Brotherhood of the Wolf Review
by Tim Wick
I think I like Brotherhood of the Wolf more for what it strives to be than
for what it actually is.
I have the utmost respect for the attempt to create something entirely new
and exciting. The movie uses aspects of a bodice ripper romance, a gothic
horror, a martial arts action film and a period court drama in a way that
makes you certain these things were never meant to exist in the same film.
All the same, it made me wish that there was some way they would.
I an way, it reads like a bizarre recipe. Take two parts Sleepy Hollow,
one part Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, two parts Dangerous Liaisons,
three parts Dances with Wolves, one part The Matrix and a dash of The
Name of the Rose and you get something that sort of resembles this movie.
Not really, but you get the picture.
Our basic plot involves two men - Gregoire de Frosnac and his Native
American blood brother Mani - who have been sent by the King of France to
discover the source of a series of particularly brutal murders in the French
countryside. The opening scene shows a woman being savagely hunted and
killed which is followed by two masked men beating the hell out of some
apparent brigands who were up to no good. The bone crunching we hear in
both scenes tells us this is no simple diversion, there is some real danger
here.
But the movie wants us to wonder what is really dangerous and what is merely
a diversion. Is the beast that is killing women and children as dangerous
as the King who wants the beast "dead" weather or not it has actually been
killed? Is the reliance on primitive religion dangerous or is the
spirituality of the Iroquois Indian who has come to hunt the beast the true
danger?
I think the movie is ultimately an exploration of the path to temptation and
the difference between the sacred and the profane. The beast represents the
profane - a creature at odds with nature. The heroes of the film - with
their connection to the Native American myths - represent the sacred. They
are in tune with the earth and it's creatures. They have the ability to end
the murders but the question is if their power is enough to combat the
profane power that is set against them.
This conflict is further illustrated by the two women with whom Frosnac
forms a relationship. One is an exotic courtesan and the other is a
virginal noble woman. They represent two paths but to the paths diverge or
do they ultimately connect?
The cinematography in the film is probably some of the best I have seen this
year. When the beast attacks, the film slows down, speeds up and freezes to
really push the sense of dread we already felt when we saw the victim on
screen and knew she was done for. The fight sequences are shot well, being
kinetic without losing their focus on the action. The countryside in which
the events take place is a drab mix of grays and muted greens. The movie
looks fantastic.
But all these great ideas and this wonderful cinematography never quite gel.
Part of the problem is the length of the film. At almost two and a half
hours, it doesn't have enough to say to fill out the time. I'm a great
advocate of long films if they have a good reason (Fellowship of the Ring)
but not films that feel padded. The movie was balancing a murder mystery, a
love story, a court intrigue and a religious debate and one might think
you'd need a while to tell all those stories. Perhaps so, but it would not
have been difficult to trim thirty minutes of fat.
The other problem is that all the ingredients mentioned above don't always
mix particularly well. I was willing to go with the Native American who
knew Kung-Fu. Not a problem. But the problem was that the martial arts
didn't always mix with anything else. They felt tacked on with a "wouldn't
it be cool if..." kind of mentality.
It's not that none of the film worked. I would actually recommend seeing
it. I would not classify it as one of the best films of 2001 because -
while it unquestionably reaches for the stars - it remains rooted here on
Earth because it was simply reaching for too many.
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