While Gilliam's films away from Python-Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil and Munchausen-are noted for their wild designs and special effects, the stories each hinge on clashes between unyielding or oppressive social orders and the efforts of a visionary few to break through calcified modes of behavior and thinking.
No, they don't.
In Brazil, Sam Lowry isn't trying to break through any part of the bureaucratic future-retro police state in which he lives, he just wants to fly away and escape with the girl of his dreams. That's why the ending, as downbeat as it is, is so satisfying: Dramatically speaking, he gets what he deserves.
In Time Bandits, Kevin just wants to have an adventure, the dwarves just want to plunder the treasures of history. Frankly, the only character in the movie who is making any kind of an effort "to break through calcified modes of behavior and thinking" at all is...
...Evil. And he's vanquished in the end (if only temporarily) by a Supreme Being symbolized as a fusty schoolmaster-the very picture of a "calcified mode of behavior."
In Munchausen, okay, fair, I suppose you could say that the Baron and company are visionaries trying to break through the walls of what some call reality.
But saying that makes it sound like a much more argumentative, heavier film than it is, so let's not.
Finally, in Jabberwocky Dennis, like Sam, isn't trying to have any adventures, but the "oppressive social order" depicted in the film rewards him in spite of himself.
That's why the ending is so ironic.
Sorry, but few things ruffle my feathers like journalists twisting stories to fit their half-baked theories. I don't like it when they do it about the army or the republican party, and I certainly don't like it when they do it about two or three of my favorite movies...
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