There are plenty of criticisms that could legitimately be levelled at director Terry Gilliam, but a lack of ambition isn’t one of them. The man behind dystopian sci-fi classics like Brazil and 12 Monkeys (along with lighter fare like Time Bandits and his early Monty Python fare), Gilliam is known for aiming high and sorting out pesky details — budget, say, or popular appeal — later. When it works, his approach can lead to unparalleled flights of fancy. Even when it doesn’t, the results can still be impressive — see Lost in La Mancha, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s 2002 documentary about Gilliam’s failed (some would say cursed) attempt to adapt Don Quixote, if you’re not convinced.
Although The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’s production wasn’t as disastrous as that Quixote attempt, it was plagued with enough misfortune that the film’s title has become shorthand for cinematic fiasco. Thanks to forced location changes and ambitious special effects, the film came in at double its intended budget ($46 million U.S., rather than $23 million), and recouped less than a fifth of that at the box office. Munchausen’s four Oscar nominations might have mitigated some of the damage to Gilliam’s career, but there’s no doubt it’s plagued the director every time he’s approached a financier since.
Twenty years on, it has become considerably easier to look past the financial fiasco and see the film for the rollicking ode to imagination that Gilliam intended. John Neville plays the titular baron, a man whose exploits are the stuff of tall tales. He’s the kind of character who hitches rides on cannonballs and finds himself dancing with the goddess of love, all without batting an eye. The film sees him sailing to the moon (and matching wits with an uncredited but typically over-the-top Robin Williams as the king of that satellite), meeting Roman gods in the depths of a volcano and staying one step ahead of a particularly spooky grim spectre of death. The rest of the cast contains stars both established (Oliver Reed, Eric Idle) or soon-to-be (a 17-year-old Uma Thurman and an even younger Sarah Polley), all of them turning in broad but perfectly suited performances.
Maybe the oddest part of watching Munchausen now is seeing how greatly it contrasts with Gilliam’s most recent output. The film’s upbeat, farcical tone and legitimately happy ending couldn’t be more different from Tideland, the director’s recent blacker-than-pitch comedy about a young girl who runs away with her junkie dad after her mom overdoses (er… ha ha?). As interesting as that film was, it’s nice to look back and watch Gilliam’s imagination soar in a much more innocent way.
The 20th Anniversary re-release features a commentary track by director Terry Gilliam and co-screenwriter Charles McKeown, as well as a documentary on the troubles that plagued the film’s production and storyboards of sequences that were planned, but never filmed.
