On a Wednesday in the 1800s, an unnamed town is being besieged by a band of Turks. Hoping to keep the citizens distracted from the destruction around them, the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson (Jonathan Pryce), the town’s chief official, has charged a theater troupe with putting on a show. Purporting to tell the life story of the famous adventurer/raconteur/bon vivant Baron Munchausen, the play is not going well.

Suddenly in walks the real Baron Munchausen (John Neville), who is angered by the scandalous nature of the presentation and begins to set the record straight. He claims to be the cause of the siege (seems he made off with the entirety of the Grand Turk’s treasure) and says he and his loyal associates--Berthold (Eric Idle), the fastest man alive; Albrecht (Winston Dennis), the strongest man alive; Adolphus (co-screenwriter Charles McKeown), who possesses astounding eyesight; and Gustavus (Jack Purvis), who can hold back armies with his breath and also has superhuman hearing--can end the conflict.

There’s just one problem: he doesn’t know where his old friends are. So the Baron--along with a young stowaway named Sally (Sarah Polley)--constructs a makeshift balloon and sets out to reassemble his old crew, a trip that will take him to the heights of moon and into the bowels of both the earth and a monstrous whale.

CRITIQUE

Like Jaws, Apocalypse Now, and Superman, it’s impossible to hear the horror stories from the set of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and wonder how in the hell Terry Gilliam actually managed to come away with a film at all (to say nothing of his sanity), much less a good one. Granted, Munchausen is by no means as good as any of those other movies, but--like, say, 1941--it’s a far better one than its history, reputation, and box office take would lead you to believe.

Baron Munchausen is fun and funny, and its times it’s incredibly entertaining and witty, but on the whole it feels compromised. The movie seemed doomed to go down in flames even before the cameras started rolling, and its shoot was a veritable bounty of disasters and setbacks. It only took one day’s shooting to put Gilliam and his collaborators a week behind schedule, and the plug was pulled more than once by the financiers, only to be reinstated after some fast talking by Gilliam and producer Thomas Schuhly.

Working on location in Italy and at Rome’s famed Cinecettá studios (where more than a decade later Martin Scorsese would run into similar problems while shooting Gangs of New York) proved to be a huge financial drain, eventually ballooning the budget to twice its original size and requiring Gilliam and McKeown to excise and rewrite large chunks of the script. Costly visual effects were created and then scrapped, with many of the final effects rushed in order to meet budget constraints and deadlines.

All of this shows in the finished film, and it does lead to thoughts of what might have been had everything gone right for the director (that would be a neat trick, huh?), but as I said, this is still a good film. Gilliam’s sheer determination and talent ultimately win out here, even if it is largely a pyrrhic victory.

As Gilliam himself has said, the fate of Baron Munchausen was more than a little fitting, as the movie can be seen as a metaphorical retelling of the struggle the director went through in his dealings with Universal during the U.S. theatrical run of Brazil. Munchausen’s (a storyteller) fight against Jackson (a bureaucrat) parallels the war between Gilliam (and artist) and Universal CEO Sid Sheinberg (a businessman), which supplies fodder both good and bad for Gilliam and McKeown.

It’s good in that it provides them many good digs at people who think like Jackson/Sheinberg (witness Sting’s cameo as the heroic soldier), yet bad in the sense that at times they (although I’m pretty sure most of it is Gilliam’s doing) push it too far and beat the audience over the head (such as the majority of Jackson’s antics and dialogue during the final act).

I suppose you could argue that the script was its own worst enemy. In terms of scope--and the resulting logistics--it was too ambitious, which ultimately gave rise to many of the production problems. The fact that Gilliam and McKeown had to do some major revisions during shooting certainly didn’t help, as it’s obvious certain sequences were originally meant to be longer (the scene inside the whale is probably the most obvious).

It’s also plain to see that some of the connective tissue was cut, as the final act comes into play rather abruptly (I’m positive there was another adventure in between the reunion with Gustavus and Adolphus and the return to the city). Perhaps had Gilliam and McKeown been able to revise and rescale the script before production began, the story would have flowed better.

And while they were at it, they could have trimmed some of the fat; it takes too long for the movie to really get rolling (the scenes leading up to the Baron’s beginning his tale are far too long), and some sequences needlessly run on a bit (which is a problem in practically every Gilliam movie).

It’s a cliché, and it’s one Schuhly employs while discussing the movie in this disc’s supplements, but every penny that went into making Baron Munchausen is up on the screen. Watching the movie you have to wonder how--if the final film was brought in for a little more than 46 million dollars--anyone thought a more ambitious version could possibly have been created on a budget of half that amount.

The movie never ceases to be a fount of wondrous visuals, from the opening assault to the descent from the moon (arguably the most amazing sequence in the movie), and from the interior of Vulcan’s volcano (Vulcan is played by a wonderfully hammy Oliver Reed) right on through the Baron’s final encounter with Death. The story may be a little flabby, and the plot may move in fits and starts, but Gilliam and his team created such a rich visual tapestry that the sights on display more than compensate for the deficiencies and inconsistencies in other areas.

THE VIDEO

Those hoping for a revelatory visual experience from this disc’s 1.85:1/1080p transfer will undoubtedly be disappointed, as flaws in the source elements hamper the high-def presentation. When compared to the old standard-def release, color fidelity and detail have been greatly improved, and black levels are also much stronger.

But the flaws have also been exacerbated; the heavy grain that is present in many of the effects shots--a result of pre-digital compositing techniques--is now even more noticeable, as if the digital noise created by all of that swirling smoke and dust. I imagine only a rigorous digital scrubbing could provide any improvements, but that would also create flaws of its own, so I guess this is another case where we fans will just have to take the good with the bad.

THE AUDIO

The opening cannon fusillade momentarily gave me hope that the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track (available in English or French) would provide a more worthy next-gen experience than the video, but my hopes were quickly squashed. The audio here is one of those obvious repurposing jobs I’ve come to fear over the years, taking what wasn’t exactly a strong stereo mix to begin with and stretching it until it becomes very anemic. Dialogue generally sounds good, and Michael Kamen’s wonderful score has never sounded better, but effects come across as harsh and thin, and the low end has no almost heft whatsoever.

The surrounds are primarily used to open up the score, although the occasional blast of cannon fire or other odd directional effect pops up, but again it’s obvious not much thought went into the mix. English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (Traditional or Simplified), Korean, and Thai subtitles are included.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary with director Terry Gilliam and co-writer/actor Charles McKeown makes for a great listen. McKeown only chimes in on occasion, but Gilliam delves into anything and everything you’d want to know, discussing his original impetus for wanting to make the film, shaping the script, pre-production, constantly butting head with the financiers, the near-disastrous shoot, and Sony’s less-than-enthusiastic distribution and marketing efforts.   

The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen (72 minutes) is an excellent three-part look at the making of the film. No stone is left unturned and no piece of dirt is left unrevealed; this is an open, honest, unflinching chronicle of the nightmare the movie became. Gilliam, McKeown, Schuhly, Polley, and Idle (who makes a very funny comment about having once vowed never to take part in a Gilliam or Kubrick film) appear in extensive interview segments. (If you want an even more detailed version of exactly what went wrong during production, round up a copy of Andrew Yule’s excellent book Losing the Light.)

Storyboard sequences (30 minutes total) for three retooled/excised sequences are included. The most interesting for me is the original, much more elaborate encounter with the King of the Moon (originally to be portrayed by Sean Connery, but eventually played by an unbilled Robin Williams after the scene and character were revised). Not only do Gilliam and McKeown introduce each sequence, they also provide accompanying narration, dialogue, and sound effects.

Four deleted scenes (4 minutes) are also included. The running time would seem to indicate there’s not much to them, but the material is actually pretty strong. (As Gilliam explains in the documentary, he cut the scenes--which are presented here in a scratchy, dirty open-matte format--only after the studio forced him.)

Closing out the extras is the BD-exclusive Marvelous World of Munchausen Graphics and Trivia Track, which provides a mixture of pop-up factoids and production art/photos.

FINAL THOUGHTS