Terry Gilliam reveals his favourite Stanley Kubrick movie
Terry Gilliam famously rose to prominence as a member of the sketch comedy group Monty Python in the late 1960s, a project which proved to be incredibly popular with the British public. However, with their film series, Monty Python became an international success. The 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, co-directed by Gilliam, became the highest-grossing British film in the United States that year, signalling the group’s widespread acclaim.
Alongside writing, starring in, and sometimes directing the Monty Python films, Gilliam also branched out to helm other movies, from the dark comedy Brazil to the ’90s classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Simply put, Gilliam is a greatly respected director, and he’s often taken the time to reflect on other filmmakers, such as Stanley Kubrick, who he considers one of cinema’s greatest geniuses.
Gilliam once compared the artistry of Kubrick to the commercial appeal of Steven Spielberg, claiming that the former’s movies actually make you step back and think. He explained: “2001: A Space Odyssey had an ending that I don’t know what it means. I don’t know, but I have to think about it. I have to work, and it opens up all sorts of possibilities, and probably the next person I speak to has a different idea of what that ending means. So suddenly, we’re in a discussion, and now we’re talking. Ideas come out of that, and that’s what I always want to encourage.”
He added: “Spielberg and the success of most films in Hollywood these days I think is down to the fact they’re comforting, they tie things up in nice little bows, give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home, and you don’t have to worry about it.”
Evidently, Gilliam much prefers Kubrick, whose talents have inspired his own approach to cinema. Talking to Rotten Tomatoes, Gilliam chose 1957’s Paths of Glory as one of his all-time favourite films. He explained: “I was, I don’t know, probably 13 or 14, and it was a Saturday matinee at the local cinema, and all the kids were dumped there by their parents to keep them out of the way on Saturday afternoons. I was sitting there, and this black-and-white thing came on.”
Gilliam continued: “I was utterly blown away, because it was the first film that I really appreciated the injustice in the world that’s waiting for all of us, and just the tracking shots through the trenches. My version in Brazil in the Clark’s Pool was all about the shots from Paths of Glory.”
“I remember going to school on Monday, telling everybody, ‘You’ve got to go see this movie’. Nobody did, because it was too serious,” he added. “Everybody was basically normally going to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, which I also loved. That’s the pratfall side of my nature”.
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