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The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

During the 1980s, Terry Gilliam directed a trio of movies that he referred to as the "Dreams" trilogy: Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Brazil is the most popular of the three, having built a cult following over the years, and it's definitely an imaginitive movie – Orwell's 1984 done as satire. But I consider The Adventures of Baron Munchausen the best of the trio, and possibly Gilliam's best work overall. The "theme" of his trilogy is expressed differently in each of the three movies: in Brazil, the hero escapes the imagination-killing clutches of society in the only way he can, by going insane; whereas in Baron Munchausen, the so-called "age of reason" is seen as suppressing the imagination, to the point where even the legendary Baron Munchausen himself doesn't want to go on because there's no place left in the world for dreams. This film is a sheer delight – a magnificent, epic, hilarious fantasy that's worth watching for its sense of FUN as it is for the message, that imagination and fantasy are necessary in the face of an onrushing world.

The book Losing the Light : Terry Gilliam and the Munchausen Saga by Andrew Yule details many of the problems making this movie, and the many compromises that were made. And for more fun in the same vein, there's the movie Lost in LaMancha, which chronicles Gilliam's failed attempt at doing a Don Quixote movie.