h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I confess, I am an unrepentant Terry Gilliam fan. I lack objectivity. This latest is "not for everyone". The story is deceptively simple, enought to deceive most of the critics who quickly dismissed it. Those looking for some veiled commentary on present political situations (like Jackson's Lords of the Rings) will gently be reminded that the Fairy tale medium exist outside of time. I probably missed much of it's meaning too. I don't like Jungian archetypes, but you could easily spot several. Things that stuck out are the feuding brothers, and feuding Euros; the French and Germans. One Grimm is a rationalist like the French, the other is more inclined to the mythic imaginal realm (For Imaginal see Henri Corbin). In the 20th Century, the Germans are considered to be the villains of history (not without reason) but just a few years and a century earlier the French Napoleonic empire was an equally methodical and bureacratical evil force in Europa. You can go back even earlier, and you have various conflicts between the two; even Caesar's conquest of Gaul, the invasion of rome by Visigoths and so on.

What does this have to do with Fairy Tales? How we interpret a fairy tale mirrors how we percieve ourselves and the world we inhabit. They are introduced into our pre rational minds, and shape some of what we become. The rational and the imaginal are two halves of a whole being. How they are integrated shapes how you percieve. Enter Gilliam's universe and you get the feeling that the rational has imposed far too much control of our lives; it is a bureucratic tyrant, glumly crushing the bugs that get in the way. In the Imaginal movie house, this can be remedied, but it is as dangerous as licking a toad.

Brothers Grimm is one of those films that will not look like much at first viewing, but it's complexities may reveal themselves over time and outside of it. We expect nothing less from Gilliam.

As a side note, don't you think that Gilliam would have done a much better Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. Adams and he collaborated on a very strange video game "Starship Titanic".