The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Blu-ray Review)

If you've been in a cinema recently you've probably seen the trailer for Steven Spielberg's new film, The Fabelmans, which begins with Mitzi Fabelman saying “Movies are dreams.” More than any other living director (with the possible exception of David Lynch), Terry Gilliam makes cinematic dreams, an endeavour which is increasingly out of vogue with critics' ridiculous desire for “realism.” Cinema, in the sense of projecting images captured on celluloid, is a magic trick that creates an illusion of motion on a blank screen. Georges Méliès, the illusionist turned filmmaker of A Trip to a Moon, understood, so it's no wonder that Méliès made the first film inspired by the fictional exploits of Baron Munchausen with his 1911 short film Baron Munchausen's Dream. He had planned a bigger film inspired by Munchausen, and as late as the 1930s was planning to make it as a collaboration with the Dadaist, Hans Richter.

The Nazi propaganda machine made the first full version of Munchausen, which was a surprising counterpoint to everything the Nazis believed in. The film's screenwriter, Erich Kästner, was immediately backlisted by Hitler after viewing some footage of the film. Kästner was already under suspicion due to his pacifism and “culturally Bolshevist attitude” (you've heard the right-wing complain about “Cultural Marxism”… I wonder where they learned that from?) in his earlier work. Before Gilliam filmed his version in 1987, Karel Zeman had also made The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (or in its native Czech Baron Prášil) in the early '60s. Zeman's film was a wondrous feature, with its breath-taking mixture of live-action and animation. The techniques he used go all the way back to the illusions Méliès was doing 60 years earlier, and if you didn't know it was from '60s you would be forgiven to think it's some lost masterpiece from Méliès.

Being the pesky anti-authoritarian that he has always been, Gilliam took on Sid Sheinberg after Sheinberg refused to release Gilliam's version of his 1985 masterpiece Brazil. Gilliam took out a full-page obituary-like ad in Variety with the following text: “Dear Sid Sheinberg. When are you going to release my film Brazil?” Gilliam also started showing the film clandestinely to students, filmmakers and L.A. critics, who gave it all the top prizes from their critic group. It was a checkmate move that forced Sheinberg to release the film with the “downer” ending intact and only some minor edits. It remains one of the most audacious things a filmmaker has ever done to gain creative control over his film, and Gilliam gained the respect of everybody in the industry. Even Universal's golden boy, Steven Spielberg, told Gilliam that he liked the film and that it reminded him of his nightmares. Whatever Gilliam did next was going to be a hot property and he was given the opportunity to make anything he wanted—and on a much bigger scale than even Brazil. He chose to make his own Munchausen film, which he titled The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The production history of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is the stuff of legend, but basically it ballooned over-budget. However, Gilliam maintains it was never the $47 million or so that the press have reported, it was around $35 million, which had always been the budget he gave to Columbia. Gilliam once jokingly said, “I'm not good with money… I'm aware of money.” David Puttnam was then the head of Columbia, and made an oral deal with Gilliam. But then Dawn Steel replaced Puttnam during production, and had an instant hostility to anything Puttnam signed off on, including Munchausen.

The shoot was clearly difficult. Sarah Polley has written a harrowing account of her own experience as an eight-year-old girl on the set, but still loves the film despite everything that happened to her. The production made Gilliam known as an “out of control madman,” when in reality much of what happened wasn't down to him. He has never been hugely over budget or schedule again in his entire career, with the exception of the 2000 attempt at The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which literally encountered floods that would've made Noah blush.

So, on to the film: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen remains one of the most magical films made in the later half of the 20th century, and is perfect finale to Gilliam's informal “Trilogy of Imagination” with Brazil and Time Bandits. The film is set in the “age of reason,” and as a nameless European city is under siege by the Ottoman army, the local theatre company puts on a stage version of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to entertain those left in the war-torn city. One evening an elderly man announces himself to the real Baron Munchausen and complains about its numerous inaccuracies. He starts telling his version of the story, but is interrupted by gunfire. Soon afterwards, Munchausen is fired into the sky on a cannonball. On his return, he announces that he alone can save the city, and escapes the city in a handmade hot air balloon to get his ragtag team of “servants”—but Sally (Sarah Polley), the young daughter of the theatre company's leader, is a stowaway. They go to the moon, to the depths of the ocean, and to volcanos in his quest to get his team back together so they can defeat the Turkish invaders. Is it all a big lie from this old man, a figment of Sally's imagination, or maybe it wasn't just a “story” after all?

The production design is breath-taking from the first second: no expense was cut; you are completely immersed into Gilliam's world. It's tactile, it has a “reality” that is lost in contemporary fantasy or special-effects-laden films—no matter what frame rate or ground-breaking CGI James Cameron can do in a Avatar film, it won't come close to the experience I had when I first saw this film. I was a little kid in the '90s, watching it in Portland, Oregon's movie palace, the Hollywood Theatre. I'm still chasing the dragon of that experience, so to speak, but luckily, I still can tap into that anytime I watch the film. Or any of Gilliam's great films, for that matter even. Even some of Gilliam's “lesser films,” like The Brothers Grimm, have some of that magic.

John Neville plays the Baron. Neville was kind of the Mark Rylance of his time, a stage actor who did a few films in the '60s but dedicated his life mainly to the theatre. Unlike Rylance, he never got the film bug after his years of theatre, although he did do more film and TV, most notably a recurring role on The X-Files as The Well-Manicured Man. It was never his calling and that's a shame, because Munchausen was the role of the lifetime. Neville has endless charm, and the way he de-ages before your eyes is one of the film's greatest illusions. Gilliam originally envisioned Peter O'Toole in the role, and you can see that would have worked, but the fact that Neville was practically unknown to filmgoers gave it a certain authenticity, without the baggage of a movie star like O'Toole would've brought to the role. Both actors do have that certain “twinkle in the eye” that is necessary for the character of the Baron.

The rest of the cast are mainly Gilliam regulars. Eric Idle (the last time Gilliam would ever cast a fellow Python), Jack Purvis, Jonathan Pryce, Winston Dennis all appear, and Robin Williams has an unpaid and uncredited role as the King of the Moon. Williams was a last-minute casting decision: Gilliam knew Williams socially, so when Sean Connery backed out at the eleventh hour and he needed a big name for the cast, Williams stepped in. The segment on the moon is undoubtably the worst part of the film performance-wise: he just let Williams ad-lib his entire dialogue, and it shows. Still, the ingenious decision to make the moon city into 2D cardboard cut-outs makes up for any problem with William's performance, and actually ties it back to Karel Zeman's own techniques. Gilliam even put his co-screenwriter Charles McKeown in a prominent role, a good old Hollywood trick to get free rewrites on set.

Sarah Polley gives one of the great juvenile performances, and provides the audience's perspective for the entire film. Gilliam has an affection for children, little people, the mentally ill, dreamers and drug-addled writers, because they all see the world differently from what we would now call the neurotypical. Polley never plays it cute, either, which I'm sure is partly why Gilliam cast her in the role—she has real depth as a performer that young. It's no wonder that she has become a well-established filmmaker in her own right in the last decade and a half.

Oliver Reed gives one of his best late performances as the god Vulcan. He was a terror on the set, as always, but given to all the other chaos, Gilliam seems to have gotten him to show some vulnerability at one point in an otherwise very over-the-top performance. Uma Thurman plays Vulcan's wife Venus in one of the greatest entries in cinematic history, and it's really an “A Star is Born”-like moment. The waltz between her and the Baron is what dreams are made of.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was a huge bomb on its US release, because Dawn Steel went out of her way to bury the film. The film was released at its highest in 120 theatres in the entire US, which killed its chances to recoup costs at the box office. However, the film did find some admirers among the critics who reviewed the film, not the budget, and the word-of-mouth was strong. It could and should have been a bit hit, like Time Bandits or The NeverEnding Story. Over the years the film's stature has only grown.

Criterion released the film years ago on laserdisc, so it's nice to see it finally arrive on Blu-Ray with a fantastic mixture of new and old special features. The commentary track from Gilliam and McKeown is from the 2008 release, and it's a great track—Gilliam always gives very funny and insightful commentary tracks, so it's a shame he hasn't done any for his most recent films. The three-part documentary from that release is also ported over, and it plays like a prequel to Lost in La Mancha. In a new extra, Gilliam walks you through the extraordinary special effects work for the film. There are also 30 minutes of storyboards, some “Marketing Munchausen” features that include Gilliam reading some of the test cards, and David Cairns does a video essay on the cinematic history of Munchausen. A 1991 South Bank episode with a brilliant overview of Gilliam's career up to that point and Gilliam's 1974 short film The Miracle of Flight round off the extras on the disc. The essay in the booklet is by critic and author Michael Koresky. 

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen joins the Criterion Collection on January 30th