{"id":530,"date":"2016-05-19T03:28:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T07:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=530"},"modified":"2016-11-09T04:42:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T09:42:43","slug":"horror-and-comedy-how-time-bandits-shaped-my-world-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/05\/19\/horror-and-comedy-how-time-bandits-shaped-my-world-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror and Comedy: How Time Bandits Shaped My World View"},"content":{"rendered":"

No single film helped shape my world view more than Time Bandits<\/em>. It showed my visions of good and evil, and blurred the line between horror and wonder. When I first saw it, I must have been roughly the age of the protagonist, Kevin. Somewhere around eleven or twelve years old. And there was no cinematic adventure more wondrous \u2013 Napoleon, Agamemnon, cowboys, Robin Hood, the Supreme Being and Ultimate Evil, all drawn together in a way that made it seem possible for a kid to meet them all, if he just showed a little bravery. Being Terry Gilliam\u2019s baby, with help from John Cleese and Michael Palin, it\u2019s also wickedly funny. <\/p>\n

I have never asked anyone else if they had this experience as a kid, but I assume many must have. Most nights before I went to bed, I would lie awake for a good long while, my eyes adjusting to the dark and drifting around the room to the different piles of toys and books. Silence is a reason for the imagination to wage war. At least in my case. Sometimes my model planes would fly. Or the globe would spin. Or the skirmishing soldiers I had laid out in front of the closet would pick up where they left off that afternoon. Or I would wait for whatever was hiding in my closet (I am still sure something was there, at least once or twice) to finally emerge and the story to start. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t much different from Kevin\u2019s messy room. I think we even had the same toy robot, one that walked and fired guns built into its chest, emanating a smell of burnt sulfur. When Kevin went to bed at the beginning of Time Bandits, he was doing the same thing I was doing. Except the things in his closet showed themselves. When Randall and his crew jumped out of the armoire, I was thrilled, scared, and amused all at once. And I wanted to go with them. Even, and maybe especially, when I saw who was after them. <\/p>\n

It becomes clear that the Bandits are running from something, or someone, and they are smart enough to find a secret way out by pushing one of the walls in Kevin\u2019s bedroom out of place. There is a mist forming, and they need to be somewhere else before it takes shape. That leaves them running down a corridor created by moving the wall, with a giant head made of blue and white light chasing them and demanding they return what they\u2019ve stolen. That image was immediately seared into my personal lexicon of nightmares. When that wall pops off into the darkness, Kevin and his new acquaintances are somewhere just beyond reality, beyond the stories we\u2019ve all agreed to tell about myth and history. And they have a map that allows them to go anywhere in time and space by finding the right portal. <\/p>\n

\"timebanditssupreme\"<\/p>\n

There was a worldview here completely alien to what I\u2019d learned at school or CCD classes. I knew the names, but the stories were changed. Here was Napoleon (Ian Holm), bored with the fierce battle raging around him and driven by a need to overcompensate for his height, to the point where he could only find entertainment in watching small people hurt each other. Cleese\u2019s Robin Hood was a bully, and his \u201cMerry Men\u201d violent and dangerous. I had to reconcile the repulsion of an arm wrestler tearing the limbs off his opponents and tossing them into a pile while a crowd cheers with the fact that the whole scene was terribly funny. The battle in which we meet Agamemnon (Sean Connery) is as terrifying and ferocious as his desert landscape is beautiful. <\/p>\n

Then after all of this history and pop culture, there was an ogre living in a ship strapped to the head of a giant roaming some fictional ocean. At that point in the film, absolutely everything was possible. Imagination was the only limit. That was exhilarating, yes, but also frightening, depending on your imagination. And I found I could imagine a lot. <\/p>\n

Toward the end, Kevin and the bandits are lost in a hazy, indistinct landscape. When they hit an invisible barrier and are left with no options to move on, their frustrated banter turns to visceral hatred. Supposedly they are at the threshold of the Fortress of Ultimate Evil, but they might kill each other before they find it. In a rage, Randall tries to bash in his friend Wally\u2019s head with a skull and winds up shattering the barrier. And there it is \u2013 the Fortress. Impossible larger, a world of gray on black, broken up by occasional clouds of smoke. It was unlike anything I\u2019d seen, but I could conjure up what that place smelled like. <\/p>\n

This is where Evil lives (played perfectly by David Warner). Kevin and his friends have to do battle with it to escape. And what does evil sound like? The announcer for a game show, apparently. Because that\u2019s what Kevin, Randall, and the rest are greeted with. And the Bandits can\u2019t resist the call of cash and prizes, even as Kevin pleads with them not to walk into the light. Evil was using something so pedestrian as a game show to lure the heroes and they were falling for it. In my head, I was pleading right along with Kevin. We could both see it. Why couldn\u2019t the adults? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a trap, of course, and brings Kevin, Randall, and the crew up against Evil himself, face to face. Good versus evil, pure and elemental. Evil is arrogant, and his crew is pitiful and stupid, but singular of purpose to destroy everything good. <\/p>\n

But good always wins, right? That\u2019s the message I got from every movie and TV show at the time. The Goonies beat the Fratelli gang. The A Team always beat the odds. Truth, justice, and the American Way. Just believe and all things are possible. Okay, so Evil just turned Og into a pig. And it doesn\u2019t look good when Evil unleashes a gang of otherworldly creatures \u2013 long black robes and elongated cow skulls for heads and bony hooks for arms \u2013 to kill everyone. Okay, so there would be casualties. There had to be to make the victory seem more realistic. <\/p>\n

Still, Kevin has a plan. He and the newly porcine Og will distract Evil while everyone else splits up and heads to the nearest portal to bring back reinforcements. And what a glorious holy shit moment when they arrive. Cowboys. Archers. A tank. A spaceship. Literally knights in shining armor. We (and I feel like I\u2019m there somewhere, and anonymous Bandit) are gonna kick your ass, Evil, and in a few minutes, when we\u2019ve dispatched you, we\u2019re going to laugh about it, and maybe take a minute to solemnly mark our losses. Kevin is control of this. And he\u2019s smart, principled. He\u2019ll rise to the occasion. He\u2019s the hero. Nothing beats the hero. <\/p>\n

Then the hero is beaten. Thoroughly and decisively. One by one, Evil dispatches every last hero in a comically easy fashion. The cowboys dashed against the stone walls, the archers slain with their own arrows. The knights impaled on their own lances to form a macabre statue of the freshly dead. Horror and wonder are, to me, part of the same impulse. They both overwhelm the senses, they permeate the skin and head straight for your beating heart. I felt both as I had my expectations obliterated in that final battle scene. So much hope built up Never had I felt so much hope created and destroyed so efficiently. <\/p>\n

The film has the most puzzling and literal deus ex machina. Just as Evil is about to claim victory, he just explodes. The giant head of the Supreme Being appears once again with the same imposing symphonic score and bright blue and white light. It\u2019s gone from bad to worse. He\u2019ll burn everyone in righteous fire. Except suddenly he\u2019s an old English guy in a nice suit (Ralph Richardson). And he\u2019s ordering everyone to clean up. When Randall apologizes for stealing the map, the Supreme Being tells him don\u2019t be silly, everything had gone according to his plan. And when Kevin asks the Supreme Being why we need evil, he answers, distractedly, \u201cI think it\u2019s something to do with free will.\u201d <\/p>\n