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The Brothers Grimm By Harry Forbes Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) -- Those familiar with 1962's "Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," one of the first super-widescreen Cinerama features, might feel a pang of deja vu at the MGM lion that opens the new version by Terry Gilliam. But, from that point on, this take on the lives of those fairy-tale-writing scribes couldn't be more different, as "The Brothers Grimm" (Dimension) is very much an adult fantasy, though a visually inventive, highly atmospheric one at that. First off, it's not a true biography. Gilliam and scriptwriter Ehren Krueger's conceit has Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, with credible English accents) reimagined as con artists in a narrative as fantastical as anything they might have written. Curly blonde Wilhelm is the crafty, smart, womanizing brother and bespectacled, bewhiskered Jacob the doltish, gullible one who genuinely believes in fanciful stories. We see how the child Jacob had been sent to buy medicine for their dying sister, and came back instead with "magic" beans, much to the chagrin of his brother and mother (shades of "Jack and the Beanstalk"). The brothers go from town to town in French-occupied Germany hoodwinking the superstitious 18th-century peasants into paying them exorbitant sums in return for sham ghostbustings of witches and the like. Eventually they're captured by autocratic French governor Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce), who orders them to get to the bottom of strange happenings in a German forest, under pain of torture and execution. The brothers report to the town of Marbaden, and discover the forest is under the thrall of an actual witch's curse, and that one by one the town's children are disappearing. With the aid of a local lady trapper, the buckskinned Angelika (Lena Headey), with whom both brothers are soon smitten, and under the watchful eye of Delatombe's henchman, Italian torturer Cavaldi (played for laughs by Peter Stormare), they set out to vanquish the evil one, in this case a rotting 500-year-old corpse of a queen (Monica Bellucci) who can be reborn with the blood of the missing children. The movie incorporates familiar elements of "Little Red Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel" and "Rapunzel" as the brothers go about their mission. The overall theme is superstition versus enlightenment, as exemplified by the backward German peasants and the more "cultivated" French. The film is marred by a slow start and an uneven screenplay. With more fleshing out, the two leads would come off less like stick figures and the plot would be more believable, even within the framework of fantasy. So, too, the abrupt changes in mood from serious to slapstick comedy don't always work. Somehow, the Pryce-Stormare segments aren't terribly compelling -- or, in Stormare's case, plausible. He's written as both an honest-to-goodness vicious torturer and a lovable comic, and despite his acting skills he can't overcome the contradiction. The effects have a refreshingly retro feel, almost more like the special-effects wizardry of Ray Harryhausen than today's digital wonders. The soundtrack, at times, sounded a bit muddy. But Gilliam gets high marks for creating an evocative, 19th-century world (the grimy, fanciful Czech-based production design is by Guy Dyas), and whipping up a good deal of excitement as the story races to its conclusion. "The Brothers Grimm" is most definitely for mature audiences (older adolescents and up). The film contains intense action violence; frightening images, many involving insects; torture scenes; scattered profanity and crude language; brief sexual situations; and brief irreligiousness. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. - - - Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. END Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250 |
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