EVIL: God isn't interested in technology. He cares nothing for the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time, forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men!
ROBERT: Slugs.
EVIL: Slugs! HE created slugs! They can't hear. They can't speak. They can't operate machinery. Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?
Time Bandits (1981) is the first installment of Terry Gilliams’ loose and named-in-hindsight “Trilogy of Imagination,” followed by Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). It’s the story of young Kevin, who joins a larcenous band of dwarves on their journey though time to steal history’s most valuable objects. It’s marked by the kind of surreal, often dark imagery and absurd humor that Gilliam began developing in his Python days, which has since become his trademark. It’s episodic, following the band as they are pursued by “The Supreme Being,” leaping from historical time periods, to fantasy settings, toward an ultimate showdown with Evil. As an adventure, it’s wondrously bizarre tale who’s chapters might not exactly sum up to a cohesive whole—which might make it the perfect coupling of form and content for film about childhood dreams. It’s a fantasy about the power of imagination unleashed as a child’s means of coping with a perplexing and superficial adult world, and his disillusionment to hero worship.
IIn a vaguely dystopian suburban setting, Kevin observes his greedy parents obsessively compare their latest household appliances to those of the neighbors. Throughout the film, technology is vaguely associated with evil. After they order him to bed, Kevin sees a horsed knight burst through his closet door and ride away. Some time later, we see a knight appear among dozens of Kevin’s drawings on the wall. Gilliam’s filmmaking is marked by a certain refusal to intellectualize, and we’re never sure if Kevin’s adventures are real or imagined.
A much later sequence is representative of the adventure as whole. Kevin and his friends land aboard an ogre’s ship, fix his bad back while he wife makes fondue, and toss them overboard. The Ogre’s cough then creates a wind that blows the ship across the water, which turns out to be sitting on top of a giant’s head. They escape the giant by finding a sleeping potion on board, tearing a hole through the ship’s floor, and injecting it into the giant’s head using fireplace bellows. This entire sequence takes place in less than five minutes.
What unfolds is plotted as if by child’s logic, told from a child’s perspective, in a dreamlike haze. Much of the dialogue seems almost like it was written stream-of-consciousness. The cameras remain low for the entire film, a kid’s-eye-view just three or four feet from the ground. The character Evil is a child’s-cartoon version of the Devil. When great moral questions are presented, they’re answered offhandedly by authority figures who seem to be barely paying attention to the question. In the end, the Supreme Being—a suit-wearing, schoolmaster-type God—appears out of nowhere and quickly defeats Evil. He then reveals that the events, including lives lost, have been a part of his plan all along. Kevin asks him, “But why does there have to be evil?” Distracted, he replies “I think it has something to do with free will. “
What begins seemingly as simple escapism soon evolves into something more, as one after another of Kevin’s heroes begin to disappoint him. Robin Hood is an upper-class, narcissist twit; Napoleon comes up short, and Agamemnon declines to teach Kevin sword fighting in favor of “much more useful” magic tricks. In Kevin’s world, he has to learn that adults don’t have the answers. Kevin returns home in the midst of a house fire. His parents are scrambling to remove their most valued appliances. From outside, the mother yells,“I’m going in for the toaster!” After ignoring Kevin’s warning to not touch a bit of evil goo, they spontaneously explode, leaving Kevin alone with two billowing pillars of smoke. The film ends on that traumatic note. Though disturbing, Kevin has learned through his adventure of taking care of himself.
Time Bandits is part adventure fantasy, part social satire, part childhood existential nightmare. It was appropriately tag-lined “it’s all the dreams you’ve ever had, and not just the good ones.” It’s certainly a child’s film—though whether or not it’s actually for kids is definitely up for debate—and the ease with which Gilliam accesses the childlike mindset it quite brilliant. Ideas are free-flowing, and sometimes a child’s solution truly is the best. Though often fantasy, adventure stories can help children learn about and cope with difficult realities.
“If I’d actually learned any of the lessons, I wouldn’t be making films anymore. I try not to learn. I spend most of my life unlearning.”
Terry Gilliam
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