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Audio Format: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Video Format: Full Screen Languages: French Subtitles: English, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified) Region Code: 3 Year Made: 2001 Running Time: 143
Set in 1765 France and based on the historical legend of the Beast of Gevaudan, Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le pacte des loups) is a huge, ballsy spectacle, especially by French standards. As such, it's a welcome rejoinder to the Amelie juggernaut -- a movie with big, messy politics, lots of action and anger, and a wide-ranging disdain for the "French" cliches so gaily embraced by Jeunet's film. For its anti-Amelie attitude alone, Brotherhood is cause for celebration: vive les loups.
There are other reasons to like Brotherhood of the Wolf (its slambanging fight choreography, Vincent Cassel's disquieting turn as a villain), as well as reasons to complain (its conceptual laziness regarding gender and race stereotypes), but its most striking aspect is its crazy mishmash of generic and cultural fragments -- French costume drama, monster movie mayhem, murky hallucinations, Hong Kong action, kung fu wirework, swords and flintlock rifles, busty whores and peasant girls looking after lambs. And oh yes, lots of blood and heaving bosoms, as the plot centers on the hunt for a horrible wolf-like monster that kills some 100 women and children (this part of the legend speaks to social and political circumstances, no doubt). The film's $29 million cost (meager by Hollywood standards) is everywhere on the screen: in the vast landscapes, lush interiors, detailed costumes, elaborate animatronic and digital beasties (by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, but entirely uncuddly), and speedy, extremely mobile camerawork.
Along with its splashy surface, Brotherhood also cooks up a bit of class analysis, with the Beast signifying the brutality and decadence that brought on the French Revolution. Like the Hughes' brothers' From Hell, Brotherhood indicts the privileged folks in rather elaborate fashion. Not only are they selfish and clueless, they're also generally dismissive of the poor, starving peasants who are the Beast's primary targets. Apparently, this has to do with access and vulnerability -- the farmers and herders are out in the open, easy prey. It also has to do with a baleful plot involving the cultish and grand-robe-wearing "Brotherhood." (Think: Eyes Wide Shut or The Ninth Gate. Been there already, and recently.) In other words, the Beast makes the systemic abuses of the time literal, as well as sensational and legendary. Such abuses were, of course, already fairly literal and sensational, but the Beast ups that fantastic ante, being gigantic and alarmingly agile, with razor-sharp scales on its back and iron fangs.
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