Terry Gilliam

Aunque la ciencia ficción suele asociarse al futuro por su carácter de anticipación, desde la década de 1960 varios cineastas han decidido incorporar imágenes del pasado. Con ellas, no solo han querido reforzar la verosimilitud de sus propuestas sino, principalmente, poner en tela de juicio el concepto lineal de la historia y del progreso potenciado desde la Ilustración. El objeto de este artículo será analizar el porqué de su aparición y, sobre todo, explicar el modo en que son representadas aquellas imágenes del pasado –incluso del pasado reciente– en la cien- cia ficción distópica propia de la cinematografía mainstream, especialmente desde finales de los años 70. Por ello, el campo de estudio abarca alguna de las producciones más emblemáticas de directores situados en la esfera capitalista anterior a la caída del muro de Berlín, dado que la liberación de esas imágenes reprimidas actúa, además, como un comentario acerca del sistema económico sobre el cual se sustentan.

The aim of the article is to compare C.Marker’s La Jetée and T.Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys. Both works are well known and give opportunities for  a considerable literature which is formed by the content of different fields in social sciences. The article avoids theses social parenthesis in which each work has been analyzed mostly in its own social debth. Both works have more or less the same story, but quite particular differences, in which the viewer never feels an act of re-making, which is a common practice in contemporary popular cinema. A common context has been searched for the analysis of this onthological paradox; and the concept of trauma is considered for this context, in which how the tragic stories have been shaped, designed, and become rhetoric for each. The next step has definitely to be looking to this onthological paradox in terms of historical determinism, through very delicate 32 years which separates the two, at the turn out of the century.

Tesi magistrale di teoria del cinema.
Un approfondimento del concetto di riflessività e di meta-linguaggio nel cinema, prendendo come casi di studio la figura di Don Chisciotte nella letteratura e nelle sue due più emblematiche trasposizioni cinematografiche, quella di Orson Welles e la recente versione di Terry Gilliam.

INDICE
Introduzione
Capitolo 1: La Riflessività
Il concetto di riflessività
1.2 Riflessività e arte
1.3 Evoluzione nell’arte
Capitolo 2: Cinema e riflessività
2.1 Linguaggio, Testualità e ruolo del fruitore
2.2 Le Riflessività e il Metacinema
2.3 Riflessività filmica e cinematografica
2.4 La Mise En Abyme
Capitolo 3: dal cinema classico al contemporaneo
3.1 Il rapporto tra riflessività e narrazione nel cinema
3.2 La convergenza dei linguaggi nel post-moderno
3.3 Il cinema contemporaneo
Capitolo 4: Terry Gilliam e il Don Chisciotte
4.1 Il metacinema di Gilliam
4.2 Don Chisciotte da Cervantes a Welles
4.3 L’uomo che uccise Don Chisciotte
Conclusioni
Bibliografia
Filmografia

What keeps the spirit of Alice alive after all these years? And what makes us so spontaneously turn into armchair travelers ready to unconditionally follow a little girl on her fantastic journeys down a rabbit hole into topsy-turvy worlds? Alice's unfailing ability to amaze is due to her characteristic ambiguity that entails a plethora of interpretive possibilities and hence a rewarding adaptability to multiple mixed media forms which stimulate senses beyond the verbal games establishing the trademark charm of the original children's classic. Popular postmodern post/millenial re-configurations of Victorian fantasy, in particular late 20 st century and especially early 21 st century adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice tales , reveal how intermedial transitions elicit different modes of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment which both shape and reflect contemporary fantasists' strategies of make-believing, and circumscribe a metafantasy commenting on limits and potentials of the fantasy genre as well as the dys/functioning of imagination. Adventures get curiouser and curiouser once Alice ventures into Transmedia Wonderland, transgressing the confines of the written text towards visual, acoustic, tactile, kinetic and digital new media regimes of representation. Contemporary adaptations dynamically interact with their Victorian source texts as well as one another to enhance the immersion into an elaborate fictional universe and maximalize audience engagement, while retelling a story that remains recognizably the same, yet turns radically different with each new retelling. The journey to Wonderland today signifies a metafantasmagoric, metamedial mission urging all to interactively explore the cultural critical and ethical stakes of our embodied imaginative experience of making sense of nonsense.

Ensayo escrito para la materia de Filosofía de la Historia basado en la película distópica retro-futurista "Brazil" de Terry Giliam, a solicitud del catedrático Lic. Iván Salazar. Este trabajo toma como marco teórico el texto de Emil Cioran "Historia y Utopía" (1960) en el que el autor afirma que la justicia es una imposibilidad material y que soñar con un mundo mejor es redundante porque éste es imposible teóricamente. Además, el triste Cioran dice --para alegría nuestra-- que las utopías son necesarias para la pervivencia y la buena salud de una sociedad. Yo, por mi parte, considero que para contrarrestar y superar la infelicidad y la calamidad inevitable,  el individuo tendría que liberarse a sí mismo. Y qué mejor forma para hacerlo que empleando a la imaginación, como herramienta óptima para la construcción de realidad y destino propios. Así, tomo al héroe/antihéroe de la película  --un pobre funcionario público que trabaja en una de las oficinas del Ministerio de Información de un Estado totalitario y ultra burocratizado--; el valeroso Sam Lowry (escapista de oficio) quien utiliza la imaginación para ser libre y  feliz. Adjetivos que Cioran considera absolutamente inutlisables teóricamente en la vida de un ser humano.

Prawdziwy tytuł filmu brzmi: „Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, co w dosłownym tłumaczeniu oznacza - „Strach i Odrzucenie w Las Vegas”. Polski tytuł (swoją drogą dość wymyślny) „Las Vegas Parano” moim zdaniem lepiej oddaje istotę tego filmu. Jest on swoistego rodzaju paranoją wypełnioną sennymi majakami i narkotycznymi wizjami dziennikarza i jego adwokata.

El hombre que mató a don Quijote (2018) es el faraónico y desdichado proyecto que ha sumido al gran Terry Gilliam en más de dos décadas de trabajo en torno a su personaje predilecto: don Quijote, la encarnación de la locura, el humor y la ironía (señas de identidad de su filmografía). A través del presente estudio nuestra intención es la de analizar de qué manera el actor y director británico ha reconstruido al más conocido personaje de ficción de la literatura española, centrándonos en dos polos complementarios: el trabajo de construcción del personaje fílmico a partir del personaje literario (teniendo en cuenta los principales episodios tomados de la novela cervantina y cómo son releídos en el largometraje) y la actualización o contemporaneización del hidalgo manchego, transfigurado en un enloquecido anciano que se cree don Quijote y que confunde a un ejecutivo publicitario con Sancho Panza.

Profitant de l’apparente quiétude d’une après-midi ensoleillée, un homme et une femme se promènent dans un parc. Au fil des sentiers, à travers les arbres, leurs pas les conduisent devant l’installation, destinée aux promeneurs, d’une coupe d’arbre, sur les cernes duquel figurent des dates importantes de l’Histoire. Dans trois films, nous avons repéré que cette séquence, bien qu’appartenant à des trames narratives différentes, se répète quasiment à l’identique. L’intériorité dévoilée de l’arbre met au jour un vaste réseau de résonances, faisant ainsi germer de l’arbre mort, au travers de ses nœuds, un ensemble de ramifications, de boutures, de greffons, développant une complexe arborescence reliant les trois œuvres. Ce motif de l’arbre, repéré dans des films où il tient un rôle diégétique essentiel, formera le prétexte d’une interrogation sur les potentialités interprétatives de l’œuvre, à la faveur d’une herméneutique entendue non pas comme recherche d’un sens, d’une vérité, mais d’un tissu pluriel d’éléments signifiants, comme autant de bourgeons, d’excroissances de l’arbre source.

El cinco de octubre de 1969, los cimientos de la BBC se tambalearon con la explosión de una forma radicalmente nueva de hacer comedia: Monty Python Flying Circus. El primer episodio de esta ya mítica serie británica se emitió en una tarde de domingo, precisamente, para sorpresa de los telespectadores, en un hueco de la parrilla televisiva que hasta entonces había estado reservado a un espacio religioso. La serie que iba a estar en antena durante cinco años ininterrumpidos, el último episodio se emitió el 5 de diciembre de 1974, se convirtió con gran rapidez en un éxito clamoroso.
El éxito del serial cómico no se demoró en traspasar fronteras, de tal suerte que El circo ambulante de Monty Python se tradujo a la nada desdeñable cifra de cincuenta idiomas.
Monty Python, un sexteto cómico integrado por un singular grupo de jóvenes: cuatro ingleses, un galés y un americano, que exhibe una notoria uniformidad tanto a nivel de su formación académica como en lo que respecta a su fecha de nacimiento, (todos ellos nacidos entre el 1939-1943). La identidad como grupo se construye en ausencia de una figura descollante o una suerte de portavoz mediático, extremo que se debe, en parte, a su formación y su propio método de trabajo deudor de sus primeras experiencias escénicas.

I have admired the director Terry Gilliam and his film projects for a long time. 

Every frame of each film is a masterpiece in its own right, and each work is peppered with Gilliam's unique sense of humour.  Despite the dark recesses of the human experience the viewer is drawn into, these are deep, funny films and highly satirical.

I wanted to analyse his exploration of hegemony over the individual in three of his film projects, the recent 'The Zero Theorem', 'Brazil' and 'Twelve Monkeys'. 

All three films are beautifully dark and analyse the increasing authoritarianism of (at least) the last 30 or so years and its impact on the 'ordinary man', who becomes increasingly lost in the face of unbending authority and its desire (for whatever apparent reason) for dominion over the mind.

This analysis intends to examine the influence of hegemonic systems and their machinations on the male psyche, and in turn, its attempts to break free of it.
"In gender history the focus has, of course, been on men as agents of patriarchal power rather than as victims.  This overlay of a gender approach onto earlier formulations has left an awkward and still unresolved legacy."  - From 'Between Manliness and Masculinity : The "War Generation" and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914-1950' The Journal of British Studies (2005), by Michael Roper.
These dystopian tableaus all have common threads, the most obvious one being that all of the protagonists are male, but ultimately they cast a lens in very different ways.  I am not the first person to link these films as an 'Orwellian dystopian trilogy', and it is a worthy undertaking to group the three together in this thematic exploration.

As a director, Gilliam is famous for going against the grain of the Hollywood machine, and frequent problems surrounding distribution of his projects feed the cult status of his films as he has carved out a reputation as a maverick film-maker.

His rebelliousness is extremely prevalent in these three films, and as with all of his projects, the audience should always be aware that the Director is playing with them.

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Terry Gilliam’s staging of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust (English National Opera, 2011) constitutes the director’s first foray into the world of opera. In a sense, though, Gilliam’s excessive, over-the-top poetics has always exhibited a strong affinity with the poetics of the operatic genre. We witness, then, the coming together of one of the most eclectic and baroque personalities in the history of film and the aesthetics of a genre defined by Gerardo Guccini as «a gigantic, enthralling theatrical machine that constitutes the most vital residue of the baroque in our times». What is more, this Damnation emerges, perhaps paradoxically, as the summation of Gilliam’s directorial journey: moving beyond the boundaries separating different artistic forms and media, it highlights all the recurring motives of his films and their aesthetics of hybridization, «where epic and ironic modes mix, producing a unique mélange» (Francesco Liberti). This article analyzes in detail Gilliam’s staging of La damnation de Faust, locating it in the context not only of his filmography, but also in that of cinema of the last few decades, and putting it into dialogue with recent trends in operatic mise en scène and its lively critical debate.

In Twelve Monkeys, a 1995 post-apocalyptic feature, Terry Gilliam credits as his main source of inspiration Chris Marker's La Jetée (1961), an experimental short movie whose story is told through a series of still images, defined by Marker as a photo-roman. This article analyzes the complex relation existing between the two movies, focusing on the different ways Marker and Gilliam approach themes like time, future, death and cinema.

Nulla è tanto sacro da non poter essere riprogettato Nel suo testo Dopo il futuro, Franco Berardi detto «Bifo» riprende un episodio riguardante Steven Spielberg. Era il 1979 e il regista fece una profezia sul futuro della comunicazione. Secondo lui un giorno sarebbe avvenuta attraverso una connessione diretta dei nostri neuroni con delle onde elettromagnetiche capaci di influenzare l'umore e di produrre immaginazione. Nel 2013 Terry Gilliam ci mostrò qualcosa di molto simile con il suo The Zero Theorem-Tutto è venità. Nel film, Qoehn Leth-un hacker interpretato da Christoph Waltz-si ritrova dopo varie vicissitudini a sperimentare, nella chiesa sconsacrata in cui abita, una tuta che gli permette di entrare e uscire da una dimensione virtuale capace di incidere su di lui, sulle sue relazioni e sul reale. Solo che ad un certo punto la tuta lo trascina in una sorta di Rete Neurale che ha il sapore della profezia di Spielberg. Sempre sulla stessa scia, Bifo riprende la letteratura fantascientifica degli anni Ottanta, riferendosi principalmente allo scrittore Philip K. Dick e alla domanda che lo attanaglia: che cosa è il reale? Prima di andare avanti allora è il caso di fare una piccola digressione su cosa si intende con virtuale e con reale e su come si rapportano. Prendiamo ad esempio un altro film. Ne La via lattea di Luis Buñuel, in particolare nella scena del sogno dell'uccisione del Papa, che cosa avviene? Che il rumore dello sparo virtuale si sente/percepisce nell'attuale, creando una sensazione di spaesamento e turbamento, portando delle comparse a chiedersi che cosa fosse stato quello sparo. Per Deleuze le due dimensioni nelle quali si svolge lo scambio tra attuale e virtuale sono coesistenti, anche se si tratta di due dimensioni ontologicamente differenti: due tempi distinti che però risultano indiscernibili. In tal senso quella letteratura, quel cinema, diventano potenza di trasformazione del reale, produzione di immaginari capaci di farci camminare fuori dal nostro ambiente di riferimento. In Heroes, un altro testo relativamente recente, Bifo pone l'attenzione anche sull'immaginazione, descrivendola come quella facoltà che ci permette di andare oltre i limiti del nostro linguaggio-«i limiti del mio linguaggio significano i limiti del mio mondo» scriveva Wittgenstein nel Tractatus-e di utilizzare i frammenti immaginari raccolti dall'esperienza del passato per ridisegnare i confini e le forme, verso nuovi orizzonti e mondi mai visti. Quando ci si riferisce in questi termini al reale, non lo si intende come un reale già dato a priori, ma come un qui e ora tutto da costruire e da cui ripartire; un reale in cui l'utopia è un motore contingente al reale stesso, non una prospettiva futura da raggiungere. Questa è la grande

Gilliams universum verschilt niet veel van de moderne samenleving die Walter Benjamin hekelt in zijn essay Het Kunstwerk in het Tijdperk van zijn Technische Reproduceerbaarheid: absurde grappen, fascinerende droomlandschappen, bizarre wezens, nachtmerrieachtige beelden, animatieflarden, nachtelijke zwerftochten door duistere straten van een grootstad, verontrustende sprookjes, personages die zichzelf in elkaar knutselen en de eeuwige strijd tussen goed en kwaad, leven en dood. De oude paardenkoets, het beeld van waaruit de hele film is opgebouwd, wordt op dezelfde manier in de moderne stad binnengeloodst als de angsten van Gilliam en Benjamin: via allegorische beelden en auratische ervaringen. Gilliams werk is niet veel aangepast na het overlijden van Ledger; allegorische beelden zijn nu eenmaal Gilliams stokpaardje, maar hij slaagt er onverwacht in om aan Ledger een cadeau te geven dat niet veel acteurs krijgen in hun carrière: het geschenk van het aura.

This article investigates the image of Naples depicted by three American filmmakers: Terry Gilliam with "The Wholly Family" (2011), John Turturro with "Passione" (2010) and Jonathan Demme with "Enzo Avitabile Music Life" (2012). In these movies Naples is perceived through a translocal perspective, an intersection of different cultures and places, where the role of memory is strongly emphasized. The common denominator of these different productions is the topic of the roots, highlighted with a cinematic sightseeing of the city. Turturro, Demme and Gilliam move the camera in tourist places, but behind the typical postcard view they give rise to a reconfiguration of the city’s soul. The article focuses on the way in which these films reject the stereotyped image of Naples built by Hollywood, providing an opportunity to rethink the complex notion of porosity proposed by Walter Benjamin.

The paper argues for an interpretation of bureaucratic dystopias in literature and cinema through the lens of encoding practices. More specifically, it seeks to demonstrate how the genre is built upon the premise of an excessive proliferation of code inaccessible to the everyman that is usually cast as the protagonist of such narratives. The prime examples are, of course, Kafka’s Castle and The Trial, as well as George Orwell’s 1984. However, while keeping these texts in mind, I will focus on lesser known works, namely Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and Nicola Barker’s H(a)ppy, which I will relate to Terry Gilliam’s iconic 1985 Brazil, Robert Edwards’s 2006 Land of the Blind and Anca Damian’s 2011 Crulic – The Path to Beyond as cinematic counterparts heavily indebted to the topos of dystopic bureaucracy derived from overcoding practices.

My main hypothesis is that when the code supersedes the message (in semiotic terms, when meaning-formation mechanisms rely more on signifiers than on signifieds) the unavoidable gap between the two widens beyond any actual possibility of mastery. Therefore, the arbitrary character of the sign becomes an overpowering ruling principle which destabilizes – and eventually crushes – not only the subject confined in the dystopic universe, but also the very possibility of meaning. The ensuing demonstration makes use of written theoretical statements signed and stamped by Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Juliet MacCannell.