Terry Gilliam: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best
5. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
None of Terry Gilliam's movies have been quite as polarizing as his adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinatory literary masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Its detractors lambast it for being a messy, delirious, incoherent cacophony assaulting the senses, while its fans laud it for being a messy, delirious, incoherent cacophony assaulting the senses. Of course, they're both right it's all a matter of personal taste when it comes to adapting source material which was considered inherently "unfilmable". Anyone who's read the original book understands that if you were to attempt to craft a cohesive plot you'd be missing the point - the story of Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) heading to Vegas and getting loaded on an array of mind-bending psychedelics is almost an irrelevance; the trip itself is far less important than "the trip" and all that it represents. The drug experience by its nature lacks logic and an affinity with the real world - indeed, it distorts, refracts and flips reality on its head, puking a bleak rainbow from its gargling mouth. Gilliam's ability to render this surreal mental landscape in such an acutely intuitive manner is a testament to his mastery of the form and function of cinema in perhaps its purest forms. Perhaps only Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void achieves the same objective presentation of the subjective nature of a mind under the influence of powerful psychedelics. Terry Gilliam was himself a product of the late 60s and early 70s who left America disillusioned by the corruption of the State under President Nixon (although he claims to never have taken psychedelics), echoing the theme in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas concerning the end of an era falling from the crest of the wave of the counter-culture movement and the end of the hope the movement had inspired. In this sense, the drugs and by extension the movie itself are a metaphor for America's season in Hell, where the American dream gave way to an endless nightmare characterised by political corruption and endless war.
