As a very longtime Gilliam fan (I saw Time Bandits from the front row of a theatre in Portland, Oregon, five nights in a row when it first came out, and have watched every one of his films hundreds of times), I was enormously frustrated by the delays in this film getting distribution, and the fact that, even when it "opened," it wasn't showing anywhere within a hundred miles of my location. I waited for the DVD, and I'm glad I did; I'm not sure I could have appreciated this film in one sitting. As some have said, I too might have headed for the exit, not because I was upset *with* the film, but upset *by* it, in a good way. Watching it over four nights was far better, with pauses for my unconscious mind to digest its disturbing yet beautiful trajectories.
I think that people today expect a sort of social contract with films -- the films will stay films, will entertain but never challenge, you will feel you have your popcorn's worth, yawn, and go home (stopping on the way to get a happy meal with a film tie-in toy). Gilliam has never signed such a contract, and here he even tears up the older understanding his viewers had, that whatever Baron Munchausen or Parry might do, it would have no sexual overtones, and would never really endanger the Sally Salts of the world. Here Gilliam allows these darker currents to flow freely, and the result threatens at several points to overwhelm the viewer with the thought "if he's gone this far, how much farther will he go next?"
On the other hand, all our master storytellers have been, as Gilliam notes, rather grim; consider in this case Mrs. Haversham's wedding cake in Great Expectations (is that why the boy here is named Dickens, perhaps?) or Faulkner's A Rose for Emily. Their dark side is essential to what makes them tick, and essential to our being enthralled. It is just that much harder to *see* such things as to *read* about them -- but amazingly, despite the darkest moments of this film, my overall feeling on having completed viewing it is one of suspended, strange, light, of airiness, of floating above those endless Saskatchewan fields of wheat.
I know I will watch this film again -- and I hope that people who may have heard poor reviews of it will ignore them, and see it anyway. It's a rich, mature work from one of our masters, and I hope that it will recover from the knee-jerk revulsion of some reviewers, and that said reviewers will be as embarrassed by their comments years hence as (for example) those who attached Michael Powell's Peeping Tom for similar reasons.
I think that people today expect a sort of social contract with films -- the films will stay films, will entertain but never challenge, you will feel you have your popcorn's worth, yawn, and go home (stopping on the way to get a happy meal with a film tie-in toy). Gilliam has never signed such a contract, and here he even tears up the older understanding his viewers had, that whatever Baron Munchausen or Parry might do, it would have no sexual overtones, and would never really endanger the Sally Salts of the world. Here Gilliam allows these darker currents to flow freely, and the result threatens at several points to overwhelm the viewer with the thought "if he's gone this far, how much farther will he go next?"
On the other hand, all our master storytellers have been, as Gilliam notes, rather grim; consider in this case Mrs. Haversham's wedding cake in Great Expectations (is that why the boy here is named Dickens, perhaps?) or Faulkner's A Rose for Emily. Their dark side is essential to what makes them tick, and essential to our being enthralled. It is just that much harder to *see* such things as to *read* about them -- but amazingly, despite the darkest moments of this film, my overall feeling on having completed viewing it is one of suspended, strange, light, of airiness, of floating above those endless Saskatchewan fields of wheat.
I know I will watch this film again -- and I hope that people who may have heard poor reviews of it will ignore them, and see it anyway. It's a rich, mature work from one of our masters, and I hope that it will recover from the knee-jerk revulsion of some reviewers, and that said reviewers will be as embarrassed by their comments years hence as (for example) those who attached Michael Powell's Peeping Tom for similar reasons.