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| Images courtesy of Janus Films |
Monty Python member
and chief animator Terry Gilliam is synonymous with fantasy adventure fiction
typically involving dreamers like himself brimming with boundless wild
imagination and an impish almost childlike playful impish desire. Influenced by everyone from Federico Fellini
to Ken Russell and particularly the Polish animation of Walerian Borowczyk,
Gilliam is something of a dystopian science-fiction provocateur whose films are
often Orwellian with a dash of Ray Harryhausen childish wonderment. Satirical, sardonic and sensorily excessive
in terms of opulent set pieces and outlandish costumed characters, Gilliam is
in a class all by himself. Starting out
in 1975 having co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry
Jones before mounting his first standalone feature with 1977’s fantasy comedy Jabberwocky,
Gilliam’s unique aesthete hadn’t really struck a chord with mainstream
audiences yet until his third feature in 1981 with Time Bandits which all
but catapulted him to the forefront of the US and Canadian box office and
cemented his reputation as an idiosyncratic fantasy-fiction game changer that
didn’t play by the studio standard rules and expectations.
An odyssey through time, past and present often peppered
with delightfully eccentric characters, Time Bandits begins with a young
English lad named Kevin (Craig Warnock) enmeshed in historical studies of
Ancient Greece, largely ignored by his parents addicted to buying household
appliances. One night as the boy is
sleeping, a knight in shining armor on horseback crashes through his wardrobe
before disappearing into his bedroom wall.
Shortly thereafter a group of six dwarves come out of the wardrobe
commandeered by Randall (David Rappaport) who reveal they’ve stolen some kind
of map with the ability to travel through the spacetime continuum in order to
steal treasure from different points of history. All throughout the film, landing in spots
like Italy during Napoleon’s (Ian Holm) reign or Robin Hood’s (John Cleese)
thieving and particularly Agamemnon’s (Sean Connery) Minotaur grappling, they’re
being pursued by a giant floating head only known as the Supreme Being which
demands a safe return of the map.
Unbeknownst to the titular Time Bandits, they’re being watched by
a malevolent force only known as Evil (David Warner) who seeks the map for his
own nefarious purposes.
When Terry Gilliam wasn’t able to mount production on his
cherished dystopian dream project Brazil (later made in 1985), he proposed
a more broadly appealing family fantasy adventure epic that still managed to
inject many of his bureaucratic utopian satirical comic elements that
characterized many of his subsequent works.
What would become the fourth feature produced by HandMade Films, a
production company initiated by Monty Python manager Denis O’Brien and ex-Beatle
George Harrison prominently featuring members of the comedy group, Time
Bandits became Gilliam’s most expensive project up to that time. Budgeted at around $5 million, the film was
shot partially in Morocco, Wales and Greece with some sequences shot at the
standing Raglan Castle and often shot from a low-angled point-of-view
perspective lensed by Pink Floyd The Wall cinematographer Peter Biziou
and a suitably rousing adventure score by Michael Moran with song contributions
from George Harrison, it unfolds onscreen as a shape-shifting Chinese box of
fantasy wonderment mixed with real bullet points in historical time.
Co-written by fellow Monty Python member Michael Palin
who also co-stars, Time Bandits while featuring a star-studded cast
including many sneaky cameos such as Shelley Duvall, Ian Holm, Jim Broadbent, Sean
Connery in maybe his second Zardoz film and Ralph Richardson and
seemingly led by child actor Craig Warnock, the real heroes of this saga are
the titular Time Bandits themselves.
Led by a brilliant David Rappaport and co-starring Kenny Baker, Mike
Edmonds, Malcolm Dixon, Tiny Ross and Jack Purvis, the ensemble cast of dwarf actors
initially appear in typical Gilliam fashion with everyone talking all at once
with a sense of chaos in the air. But
then individual personalities, longstanding grudges and personal ambitions
reveal themselves seemingly in real time as the film narrative itself continues
to change shape. Also for Gilliam aficionados,
look for Katherine Helmond who’d later appear in Brazil as well Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas in two particularly memorable grotesqueries.
Despite a difficult journey to the screen including disputes
with co-producer Denis O’Brien expressing dissatisfaction over the film’s
interpretive coda, Time Bandits shot at the number one spot in the 1981 theatrical
box office and maintained that position for around four weeks total, going on
to gross around $36 million. One year
later, the film was rereleased theatrically and took in another $6 million,
speaking to its curious universally appealing box office draw. Considered by Gilliam to be the first of his
loosely connected Trilogy of Imagination that would later encompass Brazil
and then wrapped with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1988 and
still the most beloved Gilliam effort for many, Time Bandits while
steeped in Monty Python lore represents the director’s first real break
into pop cultural consciousness as a visionary filmmaker working in a medium
that can barely contain his ideas. Firing
on every cylinder without losing its sense of controlled chaos, Time Bandits
while inspiring many imitators including a certain Bill & Ted series
nevertheless represents signature Gilliam in a fantasy/historical-fiction
adventure epic that stirs the imagination as it finds wiggle room to tickle the
ribs.
--Andrew Kotwicki
