Tagline: Eliminating Evil Since 1812.
When the French government figures out what they’re up to, they force the brothers to deal with the real thing — a number of murders being committed under mysterious circumstances in the northern woods between Germany and France. It is there that they have to try and discover what’s really happening and deal with it before more people are killed or their lack of success leads to the guillotine.
“The Brothers Grimm,” from director Terry Gilliam (“Brazil,” “The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen”), stars Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, the legendary brothers who gave us our favorite fairy tales.
The film follows them on an enchanted adventure set in a world of heroes and villains, witches and trolls, undying evil and true love, – a realm the two storytellers thought was just make believe… until it came into their world to get them. Now the Brothers Grimm are about to confront all that their imaginations brought to life, as they are caught up in an epic battle between fantasy and reality.
About the Production
Once upon a time there lived two dashing but diametrically opposed brothers, cynical Will and Jacob the dreamer, who became known far and wide as THE BROTHERS GRIMM. The brothers roamed the land collecting and spreading fairy tales – tales of danger and mystery that to this day enchant and terrify people of all ages with hair-raising stories of magical good battling epic evil and ordinary humans confronting the eternal riddles of monsters, mystical beasts and wicked witches. Indeed, the Brother Grimm brought forth the yarns responsible for some of the world’s wildest dreams and darkest nightmares for centuries.
Of course, the Grimm’s fairy tales are simply highly entertaining stories that only the gullible and the superstitious believe in – hoaxes of a sort. They’re certainly not for real. Or are they? Now, visionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam – who created the unforgettable visual worlds of “Brazil,” “Twelve Monkeys” and “The Fisher King” – creates a rip-roaring adventure for the legendary story-telling siblings that will bring them face-to-face with a cursed village in which the most wild and fabled fantasies have become . . . reality. Casting two of today’s most charismatic screen stars, Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in roles unlike anything they’ve done before — as the brothers who start out as frauds and unwittingly become heroes — Gilliam combines elements of comedy, fantasy, horror and romance in an epic quest and forges an outrageous adventure inspired by some the best-known tales ever told.
“Fairy tales are my kind of world — the world of fantasy and extraordinary things,” says Terry Gilliam of why he decided to tackle the production of THE BROTHERS GRIMM. “We ended up with a script I really believed in. The idea was that if you could create very real characters in a real world then, when these strange and scary fairy tale elements begin to intrude and take over, the audience will believe in this world completely and have a lot of fun exploring it.”
From the start, Gilliam chose to go beyond the factual lives of the Brothers Grimm to create an escapade for them that nevertheless is richly inspired by their smart, frightening and endlessly compelling stories. He explains: “We owe the real Brothers Grimm a lot of thanks for the film but the story isn’t about their historical lives. We’ve basically created a fairy tale about them, in which they, at first, appear to be hip and heroic guys traveling from village to village ridding them of trolls, witches and all kinds of fantastical nightmares — but we quickly learn it is all a clever con.
Meanwhile, Napoleon’s Army, which has invaded Germany, is trying to ensnare the brothers and stamp their kind out. But soon they are all caught in a world that is exactly like the tales the Grimms have been collecting. In the end, the fairytales have become real and reality has become entwined with fantasy.”
Paying homage to both the grandness and ghoulishness of the Grimm legacy, Gilliam playfully weaves throughout the film’s non-stop action recognizable threads from some of the most popular Grimm fairy tales that have been read and loved around the world. “Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel – there are references throughout the movie to those Grimm fairy tales that are most familiar to the audience,” the director notes. “Although there are actually several hundred Grimm fairy tales, we wanted to stay with the ones that really resonate in people’s imaginations.”
Most of all, the film celebrates the very spirit of these dark stories– with their high-octane, psychologically suspenseful mix of contrasting magic and fear, wonder and vengeance, comic enchantment and blood-curdling evil. “Fairy tales have always been the way the world exercises its fears and its darkest imaginings and, also the way it sustains its belief in happy endings,” Gilliam observes. “I believe fairy tales were always meant to be a little dangerous and disturbing, to stir things up. Perhaps the idea is that if you survive through enough fairy tales, you’re prepared for the real world.”
The true Brothers Grimm had a similar belief about the undeniable power and entertainment value of these tales. Living in the tumult of 19th Century Germany, they were immersed in a time when superstition and mythology were batting it out with rationalism and modern ideas. It was a time of radical changes in the previously remote and primal German countryside, as the Napoleonic Army invaded Germany – bringing with it the reason-based beliefs of the Age of Enlightenment.
When Enlightenment collided with a way of life based on myth and ancient stories, sparks flew – and it was this incendiary conflict that Gilliam hoped to capture on screen as the Brothers Grimm head to the village of Marbaden believing more in hoaxes than in horses that can swallow children.
“I was very interested in the great conflict between the belief in fantasy and the ideas of the Enlightenment, which actually became quite rigid in its own lack of belief in anything mysterious,” notes Gilliam. “We made that a real part of the story. And of course the conflict goes on today.”
Also at the heart of the story are the bonds that can tie brothers together – and sometimes tear them apart. Will and Jacob Grimm are entirely opposite in their personalities and philosophies, yet when they arrive in the cursed village of Marbaden, their mutual attraction for the same woman soon complicates the already spooky proceedings.
“These are two brothers who clearly love each other and also despise one another at times and they have a very intense sort of brotherly relationship,” Gilliam observes. “Will is the charmer – he walks into the room, the girls look to him and he can have anything he wants. Jake on the other hand is caught up in this belief in storybook princesses and is searching for the ultimate romance. And Lena Headey, who plays the trapper Angelika, is the perfect for the two brothers.”
Most of all THE BROTHERS GRIMM was a chance for Gilliam to delve into the darkest depths of his own imagination to bring to life a pitch-black, humor-laden universe woven of menacing forests, looming castles, lurking wolves and cryptic beasts with his trademark cinematic originality and flourish. The concept was to create an initial raw, 19th century reality for the Grimms – and then warp it into a surreal dream world from which they cannot seem to escape.
“We realized from the beginning that in order to have the film truly look like a fairy tale that we couldn’t shoot it in a real forest or a real village because nothing quite like it existed — we were going to have to build it all. So we created nearly everything from scratch, built castles and barns, brought an entire forest of trees into a soundstage, trained ravens and horses, crafted hundreds of models – and it was by far the largest production which I’ve ever done,” sums up Gilliam.
These production notes provided by Dimension Films.
The Brothers Grimm
Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Monica Bellucci, Jonathan Pryce, Lena Headey, Anna Rust, Marika Sarah Procházková, Alena Jakobova, Dana Dohnalova, Petra Dohnalova
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Screenplay by: Tony Grisoni
Release Date: August 26th, 2005
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, frightening sequences, suggestive material.
Studio: Dimension Films
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $37,916,267 (36.0%)
Foreign: $67,400,000 (64.0%)
Total: $105,316,267 (Worldwide)