![]() Then the Supreme Being turns up and saves the day, and the film ends with an intriguing theological debate. Banality, thoughtlessness, and idleness are the work of Evil. ![]() His technology drives people apart, kills them, or makes them fight. The sequence where Evil fights off the assorted armed forces of history sees him use a ton of gadgets to combat them, like an evil version of Batman years before Mark Millar’s macabre comic, Nemesis. Be it eating rats, slicing up the Minotaur, or even a dog exploding, then he will show it in a darkly comic fashion. Gilliam never shies away from showing these events. This is the kind of thing that you’d expect from a grim fairy tale. A hat on the head of an even bigger giant, which emerges from the sea and stands on a house, silencing the moaning of a parent and the cries of a baby. Then it turns out that the ship he’s on is actually a hat. But, this being Gilliam, he has a bad back, and a loving wife who treats him for his ailments and appears to be turned on by the whole eating and torturing people thing. So, here we have a ferocious giant who wants to eat people. Here we are back in Jabberwocky territory, where fairy tale trappings are twisted into something weirder. From this point onwards, after a brief period set on the Titanic which the film doesn’t dwell on, we end up in a fantasy world thanks to Evil’s manipulation of events. Who hasn’t wanted to cut a bull in half only for Skittles to spill out?Īnd yet this isn’t purely there to show us how interesting such festivals were, it’s there to raise up Kevin’s hopes and dash them expertly. He is, like most 11-year-olds, is a tad bloodthirsty, and so the film stops for a second to show us another side to the past. Kevin, meanwhile, when confronted with bloodshed in reality, finds it somewhat impressive. ![]() The disdain he puts into the line, “Nipples for men” is amazing.Īfter the initial burst of bustle, the film settles down for a bit with Kevin and Sean Connery’s Agamemnon. While Cleese is excellent in his scene, the film is stolen by David Warner, who plays Evil. It’s a very clever interpretation of the legend (Hood is an upper class twit oblivious to the lack of help his men offer) and played completely straight despite its silliness. John Cleese plays him in the style of a patronising politician meeting the public, and is surrounded by some hilariously violent Merry Men. The Robin Hood scene, for example, is hilarious. The film manages to be macabre, silly, and ferociously intelligent at the same time. The fighting isn’t the tip-tap of fine swords, it’s brutally bludgeoning and won by luck. It’s very funny, but also incredibly bleak and twisted.Īgain, this is in a PG film aimed at children, and that’s utterly wonderful. While outside townsfolk are fleeing for their lives, the city is burning and falling apart, and firing squads are despatching people quickly and efficiently, Napoleon (Ian Holm) is watching Punch and Judy and is obsessed with height. The dwarves (who are, apparently, analogous to the personalities of the Monty Python troupe) beating up Kevin is funny and violent. The comedy in Jabberwocky sometimes sat uneasily with the rest of the narrative, but here it is intermingled with the rest of the story. Gilliam’s fairy tales are dangerous, dreamlike places with an underlying brutality to them. Like the horse, they seem very real and dangerous, as does the supreme being who appears. When six dwarves stumble out of his cupboard the next night, they aren’t very friendly. Kevin picks a picture of a knight on horseback in woodland off his now restored wall, and we see around his room clues as to what we’re about to witness, initially suggesting that these adventures may well be nothing more than the dream of a trapped child. As with Jabberwocky, Gilliam is clearly trying things that are nigh-on-impossible to great effect.
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