This week finally sees the home release of Terry Gilliam’s latest effort, The Zero Theorem. The film itself is debatable, but it does lie in the better camp of Gilliam’s films for me personally for one reason mainly. There was one shot in the film that transcended and defined the whole work, and I’ll get to it in a minute. For now I want to talk about certain defining images of Gilliam’s filmography that ended up informing the audience about everything they needed to know about the film.
12 Monkeys – Hamster Wheel Imagery
I can’t remember who pointed it out first, nor is there just one specific shot in the film to pick from, but the analysis of it has attained a mythic aura about it bordering on conspiracy theory – I’m talking about the hamster wheel imagery in 12 Monkeys. It’s in the insignia for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, there are small hamster wheels in the corners of shots as well as a shadow reflection rumored to be in others. Trying to find them all is enough to make you as crazy as Brad Pitt’s character Jeffrey Goines. But what this sort of imagery is put there for is to subtly inform the audience that no matter what James Cole does, he will not change the outcome of the future. Every action he takes is cyclical, and in the end he really is just a hamster running in place.
Brazil – The Fishbowl
Similar to the shot in 12 Monkeys, Gilliam manages to pack a large source of foreshadowing information in the corner of the screen. In a scene near the beginning Sam talks with his boss Kurtzmann, and in the corner of Kurtzmann’s desk is a fishbowl. In that fishbowl is a fish going around in circles repeatedly. It mirrors precisely the type of narrative that Sam ends up going through. No matter what he does, the dystopia course-corrects him so that he ends up just going in circles. It’s a quick and minute bit of imagery compared to what’s happening in the foreground of the shot, I didn’t even notice it until my 3rd watch of the film, but when you do notice it, another level of appreciation for the film forms.
The Zero Theorem – Surveillance Jesus
The Zero Theorem is a pure Gilliam film, and that’s a statement filled with compliment and criticism. He stumbles and trips around through the film, but it is purely his stumbling and tripping so I can admire it. But all that aside, there was one shot in the film that filled me with such giddy joy. Qohen Leth lives inside an abandoned church, and one quick shot cuts to an old statue of Jesus Christ, but the head has been replaced with a surveillance camera. In just that one image, all the satire about interconnectivity becoming its own religion that Gilliam has been shooting for comes into sight. The film never reaches the powerful levels of that imagery, but that’s okay because that moment reaches so high. Jesus isn’t just watching you now, he’s also recording.
