Double, double, toil and trouble

Noel Vera

Terry Gilliam's "The Brother's Grimm" received poor notices from
such reviewers as Manohla Dargis of the New York Times (Dargis is
cute, but I wonder at her taste sometimes--"Batman Begins," "The
Skeleton Key" and "The Amityville Horror" remake all get a pass, but
not this?) and Roger Ebert, the most powerful critic in America
(don't bother wondering about his tastes--he likes Chris Columbus
and Joel Schumacher flicks).

The common complaint is that the film's tone varies wildly, from
lowbrow slapstick to fast-paced action to (occasionally) delicate
fairy-tale horror, and that the actors playing the brothers (Matt
Damon as Will, Heath Ledger as Jacob) have no idea whether or not
they are heroes or buffoons. Which makes you wonder if the critics
remember or have actually seen anything Gilliam has made, or ever
been involved in--his pictures have always been a mess, with one
thing following another, chaotically. If you don't like what's
happening right now onscreen, just wait--in a few minutes there'll
be Something Completely Different.

If anything, "Grimm" is less of a mess than some of Gilliam's
previous works ("The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," which borrows
a tale or two from the brothers, and "Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas" come to mind). Gilliam reportedly rewrote Ehren Kruger's
script, but judging from the writer's previous works (he wrote "The
Skeleton Key" and the "Ringu" remake) Kruger's much too concerned
with such niceties as coherence and logic--or at least, more
concerned than the director is, so Gilliam may have made changes to
suit his own storytelling style. On the negative side, there's the
constant interference of Miramax's Weinstein brothers, who fired
Gilliam's choice of cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini (camera
operator of, among others, Dario Argento, Roman Polanski and
Bernardo Bertolucci, and cinematographer of a few of Gilliam's own
films) in favor of Newton Thomas Sigel (who did the visually
undistinguished "X-Men" movies), then refused to get Samantha Morton
for the female lead.

The final result is something like Gilliam's "The Fisher King:" a
more commercial, more accessible work, but with generous dollops of
the director's unsettlingly vertiginous sensibility. Fearsome
phantoms and terrifying supernatural events turn out to be tricks
and special effects (a comment on Gilliam's own tendency to make
fabulist imagery?); a cursed and feared villager turns out to be a
beautiful woman; a man falling to his death turns out to be a test
dummy. You can't trust the forest surrounding a tall, entranceless
tower but you can a toad (you just have to lick it), and there's a
quick scene here of a kitten that--well, cat lovers be warned, is
all I can say (I was laughing my head off, myself). Perhaps the most
significant change in this compared to Gilliam's earlier work is the
extensive use of CGI--Gilliam in his earlier films always used
special effects, but usually the old-fashioned kind: miniatures,
forced perspectives, on-camera illusions. With "Brothers Grimm" he
goes into digital effects in a big way, but not perhaps the usual
way; he avoids the more common clichés (impossible zoom shots,
roller coaster-style POV shots), keeps his imagery darkly lit (the
better to hide the computer effects), and gives the various
digitized transformations a more substantial, textured, altogether
different look and feel (there is a morph from man to beast here
that is startling in its suddenness and ferocity). If you have to go
CGI--and Gilliam was one of the last significant holdouts--I suppose
this is the way to go (though I do still miss the fantabulousness of
the effects in "Baron Munchausen").

The heart of the film lies in an event that happened years before:
Jacob as an innocent child is sent off with the starving family's
last remaining asset--a milking cow--to sell it and bring back the
money from the sale; instead, Jacob trades that money for a handful
of magic beans, which Will angrily knocks from his hand. The
brothers grow up to become a pair of confidence men; "the famous
Brothers Grimm," as Will puts it--they manufacture ghosts and
goblins that they inflict on small villages, who in turn pay them
for a quick exorcism. Outgoing Will is the staunch publicist, agent,
and negotiator of fees, not to mention a cynic and something of a
playboy; bespectacled intellectual Jacob provides the know-how that
makes the phantoms--and elaborate techniques they use in fighting
them--convincing. He's also the group's dreaming soul, hoping deep
down inside his heart that the enchantment represented by the beans
he so guilelessly sold his family's cow for years ago may someday be
proven real after all.

The wish--which is why they're so dangerous--comes true: the
brothers are arrested for fraud by French officer General Delatombe
(Jonathan Pryce, a Gilliam regular, at his most bestially
bureaucratic), and condemned to death (the details of life in 19th
century Germany are, for a fairy tale, unnervingly realistic and,
well, grim). The only way they can escape their sentence is to
investigate the mysterious disappearances of young girls in the
forest of Marsbaden. To ensure their good behavior, Delatombe
assigns Italian adjutant and unofficial torturer Cavaldi (Peter
Stormare, who here acts like an unholy cross between Don Giovanni
and Dr. Strangelove) to accompany them.

It's not what you'd call a subtle movie, but there are unsettling
moments: roaches pouring out of corpses and tombs, a creature of mud
that climbs out of a well and wipes away a child's mouth, then face;
a mummified queen with pretzel-twist fingernails who in the mirror
is breathtaking (Monica Belucci, whose beauty makes you think twice
about not giving in to malevolence and evil). Gilliam crams as many
of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales as he can into the picture and
the creatures (Pryce and Stormare easily being the most grotesque of
the lot) and spells and magical devices pile up, willy-nilly, until
the whole thing threatens to come crashing down on you.

But Gilliam was always at his best running along the very brink of
disaster (which may be part of the reason why his productions are
always troubled), surviving simply by outrunning catastrophe's
oncoming edge. What keeps us running with him are the brothers; as
played by Damon and Ledger, Will and Jacob have their separate and
even conflicting interests, but in a crisis they depend on each
other and defend each other and even risk their respective lives for
each other. It's surprisingly persuasive work from Damon (who never
seemed more than angrily sullen in his previous films) and from
Ledger (who always seemed more like a pretty boy than anything
else). They seem so comfortable with each other they don't feel like
playing up their affection for our benefit; it's just there, like
bedrock, something solid that they can stand on and depend upon,
barring a few disagreements (magic beans, career prospects, the odd
girl).

Actually, Gilliam's brothers Grimm remind me of another pair of
wanderers: skeptical Will a stand-in for down-to-earth Sancho Panza,
dreaming Jacob a substitute for Panza's mad master, together
wandering the earth on horseback and tilting at the odd windmill
(only in this case the windmill turns out not to be a windmill,
after all). Gilliam failed to realize his "Quixote," thanks to
extreme bad luck (he's in good company--Orson Welles failed to
finish his film too); this possibly Gilliam's only chance to evoke,
however distantly or fleetingly, echoes of that lost production.

Americans looking for a good, old-fashioned "story" were probably
disappointed (the U.S. boxoffice is less than spectacular), but
Filipinos, who are never all that far from the dark sources of their
imagination (we still dabble heavily in astrology, local folklore,
religion), might be more responsive to what Gilliam, who depends on
sources of dark imagination, is trying to express. Is it worth the
price of a ticket? Trust the toad.

(First published in Businessworld, 9/9/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)