Terry Gilliam

"Terry Gilliam" presents a sustained and comprehensive examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs. It proposes fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analyzing his work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his "Monty Python" animations through the nightmarish masterpiece "Brazil "to the provocative Gothic horror of "Tideland," Marks critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output.

The book situates Gilliam within the cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, and examines his struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. Gilliam emerges as a passionate, committed and immensely creative director, whose completed body of work encompasses a dizzying and inventive array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and gothic horror. The book shows how Gilliam employs, interweaves and refashions these genres to create magical interfaces between constricted reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination.