In between, he directed one of the least funny turkeys I have ever seen.
That's 1977's Jabberwocky, which I finally saw last night on Kanopy. That delay seems unimaginable for a person who grew up steeped in Monty Python, and who, in fact, memorized an entire scene in Holy Grail which he can still quote today. (Which will actually come up in a minute.) But that's just an indication of how little people who liked Python actually talked about this movie, even though it features fully half of the Python players and is directed by one of them.
Based loosely (if at all) on the Lewis Carroll poem, Jabberwocky acknowledges its connection to Carroll by kicking off the action with that poem's famous opening: "Twas brillig and the slithy toves ..." I guess these words are being spoken, or at least thought, by a butterfly, because they end when a poacher (played in his one quick scene by Python Terry Jones) steps on and crushes the butterfly while tromping through the woods. A few moments later, this character is going to be skeletonized by the titular beast, unseen at this point, which at least set me up for something interesting.
Nope.
Poor Michael Palin, saddled with being the movie's main character and having to act out a movie's worth of bad ideas by Gilliam and co-screenwriter Charles Alverson. He keeps his chin up and at least is a beacon of sweetness within all this grossness and drudgery.
Yes, if there's something Monty Python collectively understand, it's the grossness and drudgery of the Middle Ages. Most of the characters in Holy Grail and in this portion of Time Bandits look like gnarled gnomes with bad teeth. Python think it's funny what cretins these people were, and mostly, they're right. Just think of the scene in Time Bandits where John Cleese's Robin Hood -- ah, what Jabberwocky might have done with a good dose of John Cleese -- is giving out stolen goods from the rich to the poor, but the price of each receiving their small amount of riches is that one of Hood's goons, with teeth practically coming out of his forehead, must punch them square in the face. And it's not just men, as this menace is knocking the block off of women as well.
That might not have worked, tonally, but by the time Gilliam had made Time Bandits, he knew a) how to pull off the tone and b) that small doses were all we needed. Jabberwocky is essentially one hour and 45 minutes of a goon punching you in the face, and it's as unpleasant as that sounds.
There are jokes here about shitting, eating grossly, bawdy sexuality, inbred-looking royalty, terrible hygiene and the general awfulness of people. Under the right circumstances, some of this stuff might make me laugh. Since none of it did -- I literally did not laugh once -- each new flailing attempt just stacked the deck against this movie. The most I can say is that I appreciated what they were trying to go for once or twice, but they were quite far from achieving it.
Why does this stand in such stark contrast to Holy Grail and to Time Bandits, which also features Palin as well as Cleese? Is Charles Alverson that much of a detriment to Gilliam's comedic instincts?
Because this is, really, very close to those two movies in many respects. It looks shoddy, which is a feature not a bug of Holy Grail (and a product of its mid-70s origins to some degree). It has the bawdy humor that Gilliam explores more credibly in Time Bandits. There are even some things that are so directly explored in the earlier film that they would be considered rip-offs if the same creative talent were involved. For example, Palin's character is named Dennis, which is the same name as the character who talks King Arthur's ear off in the aforementioned "constitutional peasant" scene in Holy Grail. (You don't remember me aforementioning it? That's the scene I memorized when I was 14 and can still recite to this day.) There's a black knight in Jabberwocky, just as there is in Grail, and there are rude guards at the top of a tower, just as there are in Grail, although all they do is urinate off the tower.
That's a good metaphor for what is being traded off between these two movies, though. Although the French guards delivering their complicated insults in Holy Grail has faded over time for me as one of that film's best sources of humor, more silly than masterful comedy writing, it's Shakespeare compared to two guys urinating off the top of a tower.
I do think this gives us an idea of how important the other Pythons -- who included Graham Chapman and Eric Idle in addition to the ones we've already mentioned -- were to the writing process of Holy Grail. When you only have some of them, and when the one who is directing it has not yet come into the visual powers that would later distinguish his career, you get a lowbrow, mean-spirited and unfunny slog like this.
I thought this might make me a Gilliam completist, but just checking now, I see I have not yet seen The Brothers Grimm, one of two movies he directed in 2005 (along with Tideland). That one was not well received, so I won't rush to fit it in.
In a year in which I am reviewing outlier movies from favorite directors, Jabberwocky does not qualify. In fact, looking over Gilliam's filmography for this piece, there are actually more Gilliam movies I dislike than like. While the two movies I've discussed glowingly in this piece are obviously my favorites, Twelve Monkeys is also around my top 100 on Flickchart, clocking in at #127. From there, though, things drop off pretty steeply, as only one movie he has made since then -- and that's nearly 30 years -- has gotten three stars from me on Letterboxd, which is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and I may have been generous with that rating. All the others since 1995 are some sort of misfire, and I'm no fan of Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which came before Twelve Monkeys, either. (I like Brazil fine, but not as much as most people.)
In the grand scheme of things, it should not be a surprise that Jabberwocky stinks, because Gilliam missed more than he hit. And we now know he's not a great guy either, aligning himself with right-wing politics, so you know, he and his shitty 1977 movie can go eff themselves.
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