Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2005
Matt Damon
Heath Ledger
Jonathan Pryce
Lena Heady
Barbara Lukêsova
Anna Rust
Jeremy Robson
Mackenzie Crook
In Terry Gilliam’s The
Brothers Grimm the eponymous siblings are dodgy
dealing con artists of the early 1800’s who use
their imaginations solely to profit from fearful folk,
scared of the witches and wizardry the brothers themselves
have invented. When the brothers are revealed to be charlatans
the Napoleonic General, Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce), behests
them on pain of death to investigate the disappearance
of little girls from the French occupied German village
of Marbaden. Will (Matt Damon) is the mercenary of the
pair, and has cynically rebuked Jacob’s (Heath
Ledger’s) obsession
with magic; as a child Jacob sold the family cow for nothing
but magic beans. However, Will is left eating his (little
red riding) hat when the boys Grimm find themselves embroiled
in a situation of true sorcery, including an enchanted
forest and a narcissistic Mirror Queen, where the magnitude
of the magic is beyond even their conniving capabilities.
The
Grimm’s fairy tales are at all times present
within the film, more by way of cameo appearance than anything
else, and I really didn’t feel as though the potential
of these stories were realised.
The making of The
Brothers Grimm was not without
its problems. Miramax studio execs fired Gilliam’s
choice of cinematographer and did not allow him to appoint
Samantha Morton as lead actress; instead the part of Angelika
went to Lena Heady. Lena Heady certainly did not do a bad
job, but as a huge fan of Samantha Morton, I would have
been very interested to see what she would have done with
the character. Such feuding with the producers caused production
to cease for six months, in which time Gilliam made Tideland.
Gilliam was dissatisfied with Ehren Krueger’s script
for The Brothers Grimm so Gilliam and Tony Grisoni
modified it to their own liking.
Krueger
is credited as sole screenwriter, however, Gilliam and Grisoni have mischievously
listed themselves as ‘dress pattern makers’ on
the credits.
Perhaps
these problems are part responsible for the film being
good, but by no means exceptional. Combined with the fact
that the release date was originally scheduled for over a
year ago, it certainly feels as though the film has past
its sell-by date while it’s been sitting on the shelf. Ledger and
Damon play their German parts with English accents tinged
with Cockney, as Gilliam believed that German accents would
have been unwittingly comedic. The rest of the German townspeople
have an array of English accents with Hansel and Gretal as
Geordies. English accents would allow a vaster audience
to identify with and warm to the characters, however, I found
that I didn’t care much about the Grimms in
their adventure, English accent or not. Better ‘scary
forests’ have been done elsewhere, namely by Tim Burton.
As for the villains, Delatombe was pathetic and his torturous
number two, Cavaldi, (played rather well by Peter Stormare)
turned out to be a good guy after all.
I was more than excited to see
a new Terry Gilliam creation. I remember sitting spellbound
in the cinema on my big brother’s ninth birthday
watching The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and
devoting more hours than is healthy to our VHS recording
of Time
Bandits from the television. Since then I vowed to
book myself first class tickets on each of the director’s
flights of fancy. Gilliam is a maximalist director who
loves to fill his filmic world with prodigious richness
and visual spectacle, and The Brothers
Grimm is
no exception to this end, accept it fails to ignite my
imagination the way his previous work has always done.
Gilliam and his restless editing always cooks up a feast
for the eyes, however this film left me hungry, not for
more, but for a different dish entirely: all I wanted to
do was go home and watch Time Bandits again. At
a heightened point in The Brothers Grimm Will
declares that his spangled mirror-embossed-armour isn’t
at all magic, “It’s
just shiny”, and I realised that was exactly how
I felt about The Brothers Grimm: It looked as
though it would work, it had all the elements, but I was
still left waiting for the magic. Alas, on this rare occasion,
I feel that Gilliam’s beans have fallen on fruitless
soil.
