Those who have followed me for a long time will know that I am a big fan of the director Terry Gilliam. He is indoubtedly the director I most resonate with and over the course of this lockdown I have had the pleasure of rewatching all of his films. I'd like to give a summary.

Most fans put his first films as the classic Monty Python movies, but in fact he was only an actor and animator in these films (Life of Brian and Holy Grail). Of the two, Holy Grail bears the most Gilliamesque mark thanks to his unforgettable animations of God and Dragons.

Gilliam's directorial debut was in fact the piss-poor sub-Pythonesque "Jabberwocky". Though still light years ahead of Tim Burton's narcissistic Alice in Wonderland reinterpretation 40 years later, Jabberwocky was a poor debut by the fledgling creator.

The film is a poor and cheaply made anomaly where Gilliam was trying to break out from Monty Python but didn't have the confidence to fully go independent. He holds hands with his ex-Python collaborators by wrongly casting Michael Palin in the lead.

The rest of the film consists of recycled leftover medieval jokes from Monty Python's Holy Grail. The actors are a weird blend of cheaply acquired 1970's British comics and Monty Python remnants. There are a few reasonable jokes but Gilliam hadn't escaped Python just yet.

Gilliam hadn't quite escaped the Monty Python mindset with Jabberwocky and it showed. It's hard to call it a true international release. "Erik the Viking" by Gilliam's far less talented Python colleague Terry Jones was more of a real diversion than Gilliam's forgotten first try.

Thankfully, Jabberwocky remains as an amateur offering, and the true genius of Terry Gilliam quickly became apparent with his second cinema debut: the magnificent, the wonderful, the endlessly imaginative - TIME BANDITS.

Inarguably, the greatest midget film ever made.

This is where we must pause to admire the genius of Gilliam. This is also, arguably, the time when Gilliam makes his name and makes his greatest ever films. Time Bandits seems like a children's film but it is so much more than that. It's the gateway to a whole new philosophy.

Time Bandits serves as the start of Gilliam's "Dream Trilogy" but also starts as the true beginning of his film career. Here, the director invites you to follow the dreams of the child protagonist's imagination on a journey that continues throughout Gilliam's entire filmography.

On first glance, Time Bandits is another Monty Python franchise. John Cleese does his thing as a snobby Robin Hood, and the rest of the Python's pop up in familiar roles. But Time Bandits is really about dreams, specifically the dreams of children. Note the lego.

The entire time-travelling odyssey is a joyous yarn of childish adventure. The backdrop of the story is an epic encounter between a gentlemanly reactonary God verdus a deliciously accelerationist Devil played by David Warner invoking the spirit of a diabolical Nick Land.

I say reactionary because the Devil in this film has probably the greatest accelerationist line ever uttered in a movie. Honestly, all you wish to know about the victory and failure of Gnon is here in this one line...

"God isn't interested in technology! He knows nothing about the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one!"

Paging @Outsideness

The wonder-point of Gilliam is that he made a series of films to grow up with. I vividly remember watching Time Bandits as a child and being enraptured with the story. Through this film I learnt first about Agamemnon and Napoleon. I hungered for more info as I watched the story.

This is important because Gilliam's best films during his Golden Age of the 80s not only addressed the topic of dreams but also how dreams progressed from the dreams of childhood, to middle age, to near-death. Time Bandits, Brazil, and Baron Munchuasen remain his best ever work

Time Bandits was a children's dream film, yet Gilliam prepared his juvenile audience for the disappointment of maturity by killing off the parents of the child-hero at the film's end. He ended childhood in a film in rapture with childhood. Why?

It was a move questioned by critics but a move that makes crucial sense when we consider what was to be Gilliam's next ... and his best.

The death of childhood is the world of work. And the world of work is... Brazil.

Gilliam's 3rd film and IMHO the greatest film ever made.

If you haven't seen a Terry Gilliam film, let this thread give you one piece of advice.

If you will only watch one of his films (and not all of them are good) make it Brazil.

The highlight of Gilliam's career. Never bettered. A film that still holds up today. A sci-fi classic.

What can we say about Brazil? Its a film so good and so layered that I actually have an original poster of the film framed on my wall. It's a sci-fi dystopia, a parody of 1984, a yearning for exit. It's the manifesto for fleeing the cubicle and flying out away from small minds.

Brazil requires multiple viewings before it is really understood. A surface viewing gives the impression that this is merely a film combating totalitarian government, but there is really a lot going on that only becomes apparent after 5 or 6 viewings.

First, Brazil continues the theme of dreams. Whereas Time Bandits explored the imaginative world of childhood dreaming, Brazil addresses the dreams of grown adults - specifically grown men who find their lives tinged with regret and longing.

The film is called Brazil which has multiple layers. Brazil is a faraway exotic place that seems exciting to any office-lackey. Gilliam thought of the name while stuck on a polluted grey Welsh beach and old men were listening to salsa music on the radio while staring at chimneys.

Those yearning for exit seek a Brazil, but it is also a place tinged with sadness, regret and impossibility. The song "Brazil" that plays throughout the film includes these words:

Then, tomorrow was another day,
The morning found me miles away,
With still a million things to say

Exit and freedom are also hinted to be unobtainable. Before the country of Brazil ever existed, the Irish had a myth of a fantastic western island in the Atlantic named Brazil that disappeared if you tried to approach it. If you attain your dreams, they will leave you.

The song Brazil pays throughout in different styles every time the hero Sam Lowry thinks he is approaching happiness. Yet the playing of the song is always fleeting & cursory... till the shocking twist ending when we hear the song finally in all its glory

(The music in this film is also wonderful. In particular, the version of Brazil played on office typewriters is especially good)

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Ultimately, Brazil is a film about escape. Sam Lowry wants nothing more than freedom. Freedom from his overbearing mother, freedom from his office job, and freedom from the mundaneness of his existence. He dreams of a life of freedom. He just wants to be left alone.

In a fantastic cameo, Robert De Niro plays a freedom-fighting plumber who just wants to live a life unbothered by the petty rules of others. Yet this is impossible. In a surreal scene we literally see De Niro crushed by paperwork as he attempts to break free.

Brazil is a grimly pessimistic film. Though it's frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, it offers no hope for those seeking escape. The only hope it offers is the prospect of escaping others by retreating into the insanity of one's broken mind; a result we witness at the film's end

Sam Lowry, tortured into insanity and suffering delusions of finally escaping the city, sits deranged in his interrogation chair happily humming the song Brazil which transforms into a joyous crescendo of bells and whistles. Is it a sad ending? Is it a happy ending? You choose.

Brazil has many things to say: it has strong views on bureaucracy, religion, consumerism and even plumbing. Yet it's essential point is the dreams of a mature rational adult in an insane world. Sam Lowry must become insane himself to escape the madness.

Tellingly, Brazil begins with the quote "Somewhere in the 20th century" and its mishmash of retro-futurism make it impossible to pinpoint when the film is set. This is deliberate. The 20th century brought the evils of stifling bureaucracy and Kafkaesque desperation. It's constant

The horror of 1984 wasn't Big Brother and Room 101; the real horror was the inescapable bugman bureaucracy that sucks the joy out of life and reduces it to small inhuman transactions. Brazil understands this and this is what it's hero tries, but fails, to escape.

The aesthetics of Brazil alone make it a film worth watching. Check out this previous thread for some of the thrilling scenes and shots that make the film so memorable.

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Gilliam never bettered Brazil, but he was to still complete his "Dream Trilogy" with the luscious and visionary "Adventures of Baron Munchausen" which whimsically addressed the dreams of man's final years.

(The Brazil typewriter music link given previously is broken so posting a new one)

Ok! So what can we say about commercial disaster Baron Munchausen - the film that cemented Gilliam’s reputation as having phenomenal bad luck in getting his films completed.

(Luckily it was a critical success)

The Gilliam curse had already began with Brazil when Universal Pictures didn’t like the grim downbeat ending and instead cut the film to ribbons and slapped on an unrealistic happy ending - totally destroying the film’s meaning.

Gilliam was forced into launching an epic battle against Universal to get Brazil released as it was intended, including taking out a full-page ad in Variety Magazine.

This kind of thing was to repeat itself regularly with Gilliam’s films. Baron Munchausen certainly didn’t help.

The film cost $46m to make and only reaped back $8m in profit despite winning four Oscars. The production was a chaotic whirlwind that struggled to keep up with Gilliam’s mad vision, actually traumatising some of its casts with explosions and special effects.

Luckily for us, the result was a great film and a fitting end to Gilliam’s Dream Trilogy. What better way to finish off a cycle of dreams than the stories and tall tales of 18th century German nobleman Baron Munchausen?

The real life Baron Munchausen was named Hieronymus Münchhausen: a Hanoverian veteran of the Russo-Turkic Wars. His exaggerated anecdotes of his exploits were famous in Germany and he was turned into the fictional Baron by Rudolf Raspe.

The real-life Baron was allegedly extremely upset by this mockery of his exploits who claimed they were all true. This is where we enter the film Baron Munchausen which concerns itself with the dreams of the elderly. The film contains both a “real” and a “fake” Munchausen.

Unlike the dreams of children and mature men, the dreams of the old are a complex mixture of regret and acceptance. Regret at what was not achieved; acceptance that it’s too late to change fate. There is also hope and despair for those younger who will be left to carry the torch.

The film is a fairly straightforward romp, elevated by it’s fantastic visuals, bright colours, and fabulous characters. To save Vienna from the Turks, the Baron embarks on a journey to the Moon, a fiery underworld, and the inside of a whale.

Munchausen features a couple of interesting cameos. An uncredited Robin Williams plays The King Of The Moon in a memorable performance. We will discuss Williams’ collaboration with Gilliam more when we reach The Fisher King.

There is also a cameo by a gorgeous 17-year old Uma Thurman who features as the goddess Venus in a jaw-dropping scene where she emerges from the sea reminiscent of the famous picture by Botticelli.

The film can be enjoyed as a straightforward adventure, though there are two darker elements to the story. Two enemies stalk the Baron through the tale. First, is Death, who is never far away from the old-aged and is always lurking at the back of their dreams.

Second, is Jonathan Pryce from Brazil as The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson. This character represents “Reason” and “Science” (the “Ordinary”) and tries to coldly extinguish the older spirit of imagination and humanity embodied by the whimsical Baron Munchausen.

Gilliam’s film offers the argument that cold science and logic do not a good world make alone and that deeper truths can be found in stories - even if these stories are fictional or “lies”. It is not clear at the film’s end if anything was real or not.

In some ways, Munchausen promotes the positive side of the “sorcery of the spectacle”. The spectacle, or performance, can become the truth if enough people believe in it - a collective subjective truth.

The sorcery of the spectacle usually has negative connotations, but this movie argues it can be used for good if the enemy is a factual but inhuman cold logic that brings only misery in the name of efficiency, security, convenience and profitability.

Gilliam was to continue his exploration of reality vs unreality in his next film The Fisher King - a film I have mixed feelings about due to the obvious impact of Robin Williams’ notorious sentimentality.

To be continued...