The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) Review

rating: ****

the story: Baron Munchausen dooms and then saves a European city thanks to his fantastical adventures.

review: I first saw The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in college some twenty years back, but eventually it took a backseat to other Terry Gilliam films (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote became my favorites, and Brazil became better known to me among his earlier efforts).  So in revisiting it, I've rediscovered it.

Munchausen, incredibly, based on a real historical figure, albeit one known for his incredible tales, which were themselves eventually written into fiction, was a famously troubled production that became a box office bomb, and so if you know of it at all, it's because of Gilliam, or your general interest in cult films.  And yet it was filmed in a decade full of fantasy productions chasing Star Wars, and is probably the best of them.  Probably?  It is.  It absolutely is.  How could the results be any different, with Gilliam at the helm?

Conceptually and artistically, there are few filmmakers who rival Gilliam's vision.  In order to achieve it, he usually goes all the way to hell and back (which is why Man Who Killed Don Quixote went into production twice, the first time producing only the documentary Lost in La Mancha, in which the epic collapse of the film is chronicled).  His old Monty Python colleague Eric Idle, who costars in Munchausen, had already gleamed such a reputation when he agreed to appeared in the film.  

Aside from Dox Quixote itself, it's hard to find a better, more natural story to showcase Gilliam's gifts than Munchausen, in which the world of the fantastic is superimposed on the real world by a charismatic and yet disconnected lead character, who in this case eventually has everyone believing in the same reality, mostly because there are supernatural elements that are so mythical they become accepted for reality, such as Idle's speedster.  (Although Idle's real talent is of course his voice; along with John  Cleese, who also hails from Monty Python, he has one of the most naturally hilarious voices of the past fifty years in film.)

The lead is played by John Neville, a fairly unknown commodity otherwise who nonetheless fills the fantastical shoes of Baron Munchausen regardless of depicted age (a sliding scale on par with all the other loose elements of reality).  He's got Gilliam's Brazil lead actor Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed (later best known for the role he died playing for Gladiator), Uma Thurman, and Sarah Polley, still just as a child, supporting him, plus a Robin Williams uncredited performance that seems like a preview of his Genie from Aladdin in hindsight.  

In fact, if I had never seen Tarsem's masterpiece The Fall, Munchausen would now stand as my favorite film in the fantasy genre.  Where Tarsem eclipses Gilliam, here, Gilliam would rally later to catch up (his Don Quixote was worth the wait).