The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Terry Gilliam, 2010.
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Edition screened: Sony Blu-ray, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 122 minutes.
Summary: Crass murder of a chicken.
Details:
1) A chicken’s neck is wrung on-camera at 40:50, then partially plucked at 40:20. The dead chicken is prominent in frame during dialogue through 44:22.
2) A fantasy gondola runs into a bloated dead cow floating in the water, 55:42-55:57.
The worst aspect is Gilliam’s directorial poor taste, having the dead chicken with its distended broken neck held pointlessly in front of the camera for four minutes while characters talk. I’m sure he thought it was hilarious: “It looks like a rubber chicken, but it’s real! A real chicken!” Similar to directorial decisions in The Brothers Grimm, it’s not so much that killing an animal constitutes the joke, but that it just isn’t funny at all and that Gilliam thinks a dead animal makes it funny. It’s no different, no better, no funnier, than comedians who think their unlaughable material suddenly is hilarious if they force drug references or vulgarity into the doldrum. Actually, Gilliam does just that in Fear and Loathing … and nothing else … for two hours.