A thrilling, lively Classical-era fanfare heralds the Columbia logo and signals high adventure and romance, as we open in "the late 18th Century", the "Age of Reason", on a "Wednesday." Already we know that we are in the universe of the man behind Brazil, Terry Gilliam as the expectation caused by the opening chords is quickly subverted by the grim wartime feeling of a starving city under siege by the Turks. Even death itself makes an early appearance, a black winged skeletal angel that will continue to show up throughout the film and which seems to presage an ominous and early end indeed for the characters we meet in the beginning. Young Sally is the daughter of a traveling actor (and head of his theatrical troupe) who plays the magical Baron Munchausen, a fabulous hero famed for his tall tales revolving around such feats as a trip to the moon and the theft of a sultan's treasure. The pathetic troupe puts on its poor mockery of theater in a disintegrating, cavernous building as the town's leader, the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson (note that title), only to be upstaged by the "real" Baron (John Neville), a drunken and crazy old man - with a real and sharp sword - who proceeds to tell the story of how the town got into this mess....
Gilliam's film is the summation of all of his work as director up until this point, blending the childhood wonder of Time Bandits, the satire on bureaucracy and the feeling for the importance of imagination in the face of hopeless "rationality" of "Brazil", the broad humor of Monty Python and the references to Alice in Wonderland and medieval romance and tall tales of "Jabberwocky". Most of the film charts in a relatively linear way the adventures of the (real) Baron and Sally as they fly off in a balloon made of ladies' underwear in search of Munchausen's four fabulous servants - all of whom we have glimpsed in the opening scene, denying that they are anything but actors. Is the Baron crazy? Is the child Sally the only one who believes him, or in fact the only one who can experience his exploits, or save him from death? The film explores these and many other questions of storytelling and belief and the Baron grows more youthful with success, ages with failure -- as his friends seem at first not to recognize him, and then to be too old and feeble to help him. The baron himself loses faith at times, and only Sally is there to prop him up. At the end, a mind-boggling mixture of battles, triumph, death and funeral, resurrection and above all the Story of The Way It Should End all fuse into one of the most joyous and potent conclusions in film.
Gilliam draws on a wonderful array of sources for this film, which is certainly postmodern in the lightest yet most serious and beautiful sense - there are nods to Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Renaissance painting, Cyrano de Bergerac and the 1940 Thief of Bagdad among countless others, but the film never seems derivative or obvious; always it is focused on the pure joy of the tale and the strength and power of myth-making in the face of the tedium and joylessness represented by the unscrupulous and ultimately murderous Jackson - played with vicious glee by Jonathan Pryce in an ironic reversal of his role in Gilliam's previous film, "Brazil".
The cast is uniformly fine -- some may be irritated by Polley's admittedly shrill Sally though it seemed an appropriate (and necessary) characterization to me -- with standouts being Pryce, Eric Idle as the fleet-footed but somewhat dimwitted Berthold, and John Neville as the Baron in one of the most unjustly slighted performances from a banner year for film. Giuseppe Rotunno's photography makes much more of an impact on the big screen for sure but it is certainly beautiful enough (particularly in the outdoors/sky sequences) even on the DVD; and Michael Kamen's score is one of my all-time favorites and possibly the best work in his film career. The dialog may strike some as odd, in its mixture of late-20th-century idioms (particularly when voiced by the King of the Moon, Robin Williams) and the more carefully "authentic" 200-year-old jargon of characters like Jackson -- but like most elements of the film, this is carefully designed to throw us off and keep our sense of what is real and not always in doubt.
This is a film I've seen over and over - it scored a big impression when I saw it new, alas not on very many people - and it grows greater with each re-watch. Gilliam really manages here to articulate a very profound statement about how we are losing out way, about how the bottom line and the "rational" way of winning a war - or making a film - may in fact be heartless, cold, and ultimately more dead than the Baron seems to be just before the triumphant finish of the film.
Tied for my favorite film in the toughest year for me to pick a winner, with fellow masterpieces "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Last Temptation of Christ". Easily Gilliam's best film, and in its failure ultimately a signal for a new and less potent (though still interesting) direction in his work. A triumph then, and a tragedy - the film is the career, the career is the film.
Gilliam's film is the summation of all of his work as director up until this point, blending the childhood wonder of Time Bandits, the satire on bureaucracy and the feeling for the importance of imagination in the face of hopeless "rationality" of "Brazil", the broad humor of Monty Python and the references to Alice in Wonderland and medieval romance and tall tales of "Jabberwocky". Most of the film charts in a relatively linear way the adventures of the (real) Baron and Sally as they fly off in a balloon made of ladies' underwear in search of Munchausen's four fabulous servants - all of whom we have glimpsed in the opening scene, denying that they are anything but actors. Is the Baron crazy? Is the child Sally the only one who believes him, or in fact the only one who can experience his exploits, or save him from death? The film explores these and many other questions of storytelling and belief and the Baron grows more youthful with success, ages with failure -- as his friends seem at first not to recognize him, and then to be too old and feeble to help him. The baron himself loses faith at times, and only Sally is there to prop him up. At the end, a mind-boggling mixture of battles, triumph, death and funeral, resurrection and above all the Story of The Way It Should End all fuse into one of the most joyous and potent conclusions in film.
Gilliam draws on a wonderful array of sources for this film, which is certainly postmodern in the lightest yet most serious and beautiful sense - there are nods to Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Renaissance painting, Cyrano de Bergerac and the 1940 Thief of Bagdad among countless others, but the film never seems derivative or obvious; always it is focused on the pure joy of the tale and the strength and power of myth-making in the face of the tedium and joylessness represented by the unscrupulous and ultimately murderous Jackson - played with vicious glee by Jonathan Pryce in an ironic reversal of his role in Gilliam's previous film, "Brazil".
The cast is uniformly fine -- some may be irritated by Polley's admittedly shrill Sally though it seemed an appropriate (and necessary) characterization to me -- with standouts being Pryce, Eric Idle as the fleet-footed but somewhat dimwitted Berthold, and John Neville as the Baron in one of the most unjustly slighted performances from a banner year for film. Giuseppe Rotunno's photography makes much more of an impact on the big screen for sure but it is certainly beautiful enough (particularly in the outdoors/sky sequences) even on the DVD; and Michael Kamen's score is one of my all-time favorites and possibly the best work in his film career. The dialog may strike some as odd, in its mixture of late-20th-century idioms (particularly when voiced by the King of the Moon, Robin Williams) and the more carefully "authentic" 200-year-old jargon of characters like Jackson -- but like most elements of the film, this is carefully designed to throw us off and keep our sense of what is real and not always in doubt.
This is a film I've seen over and over - it scored a big impression when I saw it new, alas not on very many people - and it grows greater with each re-watch. Gilliam really manages here to articulate a very profound statement about how we are losing out way, about how the bottom line and the "rational" way of winning a war - or making a film - may in fact be heartless, cold, and ultimately more dead than the Baron seems to be just before the triumphant finish of the film.
Tied for my favorite film in the toughest year for me to pick a winner, with fellow masterpieces "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Last Temptation of Christ". Easily Gilliam's best film, and in its failure ultimately a signal for a new and less potent (though still interesting) direction in his work. A triumph then, and a tragedy - the film is the career, the career is the film.