+- GilliamDreams forum (https://www.dreamsfanzine.com/chat)
+-- Forum: Gilliam (https://www.dreamsfanzine.com/chat/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Forum: Other Pictures (https://www.dreamsfanzine.com/chat/forumdisplay.php?fid=7)
+--- Thread: Jabberwocky (1977) (/showthread.php?tid=792)
Jabberwocky (1977) - MercuryZap - 07-24-2025
Terry Gilliam's first solo feature, Jabberwocky, is a film I first encountered at the early morning finale of a fairly drunken video rental party in the mid 1980s.
Despite having been a fan of Terry's animations since childhood and a bone fide Time Bandits obsessive, I was still completely ignorant of the existence of Jabberwocky during this more innocent time in a cine-illiterate provincial culture.
The heightened, hysterical grungy horrors of the film's world and my inebriated, exhausted mind collapsed into a harmonious reverie fulled further by the epiphany of the discovery of more Gilliam material: a magical, once secret treasure was revealed.
I didn't see the film again until it was broadcast on terrestrial television in the UK a few years later when I was in the position to make a much loved off air VHS recording.
Years again later I bought it on DVD and thoroughly enjoyed Terry & Mike's commentary back when such things were a revelation.
Today I watched the film on Criterion Blu Ray after a long absence.
The film, of course, looks and sounds terrific with sympathetic treatment of the film stock grain giving a real sense of the film's era of production.
Terry Bedford's painterly cinematography has never, to these eyes, looked better with the inky blackness beautifully illuminated by flickering, Rembrandt like candlelight.
This is a film almost, joyously, coming unglued with life.
You can sense the energy in Terry's liberation as an independent directorial force and he seems to cram a whole world into his theatre of absurd cruelty.
There is a tangible sense of the natural world and the shifting elements that is thrilling to experience in the antiseptic green-screened, cgi world of contemporary cinema.
This unique, densely textured universe is surely materialised despite the odd faltering touch. You sense a director finding his feet/his style and it's a trip to see some of the characteristic Terry touches that would come to fruition in Time Bandits being road tested here. The highly original jousting sequences seemed very ambitious for the times and resources that were at hand.
An amazing sea of grimy, gurning faces wash through the proceedings and I found it extraordinary as a child of the 1970's to see the roll call of screen talent from that era that endure the piece's indignities. The diverse cast also deserve kudos for steeping up to the OTT physical demands of Gilliam's cartoon world while keeping it of a piece.
I wouldn't say the film's disparate maximalist glee pulls it apart but I feel it is more successful, brilliantly so, as a grotesque tableau of quasi-fantastic medieval life cum political satire than as a straight narrative, anti-heroes journey. That said, the always engaging Michael Palin's clueless protagonist keeps our sympathies as we experience this carnival of earthly horrors through his gormless eyes.
RE: Jabberwocky (1977) - bruttenholm - 08-09-2025
I re-watched the film last year I think, and was struck by the opening attack on the character of Terry Jones... There's something very "Evil Dead" like in the camera work... I wonder if it was an influence somehow on Sam Raimi.
RE: Jabberwocky (1977) - MercuryZap - 08-09-2025
(08-09-2025, 11:39 AM)bruttenholm Wrote: I re-watched the film last year I think, and was struck by the opening attack on the character of Terry Jones... There's something very "Evil Dead" like in the camera work... I wonder if it was an influence somehow on Sam Raimi.I thought it was a bit of a wicked nod to the opening of Jaws. I can absolutely see the Rami connection.