Time Bandits (1981)

 I think British fantasy is defined in my mind and best exemplified by Terry Gilliams fantasy films Time Bandit’s and the adventures of baron Munchausen.

Time bandits favors the more British elements and Munchausen is very much terry’s masterpiece. Yes I know Terry Gilliam is an American expatriate and the only non British python. But still British fantasy is captured very rarely on the screen. The sardonic bite and grounded whimsey is something that is very British in its character.

Time bandits is a Monty python skit about Robin Hood bookended by one of the great fantasy films of all time.

The grotesque and dark define its panoramic view of absurdity. I was introduced the movie anecdotally by my uncle who told the basic plot and described the movie to me. Often I act resentful towards sentimental BS I posture however I literally thought about this movie for two decades before I saw it on HBO max.

It is now one of the films I study having replaced hunter x hunter in my weekly rotation of media. I have likely seen it over a hundred times in the last five years.

I think these observations are as much about my own eccentricity as they are about the movie and How I relate to it. 

I think if you have seen a movie enough you can become numb to it. No longer excluding your internal projection from it as it becomes a predictable exercise. A means to means to access a series of vibes. A series of associations.

Now the relevant part of this to the reader of this is the absurdity. That is what time bandits is kind of about. It comes off as a really hateful Walt Disney film. A kind of nitroglycerine driven projection of the feebleness of trying to make sense of it, or anything else for that matter.

I think in many ways that what I enjoy and take away from the flawed masterpiece that is the movie. It is at the end of the day a kind playful darkness on reason itself. And the pleasure it instills in the viewer is a lot of the reason the bitterness of its existential implications are so bearable.