The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1989 British adventure fantasy comedy film written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, and Robin Williams (credited as Ray D. Tutto).

Based on the outrageous tall tales that the 18th Century German nobleman Baron Münchhausen was alleged to have told about his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire, the film was well-received by critics but was nonetheless a box office bomb.

Plot[link]

The film begins in an unnamed war-torn European city in the late 18th century (dubbed "The Age of Reason" in an opening caption), where, amidst explosions and gunfire from a large Turkish army outside the city gates, a fanciful touring stage production of Baron Münchhausen's life and adventures is taking place. Backstage, city official "The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson" reinforces the city's commitment to reason (here meaning uniformity and unexceptionality) by ordering the execution of a soldier (Sting in a cameo) who had just accomplished a near-superhuman feat of bravery, claiming that his bravery is demoralizing to other soldiers. Not far into the play, an elderly man claiming to be the real Baron interrupts the show, protesting its many inaccuracies. Over the complaints of the audience, the theatre company and Jackson, the "real" Baron gains the house's attention and narrates through flashback an account of one of his adventures, of a life-or-death wager with the Grand Turk, where the younger Baron's life is saved only by his amazing luck plus the assistance of his remarkable associates: Berthold, the world's fastest runner; Adolphus, a rifleman with superhuman eyesight; Gustavus, who possesses extraordinary hearing, and sufficient lung power to knock down an army by exhaling; and the fantastically strong Albrecht.

When gunfire disrupts the elderly Baron's story, the importance of saving the city eclipses the show. The Baron wanders backstage intending to die, until the exuberantly enthusiastic questioning of Sally Salt, the young daughter of the theater company's leader, persuades him to remain living. Insisting that he alone can save the city, the Baron escapes the city's walls in a hot air balloon constructed of women's underwear, accompanied by Sally as a stowaway. The balloon expedition proceeds to the Moon, where the Baron, rejuvenated by the escape, finds his old associate Berthold, but angers the King of the Moon, who resents the Baron for his romantic past with the Queen of the Moon. A bungled escape from the Moon brings the trio back to (and beneath) the Earth, where the Roman God Vulcan hosts his guests with courtesy and Albrecht is found. The Baron and Vulcan's wife, the Goddess Venus, attempt a romantic interlude by waltzing in air, but this cuts short the hospitality and Vulcan expels the now-foursome from his kingdom into the South Seas.

Swallowed by an enormous sea creature, the travelers locate Gustavus, Adolphus, and the Baron's trusty horse Bucephalus. The Baron (who again appears elderly after being "expelled from a state of bliss", in his words) struggles with the conflicting goals of heroism and a peaceful death, before deciding to escape by blowing "a modicum of snuff" out into the sea creature's cavernous interior, which causes the sea creature to "sneeze" the heroes out through its whale-like blowhole. Back ashore, the Turkish army is located but the Baron's associates are now too elderly and tired to fight the Turk as in the old days. The Baron lectures them firmly but to no avail, and he storms off intending to surrender to the Turk and to Jackson; his cohorts rally to save both the Baron and the city. During the city's celebratory parade, the Baron is shot dead by Jackson. An emotional public funeral takes place, but the denouement reveals that this is merely the final scene of yet another story the Baron is telling to the same theater-goers who were attending the theater in the beginning of the film. The Baron calls the foregoing "only one of the many occasions on which I met my death" and closes his tale by saying "everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after."

An ambiguous finale reveals that the city has indeed been saved, even though the events of the battle apparently occurred in a story rather than the film's reality. The Baron rides off on Bucephalus. As the Baron and Bucephalus are bathed in the light of the sun parting through the clouds, they apparently disappear, and the credits roll over a triumphant blast of music.

Cast[link]

• John Neville as Baron Munchausen
• Sarah Polley as Sally Salt
• Eric Idle as Berthold/Desmond
• Jonathan Pryce as The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson
• Oliver Reed as Vulcan
• Uma Thurman as Venus/Rose
• Bill Paterson as Henry Salt
• Charles McKeown as Rupert/Adolphus
• Winston Dennis as Bill/Albrecht
• Jack Purvis as Jeremy/Gustavus
• Ray D. Tutto as The King of the Moon
• Valentina Cortese as Queen Ariadne/Violet
• Peter Jeffrey as The Sultan
• Alison Steadman as Daisy
• Ray Cooper as Functionary
• Don Henderson as Commander
• Sting (cameo) as Heroic officer
• Terry Gilliam (uncredited) as Irritating singer inside fish

Production[link]

Background[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Baron Munchausen is a character from The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (or Baron Münchhausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels) by Rudolf Erich Raspe — a collection of tall tales published in 1785, based on the German adventurer Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen. The tales were adapted and re-published in German by Gottfried August Bürger in 1786 as Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande, Feldzüge und lustige Abenteuer des Freyherrn von Münchhausen.

The stories were made into films in 1911 (Les Aventures du baron de Münchhausen), 1943 (Münchhausen, script by Erich Kästner), and 1961 (Baron Prášil by director Karel Zeman). His most famous adventures feature in a 1979 film The Very Same Munchhausen by Russian director Mark Zakharov, which depicts Münchhausen as a tragic character, struggling against the conformity and hypocrisy of the world around him.

Budget[link]

The film was finished over budget (originally $23.5 million,^[1] but estimatedly finishing at $46.63 million), and with a US domestic box office revenue of approximately $8 million.^[2] In an interview for The Directors - The Films of Terry Gilliam (included on the bonus DVD of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Time Bandits), Gilliam challenged the public figure of "40 million dollars", and alleged that while the film had indeed gone over budget, its final costs had been nowhere near that high a figure.

In The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen (included on the bonus DVD of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Munchausen), Schühly further shed light on the final cost issue and the whole budget troubles by saying that as part of an earlier deal with 20th Century Fox about the film before it ended up with Columbia, a budget plan had been set up of $35 million, "and it's strange, the [film's] final cost was 35 [millions]. [...] We always had a budget of 34 or 35 million, the problem was when I started to discuss it with Columbia, Columbia would not go beyond 25. [...] Everybody knew from the very beginning that this cutting out was just a fake. [...] The problem was that David Puttnam got fired, and all these deals were oral deals. [...] Columbia's new CEO, Dawn Steel, said 'Whatever David Puttnam [has] said before doesn't interest me'".

Regarding the new regime's apparent animosity towards all of Puttnam's projects and Munchausen, Gilliam added in the same documentary, "I was trying very hard to convince Dawn Steel that this was not a David Puttnam movie, it was a Terry Gilliam movie". Similarly Kent Houston, head of Peerless Camera doing the film's special effects said in Madness and Misadventures that they were promised a bonus if they would finish the effects in time, but when they approached the person again when they were done, he was met with the reply, "I'm not gonna pay you, because I don't want to seem to be doing anything that could benefit Terry Gilliam."

Experience[link]

When the production finally came to a successful closure, several of the actors commented on the rushed tightness of the whole project. Said Eric Idle, "Up until Munchausen, I'd always been very smart about Terry Gilliam films. You don't ever be in them. Go and see them by all means - but to be in them, fucking madness!!!"^[3]

Young star Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, similarly described it as a traumatic experience for her. "[I]t definitely left me with a few scars ... It was just so dangerous. There were so many explosions going off so close to me, which is traumatic for a kid whether it's dangerous or not. Being in freezing cold water for long periods of time and working endless hours. It was physically grueling and unsafe."^[4]

Production designer Ferretti afterwards compared Gilliam to his former director, saying, "Terry is very similar to Fellini in spirit. Fellini is a wilder liar, but that's the only difference! Terry isn't a director so much as a film author. He is open to every single idea and opportunity to make the end result work. Often the best ideas have come out of something not working properly and coming up with a new concept as a result. He is very elastic and that's one quality in a director that I admire the most."^[3]

Release[link]

United States

When The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was finally completed, David Puttnam, who had originally gotten the film's distribution rights in the US for Columbia Pictures, had been replaced as CEO of Columbia; coupled with Gilliam's prior quarrels with major studios over Brazil, the film saw only very limited distribution in the US, earning $8 million in US box office.

In Madness and Misadventures, Robin Williams commented about the low number of copies released by Columbia:

[Puttnam's] regime was leaving, the new one was going through this, and they said, "This was their movies, now let's do our movies!" It was a bit like the new lion that comes in and kills all the cubs from the previous man.

In a 2000 interview with IGN, Gilliam said about the contemporary press perception of the film being a financial disaster how "It seemed actually appropriate that Munchausen – the greatest liar in the world – should be a victim of some of the greatest liars in the world." He compared the film's budget problems to the even more serious problems of We're No Angels that commonly go unmentioned, and he went on to declare its difficulties as a mixture of "trade press" still being upset about Gilliam's battle with Universal over Brazil, nepotism, and an intrigue on behalf of Ray Stark successfully trying to have Puttnam removed from Columbia, coupled with the fact the studio was being sold at the time:

The negative stories about the shoot that were turning up in the Hollywood press were coming, we found out later, from a source at Film Finances – which was the completion bond company on the film. Their lawyer was a guy named Steve Ransohoff, whose father was Martin Ransohoff – who was Ray Stark's friend and partner. [...] I thought it was quite extraordinary, because the stories were doing two things – they were making me and the whole project look like it was completely out of control and all my fault, and that Film Finance, the completion guarantors, were the only thing holding it together – the people trying to bring control to it... the fact was, they were absolutely useless.

The ultimate fact was that when the film was ultimately released, there were only 117 prints made for America – so it was never really released. 117 prints! ...an art film gets 400. We were ultimately the victim of Columbia Tri-Star being sold to Sony, because at that time all they were doing was trying to get the books looking as good as possible. We weren't the only film that suffered, but we were the most visible one. And what happened – to complete the story in a neat and tidy way – was that they were not spending any money on advertising to promote any of the movies started by the previous regime – by Putnam's regime. They were burying films left right and center by spending no money on them – and the books looked really good at the end of that. The joke is, if you look back, we got the best reviews and we were doing the best business in the opening weeks of any film they had released since Last Emperor. We actually opened well in the big cities – we opened really well. A friend who had bought the video rights said he had never seen anything so weird – Columbia was spending their whole time looking at exit polls to prove the film would not work in the suburbs, and so it would be pointless to make any more prints. He said, "I've never seen anything like this." There it was. Then it becomes this kind of legend – which it deserves to be... even if it's the wrong legend.^[5]

Europe

The film fared substantially better in Europe, where distributors such as Germany's Neue Constantin Film were able to give it a more appropriate release, and subsequently on home video, actually in 1999 becoming the very first feature DVD issued by Columbia.^{[citation needed]}

Critical reception[link]

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen features an 89% positive review status, even 100% by professional film critics, on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes,^[6] and Metacritic counts 69 favorable reviews out of 100 (out of 15 reviews on display, 11 give it a favorable 70-100% rating).^[7]

Regarding the obvious gap between the movie's troubled production and its eventual triumph of aesthetic cinematic form on the screen, Jeff Swindoll wrote in his 2008 DVD Review of Munchausen for Monsters and Critics: "For the absolute hell that the production of the film turned out to be, you really don't see any of that tension on the screen. [...] the film is a fantastic, whimsical treat. [...] Baron Munchausen is full of whimsy, fantasy, bright colors, and fabulous characters. None is as fantastic as the Baron himself as played, with a twinkle in his eye, by the grand John Neville."^[8]

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and found that it was "told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them", appreciating "the sly wit and satire that sneaks in here and there from director Terry Gilliam and his collaborators, who were mostly forged in the mill of Monty Python". While considering the film's special effects as "astonishing", Ebert also contended "the movie is slow to get off the ground" and "sometimes the movie fails on the basic level of making itself clear. We're not always sure who is who, how they are related, or why we should care". But "allowing for the unsuccessful passages there is a lot here to treasure", and Ebert concluded overall, "this is a vast and commodious work", "the wit and the spectacle of Baron Munchausen are considerable achievements". Additionally, Ebert considered John Neville's title role performance as appearing "sensible and matter-of-fact, as anyone would if they had spent a lifetime growing accustomed to the incredible".^[9]

The Washington Post called the film a "wondrous feat of imagination", though "except for Williams, the actors are never more than a detail in Gilliam's compositions."^[10]

Richard Corliss wrote:^[11]

Everything about Munchausen deserves exclamation points, and not just to clear the air of the odor of corporate flop sweat. So here it is! A lavish fairy tale for bright children of all ages! Proof that eccentric films can survive in today's off-the-rack Hollywood! The most inventive fantasy since, well, Brazil! You may not believe it, ladies and gentlemen, but it's all true.

Vincent Canby called the film "consistently imaginative " and a "spectacle [that] is indeed spectacular and worth the admission price and patches of boredom"; he said the "major credit must go to Giuseppi Rotunno, the cameraman; Dante Ferretti, the production designer; Richard Conway, who did the special effects, and Peerless Camera Company Ltd., responsible for the optical effects. Without them, Baron Munchausen would have looked about as big and as interesting as a 25-cent postage stamp."^[12]

Accolades[link]

The film was nominated for four British Academy Film Awards, winning three:

• Best Costume Design
• Best Make Up Artist
• Best Production Design

and losing Best Special Effects to Back to the Future Part II.

In 1990, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was nominated for four Oscars:^[13]

• Best Set Decoration (Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo) (lost to Batman)
• Best Costume Design (lost to Henry V)
• Best Visual Effects (lost to The Abyss)
• Best Makeup (lost to Driving Miss Daisy)

In 1991, the film was further nominated for four Saturn Awards:

• Best Costumes (lost to Total Recall)
• Best Fantasy Film (lost to Ghost)
• Best Make-Up (lost to Dick Tracy)
• Best Special Effects (lost to Back to the Future Part II)

It won the 1990 Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon in three categories:

• Best Cinematography
• Best Costume Design
• Best Production Design

It was nominated in 1990 for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (losing to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade); actress Sarah Polley was nominated for two Young Artist Awards in the categories Best Musical or Fantasy and Best Young Actress.

Home media[link]

A laserdisc was released with features such as a commentary track by Gilliam and deleted scenes.^[14] The first DVD edition of the film, issued on April 27, 1999, did not include any of these or any other extras.^[15]

A 20th anniversary edition was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 8, 2008. It includes a new commentary with Gilliam and co-writer/actor McKeown, a three-part documentary on the making of the film, storyboard sequences, and deleted scenes.^[16]

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen at the Internet Movie Database
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen at AllRovi
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen at Metacritic