Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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The fall begins with an exile from the paradise (the angel with a flaming sword at the hotel parking in Los Angeles), the spiral fall down to the center/bottom, which revolves around its own axis (carousel at Circus Circus casino). The spiral line is a tape cartridge with the record of the two leading protagonists following excesses, which is tried to play in the second part of the movie. According to the film's motto – which is "He who makes a beast/animal of himself gets rid of the humanity’ suffering " (the Samuel Johnson’ quote) – the heroes meet another "beast" on their way and it gets more and more human-like, transforming from a bat to a chimpanzee.

Tideland

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​The shark-train rides on the outside orbit (like a shark circling around the victim?), sets a rhythm and a boundary of the film space, cut it from the rest of the world. The circle gets broken only in the end, the train derails, and therefore Jeliza-Rose leaves the "tideland." The heroine in there circulates between two nearly twin homes, hides the body of dead father and dead mother. Jeliza-Rose imaginary makes two couples - her father with Dell, the neighbor, and herself with Dickens, the Dell’s brother. The tree grows in the center of the world (the movie poster suggests that it grows above and below the ground) and rabbit-hole opens - the first words in the film are from the Alice in Wonderland: "Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her..."

The Brothers Grimm

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The center of the graph/the film’ world is taken by “the tower in the middle of the forest", in which the queen-witch is waiting to complete a magical ritual. The twelve graves are placed around the tower, like hours on a clock face. Insects, birds, trees in the forest, as well as the Brothers Grimm, are circling around the tower - literally (trying to find an entrance) and figuratively (trying to unravel the mystery of the local village girls’ disappearance). Battalion of the French army is stationed at the edge of the forest. General Delatombe, the representative of cultural intelligence (Jonathan Pryce factually recreates his role from Munchausen), orders to burn the forest – the refuge of romantic superstition.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Panassus

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Doctor Paranassus and Mr. Nick are circling on the outer orbit – they are the incarnations of positive and negative principles of the film world. Both negotiate its rules; their bet is the main narrative frame. The bet stake - Valentina, the Parnassus’ daughter - is located right in the middle between two mirrors ("His" and "Her). Selection of the one of the mirrors prejudges the outcome of the game, while still allows Valentina to leave the determined central position. The two rivals - Tony and Anton (Anti-Tony?) – revolve around the heroine.

The damnation of Faust

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The graph uses "animation" for separating sequential parts of the performance, the one based on a gradual rotation of the Vitruvian man by Leonardo da Vinci - from the vertical position through the deviation from it to the complete reversal, that occurs in the final scene of Faust being reversely crucified at the swastika. The Cube, which Faust brings on his back in the first scene (in his lab, where he meets Mephistopheles) turns out to be a cross after unwrapping. The Nazi eagle is in the center. The claws, however, do not hold swastikas, but the clock face - which, on the one hand, suggests the inevitability of the historical process, staged by Gilliam ("the history falls here on head and on the neck" - he says in the interview), on the other hand, refers to the scene, in which Mephistopheles turns back time, thus proving his absolute power over of the world of performance.