If you were to say that Terry Gilliam has lost it recently I don't even think his staunchest supporter or fan could really argue with you. His last few movies have been at best noble failures, at worst just plain bad. But at one time the words "new Gilliam movie" would fill a lot of people (me included) with the same excitement as "new Nolan movie" does today, or if you prefer a slightly different cinema going experience - "new Michael Bay movie". Over at Hero Complex they have been conducting an in depth interview with Gilliam and have just posted a few extra quotes that didn't make the final cut. Here the director of 12 Monkeys, Brazil and The Fisher King gives his opinion on two movies by two very diferent directors that in many ways for better or worse have come to define either end of the "blockbuster" spectrum.
On seeing
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon..
“The latest ‘Transformers’ movie was on the plane coming over to Los Angeles. It’s horrible and there’s all these phallic things going on. I just couldn’t even deal with it. C’mon, leave some room for me, as the audience. The audience is totally excluded, you just sit there and watch the explosions. I couldn’t tell you what the movie was about. A lot of the audience is happy not to get involved. They’ve been working some [awful] job all day long and you just want to go out to a movie. That’s fine, that’s great. But I prefer something that catches you off guard and makes you think and feel and walk out different from when you came in…with ‘Transformers,’ with the building falling down and everything, there are great images but how can people slide down a crashing building without consequence, without physics? It’s just numbing. The movie hammers the audience into submission. They are influenced by video games but in video games at least you are immersed, in these movies you’re left out. And in the movies, humans are only there to fall and run around and, somehow, go through windows without getting cut to shreds.”
He doesn't go as in depth on
The Dark Knight but does give us his opinion of it's director, Christopher Nolan..
“The car chase stuff in ‘Dark Knight’ is a video game; it is shot-for-shot, as you would get it in a video game like Grand Theft Auto. He’s got a weird balance; he understands all of that – the energy of it – so he chooses to put it in there yet he’s also a very intelligent filmmaker who can do all sorts of things. He’s incredibly good. With ’Inception,’ I wondered why all of the dreams were action movies. Don’t people have other dreams? And what’s interesting about the films are they are asexual. Maybe that’s the problem. Women can represent danger in them but no one seems to be having sex in these movies. In society overall, we have all this porn, 24 hours a day, so everyone can [masturbate] but I wonder is anyone having real sex anymore? I ask myself these questions.”
For more from Gilliam including his thoughts on
Tintin and Steven Spielberg click the link below.
By TwitterButtons.com