Jabberwocky (Terry Gilliam, 1977)

 

Jabberwocky (Terry Gilliam, 1977)

Cast: Michael Palin, Harry H. Corbett, John Le Mesurier, Warren Mitchell, Max Wall, Deborah Fallender, Annette Badland, Terry Jones. Screenplay: Charles Alverson, Terry Gilliam, based on a poem by Lewis Carroll. Cinematography: Terry Bedford. Production design: Roy Forge Smith. Film editing: Michael Bradsell. 

Despite being directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Michael Palin, and featuring a cameo by Terry Jones, all members of the troupe, Jabberwocky is not a Monty Python movie. Gilliam protested when the distributors wanted to market it as “Monty Python’s Jabberwocky.” It might have been better or funnier if it had featured the talents of the group, because as it is, Jabberwocky is mostly a string of gross-out gags held together by a story about a peasant, Dennis Cooper (Palin), who comes to the city to make his fortune and winds up slaying the Jabberwock and winning the hand of the princess – which he doesn’t particularly want. It’s too messy and too choppy, concentrating more on creating a grimy vision of the “Dark Ages” – “darker than anyone had ever expected,” says the Narrator (Palin) – than on bringing Lewis Carroll’s poem to life. That said, the film does feature a splendidly realized Jabberwock, based on John Tenniel’s illustration, a shambling, ratty-winged creature, performed by an actor (Peter Salmon)  who was forced to walk backward inside the costume so the legs would bend in birdlike fashion. The movie has many admirers, so I have to admit that I appreciate Gilliam’s efforts – it was his first solo feature as director after the success of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), which was co-directed with Terry Jones. 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Katherine Helmond, Craig Bierko, Mark Harmon, Laraine Newman, Verne Troyer, Penn Jillette, Cameron Diaz, Lyle Lovett, Flea, Gregory Itzin, Gary Busey, Christopher Meloni, Christina Ricci, Michael Jeter, Harry Dean Stanton, Ellen Barkin. Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Todd Davies, Alex Cox, based on a book by Hunter S. Thompson. Cinematography: Nicola Pecorini. Production design: Alex McDowell. Film editing: Lesley Walker. Music: Ray Cooper.

Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas invites the easy critical brush-off: What happened in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas. Many of its first-release critics, including Roger Ebert, certainly took that view. So did ticket-buyers, who stayed away. And even in hindsight it's a little hard to figure why the film was made when it was made. Hunter S. Thompson's book was published in 1971, and although there had been some earlier efforts to turn it into a movie, it was hardly fresh subject matter in 1998. But the film has developed followers over the years since, and it's now possible to appreciate the skill with which Gilliam takes on this recreation of a drug-maddened milieu, and especially the acting of Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro as the wildly tripping Duke and Dr. Gonzo. I will admit that Depp, 35 at the time, seems to me a little too young and fresh-faced for the dissipated Duke -- even though Thompson himself was pretty much the same age when the events he wrote about took place -- but it's one of his best performances. The film also benefits from an abundance of familiar faces in small roles, such as the underappreciated Ellen Barkin as a waitress unwilling to put up with abusive stoners. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas probably has little value except as a portrait of the Nixon era as seen from the end of the Clinton era, and it's certainly an exhausting film to watch, but it's a unique experience.

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

Craig Warnock and Sean Connery in Time Bandits

Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, Peter Vaughan, David Warner, Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis, Tiny Ross, Jim Broadbent, David Daker, Sheila Fearn. Screenplay: Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam. Cinematography: Peter Biziou. Production design: Milly Burns. Film editing: Julian Doyle. Music: Mike Moran. 

A film with many admirers, but I find it too much a kids' movie -- noisy and sometimes silly -- with not enough genuine wit to please grownups. What works best for me in it are the star performers -- Sean Connery, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm -- letting themselves go. 

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Jonathan Pryce in Brazil

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Kim Greist, Jim Broadbent. Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown. Cinematography: Roger Pratt. Production design: Norman Garwood. Film editing: Julian Doyle. Music: Michael Kamen.

I have to admit reluctantly that I'm not a fan of the kind of dystopian social satire epitomized by Terry Gilliam's Brazil and echoed in such films as Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen (1991) and the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). They seem to me too scattered to be effective as satire, too dependent on production design and special effects to connect with the realities they're supposedly lampooning. I find myself forgetting them almost once they end. That said, Brazil is always worth watching just for the performances of a cast filled with specialists in a kind of British-style muddling through even the weirdest of situations.