters for a year and a day. And in a spoiler, the film suggests that no-one will live happily ever after anyway, denying us a big happy wedding dance sequence over the titles at the end and the classic fairytale trope of the couple reunited. Instead, everyone has to live miserably (and perhaps shortly) ever after. Once again, Ella Enchanted or 1962’s Jack the Giant Killer does this kind of hokum so much more effectively.
Lacking conviction in itself, the story fails to convince over all — nor does it have anything like the brothers saying ‘we must write this down.. nah they’ll never believe it’. If only they’d ditched the extended babbling French soldiers/Italian henchman and put in more Jonathan Pryce being magnificent, and more Grimm story collecting. They could have been curious, gullible, anything. And made it all as clever and world building as 12 Monkeys or Time Bandits. All the Czech-ness looks fabulous though! and of course Mackenzie Crook is in the mix in a bizarre look, (very Pirates!)
Intriguingly, this movie could have had Matt Damon in a fake nose, no Matt Damon replaced instead by pre-Pirates Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman as the Mirror Queen escaping plague (very Northman) and Samantha Morton instead of Lena Headey.
And truth is stranger than fiction as the real Brothers Grimm battled against class prejudice and restrictions to provide for their family at a young age, being studious and industrious. By becoming courtly librarians! (if only this film could have met The Mummy) and remaining culturally curious, despite snobbish University restrictions to their education, these men of faith and bravery preserved rural and working class spoken culture, with their gore, sex, complexity and all, at first. (Or maybe they didn’t tricking wealthy patrons into thinking they did to create a dream, a myth of unspoilt Germanic folklore. Maybe they even nicked aristocratic French tales and made them their own). Despite being overlooked for advancement due to their status and lack of influence, they took a stand and longed for better days, for political and civil freedom, even at the risk of losing their much needed jobs. Rather than being Far Right nationhood promoters, they focused on a Dictionary to teach, to educate, which could be shared with everyone. Just as the Brothers Grimm fell between so many opposing ideas and groups, it would have been interesting to see the movie truly lose us in the forest — in the ‘no man’s land’ of Napoleonic French-occupied what would become Germany. Where standing in the village, those who have the power to charm or harm, curse or bless, or tell a good story, means more than a foresty City of Z built by a forgotten King. And more of the feuding around the film’s creation could have seeped into its frames rather than just writing and rewriting, and the visual look of its stars.
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