Tag: Terry Gilliam

Time Bandits is a wildly underrated film

Posted on by victorfraga

Although Time Bandits (1981) isn’t in the same league as Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), it nevertheless demonstrates Terry Gilliam’s inventiveness in the realm of family cinema. It doesn’t hurt that it features two members of Monty Python – John Cleese and Michael Palin, the latter the film’s co-writer – but Gilliam fertile enough in 1981 to create a zany adventure film, regardless of cast, location, or budget. And for a film with a budget of $5 million, the film ripples along with the might of a Hollywood epic, complete with an English flair.

The film opens on Kevin (Craig Warnock), a young boy fascinated with mythology, who is visited by knights and dwarves in his bedroom from a faraway land. Electing to join the dwarves on their journey, Kevin flits from time zone to time zone to profit his mind, and his pockets. Jumping from the Battle of Castiglione to the Titanic, Kevin’s greatest battle comes in the form of Evil (David Warner) who threatens to topple everything that is good and virtuous in the world. And by the time he returns to his parents, his interest in materialism has been replaced by something fierier in his life.

Time Bandits - like Raiders of The Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg), released in the same year – tests the boundaries of children’s entertainment, which includes a violent battle between the Minotaur and Agamemnon (played with handsome elegance by Sean Connery,) but it should be enjoyed by eight-year-olds looking for something with greater bite. Ten-year-olds will enjoy the shrill Shelley Duvall, crying over the Titanic harbour, just as fifteen-year-olds should get a kick out of the sparky dialogue between The Ogre (Peter Vaughan) and his wife (Katherine Helmond). “I think they thought I was a fantasist who made fantasies,” Gilliam recalled in 2023. “I don’t make films about fantasy. I make films about imagination. Those are very different things”.

Time Bandits is clearly a creative venture and opens with an animated sequence that quickly envelopes into live action. Former Beatle George Harrison contributed Dream Away, which was heard on the closing credits, which made sense considering Harrison’s interest in Gilliam’s work. What’s most apparent about the film is that it is supremely English – in humour, peculiarity, passion, and kitsch production style. The cast predominantly consists of British actors, from Ian Holm to Ralph Richardson (the latter playing God because “he was as close to God as actor’s get,”) and delves into the history taught across the British mainland (it’s hardly surprising that Ian Holm is depicted as portly and pugnacious, as he was in many texts across the French ocean).

Kevin is the emotional anchor of the film, steering parents away from technological gadgets and preaching goodness to a bunch of dwarves who travel the world in the hope of finding a pot of gold. Kevin is free of lust: His eyes widen whenever he walks through Nottingham Forest or admires the riches that surrounds him in ancient Greece. Connery took a pay cut to appear in the film, and the lack of budget is visible, but ever the inventor, Gilliam uses whatever props are at his disposal to create this insular world. Much like seeking treasures in Microgaming’s 9 Pots of Gold Slot Game, the dwarves journey for their elusive pot of gold. Gilliam would rely on playwrights Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown to flesh out the stories on future projects, which explains Brazil’s emotional density and Baron Munchausen’s ambition. Compared to those two films, Time Bandits undoubtedly suffers from a lack of central narrative – Palin’s métier as a sketch artist might explain the feature’s loose nature – but it’s so tightly directed that the audiences don’t start questioning the film’s story until the credits roll. Modern audiences might be a little concerned with Holm’s over-the-top French accent, but like everything else in the film – the lack of CGI, the sprinklings of synthesised notes in the mix – it’s an affectation that was in keeping with the trappings of the time.

Unsurprisingly, Palin keeps many of the best lines for himself. “The problem has returned,” he cries out; “I must have fruit.” Palin would enjoy a meatier turn as Jack in Brazil and would later work closely with Cleese on A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988). By all accounts, he was the Python’s lucky charm, or golden charm in this case, bringing good luck to Gilliam and Cleese on their solo projects. Had the film been made later, he probably would have played the “Evil Being” himself, but Palin’s brief appearance in the film is one of the funnier cameos in the work. The same cannot be said for Cleese, who hams it up as Robin Hood, flaunting his green tights to the camera. Sometimes, it doesn’t take three Pythons to make a film work. Often, it’s best to stick to two!

Tilting at windmills in Paris

Posted on by victorfraga

I have waited for many films to arrive, but there’s only one that I’ve anticipated for 16 years: Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Over the years it has even invaded my own dreams, quite fitting for a film made by a dreamer about a dreamer. I’ve followed its numerous iterations, from the initial hope that Johnny Depp would still star (following the success of those pirate films, he ruled himself out in 2009), to the Robert Duvall/Ewan McGregor two-header, and on to perhaps the most heartbreaking and tantalising version with John Hurt as the Man of La Mancha. At one point Gerard Depardieu (with Depp as Toby) was in the frame, then even Al Pacino was considered. Others have come and gone. In fact, the project goes way back, to a more literal concept with Sean Connery and Danny DeVito that Gilliam floated in the early 1990s.

Obviously, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was always set to play at Cannes. It was going to be independently funded with European money, and that’s where the festival directors and distributors gather. However, when former producer Paulo Branco attempted to sabotage it after leaving the project in what looked like a blatant attempt at extortion, everything was up in the air until the last minute. Without Branco’s machinations, the film would probably have played in competition – but in the end, Gilliam’s premiere bagged the final slot, showing the closing ceremony and… out of competition! It also garnered a 20-minute standing ovation despite festival fatigue, one of the longest ever.

With uncertainty still raging days before Cannes, I chose to trek to Paris instead, where screenings had been scheduled and looked likely to go through. With no UK distributor lined up, I wasn’t taking any chances on missing something I’d waited 16 years for, and so grabbed for the earliest screening I could.

How much of that Cannes ovation was for the film and how much for Gilliam’s perseverance is open to question, but in my opinion it’s probably his best work since Brazil (1985), and so richly deserved. Of course, Cannes reactions are not necessarily the best indicator of how well a film will perform with critics or audiences. No one was sure what to expect – from around 1989, when Gilliam was still a hot property in Hollywood, to now, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote transformed from a more faithful retelling of Cervantes’ lengthy and perhaps ultimately unfilmable novel to a meta-version that incorporated elements of Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to a deeply personal contemporary version without the time travel angle once considered. The documentary Lost In La Mancha (Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe, 2002) showed something very different than the final film.

.

As personal as it gets

At some point in the noughties, co-writer Tony Grisoni suggested that lead character Toby should be a movie director rather than an advertising executive. And so Toby (Adam Driver) emerged as a youngish filmmaker who made a student movie called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for his thesis. Now back in Spain to make a Quixote-inspired advert, he finds out that the town he shot as a student is close by. He visits to find some inspiration, and learns that his film had a profound, and not necessary positive, impact. That’s especially so for the village shoemaker, who played the role of Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) and now seems to believe he really is Cervantes’ knight.

Obviously, the film owes a massive debt to Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), which had a major impact on Gilliam (Brazil‘s original title was 1984 ½): a key scene for him was when Marcello Mastronianni dances around the film producers who are coming at him from all directions, a visual that portrayed what would be necessary to work successfully in the movies years to Gilliam before he made a film. Like all of Gilliam’s films, despite being grand, it’s intensely personal. Toby and Quixote portray the director’s two sides: Toby personifies the deeply frustrated would-be artist whose passion and determination have been channelled into commerce, while Quixote is the dreamer whose life was enriched and yet damaged by the story.

The film business is full of damaged people whose lives are lived episodically through the films they make. And when a film crew comes to town, it affects the place socially and even environmentally—living out your dreams carries untold risks. Indeed, there were accusations that the filmmakers damaged a world heritage site in Portugal while this one was made. The thin line between madness and dreams is always the main theme in Gilliam’s work, and there are certainly echoes of The Fisher King (1991; one of his few fully contemporary films), The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) here. Gilliam has joked over the years that his wife, Maggie Weston, says he just makes the same film over and over. Of course, most true artists have certain themes that permeate their work and they constantly re-evaluate those questions because they are close to their heart. 

.

A star-studded cast

The casting is exemplary. Adam Driver came to fame as the only reason to watch Lena Dunham’s TV series Girls, but in the last few years he has been able to pick off the directors he wanted to work with, from Noah Baumbach to Jim Jarmusch to Spike Lee. His Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) role brought stardom, and attaching him to the project helped Gilliam sell the film overseas. Driver isn’t a stereotypical handsome leading man—he has an interesting face but isn’t a pretty boy, and here he perfectly captures Toby’s humour and arrogance. His comedic timing is coupled with enough depth to bring you along on his journey.

Jonathan Pryce has a long history with Gilliam—his breakthrough role was the lead of Sam Lowry in Brazil, and although he had been pegged for a different role in 2001, in 2018 he reached the age where he can pull off the role of Quixote but still has box-office power. He stepped into the role of after Gilliam’s old Python buddy Michael Palin was touted for the role and there was even a mock-up poster made for that version for Cannes. 

Stellen Skarsgård is great as an absolutely horrid producer (perhaps there’s a bit of Branco in there) and Rossy de Palma also shines in a supporting role. Jason Watkins plays Toby’s assistant and perfectly captures a particular campy, upper-middle-class film agent type. The cast is filled out with Spanish and British actors who have perfect faces for a Gilliam production and Joana Ribeiro as Angelica is destined for stardom.

.

The eye of the Man of La Mancha

The film was shot by Gilliam’s own Sancho Panza, Nicola Pecorini, who’s a genius cinematographer but rarely gets works. Pecorini has worked with Gilliam ever since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), despite a blip during Brothers Grimm (2005). Blind in one eye, he always comes up with interesting shots. Unlike a lot of Gilliam’s movies, there’s a lot of fish-eye lens work along with the trademark wide lens shots. Of course, the landscapes they found in Spain and Portugal do half the work. There are a couple of jump cuts that don’t work for me, but that’s a minor criticism. There is little CGI, which I think is a good thing and there is even a line about Toby preferring handmade effects than CGI. It’s difficult to get the budget for high-quality CGI, and the handmade quality fits the kind of film that Gilliam wanted to make.

.

A long cinematic journey

In other words, it was worth sleeping on the overnight bus from Leeds to Paris just to see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, not once but twice: first at the UGC Cine Cite Halles multiplex, then at the MK2 Beaubourg, where the audience was smaller but far more enthusiastic. There were a couple of walkouts at both screenings, but in my experience that’s usually a good sign – the director has provoked a strong reaction (although at the MK2 it looked more like a ‘wrong date movie’ situation.) My attempt to blag a poster were, sadly, unsuccessful.

He’s a director who always struggles with length, and it’s Gilliam’s longest film since The Fisher King in a world where independent films are supposed to be 100 minutes max, it’s great that he was able to grab the time it needed—despite some minor pacing issues in the middle, it’s a story that needs time to unfold. If this is Gilliam’s last film (which I hope it isn’t), it’s a good one to go out on. At a time of so many mundane independent films and action/superhero films, the fact that Gilliam can still make a film every few years gives me hope for cinema, because that means it’s still possible to put his dreams and nightmares on the big screen.

…

.

Click here for our editor’s take on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. He was present in Cannes, and far less impressed with the movie.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Posted on by victorfraga

CLICK HERE FOR A VERY DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE SAME FILM

What happens to a cake if you open the oven several times while it’s being baked? I becomes deflated. What happens then if you – despite the interruptions – carry on baking it for a very long time? It becomes burnt around the edges. This is more of less what happened to Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was in the making for 25 years and finally showed last night in the closing ceremony of the 71st Cannes Film Festival. It’s gooey inside, deflated and burnt. Its texture isn’t consistent. But it’s still digestible with some very tasty bits.

The American-born British filmmaker is very much aware of the problems with his films, and he attempts to use them to his benefit. The movie opens with the tongue-in-cheek “And now … after more than 25 years in the making … and unmaking”. There are plenty of elements of self-mockery. In a way, this is a film about the foolishness of the film director. About the incessant will to fight on, and to finish an art piece. Terry Gilliam is Don Quixote. But his attempt at lampooning himself only works partially.

Toby (Adam Driver) is a cocky and greedy American advertising director working in Spain. He comes across old Spanish shoemaker Javier (Jonathan Pryce), who is convinced that he is Don Quixote himself, and that Toby in Sancho Panza. There are plenty of windmills everywhere, ancient and modern, the ferocious giants with humongous arms for Javier/Don Quixote to fight. Against his will, Toby is dragged into Javier’s web of delusions. Parallel to this, Toby starts an affair with the gorgeous Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko), his Boss’ (Stellan Skarsgard) wife. The forbidden relationship becomes predictably toxic and dangerous.

This is also a film about cultural shock. Spanish and British sensibility mix like water and oil, making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote a very strange and hybrid beast. The humour is entirely British, and I doubt Spanish people will engage with the film thoroughly. Overall, Spanish culture is a difficult nut to crack: Asghar Farhadi did a poor job transposing his Iranian sensibility onto reddish and ardent Spanish soil, in Everybody Knows (the film that open the Cannes Film Festival just 11 days ago). Spanish gold is deceitful. It can easily turn out to be fool’s gold.

The most effective commentary of the film is on ageing. It is very touching to see a delusional Javier convinced that he can fight the evil giants and protect the poor and the vulnerable, despite the clearly visible amount of years on his back. Pryce’s performance is very moving and convincing. By extension, this also applies to Terry Gilliam: he will be an octogenarian is just two years.

The humour in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote isn’t entirely effective. The jokes are a little stale: “my maternal grandmother was Jewish, so I respect all religions” (uttered by Adam Driver, who’s Jewish), “We are in the European Union in the 21st Century” (not sure whether this was intended to be an anti-Brexit statement), people scream “terrorist” as a scarfed lady is revealed to have a beard, and Donald Trump is compared to a toddler. No one at the press screening at Debussy Theatre (with nearly every one of its 1,068 seats occupied) laughed at any of these jokes.

There are other issues. The film is extremely personal, infectious with self-references – which could alienate viewers. Fans of Gilliam will probably recognise those, but younger people, particularly those outside the Anglophone world will probably struggle.

But there’s a far more serious problem, which disappointed me irreparably. The fantastic Spanish actress Rossy de Palma was prominent on the red carpet right next to Mr Gilliam himself. I expected to see this reflected in the movie, giving the whole story a real Spanish flavour. Sadly, she only appears very shortly in the movie. I even suspect it wasn’t her. Looking closely, I think that may have been Adam Driver in drag.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote closed the 71st Cannes Film Festival lats May, when this piece was originally written. A messy treat with some tasty bits. Let’s just hope next time Terry Gilliam doesn’t insist on the deflated and burnt cake, and just starts his recipe afresh. The UK premiere takes place at the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st, and then at the Cambridge Film Festival October 25th to November 1st.

It’s out in cinemas on Friday, January 31st (2020). On all major VoD platforms in May!