The original stories of THE BROTHERS GRIMM were the folk tales that the fraternal pair, linguists by trade (Grimm’s Law of Phonetic Transformation has always made me weak in the knees), collected from the peasants in the countryside of the German-speaking world. They were dark, they were dangerous, and they were unforgettable. Full of archetypes and wonder, the magic of these fables was and is that they speak to the more unsettling subconscious levels in kids and in adults, which is, of course, they had such staying power as an oral tradition. They weren’t aimed at just children, though it was in those young minds that they found their most ardent audience. The same can be said of Terry Gilliam’s fabulized telling of the life and work of The Grimm Brothers. There’s little here that is true, but much that delights, bemuses, and terrifies. Strictly speaking, it’s not for kids, but they’d probably get a kick out of it. And have a lifetime of nightmares because of it. Bad things happen here to kittens and bunnies. Innocence is no protection against evil.
The brothers, Will and Jake, travel the countryside taking advantage of the common belief in all things supernatural by ridding people of their perceived threats from witches and other unpleasant enchantments. Bookish and quiet Jake (Heath Ledger in a wickedly comic turn) is the brains of the operation with his penchant, like the real brothers, for collecting folk tales, and using that to come up, with more and more reluctance, with solutions for terrified and paying customers. Will (Matt Damon equally comic) is the extrovert and braggart, the marketing side of things if you will, making sure that the show they put on, complete with shiny home-made armor and state-of-the-art production values, add luster to their fame and keeps the money rolling in. Such different personalities mean bickering, all of it stemming back to a particular childhood incident in which Jake caused the family to run to ruin with his own run-in with a fairy tale. As to the specifics, suffice to say that it’s something with which Will taunts him about on a regular basis by repeating the refrain “magic beans.”
The brothers are doing well, making money and Will getting very lucky with the grateful local frauleins, until the real world intrudes in the person of Delatombe (a supercilious Jonathan Pryce), an officer in Napoleon’s army, the one that’s currently laying waste to much of Europe in the name of enlightening it. He’s pompous, egotistical, and an idiot, but he also has an army at his command and that makes him much scarier than a poisoned apple or a witch with attitude. So when he wants help in finding out why children are disappearing in a particularly creepy stretch of woods, the brothers are in no position to do anything but do just that. Not that Delatombe cares a fig about peasant children, but it is making his troops restless and that make his job more difficult and he’s having enough trouble coping with the local cuisine. Unfortunately for the brothers, the magic turns out to be real this time.
Gilliam transmutes familiar fairy tales, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood among others, into something that is distinctly his own. The narrative returns the original horror to those stories, but tosses in absurdist humor and more than a little social commentary that the Grimm’s never thought of. It’s a landscape that is whimsically dangerous depicting a twisted view of reality that’s unmistakably a flight of fantasy, but also unmistakably, firmly rooted in the underpinnings of the real world. A vain queen longs to be young and beautiful forever, a faithful family man forgets everything in the throes of passion. It’s only the methods and manifestations of these characters that are outside of everyday experience.
THE BROTHERS GRIMM isn’t afraid to dwell on the grotesque with its larger than life and wildly imaginative special effects. Amid the magic shawls and sentient trees, there is mud and genuine peril with awful consequences. But it also isn’t afraid to imbue true love, in the person of a dangerous woodswoman (Lena Headey) with magical powers in any world, real or fantasy, or to put its faith in a magic toad. The real Grimms might be taken aback by some it, but they’d also be captivated.
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