Alex van Warmerdam is a wickedly mischievous director who seems to specialize in the theatre of the disconnected, which is appropriate. Disconnection is a prime motif in society. Most things we do, see and say every day don't make much sense.
Aside from writing and directing, Warmerdam is also a wonderful actor given to playing overwhelmed characters who are never really sure why they're alive. In one of his previous films (the unsettling 'Little Tony'), he directed himself as a stone-faced, harassed and bewildered farmer beset by a brutish wife determined to have a child at any cost. It was way off-kilter in its darkly comic exposition.
In 'Grimm,' this iconoclastic Dutchman takes us on a disjointed, other-worldly ride that lacks a traditional narrative arc. But this 'journey' has so many interesting (and inventive) comedic and dramatic riffs that you can't help but be drawn into it. It is never dull because we simply don't know what's going to happen next, up to and including a nomadic donkey, an involuntary kidney transplant, and an absurd showdown in a Spanish ghost town between a guy with a shotgun and another with a bow and arrow.
This film is quirky and fresh, and keeps you off balance. Aside from unexpected bursts of gallows comedy, it can also be dark, with malicious and disturbing set pieces. Warmerdam shows us brilliant cinematic contrasts between the gloom of the Netherlands forests and the blaring brightness of the Spanish countryside. The dichotomy between light and dark is very evident in this film and very evident in Warmerdam's predilection for dark/light humour and quasi-surreal drama.
Throughout the film, Warmerdam reminds us that this is a modern fairy tale (hence the Grimm title). Things don't naturally follow, characters are 'transported' illogically, relationships just magically happen, and epiphanies abound.
Halina Reijn as Maria and Jacob Derwig as her brother Jacob are terrific playing siblings involved in a lovingly incestuous relationship that is so casual it never really speaks its name. This is Warmerdam at his mischievous and satirical best: haven't we, with our overactive, dirty little minds, always suspected there might have been more to the Hansel and Gretel story than two lost kids courting danger in the forest? Incest, of course, is taboo, and you would never see it in a Hollywood flick unless it was done as high drama or tragedy. But Maria and Jacob really do love each other in the true sense of love. In the Netherlands, the mind is a bit more expansive.
Aside from writing and directing, Warmerdam is also a wonderful actor given to playing overwhelmed characters who are never really sure why they're alive. In one of his previous films (the unsettling 'Little Tony'), he directed himself as a stone-faced, harassed and bewildered farmer beset by a brutish wife determined to have a child at any cost. It was way off-kilter in its darkly comic exposition.
In 'Grimm,' this iconoclastic Dutchman takes us on a disjointed, other-worldly ride that lacks a traditional narrative arc. But this 'journey' has so many interesting (and inventive) comedic and dramatic riffs that you can't help but be drawn into it. It is never dull because we simply don't know what's going to happen next, up to and including a nomadic donkey, an involuntary kidney transplant, and an absurd showdown in a Spanish ghost town between a guy with a shotgun and another with a bow and arrow.
This film is quirky and fresh, and keeps you off balance. Aside from unexpected bursts of gallows comedy, it can also be dark, with malicious and disturbing set pieces. Warmerdam shows us brilliant cinematic contrasts between the gloom of the Netherlands forests and the blaring brightness of the Spanish countryside. The dichotomy between light and dark is very evident in this film and very evident in Warmerdam's predilection for dark/light humour and quasi-surreal drama.
Throughout the film, Warmerdam reminds us that this is a modern fairy tale (hence the Grimm title). Things don't naturally follow, characters are 'transported' illogically, relationships just magically happen, and epiphanies abound.
Halina Reijn as Maria and Jacob Derwig as her brother Jacob are terrific playing siblings involved in a lovingly incestuous relationship that is so casual it never really speaks its name. This is Warmerdam at his mischievous and satirical best: haven't we, with our overactive, dirty little minds, always suspected there might have been more to the Hansel and Gretel story than two lost kids courting danger in the forest? Incest, of course, is taboo, and you would never see it in a Hollywood flick unless it was done as high drama or tragedy. But Maria and Jacob really do love each other in the true sense of love. In the Netherlands, the mind is a bit more expansive.