Difficult, brutal, indulgent, but in the end largely worth it

I'll begin by saying Brazil is one of my favorite all time films and I loved Twelve Monkeys so much I watched it twice in a row, which I NEVER HAD DONE BEFORE OR SINCE.

On the other hand, several of Gilliams other films have had a sort of preciousness to them, I am reminded of the endless TIRESOME riffing Robin Williams, as King of the Moon, did in that otherwise pretty good film, Baron Munchausen. Sometimes, Gilliam's scenes just run too long, like, "we get it, it is supposed to be lunacy, we GET IT already...". Also, ,my personal taste, I am not too fond of his style of cartoonish fantasy scenes.

With this film, I expected a hard slog, this being considered a difficult film. I must say, I was glad I persisted and watched the entire thing, the payoff really does not come until the very end, with the tragedy.

Meanwhile, the young actress is incredible in the way she brings you into a child's imagination. In the end the concept of the film is that despite the insanity all around the child, it only is all turned into pieces of the child's fantasy life, the child inured, protected, from true emotional harm, as is seen at the end when the child is in the woman's arms and she is just another kid being a kid, scared and shy after all, but otherwise normal, like any other kid.

The film had to be ugly, to show the true difficult modern life of marginal characters, the characters she encounters later on have to, in their way, also display extremely distressing traits, and regardless of the insanity around her, it is all brought back to a tidy end with the last scene.

Overall, glad I saw this, though I understand why so many find it brutal, difficult and overlong, the film could have used some judicious editing, to bring down the excess, and the writing could have been improved, to try to tie in the incidents that occur into a more cogent whole rather than the seeming irrelevant jumble, but then, on the other hand, the film would not have had the playful, random feel it did have, a feel that resembles life (the endless argument of whether a film should be lifelike or modified to be watchable, Antonioni had it right, hitting "life speed" only at strategic points, to emphasize key parts of the story plot), all of which can also be taken as a positive, by those again willing to indulge the director.

Could have been one of the greatest films, and maybe that is a lot of fodder for future conversations, as to what elements bring this film just shy of truly GREAT. Others who love this film will disagree of course and that is fine too.

Gilliam has never been one to comprmise, and to the enrichment of humanity in the long run, so far the films of his I have seen are at the least interesting and worth pondering and many are also solidly entertaining. So the director has a lot going for him, despite his famous difficulties with fate and caprice in so many past films, I do hope he still has it in him, and money people have the wisdom to see him as a worthy director, for this legend to continue to put out some more solid films before he gets too doddering.

I won't rate the film, too tricky a film for me to try to fit a number to it. But maybe a breakdown: cinematography 8, story 6, acting 7, directing 8.


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