Terry Gilliam might one of my favorite director when it comes down to it. Up until I started writing this blog I never really put much consideration into the idea of favorite directors, a misguided attempt to avoid bias when it came to recommendations I suppose. He’s got a fantastic track record though: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, all of them great films (in my opinion of course), all of them interesting films, and ones that I would heartily recommend when asked. Okay, The Brothers Grimm was a particularly fetid turd in the ‘make stories and people who aren’t that cool into super cool badasses’ action subgenre, (which I believe began with the ungodly awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie yet still clings to to its wretched life like a half-drowned rat) and I don’t know what all could have been done to keep it from being Van Helsing-but-with-fairy-tales (fire, possibly). Certainly a misstep, but it hasn’t ruined my appreciation for Terry Gilliam films, and I haven’t been discouraged from eventually completing his filmography.
Only a few more movies left to go.
The movie takes place in a realistically filthy medieval kingdom (It’s always the Welsh who end up filthy) currently being besieged by a man-eating creature known as the Jabberwock. It’s a horrible looking beast, despite the fact that no one knows what it looks like, which consumes every part of a human, except for his bones and face for some reason. Gilliam seems to be implying that this creature is the same jabberwocky from the Lewis Carroll poem, not only with the name but even placing voice-overs of the poem throughout the film, occasionally acted out by a Punch & Judy show. I’m not entirely sure the reason, maybe because of the recognizable name, because there seems to be little relation to the events of the movie and what happens in the poem. Unless, as I now wonder, Mr. Gilliam’s purpose was to subvert the story in much the same way as he helped to subvert classic British literature in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which wouldn’t surprise me at all if that was true. There is a distinct lack of momeraths, in any case.
Enter Dennis Cooper (Michael Palin), apprentice/son to the village barrel maker and consistent fuckup. Although Dennis has philanthropic ambitions, his constant mistakes have cause almost everyone he knows to viciously hate him, especially his father. When his father suddenly passes away (after telling his son on his deathbed that he hated his guts), Dennis decides to move to the city in order to make his fortune. Armed with only a half-eaten rotten potato and the ambivalence of his rotund lady love Griselda Fishfinger, Dennis Cooper is thrown a series of events that are as numerous as they are coincidental. Will Dennis win the heart of Griselda? Who will slay the fearsome jabberwock? You’ll have to watch to find out.
Jabberwocky is a movie of reaction and coincidence. Nothing that happens to Dennis throughout the story is due to his own actions, and everything he tries to do ends up being a colossal failure. Stumbling through an adventure is not an uncommon thing in comedy; Arthur Dent helped save the galaxy several times by just existing, after all. When you make a character completely subject to circumstance you can’t go far into the extremes: If the only things that happen to them are good, then they are viewed as unrealistic and boring. In the same vein, a character who is beset again and again by misfortune is also considered unrealistic (or perhaps too realistic) and eventually boring. I feel that Gilliam finds the right balance, having Dennis achieve success without meaning to but having him suffer for it as well. Because he’s a nice guy, and we want to see him have something after being like dirt by the rest of the world, but we need to see that dirt being thrown to keep us interested.
There are way more scenes of Dennis getting urinated on than I expected. I was expecting none at all.
If you can imagine Monty Python and the Holy Grail with less emphasis on breaking the suspension of disbelief, or perhaps The Princess Bride with Stan Laurel, and you might get an idea of what Jabberwocky is like. It’s not really a movie that generates a large amount of post-movie discussion like 12 Monkeys or Brazil can, but it has that mix of the real and the fantastical that I can’t help but identify with Terry Gilliam’s work. For those interested in some British-style comedy, or are otherwise looking to branch off from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I direct you here.
Result: Recommended
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