The Brothers Grimm (film)

This article is about the movie The Brothers Grimm. For the writers on which this movie is loosely based, see Brothers Grimm.

The Brothers Grimm
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Written by	Ehren Kruger
Produced by	Jonathan Gordon Chris McGurk
Starring	Matt Damon Heath Ledger Jonathan Pryce Peter Stormare Monica Bellucci
Cinematography	Newton Thomas Sigel Nicola Pecorini
Distributed by	- USA - Dimension Films - non-USA - Summit Entertainment
Release date	August 26 2005
Running time	118 min.
Language	English
Budget	$80,000,000

The Brothers Grimm is a 2005 film directed by Terry Gilliam.

This film was supposed to be released in November 2004 in theaters, but it was delayed, with the new release date being August 26, 2005. The film was in the competition at the Venice Film Festival 2005.

Tagline: Eliminating Evil Since 1812.

Plot

The film starts at the end of the 18th-century and begins with a scene of Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm as children. Their sister is dying and Jacob has been sent to sell the cow in order to have money for a doctor. However, when Jacob returns, he innocently explains that he has traded the cow for "magic" beans. Will is furious with Jacob, and it is implied that their sister died as a result of his mistake.

The story jumps ahead fifteen years (into the early 19th century) with Will and Jake riding into a town in "French occupied Germany," to rid the town of a witch's ghost. However, after killing the "ghost," it is revealed that the Brothers Grimm are actually con artists, setting up fake demons and monsters to trick gullible townspeople.

Afterwards, as they are celebrating at an inn, Cavaldi, an Italian torturer, captures them and takes them to the French General, Delatombe. Delatombe forces them to solve a mystery: the girls of the small village of Marbaden are going missing. The Brothers are charged with finding out who is responsible, under the assumption that it is the work of con artists like themselves. However, they soon discover that it is in fact the work of a real supernatural force: the beautiful yet horribly dangerous Mirror Queen who is stealing young girls for their youth.

Long ago, the Queen tormented the villagers' ancestors to possess their magic, including a spell for eternal life. Only a year later, her kingdom was destroyed by the plague. She built a high tower to avoid it, as her husband and everyone below her perished--unfortunately, she did not understand that plague was carried by wind. She was extraordinarily vain and soon began to rot away as she decayed over the years. Her spell granted her immortal life, but not the youth and beauty to go along with it. Her youthful appearance now only exists in her mirror, the source of her life, as an illusion and nothing more.

The queen is working an enchantment to regain her beauty with the aid of her shape-shifting huntsman with a magic ax (which can operate like a boomerang), crow familiars, and various creatures in the forest. She needs to drink the blood of twelve young women. The Brothers Grimm, with the help of Angelika, a knowing huntress from the village, and Cavaldi, must stop her.

File:Brothers-grimm-the-20050823024428066.jpg

The Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci) revives the fallen and stabbed Will Grimm (Matt Damon).

The woodsman turns out to be Angelika's father, who was saved by the Queen from a frozen death and pierced in the heart with a spike or thorn which keeps him under her spell. Eventually, the Brothers gain entrance to the Queen's tower but the spell to return her youth is nearly complete because Angelika has become the twelfth victim.

The Brothers Grimm attack the Queen but she turns their weapons on each other and Will is stabbed. The Queen decides to revive the fallen Grimm and make him her new "prince" by taking the thorn from the woodsman's heart and embedding it in Will's. Jake finally manages to shatter the enchanted mirror inside the tower, causing the Queen to shatter as well. Jake awakens Angelika and everyone else who had been enchanted by giving her the kiss of true love. With the menace gone and their daughters returned to them, the villagers of Marbaden celebrate and give their heart-felt thanks to the Brothers Grimm, who have decided to pursue a new vocation. At this point, the words "And they all lived happily ever after..." appear on screen. However, a crow flies over this cheerful scene with a surviving fragment of the Mirror Queen in its beak and the message on screen changes to "...or maybe not".

Cast

Actor	Role
Matt Damon	Will (Wilhelm) Grimm
Heath Ledger	Jake (Jakob) Grimm
Peter Stormare	Mercurio Cavaldi
Lena Headey	Angelika
Jonathan Pryce	General Vavarin Delatombe
Monica Bellucci	The Mirror Queen
Laura Greenwood	Sasha

Delayed?

Despite initial fears by some critics and film fans (based on the fact that the release date was rescheduled several times), The Brothers Grimm was released August 26 2005 after final arrangements made by the Weinstein brothers and the Walt Disney Company concerning how to divide the catalog of Miramax films currently in production. MGM and Miramax's Dimension Films produced the film, MGM has international rights and Dimension/Miramax has US distribution rights. MGM backed out of its deal to co-distribute in the US, which also contributed to the delay in its release.

Dreams and Nightmares: The Brothers Grimm and other Cautionary Tales of Hollywood by Bob McCabe was released on November 7, 2005 by HarperCollins documenting the challenges and problems that Gilliam and his crew faced while making the movie.

In an audio commentary on the DVD Gilliam forthrightly says he did not think much of The Brothers Grimm script but decided to direct it because he had no projects of his own going on at the time. In interviews included on the DVD edition of Tideland Gilliam says agreeing to direct The Brothers Grimm helped him to line up financing for Tideland. The latter film was made during a break in production on The Brothers Grimm.

DVD Release

The DVD version of The Brothers Grimm was released on December 20, 2005. Special features included deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and commentary from Gilliam.

Trivia

• Jonathan Pryce has already worked with Gilliam. He played The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) and Sam Lowry in Brazil (1985).
• Both Gilliam and Matt Damon wanted to hire Samantha Morton for the female lead (the part Lena Headey played), but producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein vetoed her out of the film. Morton has said that this was due to the impression that "the tops of her arms were too big." Harvey Weinstein said despite his decision, he believes that Morton is a great actress and one day will win an Oscar for a film that he will produce.
• Goran Bregovic was Terry Gilliam's original choice for composer. When Gilliam decided to go with a more traditional score, Bregovic was replaced by Dario Marianelli.
• The Weinstein brothers came on board in 2004 at the last minute when MGM suddenly pulled out the funding.
• In June 2004, a problem occurred on the set and Gilliam decided to place the film on hold for six months. He went on to do Tideland and came back to this feature in January 2005.
• The "hand forest" sequence in this film is an idea Gilliam has had for almost 25 years. It was originally written for Time Bandits (1981) and was almost used in Brazil (1985). A similar sequence appears in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, on which Gilliam appeared as both actor and animator.
• Matt Damon and Heath Ledger were originally cast in opposite roles. They petitioned and switched their roles.
• Because of problems with the Writers Guild of America, Gilliam and Tony Grisoni were not able to credit themselves as writers of the screenplay, despite the many changes they had made to Ehren Kruger's original script. They invented a credit for themselves as "Dress Pattern Makers" and thus were quoted as saying that the film was not necessarily made from a "screenplay" but from a "dress pattern". Similar events took place during the production of Gilliam's previous film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• For the scene in the torture chamber, Matt Damon was strung up by his waist but he could only stay up there for about a minute and a half because the rope was crushing his ribs which cut off his air supply.
• This is Terry Gilliam's first film to get a PG-13 rating in the United States; all of his other films got either a PG or an R.

Fairy Tales and References

Many references to fairy tales (most recorded by the Grimms) are made, but they are slightly different from the actual tales:

• The Mirror Queen was a combination of stories like Snow White (the evil queen in relation to her magic mirror), The Princess and the Pea (sleeping on a pile of matresses) & Rapunzel (dwelling in a tower with no doorways and having long hair).
• The heroic woodsman from Little Red Riding Hood is now an evil henchman and a werewolf: The Big Bad Wolf. In the film Will says, "A little chit, a little chat," and Jake responds by saying, "A little Huff, a little puff."
• A girl who encounters a demonic horse says, "What Big Ears you have, What Big Eyes you have..." mirroring Little Red Riding Hood's encounter with the Big Bad Wolf.
• One of the girls was wearing a red cloak when she was kidnapped, making another reference to Little Red Riding Hood.
• One of the kidnapped girls is named Greta and has a brother named Hans, making a reference to Hansel and Gretel. Also, when the two are walking in the woods, they leave a trail of bread crumbs, and Greta, scared, says to herself, "And there in the woods was the witch's gingerbread house."
• The Gingerbread man is now incarnated as a 'mud mimic'.
• Jacob sells the cow for beans, like in Jack and the Beanstalk.
• Cinderella is really the Grimm Brothers as they scrub the floors. The deleted scene in the DVD shows this better. Also, all the sacrificed girl's feet are magically covered with glass slippers, in reference to Cinderella.
• All the sacrificed girls' fingers are pricked as they fall into a comatose-like sleep, and the need to wake Angelika with the kiss of true love is like Sleeping Beauty.
• A frog is "kissed," in reference to The Frog Prince.
• While drunk, Jakob tells a story about a time they needed to guess the name of a gnome, like in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.
• There are 12 girls/princesses on the crypts that encircle the tower, the number is a reference to The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Other possible references include:

• The story of the Mirror Queen also seems very similar to the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess.
• A ring is thrown into water, and then the water is turned to ice, like a scene from the film Legend.
• A girl, despite lying down, taps her slippers together as does Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

External links

• Official site from 6 August 2005, as indexed at Archive.org and retrieved 4 May 2007
• The Brothers Grimm at IMDb
• The Brothers Grimm at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dreams (Terry Gilliam Fanzine): The Brothers Grimm
• Rambles.net review by Tom Knapp
• Interview with director Terry Gilliam at YoursDaily.com