Tag Archives: Terry Gilliam

The Rum Diary (2011)

Posted by jonbates on

Of the reviews I have read so far, the most common criticisms levelled at The Rum Diary are: it’s not funny enough, it’s a bit dull, there isn’t a plot, it’s too long.

The mistake is to go into this film expecting Fear and Loathing in Puerto Rico. The trailer doesn’t help the matter by presenting, in order, the only drink/drug/sex related scenes that do exist, which isn’t many. Unlike Hunter S. Thompson’s later rides, this is not particularly ‘crazy’ and it’s not jam-packed with his trademark acerbic irreverence either.

This is because The Rum Diary was written when Thompson was 22. Full of ambition and idealism, he was struggling to find the unique voice that experience would later bestow. The explosion of impressionist fact/fiction ramblings known as Gonzo Journalism was still some ten years down the line. The dilemma Thompson faced at this time is summed up by a line that appears early on: “I don’t know how to write like me yet”. That’s the point I think many critics are missing.

Like Kerouac before him, Hunter S. Thompson documented his cross-country wanderings using a series of thinly veiled characters as his own alter ego. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, this was Raoul Duke – a disillusioned madman on a non-stop gorge of hallucinogenic mayhem. In The Rum Diary, he is cast as a somewhat naïve journalist, Paul Kemp, newly employed by the editor of a decaying newspaper in Puerto Rico. While he has the penchant for trouble common to all of Thompson’s monikers, Kemp is young and lucid. He is not yet as purposeful and self-assured as Raoul Duke and, as such, doesn’t yet know where to channel his curiosity. The film sees him courted by greedy businessman, falling in love with one of their fiancés, and generally getting embroiled in various rum-fuelled distractions with his newspaper colleagues. Laced into the journey is a creeping epiphany about the injustice and greed of business politics which helps Kemp realise who ‘the bastards’ are and how to use his typewriter to bring them down.

Depp as Paul Kemp - 2011

Terry Gilliam was the perfect director to render Fear and Loathing for the screen, his magical realism sensibility colliding wonderfully with Thompson’s truth-bending LSD road trip. And Bruce Robinson is similarly apposite a choice to bring Thompson’s work into the realm of cinema. His 1986 film Withnail and I is one of the best ever made, deftly bringing to life the discordant friendship between an alcoholic actor and a panicky writer, both poverty-stricken and – more importantly – both outsiders, rejected by a society they despise and adore in equal measure. Depp screened Withnail for Thompson before his death and Thompson liked it. After 19 years away from the director’s chair, Robinson has made a solid return to it. As with Withnail, the directing itself isn’t especially visionary, it just tells the story well, allowing the screenplay (which he also wrote) to shine.

I haven’t read the book, but – even if The Rum Diary was simply an imagined biography of Thompson’s early life – the film does a good job of conjuring how a pre-Gonzo Thompson would behave.  The clipped mumblings of half-imagined observation that those familiar with him will recognise seep through less than 3 times throughout the film, giving the sense that his unique style is still gestating. The first time it happens is particularly striking – half an hour must have passed when finally it appears, as a non-diegetic narration over a sequence of shots showing tourists bowling. His contempt for their sheltered experience of the island is obvious. It also contains one of the rare moments of extended reality in the film, a bowling ball hurtling towards a triangle of rum bottles and smashing through in slow motion.

Depp as Raoul Duke - 1998

Johnny Depp gives as faithful a performance as he did in Fear and Loathing, perfectly toning down the eccentricity of middle-aged Thompson to the more tentative younger man. Like many, I discovered Depp in my teens, finding some sort of redemption in his portrayal of bold misfits. While taking so much from these characters at the time, it is easy to look back on the exaggerated gestures of Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka and dismiss him as a man who pulls silly faces for children. It shouldn’t be easy because he is a brilliant actor. I think my doubts were based on his performances in Alice in Wonderland and The Tourist – two recent roles in which he didn’t deliver. The Rum Diary re-convinced me of his skill and subtlety.

For all my defending of the film, of course there are flaws. Most have mentioned the length issue, which is fair enough – it is indeed half an hour too long. And no, it doesn’t live up to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But that film documents notorious Thompson, the Gonzo wrecking-ball of truth and illusion, the champion of chaos and liberty. The Rum Diary charts the unremarkable early years of a soon-to-be literary genius, which can never be as captivating as the era of the genius in bloom. The thing is, Robinson and Depp don’t try to make Fear and Loathing in Puerto Rico. What they have made is a solid document of the seeds of Gonzo Journalism, perhaps of most interest to those who already know and admire the Raoul Duke that Paul Kemp would eventually become.

Terry Gilliam: 5 Things

Posted by jonbates on

Terry Gilliam is one of the great auteurs of modern cinema. Very few directors leave such a characteristic stamp on their films. Here are 5 things that go towards explaining why his films are so worth watching.

Visual Style

Gilliam is interested in the way individuals process the absurdities of the external world inside their minds. Thus, the unique cinematography of his films is inextricable from the surreal imagery of his characters’ subconscious. While other filmmakers have their characters explain the content of their dreams, Gilliam shows us. And not just dreams. Any significant movement of the imagination is made concrete in richly detailed sets and costumes.

The strong symbology of these visuals cut right to the heart of the characters concerns. In Brazil (1985), Sam Lowry escapes the oppression of his waking life in dreams where he flies high above a green and pleasant land. Suddenly huge skyscrapers explode from the fields and shoot upwards. Simple and striking. The violent destruction of the freedom Sam craves and its connection with the bleak world of bureaucracy is immediately established.

 

Gilliam’s style is best understood when tracing his career back to its origins in animation; as a member of Monty Python, he was relied on to provide snappy links between sketches. It is this animation shorthand transferred to live action that gives his films their distinctive look.

 ‘I do think that everything I do there has a heightened reality to it, because I’m a cartoonist. I look at the world and distort it as any cartoonist would.’[1]

Championing the Outsider

Any director with big ideas requires funding in order to cover the costs of production. When those ideas are unconventional, that becomes a problem. When they’re transparently anti-business and anti-corporation that problem is nearly insurmountable. Terry Gilliam has a history of fighting with studios to keep his plotlines intact and his final cuts from being tampered with – and that’s if production is approved at all. Is it any wonder he identifies with outsiders?

‘It’s invariably somebody trying to fight against a system, somebody who doesn’t want to be limited. That seems to be the theme in all of them.’[2]

Whether it’s the homeless, the psychologically traumatised, the child, the criminal or the one human soul in a world of machines, Gilliam focuses on the ignored and marginalised – those who slip through (or break through) the net.

Contempt for Authority

True to his Monty Python roots, Gilliam has a strong irreverent streak which colours every film he has ever made. His satire is directed towards authority, especially when money and greed form the basis of the power wielded by cold institutions.

In The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983), a group of elderly workers rebel against the big American Corporation that has taken over their firm. They transform their small office block into a pirate ship and sail it into London’s financial district to besiege the giant skyscrapers of the businesses that have eclipsed them.

In Time Bandits (1981), Kevin’s parents have no time for him. They are enamoured with kitchen appliances and TV but only interact with their son when exercising unjust rules and punishments. In an interview, the specific crime above all others that Gilliam accuses them of is not listening to Kevin – even when he tries to save them. The following clip reveals their fate (it’s the kind of controversial outcome that makes Hollywood bosses sweat – it’s a ‘family film’, remember).


Sinister Comic Twists

That brings us nicely onto Gilliam’s particular brand of dark humour. It’s about laughter in the face of doom. It’s about stacking up laughs against oppressive forces as if they were ammunition. It’s about using an entire film to play a trick on the audience, slowly persuading them that beneath the comedy, a serious struggle is taking place… and then puncturing the illusion at the last minute.

Of course, every Gilliam film is peppered with absurd images and funny moments – it’s half the reason I re-watch them so often. It’s just that somewhere along the way, the plight of the characters become important. Before you know it, you’re seriously rooting for them and it’s usually at the height of your concern that Gilliam delivers the shocking blow – they were never going to make it. They never really had a hope.

The proletarian pirates of the aforementioned The Crimson Permanent Assurance burst into a joyful sea-shanty after their victory over ‘The Very Big Corporation of America’ before the narrator announces that unfortunately ‘certain modern theories concerning the shape of the world’ are somewhat inaccurate. At this, the ship/building sails off the edge of the world into the abyss. It’s very funny visually and rich with metaphor. But it’s also full of pathos.

It’s the kind of ending that says “It was a sweet dream; if only the good guys did win. But they don’t. Never mind” – almost as if suddenly throwing away the hopes and dreams of the characters in a comical way should allow the audience to put it out of their minds and get on with their lives. The thing is, you can’t (and Gilliam knows it). There’s a bittersweet taste that lingers. It’s so persistent that, writing this now, I come to wonder if what I remember as extrovert comedies weren’t all tragedies after all.

Redemption Through Imagination

‘Imagination to me is the thing that you use to reinvent the world daily, to make it worth living in, or even escaping from.’[3]

Although his worlds are often fantastical and dream-like, Gilliam’s advocacy of the imagination runs much deeper than that. He sees it as a means of connecting with reality as much as hiding from it.

In The Fisher King (1991), Jack has to delve into the delusions of Parry, a homeless eccentric, in order to align himself with his skewed perspective. Only then can he deal with his past and help Parry come to terms with his wife’s murder.

Londoners are given the chance to find enlightenment through a travelling stage show in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). Using Parnassus’ mind as a conduit, they enter the world of their own subconscious and are presented with a choice; one is difficult but self-fulfilling, the other is easy but vacuous.


The notion that imagination can somehow save someone from leading a negative, limiting life is ubiquitous in Gilliam’s work. His detailed visual style, surreal storylines and rebellious instinct are evidence of a preserved childlike naiveté. And if all that can remain intact for a man of 70, maybe there’s hope for every one else.