The Brothers Grimm

VISIONARY DIRECTOR RETURNS

By Sandra Kraisirideja

Director Terry Gilliam tears into a room at the Four Seasons Hotel like the Tasmanian Devil and can barely sit still as he talks about his first film in seven years, “The Brothers Grimm.”

It’s a fitting introduction as many in the cast talked about Gilliam’s enthusiasm during their interviews.

“He's got the greatest energy and it's totally infectious,” said Matt Damon, who plays Will Grimm. “You have 200 people—we had a huge crew because it was such a big movie—and all of these people were literally feeding off of this guy's energy.”
Gilliam, however, insists his get-up-and-go attitude is a complete act.

“I can summon up enough adrenaline to do a few days of this sort of public activity. Then I go back home and I become the curmudgeon that my wife and children know me as,” Gilliam said with a grin that spanned from ear to ear.

Set in 19th century Germany, during the French occupation, “The Brothers Grimm” has a visual framework that is reminiscent of Gilliam’s pervious works, such as “Brazil” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

The film also stars Heath Ledger as Jacob Grimm, Monica Belluci, Peter Stormare and Jonathan Pryce, who also starred in “Brazil.”

The movie casts the Grimms as nothing more than charlatans who travel from town to town ridding villages of supposed spirits and ghosts that they painstakingly created themselves. Popular Grimm fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Rapunzel” are woven throughout the film as real-life events.

Gilliam was attracted to the movie’s darker possibilities.

“Modern children’s material is so lightweight. It’s like we don’t want to frighten children; they’re delicate little creatures. That’s a big lie,” said Gilliam, who learned more about the Grimms during filming, like the fact that they actually didn’t write the fairy tales.

“They were concerned about the oral tradition in Germany, that these tales were all gonna disappear. The grandmothers and grandfathers were dying; it was all going to be lost. This great German heritage was vanishing. And they started writing down the stories; they transcribed them and got their friends to do it. That’s why they’re there. But they’re ancient tales that resonate on many, many, many levels,” Gilliam said.

Based on a script by Ehren Kruger, “The Brothers Grimm” is part fairy tale, part love story and part comedy, which suits Gilliam just fine.

“I can only do what I know how to do and what makes me laugh, what makes me excited. I like making a film with lots of stuff in there,” said Gilliam, using a food analogy to further explain his point. A lot of people “like their meals served up very simply, but I end up with a little bit of sushi, a little bit of cordon bleu there. Why not a little taco over there? Let’s stick it all together.”

Gilliam’s imaginative sets and wide angle shots can create a challenge for actors. “When you sign up to do a movie with him you're basically signing up to be one of 11 elements in a shot. So you could have a great take, but if the geese aren't right in the background or the smoke coming up in the chimney,” is not right then the whole take is scrapped, Damon said.

For “The Brothers Grimm,’ Gilliam felt the script was the kind that “gets made in Hollywood, but to me it just needed a lot more fairy tail enchantment, magic,” he said. “There was a lot of brilliant, clever stuff in [the script,] but I thought I’d seen a lot of it before. So we degraded the whole project and brought it down to the kind of movie that normally doesn’t get made.”

Gilliam is often mistaken as an Englishman because of his long association with Monty Python (Gilliam created the animated sequences used during the show), but he was born in Minneapolis and raised in Los Angeles.

Gilliam began filming “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” in 2001 with Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort, but production was halted just a few days into principal photography due to Rochefort’s health and other assorted disasters.

The difficulties surrounding the production were detailed in the documentary, “Lost in La Mancha.”

Does Gilliam find it tough to be the kind of director who only wants to make original films?

“The only tough part is getting somebody to say yes. Once they say yes, I’ve got control. And that’s the hardest word to squeeze out of the mouths of Hollywood executives, because it’s the moment they lose control. And that’s why ‘No’ is the word you normally hear, because once they’ve said yes, the director is off and running,” he said.

Source: Entertainment Today