Double Feature: The Brothers Grimm and Crimson Peak

Two different films, two different directors, many similarities. Both of these men have dabbled in the fantasy genre, both of these films come later in their careers, and both try to subvert the norms of classic storytelling, i.e. fairy tales and ghost stories. These two directors are Terry Gilliam and Guillermo del Toro, and these two films are The Brothers Grimm and Crimson Peak. Watched them back to back will transport you into completely different worlds that will let the creatures crawl under your skin, and many shivers go down your spin. Let’s look at these two very similar and yet extremely different films back-to-back.

The Brothers Grimm (2005) dir. Terry Gilliam

The script for this film was written on spec by Ehren Kruger in 2001, before being purchased by MGM and almost completely re-written by Gilliam and collaborator Tony Grisoni. The film was mainly distributed by Dimension Films, whose parent company was Miramax. This was Dimension’s biggest movie to date, with a budget of $75 million. The Weinsteins are notorious for making productions and post-editing extremely difficult for filmmakers, as they try to wring the most money out of a film’s acquisition as possible. During the production they fired Gilliam’s longtime cinematographer six weeks in and replaced him, and then post-production was delayed because of various complaints. Much like Martin Scorsese’s earlier effort, 2002’s Gangs of New York, the production was mired in broad problems. Because of these troubles even Gilliam has to admit that this isn’t the film he wanted, or even what the Weinsteins wanted, but instead it’s a strange amalgamated compromise between the two.

The film did relatively well at the worldwide box office, and was even in contention for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, losing to another Ledger property, Brokeback Mountain. It plays on cable often and is a cult favorite with millennials, but it isn’t a film that has been seen by a lot of people, or that a lot of people know of. Gilliam’s last film before this one was 12 Monkeys, seven years prior, and his filmography is generally slim compared to other large directors of his stature. This is mostly because Gilliam creates huge, fantastical films that cost a lot of money and have been known to flop. This late in the director’s career (almost forty years in) Gilliam definitely understood the technical effects needed for a larger motion picture, but not how to delegate, market to the masses, or care about the critical response. What does a film with all these modifiers even look like?

Ledger and Damon do their best throughout the film, but their characters are pegged with glaring traits and little depth. In this story the Grimms are con artists who prey on old superstitions to make money, pretending to slay witches and other demonic presences. When they are tasked with taking on real magical creatures in a small town, hijinks ensue. A pre-Game of Thrones Lena Headey plays a tomboy-esque peasant woman who helps them through a magical forest that has been stealing little girls. Throughout the film weird versions of classic Grimm fairy tales emerge, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel. Sometimes the tales stray from the Germanic iterations and include other widely loved stories. These iterations don’t add much to the film, and are very obvious, seemingly much more important as a give-in rather than an organic element of the film. The best aspects of the film include the costuming, sets, and effects. The actual plot is somewhat unintelligible and unimportant.

The Brothers Grimm is just as strange and lopsided as any Gilliam feature, with the adage that it’s a studio film. This means that the characters all seem to act and speak like caricatures of real people, and the supporting characters are odd, over-the-top, and kooky like other Gilliam films, and yet the sets, the effects, and the posturing are more mainstream. It’s Gilliam at his most tethered, making for a rather off-putting film that tries to be visually pleasing rather than artistically interesting. It’s definitely not sterile of artistic merit, but it’s also a film that lacks the gravitas and wayward craziness of a usual Gilliam film.

Overall it’s really cool to see a film look and feel fantastical in an era of filmmaking that is more interested in effects heavy action films. Fantasy is often relegated to children’s films and television, so to see a fantasy film for adults, even a tepid one, makes for an enjoyable watch.

Crimson Peak (2015) dir. Guillermo del Toro

The original spec script was written by del Toro and collaborator Matthew Robbins shortly after the release of Pan’s Labyrinth. He became bogged down in multiple projects and didn’t find the right studio until he was working on Pacific Rim in 2014. Right off the bat it’s worthy to note that this film’s script has many inspirations, including The Haunting and The Innocents, two psychological haunted house films from the sixties. This film also reminded me a lot of del Toro’s earlier film The Devil’s Backbone, which was about a small ghost boy who can’t seem to move into the hereafter. That story too followed the psychological and emotional precedent of ghosts, and how stories featuring them are often aligned with the supernatural and not the personal.

The story follows an upper middle class woman (Wasikowska) from New York, who lives with her father in her childhood home. She is beloved by a family friend (Hunnam), but when an English stranger (Hiddleston) comes to town with his sister (Chastain), she falls for him fairly quickly. From there the plot twists and turns, lending to ghosts, a past mystery that binds the siblings, and a plot that winds around the film much like a spiral staircase in a rickety manor.

Crimson Peak is a period piece ghost story set in Buffalo, New York and England. The best compliment that I can give this film is that it is rapturously gorgeous. The sets are all amazing, but especially the English manor, which was completely built from scratch, and none of which was CGI or came from past sets. Hiddleston and del Toro both agreed that it was the greatest set that they had ever worked on. Besides those amazing backgrounds this is also a film with truly breathtaking effects that create a creepy, foreboding mood. There’s a true love for the genre of the haunted house story. Haunted house narratives are a popular form of filmmaking because they denote the issues of the past and emphasize how we carry the vestiges of our past around with us.

What makes the film so unique is also what detracts from its quality: del Toro’s need for minute details in every aspect of his films. If you read the production notes on this film, every aspect of the set design, narrative arc, and costuming had metaphorical meaning to the overall story. If there was even one innocuous aspect you didn’t notice in the film, trust me it was planned out in exacting detail. While this makes for a poignant, beautiful film, it also means that every moment has to mean something. There’s no time for simple exposition or revered silence, only for more visual theatrics and melodramatic dialogue. Again, this is a film that I can easily defend, and love for its gruesome visuals and genre bending thrills, but it is also a film that relies too much on melodrama and heavy handedness. Though lovely in many ways his past films are much more interesting, and accomplish more.

There’s also the simple fact that this film has been done before. Has it been done so colorfully, or with del Toro’s unmistakable touch? Perhaps not, no, but it has been done. There’s a difference between having influences in your production, and being your influences, and this film falls into the latter category. While I think this is a more daring and grotesque version of many haunted house narratives because of its lurid twist and accomplished execution, it’s not creative enough for me to say this is one of my favorite films of the oeuvre.

In conclusion, I would probably recommend Crimson Peak over The Brothers Grimm. It knows what it is, which the latter does not, and is simply better throughout: better set, better acting, effects that are ten years younger, and a director with more control over the production. While I think Gilliam did some impressive things throughout, he has even said that this wasn’t his ideal cut, and wanted something a little less tame. If he had gone a little gorier and less appealing to the youth market, I think he would have gotten what he wanted, but this feels like a cop out for the studio. Overall, both films have truly interesting visuals, and are worth seeing.