Brazil & Terry Gilliam Q&A

I think it’s fair to say that Terry Gilliam isn’t a tepid, tentative film-maker. Like the man himself his films exhibit an exaggerated, almost hysterical combination of visual invention and perpetual thematic characteristics, veering from dark fantasy to lunatic flights of imagination, from dreams to oppression, all visually rendered in his trademark exuberant manner and evolved from his animation background. To my mind Gilliam is a very hit and miss director – the last decade of his work really hasn’t been very good at all – but when his unrestrained, flamboyant imagination collides with the correct subject matter the result can be thoroughly unique, even his misfires have their moments and you certainly can’t accuse of him that worst of cinematic crimes – being boring. The BFI have been running a month long retrospective of his work and with Terry being London based they managed to get him over for an interview and Q&A followed by perhaps his most perfectly realised film, 1985’s ‘Brazil‘ which I’ve been keen to see again, given the current surveillance state of the UK I thought it would be interesting to see the levels of prescience Gilliam had managed to cram into his most critically adored film. Beware major spoilers.

 I haven’t seen ‘Brazil‘ in full for a good few years and I’m happy to report that twenty five years on it still stands up. Historically it was amusing to see members of the cast I’d forgotten from Ian Richardson to Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins to Nigel Planer, Jim Broadbent and of course the unexpected guerrilla plumbing by Bob. The film charts the story of Sam Lowry(Jonathan Pryce), an idealistic, mid-ranking civil servant in a near future Orwellian (the first author you can’t escape when explaining this movie), nightmare dystopia. Sam is a dreamer, a romantic who indulges in vivid fantasies of battling fantastical creatures and saving princesses whilst soaring amongst the unpolluted and liberating skies. In the real, Kafkaesque (and there’s the second) world a clerical error results in an innocent man being arrested, tortured and executed by the fascist state, a state apparently perpetually engaged with a never-ending war with terrorist insurgents who threaten the very foundations of civilisation. Lowry assists his impotent boss Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm) in obscuring the blame for the mistake by expertly diverting the the omnipresent paperwork and administrative functions to other departments. During the course of this assignment Lowry meets Jill Layton, a woman who bears a staggering likeness to the beauty in his daydreams, she may or may not be one of the ‘terrorists’ who are in combat with the police state. Lowry is soon caught in flux between his fantasies and reality, his heart perhaps ruling his head as he employs his expertise of the system in an effort to exonerate his new love from lethal state retribution….

 ‘Brazil’ is seen as the central strut in trilogy that celebrates the power of the imagination, a trilogy comprised of the child in ‘Time Bandits’, the middle aged man in ‘Brazil’ and the elderly man in ‘The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen‘. I really liked the 1940’s aesthetic to the production design and costumes, all slightly tilted, slightly off-base in a marriage of steampunk-lite aesthetics with grey, industrial, claustrophobic environments papered in state propaganda. The films choking atmosphere remains resonant, I like the way it is almost casually alluded to, it’s almost naturalistically a part of the story and hyper-real world with small details and grotesque imagery coupled with pitch-black humour, Gilliam’s Dutch tilts and perspective tricky grinding in unison to produce a nightmarish effect. The proclamations of terrorism, of a perpetual war that encourages vigilance and suspicion of everyone are quite uncomfortable to watch and generate a gallows like choke of humour in light of the past decade, the constant climate of fear and mistrust pervading the screen.

 The most terrifying exemplar is Michael Palins character Jack Lint, the casual Ministry Of Information torturer who treats his job with the same repetitive 9 – 5 grind of any other jaded commuter, bringing his daughter to work, politely greeting his colleagues and staff, eager to impress his superiors and levitate up through the corporate hierarchy. The casual, endemic oppression of the state apparatus is not the extension of some nefarious dictator, some Stalin or Kim Jong-il styled despotic maniac but it is the status-quo, the junior civil servants and middle management who casually execute and torture, merely being adjuncts to the ideological status quo, it’s just how it is, the rules of the game.That’s scary. It’s almost mandatory for anyone who has worked in central or local government to enjoy this film, having worked for almost a dozen local authorities over the past decade that aura of stifling red tape, of institutional lunacy, of dysfunctional frustration is all too credible albeit of course exaggerated to cartoon proportions although perhaps some of the equipment starved soldiers in Afghanistan might have a different opinion. The justifiably celebrated sucker-punch final scene is still pretty powerful even when you know it’s coming, Lowry retreating to his fantastic imaginations when the horrors of the real world become all too vivid and painful.

In person Gilliam is exactly how I imagined he would be – hyperactive, eccentric and very, very funny. He began by recounting how he promoted his faintly controversial film 2006 film ‘Tideland‘ in the US by walked around Hollywood with a sign detailing how he was intending to sue Cheney and Bush for their unauthorised sequel to ‘Brazil’ that they’d been running since 2000 – big laugh. Bemoaning the poor reception of that film (sorry Terry, it just wasn’t very good) the Q&A went on to discuss the shooting of the Crimson Pearl Assurance section of Python’s ‘The Meaning Of Life’, which was originally intended as a double-bill with the main film. Confused as to how they could marry the two elements together they finally alighted on the pythonesque touch of having the supporting feature attack the main feature toward the end of the film, an apt and amusing solution to including the material Gilliam had photographed before running out of money.

 During the Q&A a member of the audience inquired how on earth he kept the bleak ‘Time Bandits‘ ending intact given that it involves the death of the hero’s parents – kind of unusual for a kids film – when presumably this unorthodox climax would be vigorously opposed by the producers and executives on the film. Gilliam quite cunningly manipulated the hateful test screening process and feedback cards that are completed to assess the alleged quality of a film. Test screen viewers had angrily answered the question ‘What was the best part of the film?’ with the answer ‘The End’ because of course for them this horrible experience was over. Statistically therefore the numbers championed the end of the picture being perceived as the best part of the film. Gilliam argued this and the finale remained intact. Genius. After the interviewer had opened the stage up to questions a fellow audience member commented that Gilliam’s films had a recurrent reference to cells, both literally and figuratively, making the idea of incarceration or rather the overcoming confinement a recurrent theme in his work. It’s a good point. When thinking about Gilliam’s recurrent legendary battles with executives on almost all of his films, the last being a particularly bruising encounter with the Rottweiler Weinstein’s over ‘The Brothers Grimm‘, you can’t help but sense parallels.

 Inevitably the ‘Watchmen’ question came up and Gilliam recounted his usual opinion (with which I agree) that the source material was too dense and complex to do it justice in a two, three hour movie and a HBO mini series or equivalent would be more appropriate. He was too diplomatic (for a change, he said some very naughty things about Tom Cruise) to be drawn directly in on the merits or otherwise of Zack Snyder’s effort but you could clearly tell he wasn’t a huge fan. For all you Pratchet and Gaiman fans out there the good news is that ‘Good Omens‘ is still on the schedule, he’s got a script together but it’s an expensive $75 – $100 million production so he needs a bona-fide hit before he can convince the suits to pony up the cash, don’t hold your breath however as his return to the Don Quixote tale is still the priority.

To close the event the BFI screened the trailer for Gilliam’s impending ‘The Imagination Of Dr. Parnassus‘ and I’m a convert, it looks like his most extravagant effort since ‘Munchausen‘ and that’s saying something. I’m interested to see how they weaved the passing of Heath Ledger into the movie with Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Johnny Depp all stepping in to play facets of the same character, that’s quite a feat to pull off and I’m intrigued to see how Gilliam approached and has hopefully solved the problem. It certainly looks like his most kaleidoscopically bonkers film for a long time, it hits London in October.

  I took another look at ‘Twelve Monkeys‘ and liked it much more than I remembered although I still have major reservations about the soundtrack which I find really grating and intrusive but hey, it’s a personal dislike that I can’t completely justify. Brad Pitt was less annoying than I remembered and the scenes of the post plague devastated Boston were well rendered. The extensive making of documentary on the disk ‘The Hamster Factory’ was better, it gives a very insightful and educational picture of how films are made, potentially interfered with and how the creative process is tempered by financial and corporate pressures. I’m not the worlds biggest fan of the short ‘La Jetee‘ that inspired the film but here it is in all its stuttering glory.