Brothers Grimm

Director: Terry Gilliam
Main Cast: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci
Writer(s): Ehren Kruger
Director of Photography: Newton Thomas Sigel
Producer(s): Daniel Bobker & Charles Roven
Editor(s): Lesley Walker
Original Score By: Dario Marianelli
Release Date: 2005 August 26

Once upon a time...we loved his movies. Many of us film lovers have a special place in our hearts for director Terry Gilliam. From my early memories of Time Bandits to my personal Gilliam favorite, 12 Monkeys , I have a deep respect for a man with this much imagination and artistic vision. Brothers Grimm is an evidentiary example of a classic Gilliam film, but without the soul of many of his other works.

Gilliam, in many ways like Tim Burton, creates an alternative universe with such grandiose vision and execution as to seem almost real, extending reality into the often bizarre. Brothers succeeds wholeheartedly at this. The beautiful and monstrous sets, elaborate and full of character, stand out as one of the crowning achievements for this picture. The torture chamber, the little German town, and the queen's medieval castle all merge together to create an incredibly surreal filmic environment. The lighting, dark and murky at times and at others filled with dancing shadows and color, creates an unforgettable fairytale atmosphere. The tone is superb and acheived with little reliance on modern day computer-generated techniques that permeate the industry.

The visual imagery, in small doses, could have been immensely meaningful and gorgeous. However, some specific elements were so plentiful as to become unsuitably monotous. A few examples are the ravens, the relocating forest trees, and the hundreds of crawling insects. Ravens, known best for their association with death and decay, are a wonderful way to communicate the potential hazards the characters may be facing or other such macabre happenings, but after seeing handfuls of them in nearly every scene I soon was anesthetized to their presence and simply sat quietly for the next interesting event to occur ignoring them altogether. The menacing forest tress, while intriguing at first, also became a bore after what seemed like hours of watching the characters act confused and frightened when they came to life. The CG bugs and beetles, one of two main technology driven distractions in the film (more to follow), were, again, simply overused. The death seeking insects in this film simply served as a reminder to me of how fantastically they had been utilized in other more understatedly superior performances.

The Gingerbread Man scene at the small town's water well was abhorrent. I just didn't get it. I was actually enjoying the film quite a lot until this gruesome abnormality appeared. Must we suffer through watching a computer generated tar-like gingerbread man sucking the face off a small young girl? This scene was completely out of place, unwarranted and utterly disturbing. It distracted me from anything of value for the following few minutes. Terrible. The second, and clearly more blatant, example of CG distractions in the film.

In general, the plot is not contrived or trite, but often feels familiar if you are in even the slightest way familiar with the Grimm Fairytales, though much darker than you probably remember. In the moments where things do feel cliche' it is difficult to determine if the writer is falling into modern day storyline traps or is still gently mocking the source material. The story, in concept alone, was a breath of fresh air from the remakes and sequels that have filled our local movie houses of late. Unfortunately, the storytelling was not as successful as the words on the page.

I found the storytelling to be choppy, unpredictable, and at times ambiguous. Some things were dwelt on for what seemed like endless amounts of screen time, while others were barely explained and left me somewhat baffled by their mere presence. Ledger's authorship of the "fairytale" book was present the whole film, but never really understood. The reality of the brother's con artist scheming was so brief I felt disappointed that the trailers had made a point of mentioning this fact all. Gilliam spent so few frames on this topic that it almost needed to be left on the cutting room floor. I expected more from a veteran like him.

Ledger and Damon's, and for that matter many of the other characters', dialogue was quite interesting and satisfyingly complex and humorous. There were very few flat characters. Damon and Ledger were believable as brothers and were frequently reminiscent of what you would expect from two young boys in your own household--filled with adventure, playful bantering, competitive spirits, and, underneath it all, deep and sincere caring for each other. Unfortuately, with the storytelling so mediocre, I had hoped for better development of said players but alas, I was once again disappointed. The Brothers' backstory was astonishlingly thin and their development far to quick. The French general and his Italian sidekick torturer had outstanding characters, albeit somewhat caricaturized and often bordering on harrasment for both the French and Italian races. Despite her limited screen time, Monica Belluci was fantastic as the evil queen.

One would expect that simple people in a small German village during this era would be quicker to turn to the Divine to aid them with their perceived demonization problems. However, the storytellers ask us to believe that they would rather put their faith in two snake-oil salesman than in organized religion. In fact, the presence of Christian symbolism is in the film, it would appear, mainly to be made a mockery of. Damon tapping the crucifix to get the townspeople's attention and the flaming cross used to ward of "evil", are two fine examples of such disdain. I'm not entirely sure what Gilliam or the writer's are getting at with this infatuation of marginalizing the significance of the symbols and their underlying potency. Could it be a statement that organized religiosity is dead and powerless or merely another simple sight gag to extract chuckles from the audience? Although it was present, I didn't find it particularly offensive, merely an interesting point to question how, perhaps, filmmaker’s personal beliefs translate their way onto the screen.

Bottom Line: Visually and atmospherically stunning with a well crafted story Gilliam sets up what could have been another timeless classic. This film, however, didn't grab hold of the viewer and slipped all too adeptly into the neatly tied-up ending, complete with a happily ever after bow. Dragging the poor storytelling and repeated visual elements over the dreadfully long running length didn't aid in the helpless endeavor. While it had it had its high points, in the end the film was like a sinking stone in a still lake. It will ripple on impact, but upon sinking it slowly fades from view until nothing is left to remember it by.

A "you can't catch me" 6 out 10.

~RG