Monty Python would not be the same without his witty Animations. His animations still hold up very well today. One of my favorites is the cannibalistic pram. Yes I am an American writing this post. I have great respect for how Terry Gilliam is the only American member of Monty Python.
Monty Python, Brazil, 12 monkeys, Fear and Loathing, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. 13 movies and you can do a bonus on Lost In La Mancha.
I love Terry Gilliam. I always have. Watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail at a young age had an enormous impact on my sense of humor and influenced the kinda of films I would later enjoy. The Man is enormously talented and endlessly creative: films like Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen showcase his talents and what he can do when he’s left to his own devices. His production design, costuming, special effects: they all serve to create a specific atmosphere and serve the story he’s trying to tell.
That being said, the man is his own worst enemy. He had a very hard time bringing his films in on time and under budget. The stories from the set of Baron Munchausen set the tone for much of his career after the fact: he spent so much time building extravagant sets and working on effects that some of the actors - most notably the young Sarah Polley - had a difficult time during the making of the film. In the end, the film was a box office disaster and even though it received 4 Oscar nominations Gilliam never really had a chance to spread his wings like that again. That’s not to say he didn’t have success again: The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys did well enough at the box office, but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas flopped and of course we all know about his disastrous attempts to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Post FaliLV, his career sort of ground to a halt.
I can’t say I’ve ever really HATED a Gilliam film (although I didn’t really care for The Zero Theorem), but it’s very frustrating to watch the films of a man who is clearly an auteur and a creative force to be reckoned with knowing that in many cases his talents were wasted. Does anyone else feel the same way?
I can’t figure out how to find this animation I saw online a while back. It’s an animation consisting mostly of medieval(?) art where the characters in the art are animated to do rude and silly things, like blow a trumpet with your butt, very much like Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations.
Anyone know what I’m talking about?
I find the sound and lyrics of the albums to really match a lot of the imagery seen in Gilliam's masterpiece. The motif of an angel, the morbid themes of loss and lacking a sense of reality, an oppressive government hungry to dominate people's free will, and the struggle of a peaceful existence. I am not saying these things as fact, just something I thought felt right to me personally.
