The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: A Reason to Believe

Alas, we all prefer to be the writers of our own self-fictions, as the “real” movie version of the Baron demonstrates in his own protestations. And we can understand why the Baron might be exhausted by other people’s accounts of his life: by 1988, his exploits had been adapted to film several times. His magical escapades have been catnip for practitioners of a medium that, since its inception, has lent itself to awesome flights of fancy—especially for European filmmakers, who likely grew up reading Raspe’s stories. Georges Méliès’s 1911 The Hallucinations of Baron Munchausen projects the character into various spectacles hovering above his nighttime bed; Josef von Báky’s 1943 Münchhausen spared no opulence, though it was, according to film scholar Eric Rentschler, “commissioned by the Nazi regime in the midst of World War II” and stands as “an example of fascinating and fantasizing fascism”; and in 1962, Czech dream-maker Karel Zeman’s The Fabulous Baron Munchausen mixed live action, animation, and meticulously detailed static images inspired by Gustave Doré’s engravings for an 1862 edition of the book.

“For Gilliam, imagination is a bulwark against repressive political or social systems that try to keep people mollified, ignorant, and voiceless.”

Zeman’s wondrous, collagelike style may remind viewers of the fanciful, if more stripped-down, interstitial animations that helped give the television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–74) its otherworldly, slapstick pleasures and distinctive sensibility. These were designed by none other than Gilliam, who had relocated from his native U.S. to England earlier in the sixties, in part because of what he viewed as the increasingly wayward domestic and international policies of the American government. After designing for Monty Python, Gilliam would go on to become an official member of the sensational British sketch-comedy troupe, though not primarily as a performer. His association with the group led to his first feature films as a director, 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail (codirected by Terry Jones) and 1977’s Jabberwocky, both of which demonstrate his skill at simultaneously providing and gleefully deconstructing the pleasures of fantasy—a subversive narrative strategy that reached its zenith with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Gilliam’s greatest films are not just imaginative; they make the power of the imagination their very subject. Never synonymous with escapism for Gilliam, imagination is fiercely envisioned in these movies as a bulwark against repressive political or social systems that try to keep people mollified, ignorant, and voiceless. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is the third chapter in what the director has referred to as his “Trilogy of Imagination,” following Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985). The two earlier films ruminate on the experiences of childhood and middle age, respectively, and though cushioned by humor, both are essentially nightmarish dystopias—irreverently theological in the former case, grimly Orwellian in the latter—with startling, downbeat conclusions (that is true of Brazil’s original ending, at least, which Gilliam was able to preserve after a hard-fought, highly publicized battle with Universal Pictures). Munchausen closes out the trilogy by considering old age, focusing on the Baron not as a robust young voyager but as an elderly man looking back on his triumphs and challenges, and it ends things with a dose of cheerful optimism. Part of the film’s infectious gusto comes from the captivating and poignant Neville, who always seems oddly credible even when you can’t believe a thing he’s saying.

There is, of course, an essential conservatism to the Baron’s bemoaning of a world that has left him behind and his longing for a simpler past. Yet Gilliam’s film positions the character as something of a radical dreamer, especially in opposition to Jackson’s eminently rational villain. Sally, who has little time for the Baron’s self-pity, snaps him out of his torpor, demanding to “hear the end of the story” and thus sending the film off into the creative stratosphere. Narrowly escaping arrest by Jackson and his henchmen, the Baron and Sally set sail to the clouds, ascending to the surface of the moon, where they meet one of the film’s many manic, craven despots—this one (played by Robin Williams, credited under a different name) with a detachable head. Later, they tumble into the center of Mount Etna and encounter Vulcan (Oliver Reed), a furious militarist working on a weapon disturbingly like a nuclear-bomb prototype. And finally, they become lunch for the ravenous sea beast, whose belly they escape in true Pinocchio fashion—by making the fish sneeze. The purpose of the Baron’s wildly globe-trotting mission is to get his old gang of misfits back together—Berthold (Monty Python alum Eric Idle), who can run faster than the wind; Albrecht (Winston Dennis), the world’s strongest man; Gustavus (Jack Purvis), whose breath is powerful enough to knock over ships; and Adolphus (Charles McKeown, also Gilliam’s coscreenwriter on the film), whose keen eyes can see for hundreds of miles—in the hope that they can help defeat the Turks and save the city.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a tale of stories within stories within stories, and it makes the illogic and unreality of storytelling part of its premise—yet unlike most other metatextual fantasy films, such as The Princess Bride (1987) or Shrek (2001), it uses neither deflating irony nor contemporary references. Gilliam’s film is a work of pure, rigorous enchantment, employing old-fashioned technical wizardry to bring about its astonishments. The movie’s reliance on practical effects—and the sublime concert in which they work with Dante Ferretti’s staggering sets and Gabriella Pescucci’s gorgeously mottled costumes—has helped it to age remarkably well: it has the feel of a tattered storybook. Richard Conway and Kent Houston’s visionary special-effects work is a smorgasbord of approaches, including intricate miniatures, optical tricks, mechanical creatures, matte paintings, and a smidge of blue-screen illusion. In contrast to the smooth, detextured look of so much early CGI (such as in James Cameron’s The Abyss, which beat Munchausen for Best Visual Effects at the 1990 Academy Awards), Gilliam shows us the beautiful seams. When gaping at a boat carried across an impossibly blue sky by a balloon of inflated knickers, or at the Baron literally dancing on air with the goddess Venus (a blooming Uma Thurman) while surrounded by fluttering cupids, or at a rubbery leviathan as it swallows our heroes whole, you’re aware of the tactile effects at work, but the illusion remains unbroken.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the laborious effects and lavish design of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen resulted in a notoriously troubled production. Even before it was in the can, the film became something of an obsession for journalists looking for the next big Heaven’s Gate to dogpile on. A Los Angeles Times article from January 1988 (a full fourteen months before Munchausen’s U.S. release) called it an “overbudget nightmare” and went into excruciating detail about alleged runaway costs and travails, on set at Rome’s storied Cinecittà studios and on location in Spain. But such matters mean little to those willing to be carried aloft, especially those for whom Gilliam’s film was a cornerstone of childhood daydreams—such as your humble essayist, whose nearly worn-out videocassette of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen had pride of place on the shelf alongside The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Nothing mattered more—and nothing was more real—than what was on the screen. After all, wars between studio heads, like the battles of small-minded royal tyrants, are the province of silly adults; giving yourself over to fantasy is so much more gratifying. Logic be damned.