While I was housebound by my broken arm earlier this year, Rhiannon got a rental copy of this movie out. Good choice. I liked it so much I ended up buying a copy last week.
A monster carrying off women and children, a creepy brother, wicked action sequences, sanctimonious priests, a http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001092/, dodgy gypsies, decaying rural aristocracy, the rapier wit of the hero as he attempts to seduce the daughter of the aforementioned aristocracy, Monica Belluci, and a sprinkling of politics. What’s not to love?
Well, there is one thing (other than the noble savage trope): the region 2⁄4 release of the DVD has a 5.1 (surround) track for the dubbed English version, while the French is only a 2.0. Which is a touch irritating, since I prefer to watch foreign movies in the original language with subtitles. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want the full soundtrack in the process.
Other than that, while it may have a mere US$11 million budget compared to, say, the US$63 million of the Matrix, it looks comfortable alongside it in terms of gorgeous visuals, and rather than the rather abstract brain-in-a-bucket school of gnostic thinking of the Matrix, the throughful veneer on the Brotherhood is the tension between tradition and modernity, reason and religion, which I find more interesting. And the dialogue is not just streets ahead, it’s in a different city. And I say that as someone who liked the Matrix.
The plot is fairly simple: set in mid-18th century provincial France, the story is based around the legend of the Beast of Gevaudan; the Beast has been killing peasants, almost entirely women and children, and troops sent by the King have been ineffectual in stopping it. The King has sent a naturalist and soldier of the American wars, Grégoire de Fronsac, to discover the nature of the beast and retrieve the corpse for his museum.
There are tensions shot through the film; modernity (in the form of the liberal de Fronsac and his native American sidekick) and the old-fashioned, religious aristocracy; the provinces against Paris. de Fronsac’s attempts to seduce the daughter of the principle noble family of the region are delightful for their sparkling dialogue, but hardly help his position, and his only reliable local ally is the young Thomas d’Apcher, future Marquis.
The action is well-done; the pacing is good, with the nature of the beast being revealed gradually; the dialogue and characters more sophisticated than the avergae action flick; finally, there’s a nice sense of intrigue. While some characters are obviously suspicious from the start, there’s a reasonable degree of ambiguity around who’s an ally and who’s an enemy for de Fronsac. Probably the only thing that really grated for me was that Mani was such a walking, walking stereotype, complete with Mysterious Noble Savage Powers.
Highly recommended if smart action/suspense movies are your thing.
Spoilers follow
Note that the Region 2 DVD is a considerably different beast from the original theatrical release: a whole chunk of plot is removed, while various elements from a directors cut are added: in fact, there are three versions of the movie.
Ultimately it proves that Beast is an invention of the degenerate local aristocracy and their allies in the priesthood, amongst the local officials, and those peasants and gypsies eager to enjoy the scraps from the high table; banding together an association from which the film gets it’s name. While very real, it is entirely natural; the tool of a would-be nation-wide conspiracy to roll back the to a pre-Enlightenment time where a nobility and priesthood would work together to keep everyone from peasants to intellectuals under the thumb of this elite. In that regard the film is fairly blunt metaphor for traditional pre-revolutionary provincial France.
There are paradoxes: de Fronsac is presented as creature of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, but is happy to rely on Mani’s mysticism; the Beast, and it’s religious trappings, are presented as ultimately the fraud of a corrupt church working with a vile aristocracy to keep the peasants in their place, but Mani’s Mysterious Noble Savage powers (healing powders, talking to trees and wolves, and so forth) are apparently all very real.
I don’t know if it’s intentional symbolism that de Fronsac leaves France before the revolution, but even if it isn’t, it’s a nice metaphor, anyway; the sight of Thomas d’Apcher, now Marquis, being dragged off after the revolution was rather depressing, as it was no doubt intended to be, and the narration rammed home the point: the revolution swept up the “good” nobility as well as the “bad” nobles.