The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 fantasy adventure film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce and Valentina Cortese. An international co-production of the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, the film is based on the tall tales of the 18th-century German nobleman Baron Munchausen and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire.
The film grossed only $8 million domestically, losing millions for Columbia Pictures. It received positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.
Plot In an unnamed war-torn European city in the "Age of Reason", as a large Ottoman army prepares an invasion outside the city gates, a fanciful touring stage production of Baron Munchausen's life and adventures is taking place. In a theatre box, the mayor, "The Right Ordinary" Horatio Jackson, reinforces the city's commitment to reason by ordering the execution of a soldier who had just accomplished a near-superhuman feat of bravery, claiming that his bravery is demoralizing to other soldiers and citizens.
The play is interrupted by an elderly man claiming to be the real Baron, 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, in which 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 powerful lungs; and the fantastically strong Albrecht.
When gunfire disrupts the elderly Baron's story, Jackson cancels the acting troupe's contract because of the Baron. The Baron wanders backstage, where the Angel of Death tries to take his life, but Sally Salt, the young daughter of the theatre company's leader, saves him and persuades him to remain living. Sally races to the wall, yelling for the Turkish army to leave. The Baron accidentally fires himself through the sky using a mortar, and returns riding a cannonball, narrowly escaping the Angel of Death again. Insisting that he alone can save the city, the Baron escapes over 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, who has grown younger, finds Berthold, but angers the King of the Moon, a giant with separate minds in his head and body, and who resents the Baron for his romantic past with the Queen of the Moon. The death of the King's body and a bungled escape from the Moon bring the trio back to the Earth and into the volcano of the Roman god, Vulcan. He hosts the group as his guests, and reveals that Albrecht is working as his servant. The Baron and Vulcan's wife, Venus, attempt a romantic interlude by waltzing in the air, prompting an irate Vulcan to expel the foursome from his kingdom into the South Seas.
Swallowed by an enormous sea creature, the travellers locate Gustavus, Adolphus and the Baron's trusty horse, Bucephalus. The Baron (who appears elderly again after being "expelled from a state of bliss") encounters the Angel of Death for the fourth time. They escape by blowing "a modicum of snuff" into the sea creature's cavernous interior, causing it to sneeze the heroes out through its whale-like blowhole. The Baron, young again, sails to where the Turkish army is located, but his associates are too elderly and tired to fight.
The Baron firmly lectures them, but to no avail, so he storms off, intending to surrender to the Grand Turk. His companions rally to save the Baron, and, through a series of fantastic acts, they rout the Turkish army and liberate the city. During the city's celebratory parade, the Baron is shot dead by Jackson, and the Angel of Death appears for a final time to take the Baron's life. An emotional public funeral takes place, but the denouement reveals that this is merely the final scene of yet another story that the Baron is telling to the same theatregoers in the city. The Baron calls the foregoing "only one of the many occasions on which I met my death", and closes his tale by saying that "everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after".
The Baron leads the citizens to the city gates to reveal that the city has indeed been saved, although it is unclear if the events of the battle occurred in a tall tale or in reality. Sally asks, "It wasn't just a story, was it?" The Baron grins, rides away on Bucephalus, and disappears.
Cast
In addition, Robin Williams—credited as "Ray D. Tutto" (a play on "king of everything" in Italian)—portrays the King of the Moon. Director Terry Gilliam explained, "The deal was that we couldn't use his [Williams] name because his agents said, 'We don't want you pimping his ass for your film.' [...] so that's why Robin is not credited." Sting has a credited cameo as a soldier executed for being a hero ("behaviour demoralizing to ordinary soldiers"), and Gilliam has an uncredited cameo as an irritating singer.
Production Background Tall tales, loosely based on the German adventurer Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen, or Baron Munchausen, were compiled by Rudolf Erich Raspe and published for English readers in 1785 as The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (or Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia). The tales were further embellished and translated back to German by Gottfried August Bürger in 1786. These tales were frequently extended and translated throughout the 19th century, further fictionalized in the 1901 American novel, Mr. Munchausen.
The stories were adapted into various films, including Baron Munchausen's Dream (1911, by Georges Méliès), Münchhausen (1943, by Josef von Báky, with a script by Erich Kästner), The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961, by Karel Zeman) and The Very Same Munchhausen (1979), directed by Mark Zakharov, who depicted Munchausen as a tragic character, struggling against the conformity and hypocrisy of the world around him.
20th Century Fox and Arnon Milchan announced the making of two films, The Improbable Adventures of Baron Munchausen I and II, with Terry Gilliam in February 1984.
Budget The film went over budget; what was originally $23.5 million grew to a reported $46.63 million. Gilliam, acknowledging that he had gone over budget, said that its final costs had been nowhere near $40 million.Interview for The Directors – The Films of Terry Gilliam, included on the bonus DVD of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Time Bandits).
In The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen (included on the bonus DVD of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Munchausen), producer Thomas Schühly said that, as part of a deal with 20th Century Fox before it went to Columbia, a budget plan had been set up for $35 million, "and it's strange, the [film's] final cost was 35 [million].... 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, which was 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 Munchausen is the third entry in Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination", preceded by Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985).Matthews, Jack (1996). "Dreaming Brazil" (essay accompanying The Criterion Collection DVD release). All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible". Gilliam explained, "The one theme that runs through all three of these pictures is a consistently serious battle between fantasy and what people perceive as reality." All three films focus on these struggles, and attempt to escape them through imagination: Time Bandits, through the eyes of a child, Brazil, through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen, through the eyes of an elderly man.
When the production finally came to a successful close, several of the actors commented on the rushed tightness of the whole project. Eric Idle said, "Up until Munchausen, I'd always been very smart about Terry Gilliam films. You don't ever [want to] be in them. Go and see them by all means – but to be in them, fucking madness!!!"
Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, described it as a traumatic experience. "[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." She further elaborated on her experience in her 2022 memoir, Run Towards the Danger, writing, "Though [Gilliam] was magical and brilliant and made images and stories that will live for a long, long time, it's hard to calculate whether they were worth the price of the hell that so many went through over the years to help him make them."
Nevertheless, on 29 October 2022, she tweeted, "You have my unconditional permission to still love this movie", to people who were wondering whether they could "still like this movie after hearing about [her] horrible experiences working on it as a child"; adding in a second tweet, "Yes, it was traumatic for me. Yes, it should have been handled very differently. Yes, it is still a great movie. The joy that comes from it is the joy I am able to carry with me as well as the terrible memories. So go nuts. Enjoy it. You have my blessing."
Production designer Dante 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."
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