movies - the downsides to being one of the guys (doomsday and brazil)

[cimorene]

Watched Spaceballs last night and was totally in the mood for a Mel Brooks fest. I brought Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but a rant about Bill Pullman on Wax's part captured her brother's attention, leading to Brother Windows, his bff Thos, and Wax anxious to watch something horror.

It's not just that I was very much in the mood for comedy, as that I actually hate the horror genre. I've watched humorous examples of it that I enjoyed, but I am annoyed and bored by its conventions, its storylines, and its underlying messages, as well as disgusted by its imagery.

After 10 minutes' uncomfortable indecision, Friday I caved to watching Doomsday, a horror/action piece, post-apocalypse, diseases, blah blah blah, on the grounds that it was absolutely hilarious how many other movies it borrowed from. It did contain a hot female lead, but mostly, I hated it, and was bored and uncomprehending of all the parts that Wax and her brother loved because of having never seen (and having negative desire to see) the other post-apocalyptic movies it referenced. There was a huge portion that was ripped off from The Lord of the Rings, but this didn't delight me the way it delighted them.

So then last night after Spaceballs was over, everyone wanted to watch some horror movie (After I put my foot down with "I HATE HORROR" Wax tried, "But it's got Bill Pullman, so he's funny whenever he's there even if he isn't being funny"), but when I insisted, we finally settled on Brazil. I was reluctant because my impression from The Brothers Grimm was that I probably hate Terry Gilliam's work in general and was unlikely to enjoy any movie he made, but on the other hand, I've been hearing about Brazil's seminal place in the SF canon for years, so at least I'd be able to say that I'd seen it. Plus, I remember my parents said that they liked it.

Well, Brazil felt like about five hours of pretentious, disjointed paranoid fantasy. On the plus side, Jonathan Pryce and Michael Palin were there and the visual design was interesting and clearly of historical import, while some of the dialogue was quite snappy, no doubt due to Tom Stoppard's co-writing. Also, I can say that I've seen it. On the minus side, I really hate Terry Gilliam's work, and spent most of the movie internally debating whether to leave the movie and go out into the livingroom and sleep on the couch (but didn't because it would probably have been too cold out there). If Brazil were a work of fanfiction, despite its points of interest, I would not bookmark it on delicious, because it left me vibrating with annoyance.

And in future, I will remember not to go anywhere without a book and an extra blanket.

Tragically, even though the first part of the evening combined Spaceballs with a really good red wine, most of the awesome quotes were overwhelmed afterwards by the state of Vibrating with Annoyance induced by Terry Gilliam. I'll have to borrow it and watch it again sometime.

Comments

[copracat]

Whatever you do - seriously whatever you do - do not go anywhere near The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It makes Brazil look like happy fun times that are not boring.

I realise that you're not likely to watch another Terry Gillam movie but I can't rely on that. You must beware.

[cimorene]

ahhahahahahahhaha. XD

[copracat]

Twenty-one years after we saw it, my film-going companion is still traumatised.

[cimorene]

I was so pissed off at TBG, which I saw in theatres, that I still get mad enough to stew a bit just thinking about it. At least Brazil wasn't THAT bad, but still, thank Enya I didn't pay for it.

[anglepoiselamp]

Hmm. I get what you mean about horror genre conventions and underlying messages. I do love some subsets of the genre, mainly ghost stories and scifi-themed stuff, but splatter movies for instance are extremely boring to me. (And for the record, Doomsday annoyed and bored me too.)

My mom likes The Brothers Grimm because she's weird that way. I've had to watch it way more times than I ever wanted to. Brazil, on the other hand, I refuse to rewatch because it made me very anxious.

[cimorene]

Brazil is one big anxiety nightmare that has nothing more to say than "I'm an anxiety nightmare" and "Bureaucracy is bad" (the latter is something that TG seems to think he's being both subtle and clever about, when in fact he's belaboring it with the force of several piano-topped anvils to the head and the criticism was old several hundred years ago). Also, it says all that without any sort of plot, and with way too little focus, even presuming it had been a rivetingly cool message. Even the imagery is not as cool as it thinks it is.

[cesare]

Also, it says all that without any sort of plot

Okay, fair enough, Brazil's not for everyone, but it has a plot. The plot isn't hugely cohesive and main elements are expressed visually and never come out in dialogue, but it's there. The Wikipedia entry spells it out.

Also I ended up writing a little mini-essay here, so I apologize for that in advance, but since I typed it already, here it is.

The most accessible, best Gilliam film is probably 12 Monkeys. Brothers Grimm was his attempt to be more audience-friendly, to... not much effect.

On Gilliam in general... like Tim Burton, part of the appeal is that he just does things that no other director does. Actual penguins wearing jet packs escorting the dead body of The Penguin to the sea? A homeless cabaret singer in drag doing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" for a singing telegram? Whether you like those scenes or not, hey, at least they're not cliched.

Another big draw of his movies is that his productions are visually ornate, and especially pre-CGI, it was hard to find movies so well-produced that didn't devote most of the budget to blowing stuff up. CGI has let studios take more risks as far as making things look great without sinking as much money into production design, so the kind of things that people love Gilliam for aren't as rare as they used to be.

Oh, and I think arguably he was the first to popularize walk-and-talk. The rapid-fire walk-and-talk scene with Jonathan Pryce in Brazil was ripped off for commercials (I think for Fed Ex) and became a familiar bit of film/TV vocabulary.

All of which is not to say that you should give him another chance; if he's not for you, oh well. But I thought you might like to know why other people were into it.

[cimorene]

All the events detailed in Wikipedia certainly clearly took place. I wouldn't have described them as subtle or even as not coming out in dialogue, since most of them involved a lot of talking. I characterized the movie as plotless because this series of events is deliberately made to appear random, and ultimately is futile, including various digressions (Christmas parties, lunches, Helpmann in a santa suit, his mother's portrait on Helpmann's desk) which are all pointing to leads which are left dangling, while the sequence of events leads to an abrupt cutoff played like a twist, but which is not any more horrifying than what has come before, and doesn't reveal any new information. As I said, like an anxiety nightmare, not like a quest narrative.

I can certainly see why Brazil is considered a seminal genre film. I never said I couldn't imagine why other people might possibly like him, only that I found him incredibly annoying. This is often the case with things I find that annoying, including several BNFs in every major fandom I've ever been in and a number of similarly lauded novelists.

[cimorene]

I wish I had like a smartphone and could leave the room, curl up under blankets, and watch tiny streaming versions of BBC historicals on youtube while Wax and the other manly dudes were watching boring and revolting stuff.

[mecurtin]

There are few things I hate more than horror fans who keep insisting "but you'll like this one!" No, I won't.

[cimorene]

It's not that PRECISELY with Wax and BW, it's more that they're so excited that they're willing to use any argument they can think of to get you to watch, and they don't really think that not liking whatever it is is legitimate if they thought it was really fun. For example, if you don't like a movie that is only funny because it's a pastiche/parody of 80's horror films, the problem is that you failed to watch the 80's horror films that are necessary to get it. Etc. They're the sort of people who have a hard time understanding the POV of people who don't like what they like, and they don't consider an action horror film to be horror. "Yes, sure, it was made by a horror director and had horror special effects and was about the apocalypse, all right, but that's just window dressing! It was totally an action plot!" "But the horror effects were gross. And everywhere." "You want gross? That's not gross at all compared to a real horror film."

[l_elfie]

weirdly, i hate horror movies but tend to love zombie stories, so i don't consider zombie movies to be a part of the horror genre. that said, doomsday is one of the worst movies ever made in the history of ever, and i love it because it is terrible. i mean, it's not just using cliches from previously existing films: it is using cliches from bad films! but i almost respect that it is so terrible and makes no effort to make sense or hide it's plot holes.

of course, i also enjoyed it because both bashir and malcolm macdowell in it, plus the lead was the lead female in the latest of the underworld movies.

...so basically doomsday is a smorgasbord of badness, and really only for those people who really love bad movies. ahem.

brazil on the other hand, i enjoy whole-heartedly! but it's a very particular style and i can see why it might be unappealing or even grating. (aside: my dad and i used to watch it together because the hero is a heating engineer, and my father is a heating engineer, so.)

[l_elfie]

whoops, damn emphasis tag.

[cimorene]

I drew a few hearts at the screen, but I've skipped other Siddig projects because they were boring or annoying, so it definitely wasn't worth it. A bad film has to be pretty much entirely devoid of horror, and also, funny, before I would enjoy it. To me, Doomsday was just a hot mess of mediocre dialogue, stock characters, poor performances, bad visual directing, proudly presented shitty ssfx, copy-pasted scenes from other movies, and tired comparisons presented as if they were novel or at least still mildly interesting, which they weren't; the heroine, her glass eye, and her outfit were the only things remotely to recommend it.

[bluesbell]

Oh, The Brothers Grimm sucked so bad. I did not finish watching it. I have ambivalent feelings about Brazil and Tideland.

Have you seen The Fisher King or Twelve Monkeys? Or is your Gilliam hate based only on TBG and Brazil?

[cimorene]

The latter. One can't usually tell exactly why a movie is so annoying, whether it's the director's innate style or some other combination of factors, but I had a strong impression after The Brothers Grimm that it was due to a natural antipathy to Gilliam's which Brazil only confirmed. Not only his style, but his underlying attitudes and the things that he clearly considers cool and interesting are not only boring, but incredibly annoying to me. After the agonizing movie, Wax's brother thought it would be oh-so-cool to watch a making of documentary, in which his attitude and basically every single thing he said about it only confirmed my intense antipathy to the point where I wanted to kick him in the face.