THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Spain/Belgium/France/Portugal - 2018; US release 2019) Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni. Cast: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Jordi Molla, Sergi Lopez, Rossy de Palma, Jason Watkins, Oscar Jaenada, Hovik Keuchkerian, William Miller, Paloma Bloyd, Will Keen, Jorge Calvo, Antonio Gil, Rodrigo Poison. (Unrated, 133 mins) Terry Gilliam is no stranger to overcoming obstacles and adversity in bringing his vision to life, whether it's running wildly over budget on 1989's THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, bitterly clashing with Universal studio head Sid Sheinberg on 1985's BRAZIL and Miramax's Harvey Weinstein on 2005's THE BROTHERS GRIMM, or being forced to completely overhaul 2009's THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS after Heath Ledger's sudden death midway through production. But those were walks in the park compared to Gilliam's Sisyphean ordeal in getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE made. A dream project he began mulling over around the time of BARON MUNCHAUSEN, THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE was conceived by Gilliam and frequent collaborator Tony Grisoni (the pair also worked together on 1998's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and 2006's TIDELAND) as a revisionist take on the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote, and began shooting in September 2000 with beloved French actor Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote and Johnny Depp as Toby, a present-day marketing executive who gets sucked back in time to the 16th century and is mistaken for loyal sidekick Sancho Panza by the aging and insane knight-errant.
Jean Rochefort in Gilliam's unfinished 2000 version
On the first day of filming, the problems started: while completing some early location work in Spain, Gilliam discovered that the constant flights from a nearby NATO training base would render the sound unusable, necessitating post-production dubbing and sound effects. On the second day, a hailstorm and some intense flash floods destroyed some equipment and altered the appearance of the surrounding cliffs, forcing Gilliam to scrap all of the first day's work since the shots wouldn't match. On the third day, Gilliam was told that the production's insurance company wouldn't cover the cost of the damaged or lost equipment. Then some actors started bailing. On the fifth day, the 70-year-old Rochefort was in obvious pain, wincing during takes and unable to ride a horse. He flew to Paris to visit his doctor and was diagnosed with a double herniated disc that required immediate surgery. With no timetable set for the return of Rochefort--who never acted in an English-language film to that point and spent several months learning the language just for the role--Gilliam and Depp soldiered on, shooting whatever they could to work around his absence, but production was soon suspended. By November, the ailing Rochefort was still sidelined under doctor's orders and the French producers and their insurers--citing the flood damage and Rochefort's medical issues as "acts of God"--shut down the production for good two months into filming. This was chronicled in the 2002 documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA, directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe and intended to be a making-of for the eventual DVD release, but the production grew so chaotic and cursed so quickly that they were gifted with an opportunity to create their own feature film instead.
While working on other projects in the ensuing years, Gilliam always had DON QUIXOTE on the backburner. From 2003 to 2016, he made it to various stages of pre-production, with Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, and John Hurt attached as Quixote at certain points (production was nearly set to begin in mid-2015 but was halted once more when Hurt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer), along with Depp, Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, and Jack O'Connell as the time-traveling Sancho Panza stand-in. A falling out and protracted legal battle with Portuguese producer Paulo Branco (who later tried--unsuccessfully--to halt the film's release, the stress of which contributed to Gilliam suffering a minor stroke in May 2018), and the implosion of a distribution deal with Amazon almost derailed the film again in 2016, but shooting finally began--finally, for real--in March 2017 with Gilliam's BRAZIL star Jonathan Pryce, who was originally cast in another role back in 2000, as Quixote, and Adam Driver as Toby. Gilliam and Grisoni had plenty of time to revise and restructure the story, and much like AVATAR had been brewing in James Cameron's head for so long that he used bits and pieces of it in other films over his career, longtime Gilliam fans will recognize familiar ideas and characterizations that may have surfaced in a similar form in his work over the last 30 years (there's more than a little of John Neville's Baron Munchausen and Robin Williams' Parry from THE FISHER KING in Pryce's portrayal of Don Quixote). But unlike Gilliam's 2014 film THE ZERO THEOREM, it doesn't play like a stopgap Gilliam's Greatest Hits package. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE is the best thing Gilliam's done since 1995's 12 MONKEYS, and it's so near and dear to its maker's heart that you can sense his passion in every scene, almost like he can't believe it's finally being made. Or that after nearly 30 years of this being his white whale (the opening credits have a self-congratulatory "25 years in the making...and unmaking"), he'd have absolutely no excuse for not getting it right.
In Spain shooting a TV commercial, Driver's Toby is a former film school wunderkind who long ago succumbed to jaded cynicism, selling out to work in advertising. He's inspired when his obnoxious boss (Stellan Skarsgard) picks up a bootleg DVD from a gypsy peddler (Oscar Jaenada). It's Toby's award-winning student film from a decade earlier, a micro-budget, black-and-white version of Don Quixote that he shot in a nearby village, starring a cast of locals headed by simple, elderly shoemaker Javier (Pryce). Unable to focus on the TV commercial, Toby impulsively leaves the set and visits the village, which is still feeling the effects of the movie shoot from ten years ago: local innkeeper Raul (Hovik Keuchkerian) remains bitter over Toby telling his teenage daughter Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) that she could be a movie star, prompting her to run away in search of stardom that has only led a life as an escort for wealthy men; and Javier still remains in costume as a sideshow attraction, convinced he's Don Quixote. "Quixote" sees Toby and thinks he's Sancho Panza returning to serve as his faithful squire for more marvelous adventures in "chivalry."
Johnny Depp in the abandoned 2000 version
To say anything more would deprive you of the rambunctious and inspired mayhem that transpires, running the gamut from slapstick comedy to heartfelt drama (most notably, the time-travel element has been mostly jettisoned, with Gilliam having used it extensively in 12 MONKEYS and with the idea of alternate realities in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, which really seems to have been a landing point for a lot of his initial QUIXOTE ideas). In a performance that would be generating awards buzz if this got any kind of release (it was given a one-night Fathom Events screening in theaters before heading to VOD on April 19, courtesy of Screen Media Films), Pryce is an absolute joy to behold. Watching him here, it's easy to imagine an alternate universe when Gilliam made this 25 or 30 years ago with a still-living Peter Sellers as Quixote. Pryce is matched by Driver, who spends much of the film in a state of sustained rage and confusion over the often absurdist plot turns that make this the funniest film Gilliam's done since his days in Monty Python.
Following the multi-decade nightmare of getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE out of his head and on the screen (Fulton and Pepe have also made their own sequel, HE DREAMED OF GIANTS, detailing the events following LOST IN LA MANCHA), Gilliam turns Quixote's saga into a very personal one that deals with the effects of the creative process and the sacrifices made in the name of art and integrity, whether it's an obsessive, ambitious filmmaker like young Toby blithely unaware of his impact on Javier and Angelica, or the cynicism and bitterness that can take hold when nothing goes right (Skarsgard's "The Boss" even casually tosses out "Act of God" as an excuse at one point, echoing the producers who shut the production down in 2000). It's a film that marches to the beat of its own drum, unafraid to go off on unexpected tangents and not really concerned with tying everything together, but always entertaining and never feeling self-indulgent. Considering the number of times he's faced insurmountable odds over his storied career, and let's be honest, some of it he brings on himself (re: THE BROTHERS GRIMM, why even get involved with a control-freak studio head known industry-wide as "Harvey Scissorhands" unless you're looking for a fight?), it's just nice to see this work as beautifully as it does and to see that ultimately, the struggle was worth it. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Gilliam dedicates it to Rochefort and Hurt, both of whom died in 2017) is just exuberant filmmaking on an grand scale, and the best buddy movie of 2019 so far.
As far as unofficial entries in the Monty Python canon go, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING is so bad that it makes YELLOWBEARD look like MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. The first film to unite the five surviving members of the legendary comedy troupe since 1983's MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, and Terry Jones; Graham Chapman died in 1989), ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING was directed and co-written by Jones, who had the script stashed away since the early '90s and it shows. Jones almost got it going around 2003 but decided to put it on the backburner after the release of the Jim Carrey hit BRUCE ALMIGHTY, which has an almost identical concept but Jones' script has a Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett twist. Instead of being granted powers by God, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING's everyman hero Neil's (Simon Pegg) are granted courtesy of a crew of aliens--whose instantly recognizable voices are provided by the Python guys--who have happened upon Earth in their galactic journey and are deciding whether it's a planet worth saving. Picked at random by lead alien Death Dealing Darkness Bringer (voiced by Cleese), Neil is used as a guinea pig to gauge what a normal human will do with unlimited power. With a flick of his hand, Neil is able to make sweeping changes that he often has to walk back due to lack of specification (for example, after he causes an alien attack at a school that kills 40 people, his command to "Bring back everyone who died," ends up creating a brief zombie apocalypse). He tries to use his new ability to make his downstairs neighbor Catherine (Kate Beckinsale) fall for him while avoiding her psycho ex (a grating Rob Riggle), turns his best friend (Sanjeev Bhaskar) into a sausage, and, of course, makes his dick bigger. He also gets his dog Dennis to talk with the voice of the late Robin Williams, which should give you an idea of how long this thing sat around waiting for a US distributor. Shot in early 2014, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING was dumped into a handful of US theaters in May 2017 by the rinky-dink Atlas Distribution, a company whose only noteworthy--and I use the term "noteworthy" loosely--accomplishment was releasing all three ATLAS SHRUGGED movies. Pretty much every joke lands with a thud in this flat and almost completely laughless fiasco that's made even more depressing by the fact that it was Williams' last performance and the last comedy we'll get from Jones, who was diagnosed with dementia shortly after shooting wrapped, prompting his retirement from public life in 2016. (R, 85 mins)
BLACK BUTTERFLY
(Spain/US - 2017)
A remake of a 2008 French film with the same title, BLACK BUTTERFLY was set to roll in 2011 with Nicolas Cage starring and Rod Lurie (THE CONTENDER) producing, but the project fell apart during pre-production. Director Brian Goodman, an actor whose only previous credit behind the camera was the little-seen 2008 crime drama WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, remained attached, and by the time filming began, Cage was replaced by Antonio Banderas, and the film was now a Spanish co-production, shot in Italy with a mostly Italian crew (Mario Bava's grandson Roy Bava served as assistant director), and set in an isolated area of Colorado. Banderas is Paul, a washed-up novelist once anointed the Next Big Thing, but now in his fourth year of writer's block, drinking heavily, feeling sorry for himself after his wife left him, and holed up in a remote cabin failing to deliver an overdue film script that he hasn't even started writing. He's trying to sell his cabin out of financial necessity, and his real estate agent Laura (Piper Perabo) has yet to find any takers. After a road rage incident with a belligerent trucker continues at the local diner, Paul's ass is saved by Jack (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a glowering drifter looking for a place to stay. Out of gratitude, Paul offers Jack his guest room for the night, but Jack decides to stick around, doing some much-needed handyman work around the cabin and showing an intense interest in getting Paul off the bottle and writing again. Jack's demeanor gets more threatening and controlling and Paul, and eventually Laura, find themselves being held captive by the deranged Jack, who Paul is now convinced is a serial killer responsible for a string of murders in the region that date back several years.
BLACK BUTTERFLY is merely dull and nonsensical for most of its duration, with all the talk about writing, plot, and characters threatening to spill over into a trite exercise in meta storytelling. It doesn't even do anything interesting with the unexpected casting of legendary cult director Abel Ferrara (KING OF NEW YORK, BAD LIEUTENANT) as the manager of the town's tiny carryout, and anyone else would've asked Paul to leave after the first night, but then there'd be no movie. A third act twist requires some significant suspension of disbelief but livens things up in a vaguely giallo-like way portended by the title (I was briefly reminded of AMUCK and Dario Argento's TENEBRE as things started to fall into place), putting things in a different perspective and making it appear that the film is well on its way to maybe not quite completely redeeming itself but at least finishing big in a way that makes it a reasonably entertaining time-killer. But then Goodman and writers Marc Frydman (Lurie's longtime producing partner) and Justin Stanley shit the bed by adding one last twist that represents arguably the hoariest of all thriller genre cliches, one so ancient and played out that it almost qualifies as some kind of sick practical joke that it's being used seriously in 2017. Really, guys? That's how you decided to wrap this up? It couldn't be any more infuriating if Goodman, Frydman, and Stanley appeared on camera and said "You just watched this for 90 minutes. Dumbass." (R, 93 mins)
WILSON
(US - 2017)
Adapted by Daniel Clowes from his 2010 graphic novel of the same name, WILSON doesn't continue the success of two previous big screen Clowes adaptations, 2001's GHOST WORLD and 2006's ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL. Both directed by Zwigoff, GHOST WORLD and ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL succeeded where WILSON fails. That's probably not the fault of WILSON director Craig Johnson (THE SKELETON TWINS), but rather from Clowes watering down his own source material and not having the right person in the lead. Woody Harrelson is one of our finest actors, but he's all wrong as Wilson, taking the kind of grumpy misanthrope that's similar to Steve Buscemi's Seymour in GHOST WORLD and the kind of character that was owned by Paul Giamatti a decade or so ago in AMERICAN SPLENDOR and SIDEWAYS, but playing it as an inconsistent mixture of Asperger's and unbalanced psycho. A bitter curmudgeon whose only friend is his Miniature Schnauzer Pepper, Wilson is the kind of guy who rails against everything that's wrong in the world, smugly spouting off about all of the world's ills without provocation. He's the kind of guy who will sit down next to someone on an otherwise empty bus or invite himself to share a table with someone in an empty coffee shop and make pushy small talk. There will be five available urinals and he'll take the one right next to the one being used and strike up a conversation, of course excusing himself with "Nice cock, by the way." Wilson is supposed to be an fearless guy who doesn't play by society's norms and conventions but he's really just an abrasive, irredeemable prick, and when Harrelson plays him cackling and with wild eyes, you realize how much this needs a Buscemi or a Giamatti, or maybe even a Kevin Spacey to really convey the tone of Clowes' work. You'll want to get away from this movie the same way everyone else tries to back away from Wilson.
Even if having Harrelson play it this way was the intent, the film just never catches fire, lurching lugubriously from one DOA set piece to the next as almost every joke gets chirping crickets in response. WILSON feels like a film made by people who don't understand the material, which is inexplicable considering Clowes wrote the script himself (or, at least, he's the only credited writer). Tired of his angry routine, Wilson searches for a new purpose in his life after his father dies. He seeks out his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern) who left him 18 years earlier, aborting their child and getting involved with drugs and prostitution. She's cleaned up her act and turned her life around, and she reveals to Wilson that she actually had the baby and put it up for adoption. Ecstatic about being a father, Wilson finds the girl, Claire (Isabella Amara), an overweight, 17-year-old outcast, and he and Pippi try to establish a relationship with her. What follows is one improbable plot development after another, including an ill-fated trip to visit Pippi's bitchy sister Polly (Cheryl Hines), and Wilson being arrested on kidnapping charges. Sequences just seem to exist in a vacuum in WILSON--there's little forward momentum, either comedic or dramatic, and no one seems to exist in the real world. Clowes really nailed the psychology of his characters in GHOST WORLD, one of the best films of its decade, but this just feels like watered-down GHOST WORLD outtakes, right down to the very Enid-like Claire. There's one legitimately funny scene where Wilson intentionally rear-ends a woman's car just so he can ask her out on a date, and instead attracts a large crowd of witnesses, and Judy Greer is as charming as ever as a dog-sitter who somehow finds something worthwhile about Wilson, but in the end, it just goes nowhere and says nothing, and never gets around the obstacle of a great actor being badly miscast. Fox apparently knew they had a dud on their hands, releasing this on just 300 screens for a total gross of $650,000. (R, 94 mins)
JUPITER ASCENDING (US - 2015) Written and directed by The Wachowskis. Cast: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tim Piggot-Smith, Maria Doyle Kennedy, James D'Arcy, Doona Bae, Kick Gurry, Jeremy Swift, Edward Hogg, Terry Gilliam, Rupert Frazer, Christina Cole, Nicholas A. Newman, Frog Stone, Ramon Tikaram, Ariyon Bakare, David Ajala, Vanessa Kirby, Charlotte Beaumont. (PG-13, 127 mins)
It's already more or less expected that the $175 million JUPITER ASCENDING, the latest from MATRIX masterminds Andy and Lana Wachowski, will be yet another costly box-office dud to follow 2008's SPEED RACER and 2012's CLOUD ATLAS (co-directed with Tom Tykwer), not to mention 2009's NINJA ASSASSIN, which they produced. After the disappointing reception that followed the back-to-back MATRIX sequels, only V FOR VENDETTA (produced by the siblings and directed by their protege James McTeigue) seemed to get a positive reaction from mainstream audiences. But time can change perspective, and by now, SPEED RACER and especially CLOUD ATLAS already have strong cult followings with viewers who can simply appreciate the incredible visuals and wild ambition inherent in the Wachowskis' work (even the much-maligned MATRIX sequels have their defenders). Given the "What have you done for me lately?" attitude of Hollywood studios, it's amazing that they can still get someone to gamble nearly $200 million on greenlighting a massively-budgeted auteurist vision that still gives them more creative control than most filmmakers are granted in 2015. That MATRIX cache still carries a lot of cred, even though they haven't had anywhere near the same level of financial success, but when the sci-fi epic JUPITER ASCENDING was yanked from the summer 2014 schedule and bumped to February 2015 to "work on the visual effects," the online snark machine revved up. By the time the film was released, it was already anointed the next BATTLEFIELD EARTH before anybody even saw it. If anything, it's the 2015 SUCKER PUNCH, and much like Zack Snyder's one-of-a-kind vision was trashed by everyone only to enjoy a quick turnaround as a misunderstood cult film, so JUPITER ASCENDING will likely go. The elements are in place for a colossal flop of career-ending proportions, but just when nobody is expecting it, the Wachowskis turn in their loosest, craziest, and even more so than SPEED RACER, infectiously fun movie yet.
Every penny of that $175 million is up on the screen to create a cinematic canvas that resembles the covers of pulpy sci-fi paperbacks by the likes of Isaac Asimov or John Ringo, David Weber and the entire Baen Books back catalog. The Wachowskis have fashioned JUPITER ASCENDING as an insane mash-up of STAR WARS, DUNE, BUCK ROGERS, the 1980 FLASH GORDON, BLADE RUNNER, and even a brief segue into the satirical sci-fi nightmare bureaucracy of BRAZIL-era Terry Gilliam. There's a lot of story and some of the subplots and extraneous characters get shortchanged or abandoned outright. It's representative of the kind of world-building that, if this were the 1980s, probably could've resulted in an entire series of spinoff novels like the Star Wars and Star Trek novels that still fill the sci-fi sections of bookstores today. Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), the daughter of a British father who was killed by home invaders before she was born, and a Russian mother (Maria Doyle Kennedy) who gave birth to her midway across the Atlantic while emigrating to America, lives in a cramped house with her mother's entire extended immigrant family. While her uncle and cousins engage in shady con games, Jupiter and her mother work as housecleaners for Chicago's wealthy. All of that changes when the three children of the late Seraphi Abrasax, the matriarch of the Abrasax family who recently died, her life tragically cut short by murder at just 91,000, discover that her royal genomic code has "recurred" in Jupiter. The Abrasax offpsring--fey, hissing Balem (Eddie Redmayne), playboy Titus (Douglas Booth), and kind Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), looking smashing for 14,004--are intergalactic one-percenters who collectively own most of the galaxy, left to them by their mother, whose genomic recurrence in Jupiter--a reincarnation of sorts--means that Queen Jupiter will control their assets through a complex DNA-related legal loophole of the laws of space royalty.
Enter disgraced ex-soldier Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), an albino half-man/half-wolf mercenary hired by Titus Abrasax to protect Jupiter from the forces of Balem. Earth is merely one tiny but very important piece of property to Balem, and like most planets, it's used to harvest life to provide eternal youth to the most wealthy and privileged among the galaxy's movers and shakers. Caine, expelled from the military after biting a member of the "Entitled" class ("I'm more dog than man," he explains to a lovestruck Jupiter), saves Jupiter from the clutches of Balem's minions and leaves Chicago for a country farm where his old commanding officer and bee DNA-carrier Stinger (Sean Bean) lives with his daughter and countless active beehives ("Bees are genetically designed to sense royalty," he tells Jupiter in one of the film's sillier deus ex machina lines). Caine delivers Jupiter to Titus, who of course, has ulterior motives, which leads to numerous power shifts between the siblings. Balem has Jupiter's family taken from Earth to be harvested, essentially holding them as ransom until Jupiter cedes control of Earth, while Caine and Stinger set aside their differences to team up with hard-nosed Cmdr. Diomika Tsing (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and her crew of half-human/half-animal officers, heading to Balem's planet stronghold to rescue Jupiter and bring an end to the Abrasax dynasty.
JUPITER ASCENDING is an utterly ludicrous space opera, and comparisons to GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY are inevitable (likely why it was bumped from last summer), but it works in spite of its silliness. The production design and visual effects are on par with the best the sci-fi genre has ever offered, and it takes less time than expected to get over the sight of a lupine, Spock-eared Tatum. A miscast Kunis never quite works as Jupiter, but top (over)acting honors must go to THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING Oscar-nominee Eddie Redmayne as the preening Balem, looking like a young Peter Cushing as an emo Grand Moff Tarkin, melodramatically gasping his lines while indulging in some intermittent Al Pacino shouting. It's exactly the kind of goofy, cartoonish performance the film needs and it only enhances the go-for-broke, bonkers nature of the entire project. There's a good chance people will laugh this off the screen, but it's earnest, entertaining, and offers some smart, subtle political and economic commentary on top of the space action and mayhem. I'm not sure how much longer the Wachowskis will get this kind of money to make movies this bizarre. Certainly, well-schooled cineastes can appreciate all the throwback sci-fi referencing, but how many casual, mainstream moviegoers, especially the younger ones to which studios and focus groups pander, are even aware of BUCK ROGERS and FLASH GORDON at this point? And who other than the most ardent sci-fi nerds or bookstore employees will even get the film's production design being an homage to garish, over-the-top sci-fi paperback artwork? It's a too-expensive film for a comparatively small pop culture niche, but that niche will find much to like if they don't approach it with an MST3K attitude. Check your sighing and eye-rolls at the door and go in with the right attitude and roll with it as big, dumb, visually stunning entertainment, and you'll be surprised at how much of a blast JUPITER ASCENDING turns out to be.
THE ZERO THEOREM (UK/Romania/France - 2014) Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Pat Rushin and Terry Gilliam. Cast: Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Melanie Thierry, Lucas Hedges, Matt Damon, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Peter Stormare, Emil Hostina, Pavlic Nemes, Dana Rogoz. (R, 106 mins)
A Terry Gilliam film for those who have never seen a Terry Gilliam film, THE ZERO THEOREM is the sort of dystopian sci-fi nightmare that can't help but feel like reheated leftovers coming from the guy who gave us the 1985 masterpiece BRAZIL. For longtime Gilliam devotees who have followed the auteur's post-Monty Python work for the last 35 or so years, THE ZERO THEOREM will have the distinct feeling of a classic rock act releasing a "give 'em what they want" record after several years away. Known as much for his groundbreaking vision as for the obstacles that have stood in his way over the years--battling Universal execs over BRAZIL, the collapse of his THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE chronicled in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA (2002), clashing with Harvey Weinstein over THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005), and restructuring THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2009) when Heath Ledger died a third of the way into filming--the independently-financed THE ZERO THEOREM is a rare example of Gilliam being able to make exactly the film he wanted to make, with minimal interference. That's all the more reason that the underwhelming result is a bit on the disappointing side. With a budget reportedly in the vicinity of just $10 million--shoestring by today's standards--Gilliam has miraculously fashioned an arresting visual experience. But when a sci-fi film is released in 2014 and much of the plot hinges on virtual reality, it's a pretty safe bet you're working from a script that's been kicking around for a while. University of Central Florida English prof and screenwriting neophyte Pat Rushin gave his ZERO THEOREM script to producer Richard Zanuck way back in 2004. It didn't end up in Gilliam's hands until 2009 and it's hard telling just how much of Rushin's original script remains (Gilliam is also credited with "additional dialogues"). But even if you factor out the dated subject of virtual reality, Gilliam just doesn't seem like he's bringing his A-game to this one.
That's not to say it's a bad movie, but Gilliam just has nothing significant to say. THE ZERO THEOREM is packed with visual and thematic callbacks to earlier Gilliam films (most notably BRAZIL, 1991's THE FISHER KING and 1995's 12 MONKEYS, and eagle-eyed viewers will spot a quick cameo by Gilliam's late FISHER KING star Robin Williams), but not in a way that advances the film or Gilliam as an artist. Instead, it's done in a way that makes what was once innovative and groundbreaking seem uninspired and stale. In a future that's equal parts BRAZIL, BLADE RUNNER and the Martian red-light district in Paul Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL, ManCom worker drone/"entity cruncher" Qohan Leth (Christoph Waltz) lives in the ruins of a fire-ravaged church that was abandoned by a sect of monks who took a vow of silence (in one of the film's few inspired moments, Leth quips that "No one broke the silence to yell 'Fire!'"). Leth works as a mathematician of sorts at a Kafka-esque workspace that looks like a video game console. He pleads for a work-at-home assignment because he's waiting for a special phone call--a phone call he's been waiting on for years--and doesn't want to miss it. He gets his wish, and is assigned by his jokey ("I'm a few raisins short of a full scoop!") but condescending supervisor Joby (David Thewlis) to work on finding "The Zero Theorem," a guaranteed dead-end of an equation that manages to defeat anyone who attempts to solve it. Leth slowly loses his mind as he obsessively tries and fails to conquer the Zero Theorem, all while dealing with the impossibly demanding upload schedule, represented by calls from a judgmental-sounding automated computer voice. Sensing that Leth is stressed out, Joby has Bainsley (Melanie Thierry) visit him. Leth once met Bainsley at a party of Joby's that he reluctantly attended, and he's crushed when he eventually learns she's a sex worker who was paid to see him. He also gets intrusive visits from ManCom intern Bob (Lucas Hedges), the 15-year-old son of ManCom manager Management (Matt Damon).
That Damon's cold, unfeeling manager character is actually named "Management" is a pretty solid indicator of just how heavy-handed the dark-humored elements of THE ZERO THEOREM can be. Tilda Swinton also turns up, still sporting her SNOWPIERCER teeth, as Leth's online therapist, named "Dr. Shrink-ROM." Really? Subtlety is not the name of Gilliam's game here. The dated concepts, the Gilliam's Greatest Hits selections (at least three supporting characters are almost identical variants of those seen in BRAZIL), and the ham-fisted ways he demonstrates the dehumanized nature of Leth's corporate-saturated world that's a garish interpretation of our own conspire to present a Terry Gilliam that may have reached that late-period Stanley Kubrick or present-day George Romero/Terrence Malick tipping point where an influential, trail-blazing genius is getting a little older and is starting to come off like a guy who doesn't seem to get out much.
While it has a sizable number of issues on the writing front, THE ZERO THEOREM does score in a strictly visual sense. The decaying church that Leth calls home is marvel of production design, and a ghoulish, hairless Waltz, looking like a futuristic Nosferatu, has never been creepier. Waltz plays Leth as aggressively unlikable as possible and it's a challenge for the actor to keep the audience focused on a thoroughly irritating and unappealing character who generates little sympathy. Leth speaks in plurals, constantly referring to himself as "we" and "us," and he's always testing the patience of those around him with his extreme OCD ways. It's a tough performance, and even though the endless tics and mannerisms bring to mind Brad Pitt's Jeffrey Goines in 12 MONKEYS, the great Waltz is up to the task, which helps as it's largely The Christoph Waltz Show throughout. The actors and the production design team persevere through a bit of a misfire that has a difficult time overcoming its "been there, done that" vibe. Gilliam is past the point of proving himself, and by no means is THE ZERO THEOREM an exercise in futility like, say, a new Dario Argento film. At 73, Gilliam has every right to coast into his emeritus years by raiding his back catalog if that's what he wants to do, but I don't think it's demanding too much to expect something a little more substantive from someone of his stature. But then, it's not like Gilliam's been on a roll lately: PARNASSUS was his first good film since 1998's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, with 2005 giving us the Gilliam career-nadir double-shot of THE BROTHERS GRIMM and TIDELAND. PARNASSUS was a welcome return to the filmmaker's fun, ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN side and a step in the right direction. Five years later with THE ZERO THEOREM, and Gilliam is simply running in place.
