Sightlines · reception
How Jabberwocky was received
1977 · Terry Gilliam · Jabberwocky on Sightlines
The arc
In 1977 it landed with a thud — critics and audiences expecting Holy Grail 2 got a grubby, morose medieval satire instead, and reviews were largely unkind. It's since been reappraised as the true start of Gilliam-the-filmmaker, with a 2017 Criterion restoration sealing its rehabilitation.
What’s debated
The perennial fan debate: is it a soggy Holy Grail hangover, or the secret origin of Brazil that people only dismissed because they wanted more Python?
Its footprint
It's the ur-text of the 'authentically filthy Middle Ages' — every mud-caked, rotten-toothed medieval comedy since owes something to its squalor, and it turned Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem into an actual monster movie.
Where it stands
A cult object for Gilliam completists that's been quietly climbing the canon since Criterion canonized it — the 'actually, it's good' pick of his filmography.
Did you know? Distributors marketed it as 'Monty Python's Jabberwocky' to cash in on Holy Grail, and Gilliam fought to have the Python name stripped from it — he insisted it was his film, not a Python one.
Named by the director
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Gilliam said he wanted the film to look like Bruegel's peasant paintings brought to life, mud and all.
- Hieronymus Bosch — Gilliam cited Bosch's grotesque imagery as a key visual source for the film's medieval nightmare texture.