Learning from Movies: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

I may have mentioned how much I enjoy Terry Gilliam films.

This one almost ended his career.

I am, of course, referring to The Adventures of Baron Muchausen.

It might surprise you to know that there really was a Baron Munchausen: Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen, born May 11, 1720, in Bodenwerder, in the Electrorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He fought in the Russian army against the Turks and the Swedes, and died in 1797.

The first English language account of his life appeared in 1785, and most historians agree that the real man disapproved of the way it borrowed humorous material from other works. Somehow, the man’s immodesty made him a magnet for folklore and tall tales from all over Europe.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988, Columbia Pictures) is a fantastic adventure film and well worth seeing. It’s stars include John Neville, Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, Charles McKeown, Jack Purvis (who also starred in Time Bandits), Jonathan Pryce, and an eighteen-year-old Uma Thurman.

Lessons and inspiration after the break.

• I should never have taught you to read.
• “And Sons” is traditional. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
• The only lasting peace is one based on reason, and scientific principles.
• My father will kill me for dying now.
  
• We can't start escaping at a time like this. What would future generations think of us?
• He won't get far on hot air and fantasy, unless he saves us all
• Heroism demoralizes the ordinary soldiers and citizens who are trying to lead normal, simple, unexceptional lives.
• Your reality is lies and balderdash, and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever!
• It's all logic and reason now. Science, progress, laws of hydraulics, laws of social dynamics, laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me.
• I always feel rejuvenated by a touch of adventure. For heaven's sake, don't you get any younger or I'll have to find a wet nurse.
• I have learned from experience that a modicum of snuff can be most efficacious.
• They're inviting us to defeat them! We must oblige them!
• We surrendered last time! Now, it's your turn.
• And that was only one of the many occasions on which I met my death, an experience which I don't hesitate strongly to recommend.
• Everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after.

 

The simplest less of the film is this: Times change, and we must change with them. The best way to pick which change is best, don't solely use your head. You were given a more reliable faculty—your sense of expansion or contraction. It peels away everything else away but knowing. 

 

The Baron obviously had a keen sense of that, and always chose the big, bold, expansive option.

Go big or go home!