This DVD version of Terry
Gilliam’s
Jabberwocky
was released simultaneously with a 2-DVD set of
Monty
Python and the Holy Grail (1975), and advertised as a film
from the makers of the latter. That is, of course, not totally groundless.
With Jabberwocky, the filmmakers got rid of the money they
made with Grail and there are three actors from the Monty
Python crew along, namely Michael Palin with Terry Gilliam and Terry
Jones in minor roles. This is however more a post-Python or quasi-Python
movie, a comedy that perhaps isn’t the best possible mixture of its
varied elements — satire, fairy-tale, mediaeval epoch-presentation
and animation-like jokes. “It would be funnier if we took most of
the jokes out”, confesses Gilliam in his commentary.Even though one might not call Jabberwocky exactly a Monty Python movie, there are many Pythonian touches: visual gags and overall treatment of the past, inserting modern characters, modern worries, and modern obsessions into the mediaeval world (cf. A Knight’s Tale). As one may expect, this isn’t a serious movie but more of a parody or satire of knight tales and movies, turning the circumstances upside down. All people here are more or less crazy and deluded, the knights clumsy and helpless, the king a senile idiot and the princess a gullible dreamer with no connection to reality whatsoever, the hero kills the monster purely by accident, and the castle is shaggy and dirty, falling apart all the time. The sets are quite realistic, however: all the mediaeval costumes and buildings appear credible, if not necessarily shiny and polished.
There are many picturesque
scenes and views. The makers wanted to create Brueghel paintings that
moved, and some scenes have taken their inspiration from Caravaggio
(e.g., the father dying) or Hieronymus Bosch (the character of Wat
Dabney, played by Jerold Wells). The modesty of the interiors is
compensated for by ingenious camera-work. The crowd scenes are vivid,
and only in the tournament sequence does one feel that too much is left to
the viewer’s imagination. On the other hand, the throwing of more
and more blood on the royal entourage produces a hilarious effect,
mocking the blood-thirstiness of times ancient and modern.If one thinks modern cinema up to 1977, some points of reference, also mentioned in the audio commentary by Gilliam and Palin, are easy to find: Jaws and P. P. Pasolini’s films, Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal (especially the scene with the flagellants accompanied by Dies Iræ) and Andrey Tarkovsky’s Andrey Rublyov. Of later movies, one easily thinks of Predator because the monster treats his or her victims in a similar way, leaving the latter’s bone structure intact.
Despite the title, Jabberwocky isn’t so much a Lewis Carroll movie, and his influence is very marginal. He is credited last, with small print, as the Rev. Charles Dodgson. A few lines from the poem “Jabberwocky” are recited during the film (in a manner that reminds one of Federico Fellini) and the monster that gets slain is clearly modelled after John Tenniel’s illustration of the beast.
In this film we can see the
entire British comedy establishment at work. Michael Palin works up a
great performance as the main character Dennis Cooper, the
cooper’s half-wit apprentice. Semioticians might call him a
“pathemic subject”, i.e., a wretched one to whom things
just keep happening. Max Wall as the king, Bruno the Questionable, gives
a jovial performance of the senile, baby-like king, reciting the dialogue
without his false teeth. Harry H. Corbett (the squire), John Le Mesurier
(the chamberlain) and Warren Mitchell (Mr. Fishfinger) make the best of
their roles, as does Simon Williams in his very brief
appearance as a real prince. Kind Bruno and chamberlain Passelewe look
and sound like an old married couple. Gorden Kaye plays Sister
Jessica (!). Besides, many trivial if interesting details are revealed
in the audio
commentary. For instance, the big knights are played by Dave Prowse
who also appeared as Darth Vader in Star Wars, shot at the
same time in London. As his voice is somewhat unsuitable for those roles,
his lines were spoken by Wall in Jabberwocky and by James
Earl Jones in Star Wars.
One might start pondering on
the symbolism and message of Jabberwocky the movie. When
the film was shown at a film festival in Italy, the audience wanted to know
if the depiction of mediaeval economy criticizes Thatcherism (the
merchants think the beast is good for their own economy) and if the beast
symbolizes Communism. According to the makers, the film might be seen
at least a critique of Thatcherite politics, and most certainly it is
anti-American, with all the black teeth and overall dirtiness (compared
with Rock Hudson and Doris Day). Another underlying theme we are told
is the relation between man and nature. This is illustrated in the very
beginning where we see a beautiful butterfly brutally trampled to
death.
The obvious problem with
Jabberwocky is that it is an over-loaded mixture of very varied
styles and aims — horror and satire, scatological humour and
Brueghel landscapes — and the multitude undermines the totality.
All the great art-works are, of course, multi-layered and carry several
meanings simultaneously, but in the case of Jabberwocky the
combination is not a happy one: the basic plot is understandable and
satirical but the way of telling it distracts the viewer all the time; the
surplus comedy works against the plot and the contrasts are too extreme.
We are constantly asked to re-interpret the events but this happens without
purpose. Probably this is caused by the editor’s deep reverence of
the Pythons, which prohibited him from cutting out the silly things that do
not work.The Finnish title for this film, Jappervokki, is a very unfortunate twist. It represents, however, a long tradition of abused and questionable movie titles in Finland. The distributors are, for some odd reason, used to underestimate the intellectual capacities of our audiences and the translated titles for some films are embarrassing and silly. By 1977, we already had a Finnish translation of “Jabberwocky”, known as “Pekoraali”, and it could have been used for the film as well.
The anonymous Finnish translator of this DVD release has actually created a new rendering of his or her own of the two stanzas that we hear in the film:
