Grimm Love: A love story?

I was at home in broad daylight when I saw it. A raw and unapologetic act of human savagery. I wanted to stop watching but I couldn’t. a sense of multi-dimensional horror filled me as I came to the realization that this could happen at anywhere or time. The names had been changed to protect the people involved but the factor of the student and her personal perception is what made it more frightening than I ever thought it would be. I wanted to see how far she would go. I knew the story. I mean who hasn’t? This story is about a cannibal looking for a perfect victim and more importantly, a voluntary one. The movie “Grimm Love” was essentially about this man and victim. The names had been changed of course but with Google around who needs to sleuth for answers.

His is Armin Meiwes and on March 9th 2001 Meiwes committed his crime. His victim, Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes was all to eager to participate. Meiwes had even prepared a “Slaughter Room” for the insidious act. There are so many questions in regards to this case. The who, what, where, and when are easy enough to figure out but the complexities of why? Armin posted on a message board called “The Cannibal Cafe” looking for someone who would readily give themselves for Meiwes to consume. Apparently, several people prior to Brandes answered the message posting and all of which backed out at the last second.
Brandes was a unique case in itself. A man desiring to be consumed and be able to see it. According to the video ( yes there is a video)Brandes desired to have his penis bitten off. This was attempted by Armin but instead he had to cut it off. Then together they had tried to eat the raw penis but Brandes claimed that his penis was too “chewy.” In an attempt to make this part of the night just right, Meiwes fried the penis and seasoned but it was useless and he had burnt it. Armin fed the burnt penis to his dog then gathered Brandes (who had lost a signifagant amount of blood) and left him to drain in a bath tub. However, Brandes had still been alive when the butchering had begun. Meiwes gently kissed Brandes but stabbing him in the throat to finish the job and consume him.


In total, Meiwes had 44 pounds worth of flesh and ate it over the period of 10 months. It came as quite the debate of ethics. Is it murder if someone wants to be murdered? This had a massive impact on the world, inspiring several artists of the time. It was no wonder that a movie would eventually be made. Keri Russell plays a grad student doing her research on cannibals. She became emotionally and mentally involved with a twisted sense of romanticism that haunts the events.

It comes down to the need to be consumed to sate a lifelong guilt. The main character hypothesizes, from Brandes’s stand point to ultimately become one or whole with another who understands your pain. She begins to romanticize the idea of not only giving herself as a whole to another as a way to cope with her unending loneliness and realizes as she spirals downward, the need to feel like a whole person by consuming another human being.

What makes this tale of a grad student researching the trail of possibly one of the most bizarre instances in this modern and so called sophisticated society? We are all hungry in one way or another. We hunger for joy, success, happiness and in some cases even acceptance. Was it acceptance in one way or another, that Meiwes and Brandes desired so deeply? Or was it just simply hunger for the unusual satisfaction that was never attained in real life. One has to wonder, as Meiwes sits in his cell at this very moment, does he still hunger? Does he or has he ever felt completely whole after the incidence?

Russell’s character begins this spiral out of control and as I was watching her growing obsession, I wanted to reach through the screen and stop her. She was treading a dangerous path and so close to closing over into a world she would never be able to return from. Eventually, it was the first step on the last step in the wrong direction. She contacts a chat room (the very same one that Meiwes used earlier) and sends a mass message out asking for the cassette that captured that enrapturing moment. Russell’s character seems to need it, to understand not only their point of view but connecting with her own sense crushing loneliness.

Within moments the tape is delivered and Russell’s long lost search had come true. She could finally see for herself what had been studying and theorizing about. With a lust gleam in her eyes, she injects the VHS (If that doesn’t date it all, right?) and eagerly awaits the brutal and romantic actions that she had studied so closely.

It took moments for the absolute horror and brutality to in. There was no romance, no understanding, just Meiwes literally slaughtering Brandes as if he were an oversized pig. Within moments Russell’s character’s illusions came to a screeching halt as the romantic shroud was ripped asunder to reveal the true brutality of it all. It was just simply, a person eating another person. Whether or not it was willing, someone should have stepped in to see the mental mess that was driving these cannibalistic factors.

But then again I can’t help but to bring up the ideas or other sorts of cannibalism which are deemed acceptable in today’s society. For example, society cannibalism is where we eat people alive until they are nothing. Some victims desire it, whilst others are more or less victims that take more drastic measures in order to ensure a form of vengeance. We pick each other part to fill another part of ourselves. Perhaps it is the same part of our selves that another person had taken. In the same sense a daily dose of emotional cannibalism is taken place where reciprocation is not a part of the relationship.

But to us, what is cannibalism? Is it the need for release? Redemption ? An act of desperation ? Or is it something only deemed socially acceptable if it doesn’t have to dismembering a body? Does the horror only come into play when it is physical or is the idea alone that is uncomfortable to society?
Regardless of the answers, Russell destroys the tape with inexplicable rage, never to touch it again. For this topic in itself never should happen let alone hunted down for the why factor. It is that and that alone is a reason that drives us mad. Who dive into this can dive too deep and never resurface again.