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"To live is to defend a form," says the poet, the visionary in the age of blockbusters learns this as a fabulist in the Age of Reason. An Ottoman Empire cannonade outside the city gates, inside there's the ramshackle theater putting on a show amid explosions. The subject is Baron Munchausen's life, the real thing (John Neville) wanders in, tattered, doddering, complaining about inaccuracies. Olivier's Henry V is relied upon for the storyteller's switch, the camera simply pans from the production's painted backdrops to the marbled harem where the trouper with the glued-on beard becomes a Sultan (Peter Jeffrey). The bureaucratic pedant (Jonathan Pryce) is not impressed: "I'm afraid you have a rather weak grasp of reality." Terry Gilliam aims to stagger the imagination and does so, his massive planes of artifice absorb Pinocchio and The Thief of Bagdad and Le Carrosse d'or in a fulsome vindication of "hot air and fantasy." Up and away in the balloon stitched from bloomers, to the moon where King (Robin Williams) and Queen (Valentina Cortese) give the schism of cerebral and sensual. ("I've got tides to regulate! Comets to direct! I don't have time for flatulence and orgasms!") Putting the body back together is the dream, legs (Eric Idle) and eyes (Charles McKeown) and lungs (Jack Purvis) and muscles (Winston Dennis), the tiny tag-along (Sarah Polley) is the Dorothy of the journey. Vulcan (Oliver Reed) has his hands full with a cyclops strike, the Baron waltzes on air with Venus (Uma Thurman) in a hall of chandeliers and geysers. Chagall swirls and sardonic gags, the ship graveyard in the leviathan's belly and a run-through of "The Torturer's Apprentice." "Act Four is set in an abattoir. I see a lot of slapstick." Fellini returns the compliment in La Voce della Luna, and from there to Cervantes is Gilliam's winding road. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. With Bill Paterson, Alison Steadman, and Sting.
--- Fernando F. Croce |