The 80's Goes Stir Crazy: Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen is, as Mike commented earlier, part of Terry Gilliam's "Imagination," "Dreamer," or "Flights of Fancy" Trilogy. It is based on, or inspired by, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe. Baron Munchausen appears to have been a tall-tales hero--like Paul Bunyan or Alfred Bulltop Stormalong--long before his literary and film career.

For those of you who don't watch enough House, Munchausen is also a disorder--named after the good Baron's life--in which patients deliberately manufacture false symptoms of disease. These manufactured symptoms can extend to "skin infections or abscesses caused by injecting oneself with feces, sputum, or laboratory cultures of bacteria" (from Don R. Lipsitt's "The Munchausen Mystery").

MIKE SAYS this is easily the oddest film on the list.  Rewatching the film a couple years ago, I realized that some random, odd movie memories from my childhood were from this film.  Rewatching it again now, I'm not quite sure what I thought of this as a kid.  My mother assures me that I watched it dozens of times. The film, odd, quirky, and a little mixed up, definitely conforms with my personality.  Enough that I now find myself question my own sanity almost as much as I'm wondering about Gilliam's.

The utter strangeness of the film  permeates the entire experience. The characters, settings, storyline itself, even the costuming and makeup for the actors all have a hallucinatory quality, much like the shifting of a dream.  The Baron's aging, the shifting time frame, and the bouncing in and out of fantasy makes the film almost impossible to watch casually.  A viewing requires intense focus, and perhaps a notebook just to be safe.

At the same time, the visual imagination required to create such a film is utterly astounding. The visuals have a classic, animated quality that is strikingly different from anything modern.  The fact that this is all done without CGI just makes it all the more impressive. 

Watching the film, I kept thinking: Terry Gilliam is either INSANE.... or a GENIUS.  The terrifying truth is that this film may be evidence that both are correct, at the same time.

The film does make a solid argument about the power of myth and imagination versus reality.  Kate talks about this a little more below.  My fear for the film, though, is that the pure intensity of the film makes the very cool moral almost impossible to decipher for the average viewer.  In spite of this, I can't help but be blown away by the sheer scope of the film.

Although, I find myself a bit overwhelmed by the weirdness as well.  I find my brain divided into two camps....  one side is delving into the meaning and metaphors of the film, while the other, more rational half, is thinking "What the hell did I just watch?!?!?!"

KATE SAYS this film is a combination of the darker myths and fairy-tales mixed with classic tall-tale elements plus Monty-Python humor and scenery plus Les Miserables and . . . what the heck is Robin Williams doing in this film under another name?

It's just weird. Though still not as weird as Highlander (for one thing, Gilliam's vision is more consistent).

And it actually, surprisingly, is entirely appropriate to this list!

In our last review, Mike pondered:

I almost wonder if writers, film makers, and artists in general were afraid that their days were numbered, that the day would come when technology would replace imagination with realization. So many films in this period seem to focus on the consequences of power, I wonder if the artists were just afraid of losing the power that they already wielded.

The Adventures of Baron Von Munchhausen radically addresses this issue. With its steam-punk feel, the film grapples with science in the Age of Reason being used (ironically) to fight a war, and it addresses the possibility or threat that a scientific--rather than heroic--approach to adversity will literally and figuratively kills marvelous storytellers like Baron Munchausen.

The theme reminds me of the death of Pan which heralded the end of the age of Myth. Although I am well and truly relieved to live in the modern world, the loss of the fantastic and imaginative--islands still to explore, oceans still to swim, big scary monsters still to find, tall-tales easy to believe--is rather sad.

But hey, there's still space!

And, what do you know, Gilliam goes there too.

Sort of. It is definitely not Apollo 13 space. Or Star Trek space. Or any space I've ever encountered anywhere, not even in my most disturbing dreams (thank goodness).

In the article on Munchausen's quoted above, the author states, "But...the name is somewhat misleading. While stories of the Baron's escapades are always palpably absurd, the accounts of patients whose condition bears his name are generally quite feasible."

This is true but the lengths that Munchausen patients will go to (up to 400 hospital admissions; spitting up blood from concealed devices) gives one the same creepy, yet enthralled sensation as this movie: what?! WHAT?! So I think the name is entirely applicable. It isn't the doctors who make us think of Munchausen's; it's the bewildering phantasmagorical inner world of the patients.

This film inhabits the strange, fantastical, gaudy, and utterly baroque mind of the Baron. It eventually makes one passionately wish for the rescuing editorial voices of Rizzo the Rat and Gonzo:

Rizzo the Rat: Boy, that's scary stuff! Should we be worried about the kids in the audience?
Gonzo: Nah, it's all right. This is culture!

Gonzo: [whispering] You must remember [that the Marleys are dead], or nothing that follows will seem wondrous.
Rizzo the Rat: Why are you whispering?
Gonzo: It's for dramatic emphasis.