The movie that made Terry Gilliam fall in love with cinema: “This extraordinary film”
In the ever-expanding world of cinema, the name Terry Gilliam is the very example of the merging of excellence and avid imagination. But for the legend, who has inspired countless aspiring, dreaming souls to embrace their love of directing cinematic jewels, it was someone else’s masterpiece that allowed him to discover the true beauty of cinema.
Even very early on, Gilliam’s by-default mode was to be in love with the movies from a young age. While the city is still the bustling centre of the Indian film industry, the years the filmmaker spent there were the peak of cinema in the country, so much so that movies influenced the most minor details of an individual’s life.
But it wasn’t until his family moved to the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Panorama City that a young Gilliam was introduced to the heartbreaking beauty of cinema that refuses to hide the bitter truth of life—sometimes, there isn’t a happy ending.
In a chat with Wide Angle Closeup in 1996, Gilliam reminisced the time when he saw Stanley Kubrick’s widely contentious Paths of Glory, a film that was banned in many places in the US and across numerous cities and countries in Europe for its anti-war themes. But for Gilliam, “there was this extraordinary film” whose cinematography and refusal to coddle its audience stuck with him. “It was just two things: one, being stunned by being aware of camera movements for the first time, the tracking shots in the trenches, and then it was the uncompromising nature of the story, where justice is not seen to be done,” he added.
The Ox-Bow Incident is another film that acts as a societal mirror that side-stepped the need to put rose-tinted glasses over its viewers’ eyes, opting to show the real world where not every injustice is rectified. Starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, and Mary Beth Hughes, the western drama sees how an angry mob nabs the wrong guys and hangs them for killing a local rancher and stealing his cattle, only for the real rustlers to walk in as the innocent men die. Like Paths of Glory, this William A. Wellman film showed Gilliam a side of cinema that is not adamant about “telling us that everything was right in the world and it all worked out for the best”.
But Kubrick remained one of Gilliam’s most influential idols, who was always awed by his “uncompromising” approach to filmmaking. For the actor-director, Kubrick’s Spartacus is a “wondrous film”, even though the filmmaker himself famously disowned the film, claiming it doesn’t depict his best work. At the time of the film’s making and release, Kubrick wasn’t the big name in the cinematic circles he is today. He didn’t have direct creative control over the film, as he had to share it with then-blacklisted writer Douglas Trumbo and wasn’t exactly a fan of cinematographer Russell Metty’s work since it didn’t match his vision.
Though Metty would go on to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Cinematography’ for the film, it did little to alter Kubrick’s opinion. Apparently, the same goes for Gilliam since Kurbrick’s stance on what is majorly considered one of his best movies did little to deter the Time Bandits’ director from idolising the man and his work.
