Visible crew/equipment: When they're building the petticoat balloon, the camera slowly goes back. Look at the lower-right corner of the screen: there is a man wearing a stadium jacket. He's a crew member.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
1 picture
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Robin Williams, Uma Thurman, Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, Sarah Polley, John Neville
Visible crew/equipment: When they're building the petticoat balloon, the camera slowly goes back. Look at the lower-right corner of the screen: there is a man wearing a stadium jacket. He's a crew member.
Baron Munchausen: Everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after.
Trivia: This film was actually the third installment in director Terry Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination," all dealing with fantasy escapism at different ages in life. The first film of the trilogy was 1981's "Time Bandits," a surreal fantasy seen through the eyes of a child; the second film was 1985's "Brazil," another surreal fantasy seen through the eyes of a middle-aged man; 1988's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" was yet another surreal fantasy seen through the eyes of an elderly gentleman.
Question: When Baron Munchausen and his cohorts clean out the Sultan's vault, the Sultan's horrified Treasurer crosses himself in the Catholic fashion. But, in this film, the Sultan is head of the Ottoman Empire (a Muslim empire), and the closest members of his court (such as his Treasurer) would surely be Muslim. So the treasurer's Christian gesture stands out as unlikely, at best. This seems to be a character error, but was it intended as a deliberate joke? If so, what was the joke?
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Answer: The Baron is a teller of tall tales and massively exaggerated stories, so it is all from his limited point of view. The Ottomans did have Christian members of staff, especially doctors and such but the treasurer would never be a non-Muslim.