The New Year's barely begun and what may very well turn out to be the biggest, boldest and most purely entertaining guilty pleasure of 2002 is already here.
Imagine a vintage '60s Hammer horror flick starring Peter Cushing — albeit a buffed-up, ass-kicking Cushing — trading moves with Bruce Lee or even Jet Li, and with production credits shared by Merchant-Ivory and John Woo. Then, add drop-dead gorgeous 18th century period trappings, liberal sprinklings of history, philosophy, mysticism and social criticism, all filtered through an underlying tongue-in-cheek obsession with boundless human perversity, and you begin to get a hint of what to expect from The Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Brotherhood of the Wolf (a.k.a. Le Pacte Des Loups) has been tearing up the box office in France for some time now, and at this very moment appears poised on the brink of doing some similar damage on these shores. There have been other movies that bent and blended genres as blithely as Brotherhood of the Wolf, but few have done it with as much panache, and fewer still with budgets that included lunch for the crew, or directors that weren't incompetent or insane. Christophe Gans, director of Brotherhood of the Wolf, is anything but incompetent or insane — if anything, he's clever like a fox and hungry like the wolf — and the movie's budget is, by European standards, just short of astronomical. Say what you will about Brotherhood of the Wolf; this is a class act.
Gans' movie may not quite offer something for absolutely everyone, but it comes awfully close. His film is constructed from elements that will appeal to art film buffs and popcorn movie fans alike, although for completely different reasons. At the same time, there are sure to be purists in both camps who'll be completely bored and even repelled by Brotherhood. Some will see it as silly wannabe Hollywood action-adventure movie cloaked in faux-art formalism; others will find an overlong, quasi-egghead movie goosed up with some fancy kung-fu moves and cheesy digital effects.
There are elements of truth in those perspectives, but, on the whole and against all odds, Brotherhood of the Wolf works. If nothing else, Gans is an inexplicably successful Dr. Frankenstein, piecing together from the dried corpses of old movie genres a smoothly reanimated cine-beastie that should by all accounts not be able to walk and talk, but does – with energy and style to burn.
Taking as its source a famous French legend used to scare small children late at night, Brotherhood takes place circa 1765 in Gevaudan, a rural area in France being terrorized by what is said to be a monstrous, wolf-like creature. The film is told in flashback, narrated years later by one of its peripheral players who sits sipping wine and writing his memoirs as the French Revolution howls away just outside his door. The costumes and decors are ornate and wonderfully accurate, the mood terse but subdued. Yet, Brotherhood of the Wolf barely gives us a moment to get a handle on things before it's off and running in a rush to get on with its mad experiment at splicing and dicing from the cinematic gene pool.
The movie opens looking for all the world like some refined, mild-mannered costume drama. It almost immediately diverts our attention to the gruesome sight of a young woman being savagely mauled by the unseen beast, who is automatically presumed to be a female — a nice, typically French touch. Gans' perpetually agitated camera lurches and lunges as if possessed by the forces of darkness (or maybe someone's just seen Sam Rami's Evil Dead one too many times).
From there, we cut away to the men tracking the creature: the brilliant, court-appointed naturalist Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan, sporting a tres unfortunate David Lee Roth coiffure) and his Iroquois blood brother Mani (martial arts mainstay Mark Dacascos of Crying Freeman fame), a strong, silent type who talks to trees and communes with the spirit world.
Oh, and lest we forget, both Fronsac and his faithful Indian companion just happen to be world-class kung-fu fighters, something that comes in pretty handy when bands of thugs and other assorted scumbags start turning up every couple of scenes or so itching for some action. The first confrontation occurs scant minutes into the film. It's not nearly in the same league with that initial inspirational moment we see the characters literally flying across the rooftops in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (another culture-crossing film that bears comparison with Brotherhood of the Wolf) but it sets the tone in just as unequivocal a fashion.
The fighters all move like dancers (thanks in no small part to the efforts of veteran martial arts choreographer Philip Kwok) and the camera takes it all in from an assortment of oddly stylish angles and artful, stop-and-start motion techniques — equal parts Guy Ritchie, John Woo and The Matrix. All this, plus graphic, slo-mo shots of bloodletting, iconic close-ups and exaggerated sound effects announce in no uncertain terms that there's more than a touch of a comic book sensibility here as well. That sensibility lends itself nicely to the chopsockey/spaghetti western show-downs sprinkled through the film, but it's right at home as well with the inescapable fact that, when you come right down to it, Brotherhood of the Wolf is mostly a good, old-fashioned monster movie.
And true to the tradition of all good old-fashioned monster movies (and most good sex), the wait is everything: Brotherhood delays our satisfaction for ages, giving us only the briefest glimpses of the monster until well over an hour in. Instead, the film doles out bits and pieces of its multigenre game plan (a little history, a little romance, a little perverted human psychology, lots of fights) as it piles on the elegantly spooky atmosphere, making the most of the twisted tree stumps and mist-enshrouded, blue half-light of the Gevaudan countryside.
As it turns out, less is really more: When we finally do get a good look at the movie's creature, it's a major disappointment. Without giving too much away, let's just say that the blend of computer-generated digital effects and animatronic puppetry on display here (courtesy of Jim Henson's workshop) looks dated, at best, and mainly serves as further proof that in some departments, the rest of the world still can't compete with Hollywood.
There are other problems here too, and some of them are fairly substantial. Regardless of its eclectic, eccentric nature, Brotherhood of the Wolf is far too gracefully assembled to be called a mess. Still, the movie's "big picture" seems to take a back seat to its individual moments, and its overall shape ultimately feels a bit lopsided, even ungainly. It's inexcusable that a movie this long (140 minutes plus change) contain major plot points that feel like they've come out of nowhere and narrative twists that are revealed in a manner virtually lacking in dramatic impact. There's no way you'd call Brotherhood sluggish (for a big movie it actually moves pretty well) but the film definitely has its share of dead spots and weirdly fractured transitions.
It's almost as if Gans isn't quite sure sometimes if he wants to play by the rules of traditional narrative filmmaking or tinker with them. At those moments, it's as if the emperor's new clothes have vanished, and Brotherhood of the Wolf stands nakedly revealed as a thing neither fish nor fowl. Those moments are relatively rare, thankfully, and Gans' hand is generally more or less invisible as the film cruises along juggling genres, genetically engineering arthouse, kitsch and popcorn sensibilities, having its cake and eating it too.
That all this doesn't just negate itself is a small miracle, but then again, the film itself, for all its faults, is something of a miracle of cinematic reinvention. As if to drive the point home, we even get a last act in which Gans' hero is literally reborn as a kung-fu Christ, returned to wreak havoc on pretty much every authority figure in the movie. It's audacious, probably ridiculous, and, like much of Brotherhood of the Wolf, almost impossible to resist.
Lance Goldenberg can be reached at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 157.
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2002.