The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), directed by Terry Gilliam

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Viva Las Vegas' by Elvis Presley

       When I was a teenager I was at the height of my weird writing phase. As a child my mind had been shaped by the retro futurism of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, and as I matured that malformed imagination metastasized into something all the more bizarre, and it needed food to maintain it. Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Mick Farren, Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, surface level stuff for those who consider themselves alternative literature connoisseurs but mind-blowing to the isolated me. However I don’t know if there has ever been a writer that has been more influential in my attempts at being a writer than Hunter S. Thompson.

       There were two main reasons this was the case. One was that I was a big fan of the Venture Bros. and the comic series Transmetropolitan, both of which featured a Thompson-esque character, and his wild lifestyle was fascinating to someone who had entered his love of music through the 1960s and 70s. The main reason however was in the writing. It was magical to me; A speeding bullet train of razorwire thoughts and ugly feelings that brought to mind the freewheeling work of Kerouac, but unlike Kerouac never veered off course. As a kid who consistently struggled with expressing myself in words and especially in writing I was in awe of Thompson’s ability to not only to write down exactly how he felt but to do it so eloquently and effortlessly. Everything I’ve ever written since then, whether it’s this blog or other things you readers aren’t privy to, has been in an effort to reach that level of writing, that smooth-as-silk translation of the fluidity of thought into form. I don’t think I’ve ever reached that level, but I guess until the day I stop writing for good there’s still a chance. 

      Anyway, movies.

       Released in 1998, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Terry Gilliam, written by Gilliam, Tony Grison, Alex Cox and Tod Davies and produced by Patrick Cassavetti, Laila Nabulsi and Stephen Nemeth through Rhino Films and Summit Entertainment, based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. Johnny Depp plays Raoul Duke (a pseudonym of Thompson), a doctor of journalism who is tasked by the magazine he works for to cover the Mint 400, a motorbike race in the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. Duke does make it to Vegas, but it’s not to cover any race; rather he, his attorney ‘Dr. Gonzo’ (Benicio del Toro), a cherry red muscle car, and a briefcase of every drug known to mortal man, are in Sin City to find the fabled American Dream, preferably while blitzed out of their mind. What follows is a sort of hedonistic Odyssey, as Duke and Gonzo go on the mother of all benders in the nation’s capital of debauchery, from the highest highs to the lowest of lows. It’s time to experience some true fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

       It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the first time that the work of H.S.T. had been put to film -- A decade or so prior had seen the release of Where the Buffalo Roam, with Bill Murray in the role of the infamous journalist, which was somehow not able to save the film from obscurity despite being a comedy movie from the 80’s with Bill Murray in it. Although the two films revolve around similar material however, Where the Buffalo Roam is cartoonish farce pretending to be an adaptation. Buffoonish even, noteworthy mainly for Bill Murray trying his best Thompson impression and Peter Boyle of all people playing Chicano lawyer Oscar Acosta. Maybe I’ll give it a proper review one day, but it’s not exactly high on the queue.

       Terry Gilliam on the hand has never been interested in just doing comedy. His entire directorial career had been about going into weird, dark directions that dabbled in comedy from time to time. While he had started off the decade relatively wholesomely with The Fisher King (which still featured mass murder, PTSD and homelessness), he followed that up with 12 Monkeys, his most openly nihilistic and depressing film since Brazil. Fear and Loathing isn’t quite as depressing, but true to its title there’s a violent miasma to this world that taints everything with a terrible ugliness. Duke and Gonzo’s can be amusing but more than anything else they’re disturbing, base expressions of paranoia, violence, and psychopathic antipathy spurred on by the copious amounts of psychoactive drugs warping the excess of Vegas into a pandemonium of sights and sounds. When Gonzo is a tub full of water and grapefruit, threatening to murder Duke unless he throws an electric tape player into the bath at the climax of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, thus killing him, the sheer absurdity of the situation lends itself to comedy, but rather than being funny it feels more uncomfortable and sad. If a Marx Brothers movie were set in the real world, it’d feel like Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

       The classic rule of storytelling is that you should always show and not tell. It’s one that Gilliam has built his career around and it’s one that’s showcased in full force in Fear and Loathing. Everything in this film is literal; Duke goes into a bar and the narration says that he was in a ‘reptile house’ and suddenly the room is filled not with people but extras from ABC’s Dinosaurs, when Duke takes a few too many hits of ‘adrenochrome’, a hallucinogen supposedly derived from the adrenal glands of children that Gonzo got from a Satanist client, Duke watches Gonzo transform into a demon before his eyes. Even during the more sober moments of the film the camera can’t sit still, leaning in close or contorting as if it’s as inebriated as the characters themselves. This, combined with the puppetry, the CG, the art direction all adds up to one of the most artistically ambitious films in an incredibly ambitious filmography up to that point, right up there with Brazil and Baron Munchausen. 

       Of course on the flip side there’s an argument to be made that visuals can be detrimental, or at the very least not helpful to a film. Monkeybone was a visually interesting film. Most of Ralph Bakshi’s films were visually interesting. That doesn’t make them good films, it makes them good wallpaper compilations. There are a few moments where we pull back and we actually get into something with substance, Duke soberly reflecting on the death of the 60’s social optimism and the dispelling of the grand illusion that was acid culture as the cure for the ills of society.  Duke and Gonzo aren’t taking LSD and mescaline in the 70’s  to expand their consciousness and thus become better people, they do it to get fucked up, because trying to get through Vegas and to a greater extent life completely sober has become increasingly tolerable. But then we get right back to the wild and bizarre stuff, and it makes you wonder if that’s just how the book is written or if Gilliam is missing the forest for the trees in order to be ‘out there’. That was certainly true years later with the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, a flashy production utilizing the hip new technology that all adds up to a dull viewing, although by that point Gilliam had been all but forced into the realm of ‘has-been’ filmmakers. In 1998 though Gilliam was at his peak, and it’s because those moments of introspection are so few and far between are why it works. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas isn’t a story about answers, it’s about questions. It’s about being lost, morally, spiritually, chemically, and the desperate struggle to find purpose in nothingness. And even if we manage to distract ourselves with chaos, as Duke and Gonzo do, that taint is etched into our souls, rising up in those moments of lucidity before we force it back down again. 

       Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gets the recommendation. While these days films and TV about the darkness of the post-Flower Power era are commonplace, in the 1990s when pandering to 60s nostalgia was at an all time high (they tried to reboot Woodstock twice), films like Fear and Loathing and The Basketball Diaries provided a nice counterpoint to the jam bands and tie-dye shirts. And since disillusionment with America has only increased with the years, this film has so far aged like a fine wine. Not to mention adding yet another feather to the caps of both Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, who had both had a pretty good decade and would only get bigger moving forward. A damn good, damn crazy movie. For best results, pair with Apocalypse Now! or Taxi Driver for the full burn out 70s experience. And avoid bat country if at all possible, you’ll thank me later.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), directed by Terry Gilliam

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Da Art of Storytellin' (Pt. 1)", by Outkast

       With all these modern day films that I’ve been reviewing on this year’s Marathon, I bet you all were thinking that a piece on Terry Gilliam’s long-overdue creation, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was just waiting in the wings. Well shame on you! Readers should know that this blog isn’t about being ‘up-to-date’ or ‘relevant to current interests’, it’s about me farting out a meandering, incoherent mess of a film critique that no one is ever going to read, and then you folks out there not reading it. It’s a proven system honed over years of trial and error, so I see no reason to change things up now. So maybe in a couple of years if I’m not lying dead in a ditch somewhere I’ll get around to Don Quixote, right alongside watching The Wire and forming a sense of self-worth. 

       But not today.

       If you’re ever walking the streets of London when the time is right, there’s a chance that you might come across a horse driven cart containing the most magical show of all, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Step right up and through the silver door and Doctor Parnassus, immortal mystic of the ages, will transport you into a world of your dreams. Anything can happen in the Imaginarium and everything does, and at the end of the journey all you have to do is make a simple choice. Tough but rewarding, or quick and easy? Moral or immoral? Purification or, as the case may be, immolation?

       The truth is, perhaps, a bit less glamorous. Yes Doctor Parnassus is immortal and the Imaginarium is real, but he’s not much of a mystic anymore. He’s more like a bum, drinking himself into a stupor as his troupe, Anton the young ward, Percy (played by the late Verne Troyer) and the Doctor’s daughter Valentina cart their wagon across the city. One day however, Parnassus is visited by his old betting partner Mister Nick, played by music legend Tom Waits. Seems that that’s almost Valentina’s 16th birthday and based on the outcome of the last wager, that means she’s going to be coming with him (hope she likes fire & brimstone). Unless of course if Parnassus wanted to make another wager, say, the first person to sway the souls of 5 people to their side wins? Parnassus eagerly accepts, although with the way the show has been doing lately there seems little hope that Nick won’t run away with the whole thing. That is until the Imaginarium happens to find a hanged man under a bridge, with a pipe in his mouth and strange symbols on his forehead…

       Now before we move on to the nitty-gritty, you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that this is Heath Ledger’s final film, passing away before its completion and being replaced in select scenes by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. I didn’t have much of an experience with Ledger prior to this film, a couple of snippets of A Knight’s Tale and a half-remembered viewing of I’m Not There and The Dark Knight years ago, but I think his final performance shows him off well. Hell, he’s probably the best character in it. Using substitute actors was the best choice in the long run, not only in the context of the story/character and also as a nice gesture of support during a tragic event. Don’t know how many othe actors would’ve been honored like that.

       Imaginarium presents itself as having a underlying theme of telling ‘stories’, although most of the allusions tend to lean towards the religious, particularly East-Asian beliefs. Parnassus is depicted as various types of holy men, a yogi, a Sikh, even a pseudo-Krishna at some point, while Mister Nick is clearly analogous to Satan. Parnassus was once a leader of men, until he’s tempted by the pleasures of the material world and ultimately falls from grace. Heath Ledger’s character, as a Hanged Man, symbolizes self-sacrifice in Tarot and is occasionally represented as Judas. Then of course there’s the crux of the film, Parnassus and Nick competing with each other over people’s souls, the struggle between yin and yang played out right on your screen and the positively Buddhist implication that the answer lies beyond them. Gilliam lays it on pretty damn thick too, so if the boats with Anubis’ head don’t make you get the hint than there’s about a dozen other things that will.

       However, while analyzing all of this imagery can be entertaining, the film itself struggles to do the same. The opening scene with the Imaginarium is quite interesting; this bizarre caravan with oddly dressed people just appears on the street, an aggressive drunk chases Valentina through the silver door and he ends up in a giant cardboard forest where his face completely changes, he’s launched into outer space with giant jellyfish and eventually gets blown up by a bar. It’s all wonderfully surreal and mysterious and really draws you into the film. Then they keep going into the Imaginarium, or they have flashbacks, and every single time it’s not as good as the first time. CGI is quite obvious in 2018, and in 2009 a blind man couldn’t miss it. Seeing Johnny Depp pretend to dance on some floating plate is probably funnier than any joke in this movie, and they throw out a lot of jokes here. For a director that I have sung praises for in the past for creating such fanciful, visceral settings for his films, this almost feels like an insult. I came to see something like Brazil, not Shark Boy & Lava Girl.

       Ironically though, those scenes still end up being the highlight of the film, because everything else just sort of stands there awkwardly. A whole bunch of time in this movie is waiting for the plot to catch up with the audience, and then trying to gaslight you with trippy ‘mind-bending’ visuals. Just throwing more and more stuff onto the pile that we’re supposed to accept without explanation, like the eternal story bit or the declaration that black magic doesn’t magic, or that some people change faces in the Imaginarium but not everybody, until you’re so tired and numb to it all that you throw your hands up in the air with exasperation. Hopefully you’re already in the second hour of the movie by then.

       Then we get to characters. Not the acting per se, which is fine, but the characters, which the movie utterly fails to make me care about. Parnassus is barely relevant in his own film until the last 15 minutes or so when the movie decides he’s actually the protagonist. Anton is the typical doormat character who’s there to take abuse until the plot decides he has a spine. Valentina is an overbearing angsty teenager who is constantly pushed into romantic and sexual, and while yes it’s normal for a 16 year old girls to be interested in sex, that doesn’t mean I want to see Heath Ledger put his dick in one. Percy is okay but he’s also immortal for no adequately explained reason so screw that. Which leaves the entire weight of entertaining the audience and moving the story along squarely on the shoulders of Heath Ledger’s character, Tony Shepherd, and while Heath and his substitutes are certainly charismatic enough to entertain an audience, this is not one of those films that can be carried on the performance of one character (even if they’re played by four actors).

       It pains me to say it, but The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus might be the first film by Terry Gilliam covered on this blog that isn’t going to get the recommendation. It’s a two hour long mess of special effects and half-baked philosophy that feels like watching Larry Byrd going for a free throw and hitting the popcorn vendor instead. You can’t judge his entire career based on it, but it certainly takes the shine off it. If you’re interested in movies with a lot of subtext to unpack this Halloween, especially if it's tied to religion, you might want to try Circle of Iron, Jodorowsky’s El Topo, or even David Lynch’s Dune if you’re feeling saucy. Or perhaps you can hang out with your friends and not even bother watching a movie at all. Either way you’re missing out on much if you decide to give this one a pass.