Visual & Media Studies Academic Journal
ISSN 2299-906X
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The four edges of a chessboard are the four forces that interfere with the world of film on basis of deus ex machina: 1. The inside-film – the God who instructs the Arthur to find the Grail, when that one over-thinks and gives up the idea of reaching the castle of Camelot, and the police, which tracks the Round Table team and in the end accelerates the storming of the Aaargh Castle (thus making it impossible to get the Grail). 2. The Meta-film - the narrator (who is revealed on several levels - in the trailer, in the opening credits as the voice-over, as a hand turning the pages - first of the woman, then of the beast from the Beast), and the animator, whose sudden death saves lives of knights , who are fleeing from the many-eyed monster. The King Arthur is in the center of the chessboard, his four companions are in its four corners. Arthur, like King Bruno from the Jabberwocky (but also like the Deputy Minister in Brazil) could be named "the Questionable" - his power is an illusion. The plot of the film is dominated by castles (which are besieged and conquered by characters and which imprison them) or obstacles (usually in a form of knights, who must be overcome, avoided, or bestowed a hedge on) - both types of adventures are marked on the board.
Jabberwocky
A concentric graph accords to the structure of the city, the political machine and the relationship between the characters. The empty throne of Bruno the Questionable is placed in the middle (certainly no one would notice his absence), surrounded by a circle of a bureaucracy (a secretary and heralds). "The royal sphere" is being torn by the four forces - the church, the craft guild, the mercantile guild and the knights. The whole conflict takes place within the crumbling walls of the city. The monster prowls outside the walls, his tamer – Dennis Cooper – comes from the outside of the walls. Two knights are revolving around the monster, and Dennis is in-between the Princess and Griselda Fishfinger.
Brazil
The center is empty in Brazile (like the throne of Bruno the Questionable in Jabberwocky) – there is only the Vice-Prime Minister, no Prime Minister himself (the highest authority figure). People, papers, excrements are revolving around the empty place. The housefly wanders in the middle, bulking the operation of an information machine; it produces a typo, heavy with fictional effects. The Sam Lowry's mother overlaps with the mistress on the following fantasy’ orbits and the chivalrous character’s alter ego overlaps with an enemy, whom it tries to overcome. Lastly, the border circle is also clouds, a smoke from factory chimneys and guts of the city-leviathan.
Time Bandits
The home left by Kevin is in the middle; built of bricks, with a gap in the middle (Kevin comes out of it, pushing out one of the walls). Next worlds are built with the blocks removed from the house, the worlds, which are visited by the characters (elements of each of the worlds are modeled on the basis of toys and drawings in the Kevin’s room). The collection of worlds breaks up into two parts - the historic one and the legendary one. The Supreme Being is circling on the outer orbit.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Münchhausen uses different means of transport to travel through the land of the four elements (air, fire, water and earth). He leaves and comes back to the city (one of the Gilliam’s Cities). In the film, someone always loses his head - the King of the Moon, the sultan’s subjects, the equestrian statue in the city center (which in the end appears to be the monument to Münchhausen). The city itself loses its head - towers are crumbling, buildings lose their roofs, and a city’ body is ripped by the conflict between mundane, biopolitical administrator Horatio Jackson and myth-creator Munchausen (the big Baron’s head flies to the sky on the movie poster). The second axis of the conflict is set by love and death.
12 Monkeys
The graph refers, firstly, to rings of the mighty tree from the fragment of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, cited in the film, secondly, to the scheme of spreading the virus, which appears in one of scenes, thirdly, to the "tunnel" made of the Warner Bros. closing logo’ board (due to the used in 12 Monkeys quotes from popular animations, as well as a number of tunnels, shafts and wells). The central part - but also the end of the tunnel and the bottom of the well - is a beginning of the sequence of events that led to the outbreak of the epidemic. The James Cole’ orbit of the fantasy/memory’ about the airport becomes a place, where old James meets the young one (though the physicality of old Cole also has something of a big child) and the Blonde, in whom he recognizes doctor Railly in the end. The team of scientists from the future observes right behind the last circle – a half-blind providence.
The Fisher King
Gilliam turns New York into an early medieval city ("Jabberwocky meets Brazil"?) - a small area, Roman walls, cathedral towers. Vertical architecture reflects a social hierarchy system - from the tower of power with the Grail (the millionaire’s apartment) to the royal chambers (the Jack's house), to the tower with the princess (the Lydia’s editing house), to the peasant hut (Anne’ video library), to the dungeons (Parry’s boiler room). The two main characters basically move only vertically or horizontally - Jack falls from the top, gets up and climbs back (and in the end its him who has to climb to get the Grail), Parry runs along and across (fleeing from the blazing knight) and wanders through the streets.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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
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
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
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
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.
Bibliographic description to this article:
2. Wundercamera : The Gilliam's Atlas /J. Woynarowski. CyberEmpathy: Visual Communication and New Media in Art, Science, Humanities, Design and Technology ISSUE 1 /2012. Cybersky. ISSN 2299-906X. Kokazone. Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
CyberEmpathy SPECIAL EDITION 2 / 2011: The Gilliam's Atlas
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