The Brothers Grimm
by Daniel Fienberg, Zap2it.com
* * As accomplished a visual stylist as Terry Gilliam may be, the success of his movies is disproportionately tied to the strength of the screenplays. When handed a weak or loose script -- as with his own work on "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail" -- Gilliam's taste for whimsy and oddity gets the best of him. When working with an intellectual text -- Tom Stoppard's "Brazil" or David Webb Peoples' "Twelve Monkeys" -- the director brings the visuals to make the ideas soar. On his latest, "The Brothers Grimm," Gilliam spends so much time over-compensating for Ehren Kruger's over-literal mish-mash of a story that the film is without moorings. The movie is an utter mess, but it's the kind of maddening disappointment that could only be made by a director of Gilliam's stature.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were interesting, if not fascinating, historical figures. They were scholars, writers and oral historians. They were also anthropological censors, taking folk stories and smoothing out the rough edges, eliminating many of the more violent and sexually deviant aspects to cater to a more mainstream audience. Many decades later, the Brothers Grimm would get a posthumous taste of their own medicine, as Walt Disney worked to obliterate whatever dark elements still remained in the stories.
Those Brothers Grimm have nothing to do with the Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob (Heath Ledger) depicted in Gilliam's film. Yes, Jacob is a bit of a dreamer. Back in the day, he sold the family cow for a handful of magic beans, basically bankrupting the family. As a result, Will is a skeptic and a cynic. Together, they roam the countryside defrauding superstitious locals. They stage elaborate pageants under the guise of hauntings and then charge the townspeople exorbitant sums to rid the area of ghosts and wandering spirits. Will is all huckster and showman, but Jacob is working on the side to collect some of the stories.
