Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020! Theme two, part one - a swords and sorcery film!
(Chosen by me!)
Surgically remove the filthy medieval backdrop from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, intensify it so even the king has grime and dust and shit all over him, and make the socioeconomic outlook of Dennis the Peasant's scene way bleaker, and you've what I imagine Terry Gilliam shot for while making Jabberwocky. Anyone familiar with his later work can see the elements common to his later films in clear evidence here - a parade of gonk-faced masses whose disgusting habits pale in comparison to the depravity of the people in charge, a protagonist too inexperienced, addled, or both to do much beyond get shunted from one scenario to the next, a love of extreme close-ups and dark places filled with gunk and refuse. There's all the hallmarks here, and the story of Dennis Cooperson's journey through the bowels of the local city during a monster attack proves an ideal backdrop for Gilliam to exercise his aesthetic and philosophical impulses in a solo setting for the first time. He's as compelling an image-maker here as he'd become with Brazil or Fear and Loathing years later, and I can wholly commend him for crafting so completely ugly and cruel a world.
Structurally and thematically, though, we're on far shakier ground. Gilliam films usually have some sense of hidden purpose behind their wanderings through menageries of societal scum, or at least a firm enough commitment to displaying a few particular stripes for some skewering point. With Jabberwocky, one feels Gilliam's aesthetic workout alone is the point, a tour through twisted faces and horrible actions for its own sake. The world shifts on the basis of whether or not Dennis has suffered enough in the last five minutes, which often leads to a resounding "no" and a new kick in the balls, as Dennis is just a little too gormless and oblivious to his own suffering for anything much to stick. As a result, the film's moments of greatest cruelty of repulsiveness seem to happen because we're getting bored of not seeing something horrible happen, rather than because the man in charge has a carefully mapped plan of emotional highs and lows. It's amusing when Dennis' flailings as he chases after a meaningless rotting potato memento are scored to a crowd cheering its bloodlust over an unrelated jousting tournament, or when Dennis falls to the mercy of a princess whose imagined visions of a noble prince make her quite unable to see the real idiot before her; moments like a cuckolding squire getting squashed to death by the man he cuckolded during a lovemaking session or Dennis stepping in an utterly massive pile of jabberwock shit are more uncomfortable and mean because they can be. There's a lot more of the latter cudgel to the skull cruelty than the former finely-tuned ironic torment, and when paired with a lack of anything substantial to say, the trend towards guffawing at how senseless everything is makes the film a bit miserable towards the end.
I've praised miserable films plenty in the past, absolutely adored works designed to make you feel as terrible as possible and then keep pushing. The question one has to ask, though, is thus: am I miserable because the work is built in such a way as to guide me towards this emotional state for some rhyme and reason (even if only to do so with skill and finesse), or am I miserable because the film has lost me in one of its many tangents down a filthy alleyway and I've nothing to grab hold of to get back in? Jabberwocky feels like the latter, and I'm disappointed because it could've easily been the former with a greater focus on its socioeconomic humor. That stuff is built into Dennis' central joke of being a bumbling fool who's great at administrative theory and horrible at communicating his ideas. A little tweaking, and the film's commentary on how chaotic and ill-led the medieval world's people and leaders were in a reflection of our similarly depraved modern times could rival Brazil's similarly freeform tour through a city gone mad with callous bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the parts where this line of humor does come into play are where Gilliam's early lack of confidence is most evident, as he drops the crueler tone in favor of Monty Python-style absurdist humor. It's all good material, the sort've scenes you could easily slot into Holy Grail as supposed deleted scenes and fool a lot've people along the way, but they tend to be composed flatter than the rest of the film, acted with a more self-aware tone, and generally don't mesh with the dirtier atmosphere at play here. They generally feel more like Gilliam dipping back into his comfort zone when confronted with a difficult task rather than natural counterweights to the misery, and so fail in their purpose even as they work on their own terms.
I'm disappointed in Jabberwocky, and with good reason, I should think. There's an abundance of positive elements to pick through, from the doubling-down on Holy Grail's rain-soaked muddy exteriors and dust-choked candle-lit interiors to beautiful effect, to the variety of satirical scenarios Gilliam plays out within them; from the contrasting vibe of empty spaces suddenly filling with roaring crowds, to the purposefully drawn-out, painful nature of many jokes that get laughs from how pathetically they end; from the rotting design of the suitmation monster at the climax to the sociopathic cruelty in twisting an unambiguously happy ending into the worst possible fate for the main character. It is a well-made movie on most technical respects, and could even match some of Gilliam's later works for aesthetic quality. However, without a central point to revolve around, some idea to work towards, any sense that we're doing this for reasons beyond the enjoyment of cinematic cruelty, it becomes a well-made movie that I don't much enjoy watching for long stretches, and leaves one without a coherent framework for discussing its ideologies at the close. A miserable tour through a pitiable world with a guide whose greatest ambition is to repeatedly say, "Lookit that! Revoltin', innit?" is not the most effective use of anyone's time, and even if all the sights are pleasing in their own repulsive way, I'm not about to thank the guide if I get the feeling he was somehow holding back.
At least later Gilliam took this template and refined it into the basis for many a career highpoint. I'm disappointed in Jabberwocky, but it's got too much going for it and too much readable DNA of its descendants for me to fully say the lack of a thematic centrifugal force breaks the entire experience. Knowing both where Gilliam came from and where he'd go after this weakens the experience by making the whys of its shortcomings stand out, but while I doubt I'd rate this too much higher if I came in totally ignorant to the man's existence and other work, I'd say acknowledging this at least tempers my opinion from "verging on bad" to "good but heavily, heavily flawed." At the very least, it's only here you get to see David Prowse Knight make bloody mincemeat of Other David Prowse Knight.
3/5
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