The director Terry Gilliam called “the Norman Rockwell of cinema”
An influential figure not only in comedy but also in cinema in general, Terry Gilliam has crafted a body of work that has very few similarities with anyone else’s. Coloured by his eccentricities as well as his unique approach to surreal narratives, Gilliam’s work has evolved far beyond his time with the Monty Python troupe in the years that have followed.
Known for his strikingly original gems such as Brazil, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam has constantly strived to modify the conventional lenses through which we view cinematic realism in order to arrive at a different kind of truth. In the process, he has created hallucinatory masterpieces that are as unsettling as they are engaging.
During a conversation with The Guardian, Gilliam was once asked about his admiration for Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg and the difference between the two. The question was placed within the context of Schindler’s List, a subject in which both Kubrick and Spielberg had been interested, but their ideas were extremely different.
Although Spielberg shared a close relationship with Kubrick while the latter was alive, and comparisons between the two have been made on several occasions, Gilliam believed that the two great American filmmakers were operating within completely different frameworks. As a result, such analyses were nothing but exercises in futility.
“I don’t think there’s any comparison,” Gilliam began. “Kubrick had a brilliant mind and really explored things. He wasn’t frightened of going down very dark corridors. Spielberg is the Norman Rockwell of cinema. He’s brilliant, but there’s always something reassuring about his movies. There’s no leaving doubt for the viewer other than the world is an OK place. I don’t agree with that.”
While talking about his own thought process that guides his cinematic projects, he added: “Filmmaking is more about leaving people without a clear answer to life and making them do some work. My movies are pretty funny most of the time, but they’re not reassuring in the way a Spielberg movie is. I think the last one – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote – has got the happiest ending of any of my films.”
Instead of Kubrick, Gilliam linked Spielberg’s oeuvre to that of Norman Rockwell, the American painter whose works are now viewed as definitive representations of the country’s cultural ethos. At one point of time, the term “Rockwellesque” was used as a derogatory term by critics because many critics did not consider Rockwell to be in the same league as many of his more acclaimed contemporaries.
Even though it might be easy to view Gilliam’s comments in the same light, saying that Spielberg has had the same effect that Rockwell had on the American mainstream’s perception of art is definitely a positive evaluation of the filmmaker’s unparalleled influence.
