The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Year:  1988

Director:  Terry Gilliam

Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown

Starring:  John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Robin Williams, Valentina Cortese

Running Time:  126 minutes

Genre:  Fantasy, adventure, comedy

 

The 18th Century, "The Age of Reason":  A European city is under siege.  As battle rages, the flamboyant, eccentric Baron Munchausen (Neville) offers to rescue the city, but first has to reunite his disparate group of superpowered assistants.  The Baron sets off, along with young stowaway Sally (Polley), on a surreal adventure.

Inspired by a real-life figure from the 18th century, who became something of a celebrity for spinning outlandish tall tales about his various exploits, Baron Munchausen has appeared in books, plays, radio and television shows as well as several other films.  It's easy to imagine that director Terry Gilliam probably saw more than a little of himself in the figure of the outlandish Baron, who refuses to accept reality for what it is.  Best known for his part of the Monty Python comedy troupe, Gilliam had already made a name for himself with bizarre, outlandish fantasy films, and for his refusal to compromise his vision.  Gilliam's epic struggle with Universal over the final cut of Brazil (1985) had already become the stuff of Hollywood legend.  With it's intricate puzzle box structure, tales within tales within tales, and audacious visuals and freewheeling plot, as well as the constant feeling of barely suppressed anarchy, this is a kind of Hollywood filmmaking that we are unlikely to see again, a big budget epic in service to one person's vision and imagination.  Terry Gilliam was a director who really put everything at the service of his film, regardless of the cost and it is unlikely that in modern Hollywood he would be given this much freedom again.  This may not entirely be a bad thing.  Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, has written that she was terrified and exhausted the whole time she worked on the film.  Although she did give her blessing for people to still watch and enjoy the film, and commented that it was still "a great film".  Even Gilliam's fellow Python Eric Idle commented that, in regard to Terry Gilliam films, "you don't want to be in them".  The film itself is a fantastic epic.  It doesn't always work, there are slow passages, and it doesn't always hang together, but there are also indelible images and delightfully bizarre moments, as well as plenty of offbeat cameos, including Robin Williams as the King of the Moon, with a detachable flying head; Oliver Reed at his most satanic as the Roman god Vulcan, depicted here as an arms manufacturer dwelling in a volcano and building a prototype of nuclear bomb; and Uma Thurman making her film debut as Venus. Right from the start where the Baron bursts in upon a theatrical depiction of his story where the cardboard sets become a lavish Sultan's palace, the film is unexpected, and sometimes disturbingly eccentric.   Gilliam saw the film as the third part of a loose "Trilogy of Imagination" beginning with Time Bandits (1981) and continuing with Brazil (1985).  

John Neville and Sarah Polley in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

      

Women Talking

Year:  2022

Director:  Sarah Polley

Screenplay:  Sarah Polley, based on the novel Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Starring:  Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand

Running Time:  104 minutes 

Genre:  Drama

In an isolated Mennonite colony women are drugged and raped over a period of years.  Their claims are dismissed by the colony's authorities as either supernatural attacks or "wild female imagination".  Until, that is one of the attackers is caught, and he promptly names the others.  The attackers are arrested and taken to the nearest city to stand trial.  The other men of the colony accompany them in order to pay their bail.  The colony elders order the women to forgive their attackers by the time they return in two days or be banished from the colony.  Left alone, the women debate how to proceed:  Should they stay and obey their orders?  Stay and fight the men?  Or leave and found a new colony?

Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, which itself was based on a real life incident that occurred in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  The film doesn't focus on the attacks, instead it focuses on the women's response, and most of the film is the debate on how they should proceed.  In fact men are more or less entirely absent from the film with the notable exception of August (played by Ben Whishaw), the gentle schoolteacher who was educated away from the colony, and takes the minutes of the meetings, because none of the women have been taught how to read and write.  In the novel he narrates the story, but in the film the voice-over narrator is the yet unborn daughter of one of the women. The other exception is Melvin (played by August Winter) a transgender man who was raped and refuses to speak except to the youngest children who he cares for while the women are debating.  However men and male violence is the spectre that haunts the entire film.  The women live in an extremely patriarchal society where they are completely subservient to the men.  The film doesn't really come down against the Mennonite way of life, none of the women want to abandon their faith they just want to interpret it in a better and more fair way.  The film has a muted, washed out colour scheme, that evokes old photographs from the 19th century.  It is briefly mentioned that the year is 2010, but the only vision of modernity is a census taker driving through the colony in an old truck, with a loudspeaker on the roof playing the song "Daydream Believer".  The film boasts excellent performances, particularly from Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw.  This is a great film, wonderfully directed by Sarah Polley, who keeps the drama tight and intense, but provides enough brief glimpses of the world away from the meetings, so it doesn't feel to claustrophobic, and also lets up the tension with some flashes of mordant humour.  It's a moving and powerful piece of quiet rebellion.

Women Talking

The Sweet Hereafter

Year of Release:  1997
Director:  Atom Egoyan
Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan, based on the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Starring:  Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Maury Chaykin, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Arsinee Khanjian
 Running Time:  112 minutes
Genre:  Drama

In the small rural town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus crash kills fourteen children.  Lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Holm) arrives in town to persuade the grieving townspeople to hire him to represent them in a class action lawsuit against the town and the bus company.  While some people accept his offer, others are more reluctant and some overtly hostile, as the town's various dark secrets come to the surface.  Meanwhile Stevens is haunted by his troubled relationship with his estranged drug-addict daughter, Zoe (Banks).

This is a deeply powerful and genuinely moving film.  As with many Egoyan films, it uses an unconventional structure, moving back and forth in time, with crucial events and information revealed out of sequence.  Ian Holm gives a devastating performance as the lawyer, who is revealed to be much more than just a sleazy ambulance-chaser.  The heartbreaking scene where he tells a story from his daughter's childhood is possibly the best moment in Holm's distinguished career.  The film has a large ensemble cast all do well, particularly Sarah Polley as troubled fifteen year old Nicole, who survives the crash but is left disabled.  The tone of the film, despite it's subject matter, is more like a dark fairy tale than gritty realism, with repeated references to Robert Browning's retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and a haunting, medieval-influenced score by Mychael Danna.

      Sarah Polley and Ian Holm face up to The Sweet Hereafter

Exotica

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Atom Egoyan

Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan

Starring:  Bruce Greenwood, Don McKellar, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This dark, multi-layered drama focuses on the staff and clients of a Toronto strip-club called Exotica:  Lonely accountant Francis (Greenwood) is obsessed with a young exotic dancer, Christina (Kirshner), which arouses the jealousy of the club's resident DJ, Eric (Koteas), who is also in love with Christina.  Meanwhile Francis becomes involved with pet-store owner Thomas (McKellar), who runs a smuggling operation based around trading rare animals.

Back in the mid to late 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema, and this was the film that really made him a star director.  As with many of his films, various initially apparently unrelated stories, set in the past and present, interweave and coalesce into a whole towards the end.  The film conjures up a distinct feel right from the opening shot, as the credits play over a long tracking shot of a variety of hothouse plants and flowers while Mychael Danna's memorable, sinuous, Indian-influenced score plays and the opening line: "You must ask yourself, what brought them to this point?"  The decor in the Exotica club is full of images of jungle plants.  The film was marketed initially in some places as an erotic thriller, which conjures up images of the kind of cheap movies that come on late-night cable with dull plots and a couple of soft-focus sex scenes, and Exotica  really isn't that at all.  Given the fact that it is set in a strip club obviously there is a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the background, and there is a powerfully sensuous atmosphere in the film, but it is not a sex movies, nor is it really a thriller, although there are thriller elements in it.  It's a well-constructed film, with some great performances, and a fantastic soundtrack (including the best use on film of the late, great Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows").  Not all the various storylines are resolved in the end, but it remains a haunting, powerful and deeply rewarding exploration of grief and desire.       

      Mia Kirshner and Don McKellar in Exotica

Go

Year of Release:  1999
Director:  Doug Liman
Screenplay:  John August
Starring:  Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Taye Diggs, Katie Holmes, Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr, J. E. Freeman, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner
Running Time:  102 minutes
Genre:  Crime, comedy, drama

This film consists of three interlinked stories set over a Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning.  In Los Angeles, convenience store clerk Ronna (Polley) needs extra money to make her rent and attempts to double-cross the local drug dealer (Olyphant).  Meanwhile, Ronna's fellow clerk, Simon (Askew), sets off for a wild weekend with his friends in Las Vegas, where he becomes embroiled in a series of misadventures involving a wedding party, a fire and an angry strip-club owner (Freeman).  Also a couple of TV actors (Wolf and Mohr) are coerced into taking part in a sting operation by a sinister detective (Fichtner).

This film plays like a teen movie version of Pulp Fiction (1994) and, released by Columbia, it feels a lot like a major studio's attempt to emulate the hip indie movies that Miramax were specializing in at the time, and so isn't really as edgy and cool as it sometimes seems to think it is.  However, having said that it is an entertaining film, funny, fast-moving and fairly light-hearted.  The film is well-written and the individual stories are well-constructed, and each has it's own feel.  It's well cast and full of familiar faces many of whom would go on to bigger things (look out for Melissa McCarthy in her feature film debut), Sarah Polley in particular is a stand-out.  While it is very much a product of it's time, it has aged fairly well, and is always enjoyable.

Katie Holmes and Sarah Polley in Go