Film Review: Gretel & Hansel

The opening segment of Oz Perkins's dark fantasy film is a story within a story. A female narrator tells us of "the beautiful child with the little pink cap," the apple of her mother and father's eye. When their darling daughter takes ill, and is predicted not to survive her second winter, her desperate father makes the proverbial deal with the devil.

It sets the tone for the rest of the film. The moral of the tale is that no gift can be given without something else being taken away. It's a theme that characters cling to, particularly our lead, Gretel (played here by a wide-eyed and feral-seeming Sophia Lillis). As in most fairy tales, Gretel is constantly plagued by the kind of threats that follow women everywhere.

In the hopes of helping to provide for her family, Gretel seeks employment with a strange man who will give her work as a housekeeper. When she arrives, sitting in his house with its stained glass windows casting spheres of color onto the otherwise shabby interior, we are immediately struck with a feeling of unease. It isn't just the man's appearance (something of an ageing, distastefully made up fop), but the manner in which he looks at her.

It's one of the more poignant arcs in the film. He asks her flatly about her "maidenhood," inquires if she is still "intact," in his euphemistic-laden speech. There's a horrified look in her eye, and her fury is palpable in the next scene as she walks home in a downpour. Accompanying her throughout all of this is Hansel (Sammy Leakey), who, Gretel informs us in a voice-over, is with her wherever she goes.

Like in many stories centering around a girl in the stages of early womanhood, Gretel has a strained relationship with her mother. It's her mother, in fact, who ends up sending her on this journey into the great unknown. The first sequences of the film are almost throwaway, aside from giving us the necessary background to understand why Gretel and Hansel are on their own, and until the Witch (Alice Krige) comes in, it feels strangely aimless.

At first, Gretel is wary of this strange woman. She treats them with kindness, which, in Gretel's view, is unwarranted. Again there is the suspicion of corruption and evil lurking beneath the facade of good things, of abundance and unchecked happiness. They eat at her table; she has two beds waiting for them, as if she were perhaps anticipating their arrival.

The film plays on a common fear. Don't we all feel that, when we are experiencing something wonderful or enjoying our lives with no setbacks, something is wrong? There's always a creeping doubt, a feeling that because we are happy, something is waiting for us around the next corner. In that respect, it works. But the stilted dialogue is heavy-handed, and instead of allowing us to figure out the moral of the story for ourselves, the script is constantly telling us how we should be experiencing the events.

There's an undercurrent of feminism, too, which presents itself primarily through the Witch. There might be something to be said about that, about how people view feminism through the age-old lens of its unspoken evil. Witches have been an object of hatred and fear not only because of their capacity for magic, but because they are often women free of any male influence, because they are powerful in their own right.

Visually, the scenes are beautifully set, the usage of color mesmerizing. It's nothing short of stunning. There is a scene towards the middle-end of the film where Gretel takes Hansel into the woods in the middle of the night, and a searing, deep scarlet light radiates from the darkness. Dark figures lurk in the forest, with their pointed witch's hats, their black cloaks.

In a way, it could be described as a sort of quasi-chamber play. Aside from a few inconsequential characters who feature in only one or two scenes, the three lead actors (Krige, Lillis and Leakey) dominant the screen for almost the entirety of the movie. We jump between the woods and the Witch's house, but aside from that, there are very few other settings. It lends the movie a certain strength, because Lillis and Krige are powerful in their quiet performances.

Another element which adds to the enjoyment is that there's no telling what time period this is intended to portray. It could just as easily be some strange alternate take on the 17th century as it could be a post-apocalyptic future. The wardrobe is distinctly and purposely vague, although it sticks to its old-world feel by putting the women in dresses and the men in traditional shirts and trousers. The vagueness is appealing, and if the story had taken some of that into consideration too, it would have felt that much more fascinating.

In any case, it must be given points for its sheer originality. While it is faithful in its own way to the traditional tale, Perkins wasn't afraid to strike out and make it his own. Gretel dreams, and in these vivid nightmares, the house takes on a new shape, seems to create rooms that cannot exist, shows her things that hide under its pleasant appearance. These scenes are striking, and Lillis does an excellent job of behaving as a trapped wild animal. It's no surprise, either, that Krige turns out a deliciously wicked performance here. She commands the scenes with easy grace, totally effortless.

 Jessica De Gouw isn't featured in many scenes, but she's also worth noting. She's ice-cold and communicates ruthlessness without speaking a word.

In spite of some flaws and the aforementioned heavy-handedness, I recommend you go and see it for yourself. The performances are pretty solid, and if nothing else, the aesthetic is absorbing and haunting. 

Worth Mentioning: A song plays over once scene - "My mother, she killed me, my father, he ate me, what a pretty bird am I!" - which is taken from another German fairy tale, The Juniper Tree.

Director: Oz Perkins
Screenplay by: Rob Hayes
Cinematography: Galo Olivares

Director's Quote: "It's awfully faithful to the original story. It's got really only three principal characters: Hansel, Gretel, and the Witch. We tried to find a way to make it more of a coming of age story. I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn't feel like two twelve-year-olds – rather a sixteen-year-old and an eight-year-old. There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes, and how that can impede one's own evolution, how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth."