Posted: 09/10/2005

The Brothers Grimm

(2005)

by Ben Beard

A Gingerbread House of Terror Awaits.

Terry Gilliam loves children’s stories. He loves fantasy, oddities, and the insane. There’s always been a razor’s edge between reality and fantasy, rationality and insanity, in his films. In this case, these two dueling factions are embodied in the two brothers Grimm, Jacob and Will, in this thematic sequel of sorts to his oddball The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. Like Munchhausen, Grimm follows a questing tale precariously balanced between farce and thriller. Both films deal with war-torn peoples, with squalid living conditions and the hope that perhaps there is a bit of magic in the paper lanterns of the everyday.

Matt Damon plays Will, the fast-talking, cynical, womanizing shyster, a disbeliever in all things magical. Yet he and his brother earn a living manufacturing magical hoaxes that they then destroy, earning the adulation and gold of beleaguered German villages.

Heath Ledger plays Jacob, a jittery self-made scholar of dark tales of magic and mystery. He provides the detailed grist for Will’s rumor mill, the arcane knowledge that cements the Brothers’ reputation.

They make their living in the countryside of French-occupied Germany, two bumbling charlatans too stupid to realize the guillotine is about to drop.

But when a French General (played by Jonathan Pryce) captures the two brothers, threatening them with death if they don’t solve the riddle of disappearing girls in the woods by the town of Marbaden. Faced with certain death, the brothers agree, and are whisked off to the far off village under the watch of the cruel and petulant Cavaldi, whose penchant for torture is barely held in check by his responsibilities.

The plot moves at a breakneck pace. Soon the brothers are met by killer trees, a man-eating werewolf, a ill-mannered huntress, and all manner of witchcraft, connected to a strange tower resting peacefully in the middle of the forest. Will wants to flee to save his neck, but Jacob slowly becomes intrigued by the story of a cursed queen forced to live forever. As the quarreling brothers are drawn further and further into a world suddenly magical and terrifying, they each must come to terms with the other’s point of view.

The staples of all fairy tales—full moons, enchanted princesses, ubiquitous crows—fill the screen along with very obvious and mostly unfunny allusions to the gruesome tales that the real Grimm brothers popularized.

Of course, Gilliam is no stranger to the material, but here his visuals seem convoluted. In fact, there’s a feeling of hastiness about the whole affair, as if the production ran out of time, or more likely, money. There’s something off-kilter for the whole film; scenes seem to cut off too abruptly, while others seem to run too long. The faults of the film—and there are many—lie with the screenplay, alternately slapstick, scary, funny, banal, and confusing. If it were funnier, we would forgive its myriad flaws, the holes in the plot, the mismatched accents. If it were scarier or weirder, we would cast aside the convoluted action sequences and marvel at the gem buried beneath. But the film is neither a full comedy nor a reckless horror movie; it is a mish mash of the two, and in this case Gilliam cannot quite juggle the various elements into a coherent whole.

The material is rich, the cast is strong, and Gilliam is perfect for it. The viewer keeps asking, why isn’t this a better film?

Damon and Ledger are great together, and show comic acumen and zest. And Gilliam, even on a bad day, can deliver some fun, some wonder, some perverse laughter. It’s too bad his fantastic imagination has been marred by substandard screenwriting. The Brothers Grimm is undoubtedly his worst work. But still even a bad Gilliam is better than a thousand soulless blockbusters. He, at the very least, has the courage to be as zany as the mad visionaries he so obviously idolizes.

Ben Beard is a film critic and writer in the Midwest.

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