Revisiting Rewatchables, week: “Time Bandits”
Revisiting Rewatchables, week: “Time Bandits”
Imagine lying in bed, trying to fall asleep when suddenly you hear a rattling noise and a knight in armour, on a white horse, bursts through the wardrobe door, raises his sword and gallops off into the countryside. WHAT?? That’s what little Kevin thinks once he dares to look up again. There is no trace left after the knight and his horse, and the countryside is back to being his bedroom wall.
The following night, six dwarves make their entrance through Kevin’s wardrobe. This time around he is prepared. He is armed with a torch and a Polaroid camera. It turns out the dwarves stole a map from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson). The map shows holes in time, and the dwarves want to use this information to travel to some point in time, steal as much as they can and then vanish to another point in time. Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned, for not only are they being chased by the Supreme Being, there is also Evil Genius (David Warner) who wants the map in order to change the world according to his ideas:
If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!
Anyway, Kevin decides to travel with his new acquaintances and ends up in Italy at a point in time where Napoleon laid siege to a town. While the town officials wait to be allowed to surrender (they are really keen to surrender, a general says) Napoleon watches a puppet show. Meanwhile the fighting goes on and the puppeteer dies. Napoleon is angry and scary:
More of the funny show … with the little puppets … hitting each other … that’s what I like … little things … hitting each other
The Time Bandits see their chance, take to the stage and Napoleon is delighted. Soon the Time Bandits are generals, dining with Napoleon while he drones on about the size of various famous men. Size is important to him. The smaller the better. Eventually he falls asleep, the Time Bandits grab a load of treasures, find the nearest hole in time and escape.
And so the journey continues. From Napoleon to Robin Hood, then to Agamemnon and from there to the Titanic. Finally, they end up in the Time of Legends and are picked by an ogre and his wife.
And here comes the second truly iconic scene. The Time Bandits are alone on the ship of the ogre when the ship begins to rise into the air and we see that the ship is the hat of a giant who starts to march towards the shore. WHAT??
They are now in the Time of Legends trying to find the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness in order to steal “The Most Fabulous Object in the World!” It’s a trap of course, set by Evil Genius. The intrepid travellers are caught, the map ends up in the hands of Evil Genius, but Kevin has a Polaroid of the map, and the band sets out to fetch help in order to defeat Evil Genius. In the end it is the appearance of the Supreme Being which puts a sudden stop to Evil Genius and his grandiloquence. He is unceremoniously transformed into charcoal.
The Supreme Being orders the Time Bandits to clean up after the destruction of Evil Genius and gives them their jobs back:
Supreme Being: I should do something very extroverted and vengeful to you. Honestly, I'm too tired. So, I think I'll transfer you to the undergrowth department, brackens, more shrubs, that sort of thing... with a 19% cut in salary, backdated to the beginning of time.
Randall: Oh, thank you, sir.
Supreme Being: Yes, well, I am the nice one.
Kevin wakes up in his bed. His house is on fire and firefighters break into his room to rescue him. All is well, or could be. Unfortunately, his parents refuse to listen to his warnings and touch a piece of Evil that had ended up in their microwave oven. The parents explode. The end.
This is a fantasy film but there is not one grain of fairy dust to be seen. The film is surprisingly (or not, given that it is based on a script by Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, and directed by Terry Gilliam) dark, satirical and brutal. There is death and destruction everywhere; the battle between Agamemnon and the Minotaur is brutal; Evil Genius has scary minions that might be the forefathers of Dementors, and the ending is very grim. There is nothing sentimental about this film. But apart from this dark side, the film is also endlessly inventive, and some scenes are sumptuous and truly beautiful (the court of King Agamemnon springs to mind, with its wonderful set design, the masks and the music).
“Time Bandits” benefits from great casting. The six dwarves who are at the centre of the film (David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis and Tiny Ross) make a believable gang where everyone has their part to play in the heists they pull off. They are skilful, cunning and ruthless. But the heart of the film is little Kevin, played by Craig Warnock. He is really charming, full of wonder, and we as the audience experience the various adventures through his eyes. The big names (Ian Holm, Sean Connery, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Shelley Duvall, Peter Vaughan and Katherine Helmond) each bring something special to their parts.
The film is missing some scenes. Some adventures and characters were cut. Our heroes were to walk through a forest of gigantic hand/trees and they met Spider Ladies. We can read about these scenes in the screenplay and there exist some stills. But the scenes are gone. Vanished in a hole in time. Is it a pity all this remains unseen? Maybe yes, probably not. The film is perfectly shaped as it is.
The last time I’d seen the film was in 1984, that was a year before “Brazil” opened, and watching “Time Bandits” now, I realize how much of “Brazil” is foreshadowed in it. The jingles and game show on TV, the giant, the cages in the lair of Evil Genius, the plastic covers, the nightmarish monsters, but most of all the question whether things are real or just part of a dream.
“Time Bandits” is absolutely worth watching. It is still fresh and exciting. And it is way better than the new series by Jemaine Clement, lain Morris and Taika Waititi. The series is entertaining but it plays it safe and lacks the bite and the edge of the original. The Time Bandits in the series are bumbling amateurs, and the series is soppy. None of the original Time Bandits would have spent time saving an injured “rhinokelos”. They would have eaten it right away. And most importantly: a Supreme Being who is peevish and can be duped as in the series is no Supreme Being. The original film got that right:
Wally: Do you mean you knew what was happening to us all the time?
Supreme Being: Well, of course. I am the Supreme Being, I'm not entirely dim...