cast (Cleese, Palin, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Ian Holm, and Katherine Helmond) and more alluring cinematography, the film was a much larger success thanJabberwocky and prompted critics to view Gilliam as a promising new writer and director. After producing two more Monty Python films, Gilliam returned to solo work in 1984 with Brazil. In Brazil Gilliam creates an odd dystopian world in which people dress in 1940's fashions and use computers with early twentieth-century typewriter-like keyboards. Everything appears to be broken, run-down, or dirty in the film, but characters employ high-tech gadgets with as much frequency as mundane twentieth-century devices. The story follows Sam Lowery, a bureaucrat who encounters trouble with the government when he tries to fix an administrative error and sends an innocent man to jail. Lowery escapes from the grime and drudgery of society through his fantastic dreams and vivid imagination. However, he is unable to differentiate between illusion and reality, and eventually, when he is taken prisoner, he completely escapes to the dream world leaving his body behind to be tortured.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a visually stunning film starring John Neville as Baron Munchausen, a character drawn from European mythology who is known to tell outrageous and unbelievable stories. In the film, Gilliam vividly depicts several of Baron Munchausen's tallest tales. For this movie, Gilliam utilized a large budget and grandiose special effects to depict the baron riding a cannonball, dancing with Venus, and traveling to the moon. In 1991, Gilliam directed a film he didn't also write: The Fisher King, a comic fable that takes place in present-day New York City. Jeff Bridges stars as Jack, a severely depressed ex-disc jockey whose life is rescued by Parry, a homeless man played by Robin Williams. Parry has experienced extensive trauma during his life and is obsessed with all things medieval. He is consumed in a search for the Holy Grail, and he enlists Jack's help in finding it. Gilliam encourages the audience to question Parry's sanity and whether Parry's literal quest for the Grail might symbolize something deeper, such as a search for enlightenment or spiritual fulfillment. In 1995, Gilliam directed Twelve Monkeys, an apocalyptic science-fiction thriller. Based on the film La Jetée by Chris Marker, Twelve Monkeys relates the story of a convict (played by Bruce Willis), who is sent back in time to stop a plague that has wiped out ninety-nine percent of the Earth's population. The plague has forced survivors to live underground due to fear of contamination. In Twelve Monkeys Gilliam conveys a bleak future and emphasizes one of his favorite recurrent themes in films—man's distrust of technology. In 1998, Gilliam returned to screenwriting and adapted Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the screen. The film follows Uncle Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio del Toro) on a weekend trip to Las Vegas in which they experiment with a wide variety of drugs. The entire movie is seen through the distorted perspective of drug induced hallucinations. The two companions ingest a combination of marijuana, ether, LSD, and alcohol with reckless abandon; and Gilliam, like Thompson, uses their warped realities to lend black humor to their self-abusive behavior.

Critical Reception

Many critics laud Gilliam for his daring imagery while others argue that this extraordinary imagery tends to overwhelm his narratives. Most reviewers, however, tend to praise Gilliam for his utilization of imagination and for creating films that are not only visual spectacles but are thematically critical in hopeful, comedic ways. Peter Travers in Rolling Stone writes: “Even when Terry Gilliam's latest leap into the wild blue of futuristic fantasy is at its most confounding, you leap along with him. Such is the seductive power of his twisted imagination.”