Changeling: The Gilliam AUs

[a_leprechaun]

So, as it turns out, Terry Gilliam films are really easy to twist into alternate universes based in White Wolf's Changeling: The Lost roleplaying game. The Queen in 'Brothers Grimm' is really a Fae in disguise, as is the "Devil" in 'Doctor Parnassus.' 'Brazil' is an Arcadian nightmare. You get the idea

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[adampb]

You know, it's the damndest thing, but in hindsight this flick must have had some pretty unmemorable characters, because I'm reading this post and wondering who the hell half these people are. I mean, I didn't love "The Brothers Grimm" (for instance) but I can still tell you about the people and what they got up to, and I saw it far longer ago.

Rightly or wrongly, I recall Anton as being one of those characters I don't like in movies: the normal guy, the grounded choice in opposition to an extreme. And that may be right in real life, but try to capture it on film and it just sucks the energy out of the room. (Shades of Patrick Dempsey in "Enchanted", who I will complain about forever.) It's inactive, it may not be particularly playable. And it's certainly not a function Gilliam should be bothering with. I could actually be doing ol' Anton a disservice here; it may be I remember him as blander than he was not because of the writing but because he wasn't a thousand-year-old man, a midget, a cherub-faced picture-postcard model or Heath Ledger.

As you may have seen in my own post at the top of the year, I think Ledger just didn't get to do the best part of his role, I would have liked to have seen him in the portion of the piece Colin Farrell ended up with. The parts inside the fancy building as it broke apart (or the universe exploded) (or whatever) put me in mind of Sam Lowry's final series of fantasies, and indeed I thought of you.

Although his love and respect for the deceased was clear, I nonetheless really felt Gilliam could have cut the scene showing Ledger on the noose a lot quicker. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not sensitive about that sort of thing. It may just be that (given my trade) I was making the cuts in my mind just to avoid the problem.

I wouldn't have used "fun" to describe the film in any case. He's clearly exorcising his own personal demons up there for a nice little stretch, and I found it to be a gloomy piece indeed. (I hear "Tideland", which I'm finally going to bite the bullet and see--incorrect framing and all--is the same way.) There is one thing so heavy that even Gilliam's buoyant imagination cannot lift it, and that is Gilliam's heart.

This is not to say that his masterpieces were without their depressing moments, but, like a different recent Ledger film we could mention, the sheer exhileration of the artistic experience tended to outweigh the forgivable impulse to go end it all.

It is my hope that he has managed to work out his frustrations about everything that fucked him in the ear in the 2000s, so he can go into his long-delayed dream project with the sheer bravado it deserves. But controlled bravado (on his terms, on self-control). I think one of my criticisms of "Parnassus" is that in many ways, it IS the movie that Gilliam's detractors accuse ALL his movies of being.

Have you treated yourself to "The Fisher King" yet?