The Brothers Grimm

Before I start to rave vitriol and rue Terry Gilliam's incessant leaping over the moon, I'll admit that part of my hostility comes the philologist nerd inside me who demands that everybody remember and be able to recite on cue Grimm's Law, a vital contribution to mankind and a major reason we praise the brothers today:
It inspired, in part, the Neogrammarians to turn the ad hoc observations of amateurs into a systematic human science, and it revolutionized the industry of 19th century German plagiarism, stolen, as it was, from a far better but less charismatic scholar. Anyway, not once does the movie mention this summit of synthesis, this contest of correspondences, opting instead to focus on fairy tales, and therefore I justifiably fume and sputter.

Now, I understand that few people will pay money to watch a movie about historical grammar. I also know that each of us likes to make believe. But can we not combine the two preferences and pretend that language interests us?

So: I hated it from the start. But I admire Terry Gilliam, despite his Icarusian M.O., and so I went ahead and watched this latest combustible flight of imagination. As is customary of his projects, this one looks great. As is also customary, it sacrifices depth for scope, plot or character for spectacle. The brothers are both contrasting caricatures and completely interchangeable, an improbable irony that actually improves the movie, unfortunately. The story is ankle-deep but nevertheless proves a very real danger for drowning once the wings have melted and their voyager plummeted from the celestial muck to wrestle once again with the bathos of gravity.

Man can write, or paint, or sculpt, or compose the impossible; he can never film it, however, because money and time constrain his task. His effort is doomed, and his art, born of its author's brain as a dead invention, labors into an ugly life, confused and contradictory. But give the man credit for trying: a novel touch to claim the brothers passed their early years as masters of the confidence game.

If anyone out there has plans to make a movie about Karl Verner the witchdoctor, don't bother: the German thing has been done to death. May I suggest Morris Swadesh, M.E.?