A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam provides a fresh, up-to-date exploration of the director's films and artistic practices, ranging from his first film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) up until his recently released and latest film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018). This volume presents Gilliam as a director whose films weave an avant-garde cinematic style, imaginative exaggeration, and social critique together. Consequently, while his films can seem artistically chaotic and can, thus, have the effect of frustrating and upsetting the viewer, the essays in this volume show that this is part of a very disciplined creative plan to achieve the defamiliarization of various accepted notions of human and social life.
Sabine Planka is librarian for the humanities at the University Library of FernUniversitat Hagen and visiting lecturer in the field of children's literature at various universities such as Bielefeld University and Humboldt-Universitat Berlin. Ian Bekker is professor in the English Department at North-West University. Philip van der Merwe is senior lecturer in the School of Languages at North-West University.
1.Terry Gilliam, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Cinephilia Chris Broodryk 2.Ideology Through the Looking Glass: Terry Gilliam's Lewis Carroll and the Politics of Comedy in Jabberwocky and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Garreth O'Brien 3.Carnival and the Imaging of Language in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977) and Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) Ian Bekker 4.Subversion of the Cosmos in Time Bandits David Robinson 5."'I Think It Has Something to Do with Free Will': Time Bandits as Gilliam's Theodicy" Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 6."Meet to Eat. The Restaurant as Narrative Setting in Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and The Fisher King (1991)" Sabine Planka 7."A Bittersweet Apocalypse: Averted Endings and Suspended Hope in 12 Monkeys" Andrew Grossman 8."The Art of Deserts in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" Philip van der Merwe 9."Between the Forest and Civilization: Liminal Spaces in Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm (2005)" Sabine Planka and Philip van der Merwe 10."Tideland and the Ossification of the Imaginary Faculties" Jonathan Fruoco 11."Wonderland and the Wasteland: The Colorfully Dirty Mise en Scene of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)" Ivy Roberts 12. "Black Hole: The Zero Theorem and the Pointless Quest," Michael Charlton 13."The Zero and One Theorem: A Meta/Physics of the Digital," Ulrich Meurer Afterword: Gilliam's Legacy Karen Randell
