Once upon a time, there was a beleaguered filmmaker so plagued by cinematic misfortunes that none of the studios in the land would trust him with their money. With the advent of The Brothers Grimm however, a feature with star power and real studio backing, it seemed that Terry Gilliam might have finally been offered a garden to allow the seeds of his creativity take root and flourish. Sadly, the same demons that have plagued him his entire career reared their heads again and threw a monkey wrench into the creative cogs that make up the Gilliam Machine.
Brothers Grimm tells the tale of a pair of charlatan siblings who roam the countryside of 19th century Europe, running a paranormal pest control scam on gullible villagers. The plot thickens when they are caught by an irritable French General – played competently by Gilliam troupe stalwart, Jonathan Pryce – and contracted to deal with a real life monster menace. This launches them into a caper where they rub elbows with a rogues gallery of Fairy Tale creatures including the Big Bad Wolf himself.
Sounds like the perfect little sandbox to unleash Terry’s mind upon, right? Not quite. While he definitely makes his presence know, the film is bogged down with so many problems I regret having to sit it next to the rest of Gilliam’s film on my shelf.
It was an exercise in pain watching this film unfold, so I was quick to find ways to waive Gilliam’s liability for this mess, and the best barometer to gauge who’s to blame is the score. The score is generally the last thing completed in the filmmaking process, and is therefore one of the easiest targets for studio execs looking to bring a film back under budget, Music is, after all, often underestimated as a means of accentuating the positive in a good movie, and its absence can certainly magnify the negative as well. Absent were the colourful tones that graced films like 12 Monkeys and Baron Munchausen, leaving us to contend with a sparse musical landscape that fails to play up on any of the atmospheres that Gilliam’s struggling to create. It’s like a cake with no icing, it’s tastier than bread, but you’re not gonna make a sandwich out of it. Why not pull money out of the CGI budget instead, after all Gilliam certainly has a penchant for “conventional” special effects, like lens tricks and smoke machines.
There are plenty of aspects of production that a studio can meddle in with the possibility of improving on a floundering project, but a weak story is one of those inescapable flaws that corporate influence can only serve to further confound. Right off the bat we open we open with a poorly executed Jack & the Beanstalkesque vignette that is supposed to illustrate the tension between our protagonists – it establishes the film right out of the gates as contrived, rather than sly. Even more tragically, Brothers Grimm suffers from something I like to call… well, I don’t have a name for it, but it’s when a movie has a poorly constructed nemesis structure. There are plenty of bad guys for the eponymous brothers to contend with, but because the true personification of villainy in the film – portrayed by the believably sinister Monica Bellucci – never interacts directly with the Grimms until the end, how can we really develop a feeling of enmity between them that achieves some satisfying resolution with the audience when she is defeated? As mentioned earlier, there is the lurking menace of Jonathan Pryce waiting for the Brothers to mess up, but he’s deliberately portrayed as ineffectual even if he is cruel and ruthless. He does send an agent to keep tabs on them, the sadistic bungling Cavaldi – played disappointingly by go-to weird guy Peter Stormare. Stormare’s the kind of actor than can really put the polish on already great movies, whether it’s feeding guys into a wood-chipper, or singing creepy torch songs with Bjork. Maybe it’s because he plays an Italian instead of some ominous Eastern European type that he’s way off his game. Like many things in this movie, Stormare seems like the perfect choice, but he comes off as simply white noise, adding a little to the mood but contributing nothing to the narrative.
Many casting choices are attributable to the Director, so in all fairness, the blame for Stormare and his performance can rest on Terry’s shoulders. However, the casting of a marquee star like Matt Damon was likely out of his hands, so we can absolve him of Damon’s inappropriate accent, and hot & cold performance. Damon appears outmatched by Heath Ledger, which may bode well for the next Batman film, but doesn’t do us any favours in the present.
In situations like this, it would be easy to lay it all on the director and wash your hands of it, but let me point out that when studio interference got so out of control that production was halted, Terry used the break to come all the way to Manitoba to make a whole other movie; one not without its own complications, but a signature Gilliam film nonetheless.
So what are we to make of this? I suppose all I really set out to do was establish what a bad movie this was, while still preserving Gilliam’s dignity, but that would only keep me up at night and doesn’t help with your choices. Tell you what: if you’re looking for a film set in 19th century France, where a couple of European monster hunters chase after a supposedly mythical beast, check out Brotherhood of the Wolf instead, it was way more slick, in French, and has plenty of Kung Fu. And if you can get your hands on it, watch Tideland, it’s like the escapist daydream Terry had while contending with the waking nightmare known as The Bothers Grimm.
The verdict: Borrow it from a friend, but don’t thank them for it.
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