I was given the unfortunate task of watching The Wolfman for another class. Somehow, I found myself relating it to Happily Never After. Congrats, Gretchen, on interscholastic domination.
The movie takes place in 19th century London, apparently a time when Benicio Del Toro is even uglier and Anthony Hopkins more boring. BDT is bitten by a werewolf, who turns out to be his father (Hopkins), thus commencing a montage of ripping out vital organs. I'll save you ten bucks by describing the next hour of the movie: kill, kill, kill, screaming, blood, Del Toro awkwardly flirting with dead brother's wife, more killing, more blood, make out scene with bro's wife, Anthony Hopkins turns into a wolf (his true form in real life)/gets head chopped off by wolf-Del Toro in epic wolf-fight, wolf-Del Toro has precious moment with bro's wife who promptly shoots him in the chest. Fade to black.
How does this relate to fairy tales? Well, after Del Toro is bitten by the wolfman, a stereotypically soothsaying gypsy describes how his beast-like curse may only be lifted by the love of a woman. BDT encounters his dead brother's wife and promptly falls in love (perfectly normal in London, I guess). She knows of his curse, but learns to love him back. There is the initial fear, the awkward flirting, the declaration of true love, and that precious scene in the end where the woman and cursed hell-animal both look through their physical limitations to find only true love. Sounds a lot like Beauty and the Beast to me.
However, the difference between this low-income abomination and a fairy tale Beauty and Beast story is the happy ending. More accurately, the lack of one. True love saves the beast, but only in the form of him turning around long enough for the beauty to shoot him in the chest. In effect, she saves him from himself and his natural inclination to make hors d'oeuvres out of unsuspecting townsfolk. Not exactly Disney-worthy. But the fact that this story contains fairy tale elements, even in a horror setting, shows the transcendent nature of some of the stories we've been reading.
I'd love to end this with something witty, but it's midterm week, so here's a link to a dancing bear instead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0UQ27J5w_c
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I'm probably not going to see this movie, so I have to ask a question about it. If Wolfman's curse can be lifted by the love of a woman, and there is true love in the end between the dead brother's wife and Wolfman, then why wasn't the spell lifted at the end of the movie? Or did they purposely lift the spell and she still shot him?
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