PG | 2h 6min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy | 1989
It seems that eccentric director Terry Gilliam has a few things in common with the equally eccentric 18th-century German writer and librarian Rudolf Erich Raspe. One of Raspe’s more surreal novels, “Baron Münchhausen’s Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia,” follows the adventures of a semi-mythical folk hero, the titular Baron Munchausen. In real life, he was named Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen.
Both Gilliam and Raspe, who lived during the Age of Reason, have had fascinating lives full of imagination and creativity. So, it’s not much of a surprise that Gillian chose to base the third film of his “Trilogy of Imagination” (which includes 1981’s “Time Bandits” and 1985’s “Brazil”) on Raspe’s 1785 book….