31 Days of Halloween, Day 2- Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Directed By: Cristopher Gans
MVP’s: Mark Dacascos, Émilie Dequenne, Vincent Cassel, Samuel Le Bihan, Jean-François Stévenin, Bernand Farcy, Jérémie Renier, Monica Belluci
Plot: A rakehell of a royal naturalist/knight and his Native American bestie investigate some weird animal attacks in the French countryside of 1764. Is all as it appears or naw? And will the royal subject of Louis XV, just maybe, fall in love?
Response: Y'all remember The Matrix? Mud n' blood n' muck n' brains. The psychosexual dynamics of unhealthy bro/sis relationships. It's the church of the wolf! Old powder-heads snoozing during the sermon. Every time a blonde peasant gal is devoured we cut to a rain-besodden crucified Christ. Titties turn to CGI mountain vistas. Knights turn to slashers. Homie fucks with his boxers on. A white wolf dwells in the hollow.
Review: I was binging a lot of these quick (to give adequate time for the drawings and stats collages) and not taking super good notes so I can't remember the political dimensions of the film 'cept to say it's got 'em. Something something anti-church. Something something indigenous-respect-for-the-land.
As a coked-out, genre mash-up it's singular and interesting. Bodice-ripping paperback romance with horror brutality, martial arts fighting, historical posturing, swashbuckling adventure and hyper-kinetic early aughts editing. Basically a eurosleaze Pirates of The Caribbean more Jerry Bruckheimmer than Jess Franco and, for this viewer at least, not as fun as all that sounds.
I think the movie lost me on three points.
Strike One: It's treatment of magic
There's a moment about halfway through when a monster-wizard shows up and wrenches a three-pronged garden fork out the back of the beast of Gévaudan as thunder crashes and lightning ripples across the screen and I leaned forward in seat, allowing myself, at last, to get pumped as hell but SPOILERS they pretty much Scooby-Doo it all away.
I won't say what the beast is but it ain't any kinda werething.* And sure, that's my baggage I'm bringing to the picture. I tend to be "more is more" rather than "less is more" regarding my supernatural monster stuff. "Gimme the weird!" I cry from my front-court seats at the art show. The reveals here do carry thematic resonance, but any media that seeks to put a bow on the mystery and reify rationalism/materialism/status-quo is gonna have to work extra hard to get me, personally, on it's wavelength.
Strike Two: A likeable male lead
My wife and I started reading romance novels to each other a couple years back. Our Mount Rushmore of authors are Georgette Heyer (untouchable, hilarious, a master of language and dialect and a true heir to Jane Austen), Johanna Lindsey (pure, horned up trash. A + sexy pirates. James Malory? Be still our hearts) and Teresa Medeiros (oh-so-Christian and face-palmingly-awkward but nobody else writes quippy, hot-as-fuck, time-travel-adventure this rollicking)**
What all this means is I kinda get the old skool romance tropes. The weird virgin worship. The rakes reformed to good husband. I kinda understand how all this plays out in service of desire. Or, at least, I'm familiar now to its machinations. But in the context of a Great-Man, Action, Bro-Down Flick ©; employment of these tropes becomes all the cringier.
At one point our rougish lead goes on a stalk-and-slash, murder-revenge trip that had me tapping out. It's even shot like a Friday the 13th, this sequence. Plus he's fucking around, dipping his quill into another ink pot. Like, say what you will about the Malory brothers, they stop their whoring when true love arrives. They don't have a whoopsie cuz Monica Bellucci's a hot witch. They don't turn into merciless killing machines. Like, girl you ain't sailing to a happily-ever-after, get the fuck off that boat!
Strike Three: Action at Odds with Filmmaking Style
I hear you art-bros clammering, "but J-Man," you say, "how 'bout those martial arts?" Yeah, how 'bout 'em? I just watched Mr. Vampire! You can't tell me the cheese is good at Dominoes when I'm fresh back from the Swiss Alps.
Marck Dacacos is an undeniably boss fighter, but maybe don't pull as many relentless noodly zooms and quick cuts. Let this guy do the fighting not yr MTV-like editing.
In the pros camp, the movie looks good. Great costumes, great lighting, great art department. There are way worse versions of all this stuff. This being a European production, the supporting cast is a smorgasboard of cool, weird-looking, real-people faces and character actors. The direction is well-beyond competent and even stylish. Lil Sam Raimi, lil Michael Bay. I'm very glad it exists and it had been on my too-watch list for a couple decades. If somebody told me this was their favorite movie not only would I be happy for them but part of me would get it. It just ain't quite for me.
Background: This was a huge hit in 2001, breaking box office records in it's native France and also in the US and Germany. It did well in Spain and Mexico too. To this day, it is the fourth-highest-grossing French-language film in the US (after Amélie, La Cage aux Folles, and Léon: The Professional***). I chalk all that up to right-place, right-time and wonder if a film like this would do so well today. It got a wide cinematic roll out in the states by Universal exactly four months after the tragic events of 9/11. Perhaps we were all in the mood for this unique remix of escapism.
Before this Christopher Gans made a gun-fu, yakuza picture called Crying Freeman. It looks unsurprisingly stylish, lots of zooms and 'splosions. It was also a Dacascos vehicle and was a co-production of France, Japan and Canada. After Brotherhood his filmography grows a little spotty. He seems to vacillate between French-period beast pictures (his La Belle et la Bête stars Léa Seydoux, keeps the leonine appearance of the beast from Cocteau, and has all the digital sheen and CG critters of a live-action Disney remake circa 2017) and cinematic adaptations of the video game Silent Hill.
Oh yeah, creature work by Jim Henson Studios though it’s a puppet only fleetingly and mostly CGI.
Can Kid's Watch It? Listen, kids are probably seeing a lot worse but still I wouldn't recommend it. The dubious morality, and general disrespect for life make it a "not without a conversation" suggestion from me.
Halloween Score:
Autumn Vibes: 2/5
Scares & Chills: 2/5
Cultural & Cinematic Importance: 4/5
Monster Action: 2/5
Second Opinions:
"I would be lying if I did not admit that this is all, in its absurd and overheated way, entertaining." - Roger Ebert
“…what ends up working in its favor...is how its unique brand of genre amalgamation feels so prevalent today, managing to feel both tethered to the early 2000s and ahead of its time simultaneously; a pretty bold achievement - Justin LaLiberty on Letterboxed
“Ngl I have a bit of a hate boner for this movie because it's one of the clearest examples of foreign movies being graded on a curve by cinéphiles. If this movie was in English it'd be a laughing stock." - SamwisethePoopyButt on reddit
“It looked like a stegosaurus did the beast” - Ferarri17 on Letterboxed
Where to Peep:
Tubi's got the English dub, but I went to Russian Facebook to peep it en Français with English subs. Even if you do go the Tubi route, I recommend downloading some ad blocking software. Laura got us on uBlock Origin a little over a year ago and it's been an absolute game changer for streaming. Not only are we not sitting through ads but I'm watching movies off sites that heretofore I couldn't even swim through with all the pop-ups. The Japanese kiddie baby-dinosaur Christmas movie Rex was one of those. Great stuff.
Hint for Tomorrow’s Movie:
A film made infamous by it's highly-memed content.
Reminder that if you guess it in three tries I’ll buy you a pumpkin-spiced latte!
Poster cred left to right: Newish Adam Stothard art for Shout Factory release, original US DVD cover, fan art uploaded to the themovieDB by parker_eyrich, Spanish poster?, original French poster, Jasper Oliver original
*And this was supposed to be the season's big werewolf picture, darn it!
**Our fourth slot is still open. We've got Tia Williams, Rae Muir, Betty Brooks and half a dozen others awaiting us on the shelf.
***The Artist doesn't count cuz it's not a talkie.