The Juniper Tree and Resurrection

I find the Juniper Tree to be one of the Grimms more darker and disturbing tales, and I think while the movie is very weird and surrealistic, it does capture the bleakness and sinister mood of the story. The boy's bones are buried under the Juniper tree, where his mother is also buried. It evokes the image of the magic tree in Cinderella, where her mother is buried. The dead mother is seen as an image of good, and often helps her child through magic. Since this is a fairy tale, anything can happen, including the transformation from boy to bird, and back to human. The main difference between the Juniper Tree and all of the other transformation stories is that in The Seven Ravens, Twelve Swans, etc etc, the boys are never dead when they are transformed into birds. However, one theory is that the magic of the dead mother helped her dead son to be resurrected in the form of a bird until the spell was "broken," which meant that he would turn human with the death of the evil stepmother. He is not so much transformed into a bird as he is resurrected as one, as seen in this passage:

"At the same time smoke came out of the tree, and in the middle of the smoke there was a flame that seemed to be burning. Then a beautiful bird flew out of the fire and began singing magnificently." (161).

The rising out of the fire is characteristic of the Phoenix, along with the beautiful singing. (And yes, thanks to Harry Potter and Fawkes, I know this.)

Back to the Grimms and the bird's song. It is interesting to see how the words of his song are so tragic, so bizarre, yet everyone who hears them says "Bird, how beautifully you sing!" Through his song he gains a golden chain, red slippers, and a millstone. His song tortures the stepmother to madness, forcing her to step outside to escape it, but when she does, it's her bad luck that the millstone is dropped on her head. Once the source of evil is crushed, from the fire and smoke rises the boy in his human form. Another difference is that he has to transform himself back, he cannot rely on anyone else to change him back. So while it can be read figuratively, as if the bird is a reincarnation of his spirit, I tend to think that his biological mother's magic made it possible for him to take the form of a bird until he used his power of song to tell the truth and kill the evil stepmother. With magic, anything can happen, especially in a fairy tale, no matter how far fetched it may seem.