| | Back when Terry Gilliam was just the guy who did the quaint animated sequences on MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS did anyone expect him to become one of the great directors of our era? He's in turns a marvelous director of sentimental fantasy and an acidic surrealist social critic. MONTY PYTHON in general and Gilliam in particular are continuations of Luis Bunuel in the way De Palma continued Hitchcock. MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE is Bunuel through and through. Gilliam combines the comedian's understanding of the unity of tragedy and farce with the melancholy of a man in love with times long dead. BRAZIL, among the blackest of all black comedies, was so prescient that it's most outrageous speculations have become everyday life. 12 MONKEYS is even darker and no less prescient. |
