![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
immolate_the_silenceCollection: Trope Bingo (Round 14)
Prompt: Imprisonment
Specifics: Meta + Picspam [8 images]
My Card
Title: Cages Won't Hold Us: Imprisonment in The Brothers Grimm
Notes: Imprisonment is a pretty common trope in The Brothers Grimm; in fact, all the characters are imprisoned in one way or another, and usually in various ways and at numerous times over the course of the film. The film deals with both physical and mental forms of imprisonment, opening opportunities for character growth and parallels between the characters themselves. I could realistically have used dozens of images with this prompt, but here are just a few...
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Let's start with the Mirror Queen, the overarching villain of the film though certainly not the only one, nor perhaps the most important. I'm talking about General Delatombe and his soldiers and the France they represent as they occupy Germany in the 19th century setting of the film, their actions very nearly giving the story a tragic ending, but we'll get to that later.
Terrified of the plague, the Mirror Queen willfully locks herself up inside her tower away from the world, though forgets how plague is carried by the wind. Having forgotten about eternal beauty in her quest for immortality, her body begins to wither away as it persists in clinging to life. Enraged and determined, she sets her sights on the small nearby village of Marbaden, capturing its young girls in horrifying ways in order to claim their youth and beauty. Since she is trapped, she must rely on her bewitched woodsman and the enchanted forest to carry out her mission to become flesh and blood again. Technically, the Mirror Queen is threefold imprisoned: in her tower, in her decaying body and in a mirror, the latter symbolizing her obsession with beauty.
[Image 1: The Mirror Queen, having just locked herself in her tower to escape the plague.]
[Image 2: The Mirror Queen imprisoned in her mirror in the tower. Notice the small crack in the left of the mirror.]
While imprisoned herself, she is also quick to imprison others, most notably the young girls who are put in an enchanted sleep until her spell is complete. She tries and fails to imprison Jake, attracting him with promises of love until Will forces him back to reality, and succeeds with Will, though through no fault of his own other than believing in his own brother. She forces Jake to stab Will with an enchanted blade so that she can better impale him with her own love trinket, turning him into her new slave, lover and prince. It is through the Mirror Queen's imprisonment of Will and the ensuing near loss of his second sibling, both by his own hand, that results in Jake's grief and hopelessness though also his determination to not be subjugated under her will and to save his brother from the same fate.
[Image 3: Notice Will's hand and Jake in the foreground, the real world, while in the background the enchanted mirror houses the Mirror Queen and an uninjured Will, her prisoner. For Jake, it's the most tragic, twisted fairy tale.]
[Image 4: Jake and Will locked in a battle with the Mirror Queen's enchanted knives, having to focus all their attention on not impaling each other on them.]
Angelika, while a strong female character throughout, is also imprisoned in numerous ways. When we meet her, she is imprisoned in a town which views her as cursed and in a world which doesn't tend to recognize women as particularly strong or intelligent. After she loses her entire family to the enchanted forest, she leaves the city and imprisons herself in Marbaden so she can find her sisters. While meeting Will and Jake Grimm is a blessing in disguise, she has to put up with a lot primarily because of her involvement with them. Cavaldi imprisons her and threatens her life numerous times, even subjecting her to his torture chamber; she is very nearly killed by General Delatombe; and as if this wasn't enough, the Mirror Queen captures and entombs her through her bewitched father. Angelika's strength and endurance, however, reward her in the end.
[Image 5: Angelika trapped in the frozen lake and Jake forced to watch her drown.]
[Image 6: Angelika entombed as she lies sleeping under the Mirror Queen's enchantment, her twelfth and final victim.]
Before we get to the brothers, I'd also like to bring up France's occupation of and technically imprisonment of Germany and its people, symbolized in the characters of General Delatombe and his cohort Cavaldi, the latter whose career as a master torturer inevitably involves the imprisonment of his victims. Both these characters find power through this trope, although both meet different fates as Cavaldi has a change of heart upon finding out the truth, while the General remains willingly blind until his death. The General perhaps poses the greatest threat, considering the Mirror Queen's victory would be absolute under his cruel and ignorant rule.
And finally we get to Will and Jake Grimm. It's a wonder they're still alive and relatively whole as the film comes to a close, but there were many close calls.
General Delatombe sets the film's plot into motion as he gives the brothers a choice to find the missing girls in Marbaden and suss out the true, flesh and blood culprits, or be killed. Even their trip involves them being trapped in small cages; furthermore, when they reach the town, they are still technically imprisoned under Cavaldi's watchful eye. General Delatombe shortly thereafter imprisons them a second time, under threat of torture, when he grows impatient at their lack of progress, and they barely escape with their lives this time and only through their lies. The General will imprison them for a third and final time, tying them up in the Enchanted Forest and setting the forest on fire which again, they somehow manage to escape. More like the damn lucky Brothers Grimm.
[Image 7: Will and Jake hanging from ropes in General Delatombe and Cavaldi's torture chamber, awaiting their fate for the second, though unfortunately not the last time.]
[Image 8: Will and Jake awaiting their immolation in the Enchanted Forest, courtesy of General Delatombe.]
Physical imprisonments are not the only things these brothers will have to endure however, as they will also go through their own emotional battles. At the start of the film, we see Jake disillusioned by the con artist life Will has forced him into, no doubt feeling like a prisoner in his brother's elaborate though deceptive lifestyle. Jake's whole purpose in life is to collect and tell stories and to find real magic, which is why tricking others with fake magic and superstitions devastates him. Will seems like a cold and callous character due to this, until around halfway through the film when he opens up to Angelika, disclosing his fear of Jake's magical world and how he feels inferior and completely incapable of protecting his little brother. He's more than just out of his element, you could almost say he's alienated and imprisoned by Jake's world as he has slowly begun to realize that magic is real and that he is dangerously close to being left behind.
A large part of the character growth of Will and Jake is how they throw off their shackles and embrace truth and courage. Will's trust and belief in his brother, which Jake has longed for, is exactly what Jake needs to believe in himself and give the story a happy ending. It's also exactly what Will needs to finally understand his brother and forgive the both of them for their past trauma. The brothers may be imprisoned by others and they may have unknowingly imprisoned themselves from reaching their full potential, but the film's happy ending is so satisfying largely because they grow as characters and reconcile as brothers by going through the same journey and breaking their chains together.
Prompt: Imprisonment
Specifics: Meta + Picspam [8 images]
My Card
Title: Cages Won't Hold Us: Imprisonment in The Brothers Grimm
Notes: Imprisonment is a pretty common trope in The Brothers Grimm; in fact, all the characters are imprisoned in one way or another, and usually in various ways and at numerous times over the course of the film. The film deals with both physical and mental forms of imprisonment, opening opportunities for character growth and parallels between the characters themselves. I could realistically have used dozens of images with this prompt, but here are just a few...
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Let's start with the Mirror Queen, the overarching villain of the film though certainly not the only one, nor perhaps the most important. I'm talking about General Delatombe and his soldiers and the France they represent as they occupy Germany in the 19th century setting of the film, their actions very nearly giving the story a tragic ending, but we'll get to that later.
Terrified of the plague, the Mirror Queen willfully locks herself up inside her tower away from the world, though forgets how plague is carried by the wind. Having forgotten about eternal beauty in her quest for immortality, her body begins to wither away as it persists in clinging to life. Enraged and determined, she sets her sights on the small nearby village of Marbaden, capturing its young girls in horrifying ways in order to claim their youth and beauty. Since she is trapped, she must rely on her bewitched woodsman and the enchanted forest to carry out her mission to become flesh and blood again. Technically, the Mirror Queen is threefold imprisoned: in her tower, in her decaying body and in a mirror, the latter symbolizing her obsession with beauty.
[Image 1: The Mirror Queen, having just locked herself in her tower to escape the plague.]
[Image 2: The Mirror Queen imprisoned in her mirror in the tower. Notice the small crack in the left of the mirror.]
While imprisoned herself, she is also quick to imprison others, most notably the young girls who are put in an enchanted sleep until her spell is complete. She tries and fails to imprison Jake, attracting him with promises of love until Will forces him back to reality, and succeeds with Will, though through no fault of his own other than believing in his own brother. She forces Jake to stab Will with an enchanted blade so that she can better impale him with her own love trinket, turning him into her new slave, lover and prince. It is through the Mirror Queen's imprisonment of Will and the ensuing near loss of his second sibling, both by his own hand, that results in Jake's grief and hopelessness though also his determination to not be subjugated under her will and to save his brother from the same fate.
[Image 3: Notice Will's hand and Jake in the foreground, the real world, while in the background the enchanted mirror houses the Mirror Queen and an uninjured Will, her prisoner. For Jake, it's the most tragic, twisted fairy tale.]
[Image 4: Jake and Will locked in a battle with the Mirror Queen's enchanted knives, having to focus all their attention on not impaling each other on them.]
Angelika, while a strong female character throughout, is also imprisoned in numerous ways. When we meet her, she is imprisoned in a town which views her as cursed and in a world which doesn't tend to recognize women as particularly strong or intelligent. After she loses her entire family to the enchanted forest, she leaves the city and imprisons herself in Marbaden so she can find her sisters. While meeting Will and Jake Grimm is a blessing in disguise, she has to put up with a lot primarily because of her involvement with them. Cavaldi imprisons her and threatens her life numerous times, even subjecting her to his torture chamber; she is very nearly killed by General Delatombe; and as if this wasn't enough, the Mirror Queen captures and entombs her through her bewitched father. Angelika's strength and endurance, however, reward her in the end.
[Image 5: Angelika trapped in the frozen lake and Jake forced to watch her drown.]
[Image 6: Angelika entombed as she lies sleeping under the Mirror Queen's enchantment, her twelfth and final victim.]
Before we get to the brothers, I'd also like to bring up France's occupation of and technically imprisonment of Germany and its people, symbolized in the characters of General Delatombe and his cohort Cavaldi, the latter whose career as a master torturer inevitably involves the imprisonment of his victims. Both these characters find power through this trope, although both meet different fates as Cavaldi has a change of heart upon finding out the truth, while the General remains willingly blind until his death. The General perhaps poses the greatest threat, considering the Mirror Queen's victory would be absolute under his cruel and ignorant rule.
And finally we get to Will and Jake Grimm. It's a wonder they're still alive and relatively whole as the film comes to a close, but there were many close calls.
General Delatombe sets the film's plot into motion as he gives the brothers a choice to find the missing girls in Marbaden and suss out the true, flesh and blood culprits, or be killed. Even their trip involves them being trapped in small cages; furthermore, when they reach the town, they are still technically imprisoned under Cavaldi's watchful eye. General Delatombe shortly thereafter imprisons them a second time, under threat of torture, when he grows impatient at their lack of progress, and they barely escape with their lives this time and only through their lies. The General will imprison them for a third and final time, tying them up in the Enchanted Forest and setting the forest on fire which again, they somehow manage to escape. More like the damn lucky Brothers Grimm.
[Image 7: Will and Jake hanging from ropes in General Delatombe and Cavaldi's torture chamber, awaiting their fate for the second, though unfortunately not the last time.]
[Image 8: Will and Jake awaiting their immolation in the Enchanted Forest, courtesy of General Delatombe.]
Physical imprisonments are not the only things these brothers will have to endure however, as they will also go through their own emotional battles. At the start of the film, we see Jake disillusioned by the con artist life Will has forced him into, no doubt feeling like a prisoner in his brother's elaborate though deceptive lifestyle. Jake's whole purpose in life is to collect and tell stories and to find real magic, which is why tricking others with fake magic and superstitions devastates him. Will seems like a cold and callous character due to this, until around halfway through the film when he opens up to Angelika, disclosing his fear of Jake's magical world and how he feels inferior and completely incapable of protecting his little brother. He's more than just out of his element, you could almost say he's alienated and imprisoned by Jake's world as he has slowly begun to realize that magic is real and that he is dangerously close to being left behind.
A large part of the character growth of Will and Jake is how they throw off their shackles and embrace truth and courage. Will's trust and belief in his brother, which Jake has longed for, is exactly what Jake needs to believe in himself and give the story a happy ending. It's also exactly what Will needs to finally understand his brother and forgive the both of them for their past trauma. The brothers may be imprisoned by others and they may have unknowingly imprisoned themselves from reaching their full potential, but the film's happy ending is so satisfying largely because they grow as characters and reconcile as brothers by going through the same journey and breaking their chains together.
