I bought a beautifully bound complete collection of Grimm's fairytales (after enjoying with every fiber of my being making plays out of them with 6th graders for a TYA [theatre for young audiences] piece) and have been reading one fairytale each night when I crawl into bed. I haven't come across this one yet but just read an article online about it and how it should be adapted into a movie. The summary made my day!
The Juniper Tree
The Gist of the Tale: There’s a ton of wicked stepmothers in Fairy Tales but, for my money, the one in The Juniper Tree takes the cake. The story begins with a happily married rich man and his wife wishing for a child. They have a beautiful juniper tree in their front yard, where wife goes to whenever she needs to pray. One day, she cuts herself and a drop of blood lands at the base of the tree. The next day she discovers that she’s pregnant, and she asks the tree to give her a child with ‘skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood’ (no, it’s not what you’re thinking). Her wish comes true but she dies in childbirth. As she dies, she cradles her newborn son in her arms and tells her husband to bury her beneath the Juniper Tree.
The story then jumps to ten years later. The rich man has married an evil woman (he, of course, is utterly oblivious to that fact) with a pretty, young child of her own named Marjory. Marjory and her stepbrother get on wonderfully, but the stepmother hates the boy and wants him dead. Why? Well, she is a wicked stepmother, as I have already said.
One day, while Marjory is out in the backyard, the stepmother decides to put an end to the boy. What she does is shocking, absurd, and hilarious all at the same time. She pulls out an old chest and tells the boy to look inside of it. He does so and as soon as his head is in the chest, she slams the lid down on him, effectively decapitating him. She then realizes that her husband will be a mite pissed, so she comes up with a ludicrous ruse to save herself.
She takes the boy’s body out of the chest, places it in a chair and loosely ties his head back on with a white ribbon. When Marjory comes back inside and tells her mother that her stepbrother won’t talk to her, the nutjob tells her daughter to just ‘give him a good whack in the head.'
Marjory does so and, you guessed it, the boy’s head falls off. Marjory becomes convinced that she killed her stepbrother and her mom tells her that (I’m not making this up) they will have to chop him up into little pieces and serve him for dinner so that the father will never find out. I fail to see any of the logic in this plan, but that’s what they end up doing nonetheless.
The father comes home and, yes, they all do eat the boy. The father even remarks that it’s the most delicious meal he’s ever had. After the meal, Marjory, ravaged by guilt, buries the boy’s bones beneath the Juniper Tree. Later that night, a beautiful bird rises from the bottom of the tree and is soon revealed to be the boy reincarnated. He travels the land singing a song with the following deranged lyrics to whoever will listen:
My stepmother killed me, my father devoured me but it was Marjory who buried my bones beneath the Juniper Tree.
You can’t make this shit up. Every person who hears the song, rather than screaming their head off and running for the hills, declares it the most beautiful song they’ve ever heard and gives the boy a gift. He winds up with a beautiful necklace, a pair of red shoes and a giant millstone. After collecting these items he returns to his home, drops the necklace on his father, the shoes on Marjory and the millstone on his stepmother’s head. Sweet revenge. He then turns back into a boy and they all live happily ever after.
How to Adapt it: Wow, right? What the hell is going on in this story? Most Fairy Tales have a pretty clear message, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out just what the message is in this one. Don’t chop your kid’s head off, perhaps? Or, watch out for singing birds? I’m at a complete loss and as a result I think this story should be adapted as a satire of Fairy Tales. You’ve got all the elements in place: wicked stepmother, love between siblings, bizarre magical intervention and gruesome murders. They should go all out with this story and don't shy away from any of its weirdness. The scene where the stepmother kills the boy sounds like the perfect set-up for a screwball comedy. And I think we need to see at least one person be freaked the hell out by a singing bird.
Who Should Do It:
Before Peter Jackson got all heavy-handed and long-winded with the endlessly boring Lord of the Rings films, he made a masterpiece called Dead Alive. It was a brilliant screwball comedy disguised as the goriest film ever made. He should take the same approach with this story. Now, I’m no fan of Glee, but I am a fan of Jane Lynch and would love to see her sink her teeth into the role of that demented stepmother.
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