Time Bandits
Terry Gilliam is probably the most consistently bold and imaginative fantasy filmmaker in movie history, at least since George Melies. That feels like overpraise for the director of “The Brothers Grimm” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” but I honestly cannot think of a director (Ray Harryhausen is probably the peak fantasy filmmaker of all-time, but he didn’t direct the films his handprints are on) whose work is so regularly alive with ideas and creative solutions to issues of budget and practical design while creating entire worlds for his characters to inhabit. Peter Jackson is probably the closest to him, and Tim Burton is up there, but while there are films of Jackson and Burton’s I adore, I don’t know that either’s signature has imprinted on me like Gilliam’s, even if it’s a film I respect more than I love like “Brazil” or “Time Bandits,” his 1981 fantasy adventure.
“Time Bandits” feels like it should be an adaptation of a children’s novel, but instead it’s the brainchild of Gilliam and his Monty Python cohort, Michael Palin, and the story they tell is one of wonderful weirdness and simplicity, as Kevin (Craig Warnock) is besieged in his room by six bandits of time and space (played by David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Jack Purvis, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds and Tiny Ross) whom are on the run. They are escaping from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), whose star map they have taken, and they are using to to different points for personal gain. Kevin’s room is a point of place along the way, and he is taken on the adventure with them as they look to steal great riches.
This is the first time in quite a while since I had watched “Time Bandits,” and it’s fascinating to watch Gilliam work on a large-scale fantasy with a small budget. This is a big chunk of imagination by he and Palin, as Kevin and the time bandits make their way through history and fantasy to Napoleon’s reign in France, where the diminutive leader is delightfully played by Ian Holm; into Sherwood Forest, where John Cleese’s Robin Hood mistakes the bandit’s loot for donations to his own poor in his era; to ancient Greece, where Kevin befriends, and finds a welcome parental figure in King Agamemnon (Sean Connery); aboard the Titanic, where they break up the pending proposal of a troubled couple (Shelly Duvall and Palin, who also appeared in the Robin Hood segment); on the ship of an ogre and his wife; then, finally, in the presence of Evil (David Warner), who wants the map for his own purposes. Even as he works in quick moments and minimal budgets, Gilliam’s world in each of these stops feel fleshed out and fully realized, with his attention to detail one of the most arresting things about the film, along with Peter Biziou’s cinematography and a score by Mike Moran that engages us as much as the personalities on-screen.
Rewatching “Time Bandits,” I couldn’t help but think of what it would have been like had Gilliam, J.K. Rowling’s preferred choice, had directed the first “Harry Potter” film, but ultimately, Gilliam is a filmmaker of too unique vision and creativity to be involved with a studio tentpole like that. When he is offered the chance to do his own thing as a filmmaker is when he is at his best, and “Time Bandits” is a perfect example of that. It still has some of that Month Python human, but it also has him unafraid to mine darker sides of fantasy. This is a fun movie, but there’s a dark side to Kevin’s life- his parents have all but ignored him; the time bandits don’t really care about Kevin, and when the film ends, he’s not in a great place. But the adventure he went on is unforgettable.
