munchausen

THE FLICK: I’ve come to loathe the sort of egotistical first-person film reviews that have taken over the web today, most notably on Harry Knowles aintitcool.com. If I wanted to hear about how many Goobers you ate while standing in line I’d check out your MySpace page, otherwise stick to the facts at hand. That being said, I find it next to impossible to write about The Adventures of Baron Munchausen without getting personal. It was, after all, the film most responsible for sending me off to film school and pursuing my own dream of celluloid artistry. The fact that I ended up a poor man’s Roger Ebert is neither here nor there. Meanwhile director Terry Gilliam’s film remains an undiscovered manic masterpiece, perhaps the best proof since Apocalypse Now that true genius can flourish in the midst of chaos. Based on the historical imaginings of its central character, Baron Munchausen (Robert Neville) is a braggart, a phony and a bald-faced liar of epic proportions, his stories full of outrageous claims of traveling to the moon, being swallowed by a gigantic fish and taking on the entire Turkish army single-handedly. Sally Salt (Sarah Polley) is the least important cog in the wheel of her father’s theatrical company, a young girl who finds the Baron’s stories fascinating and, more than that, believable! When the Turk returns to invade the city, Sally tags along on the Baron’s quest to track down his loyal servants and enlist their help to save the town. Best described as The Wizard of Oz meets Monty Python, Munchausen is a direct continuation of the unique storytelling style used by Gilliam in Time Bandits. The Baron’s illogical belief in the impossible is pit against the armies of reason, led ironically by actor Jonathan Pryce who was the victim of his own overactive imagination in Brazil. However this time around, Gilliam comes full circle, allowing for the happy ending to his three-film fairy tale. While Munchausen may not be the most structurally-sound of the unofficial “dreamer” trilogy, it is far and away the most enchanting. Notoriously over-budget and the victim of a regime change at Columbia Pictures, Munchausen was released in only 125 theaters, less than your average art film. But for those like myself who had the commitment to track down a screening (I drove 2 hours and found myself crammed into a living-room size theater at a 28 film multiplex) the reward was well worth the effort. Like the stage production that kicks off the film, Munchausen is made up of time-worn cinematic techniques that give each sequence a handmade feel. The sets design by Dante Ferrettii are a baroque blender of 17th century nostalgia and dated sci-fi circa Jules Verne. This is a world that runs on ropes and pulleys, where the magic is hidden behind a velvet curtain. At some point in time Gilliam will be recognized for having one of the most unique visions in the history of cinema. But while he has no shortage of ideas, the director scripts are inevitably flawed from the get-go. And Munchausen is no exception; it starts slow and lingers too long, characters are both endearing and annoying, while the “yellow-brick-road-trip” plot structure runs into far too many cul-de-sacs. It’s to Gilliam’s credit that his singular imagination rises above most of these shortcomings, with the whole adding up to much more than the sum of its parts. Munchausen is rare filmmaking from a director whose opportunities to top himself are far too rare as well. THE FEATURES: I’m a bit flabbergasted that Sony would even bother to release a film like Munchausen at this point in the Blu-ray format’s life cycle. Happily flabbergasted that is. That being said, my expectations were tempered by recollections of the original theatrical experience. To put it politely, even in 1988 Munchausen looked like the entire cast of dwarves from Time Bandits had stomped all over the negative. Much of that can be attributed to the film’s wall-to-wall optical effects, but it also just felt like the release prints had been dragged through the mud with the rest of the production. So how does the Blu-ray transfer look? Not bad actually. The heavy grain is still present in most of the effects scenes, but the colors look incredible and all signs of wear and tear have been cleaned up. What really sells the set however are the extras, including a 70-minute 3-part documentary, The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen. Essentially a tete-a-tete between Gilliam and producer Thomas Schuhly (who gets most of the blame for the on-set troubles, but at least has the courage to defend himself), the featurette collects a remarkable amount of comments from the cast and crew (Sarah Polley and Eric Idle certainly don’t mince words about their experience) about the good and bad of Munchausen. Mostly the bad, though. Gilliam and screenwriter Charles McKeown also participate in a lively commentary that repeats much of the same information on a scene-by-scene basis. Combine that with an enhanced Graphics and Trivia Track and you’re sure to learn more about Apocalypse-Munchausen than you ever cared to know. A quick sampling of deleted scenes and interactive storyboards complete the package.