Movie Night: Time Bandits

Year: 1981

Director: Terry Gilliam

Production Company: HandMade Films

Leads: John Cleese, Sean Connery

time_bandits_movie_poster_01Time Bandits is one of those wonderful films that I started watching many years ago, and somehow never got to finish (like Pulp Fiction – it was nearly ten years before I saw how it ended). Written alongside the Monty Python films, it shares many of the hallmark characteristics (and actors) of those inimitable televisual feasts, not the least of which is their complete and utter disregard for anything making any sense at all. Little Satis has not seen any Monty Python yet, but I suspect the time is coming.

In a nutshell, Kevin is a oppressed and imaginative 11-year-old who is whisked off by a band of six time-travelling dwarves in search of treasure, and on the run from the Supreme Being from whom their time map was stolen (still with me so far?). Enter a series of irreverent clashes with famous moments and figures in history, including Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Castiglione, Robin Hood, and the sinking of the Titanic. The seven eventually end up in the Time of Legends, face off with Ultimate Evil in the Fortress of Ultimate Evil, and are rescued by the Supreme Being. Supreme Being sets things right, sends Kevin back to bed, and everything ends with a hunky-oh-it-was-just-a-dream feeling. Only…

Not giving that one away. All I’ll say is the ending to Time Bandits is one of the most paradoxical and nonsensical moments I’ve ever seen in film, and Little Satis and I were discussing for days afterwards.

It was interesting to watch this film with Little Satis, for he hasn’t grown up with the same British humor that I did. This film, along with pretty much all of the Monty Python canon, is a blend of slapstick, nonsense and subtle wit, and there were a number of times when I had to point out to Little Satis why something was funny.

The poor are going to be absolutely thrilled. Have you met them at all?

Who?

The poor.

The poor?

Oh you must meet them – I’m sure you’ll like them. Of course, they haven’t got two pennies to rub together, but that’s because they’re poor.

This is followed by a fellow who decks every person they give gold to – because it is necessary, actually. Dear me…John Cleese as Robin Hood couldn’t be more perfect. Then again, he couldn’t be more perfect as Napoleon’s extremely tall general; watching Ian Holm as Napoleon Bonaparte descending into a drunken stupor whilst rambling about extremely short military conquerors of the past is one of the most exquisitely funny things I’ve seen. But this was lost on Little Satis of course, because they don’t teach kids about the Napoleonic Wars these days in third grade.

There are some surprising twists in the film, and they are twists of the tiny and subtle kind. A pivotal point is when Agamemnon is talking to Kevin about finding his friends and returning home. He asks Kevin if he wouldn’t like to be with his own mother and father again, and where pretty much any other film would take the heartstring-puller “yes,” Gilliam goes for the “no; it’s much better here.”

Given the limits of technology and budget of the time, the visual effects are splendid. It helps, I suppose, that in keeping with Monty Python’s aesthetic there are many effects which are quite deliberately “obvious”, but effective nonetheless: the giant who rises from the sea with their ship on his head is, of course, simply a man with a ship on his head. Other sets – in particular the scenes in the Fortress of Ultimate Evil – are striking and impressive, and the scene in which the dwarfs swing on ropes from great iron cages above a bottomless abyss is genuinely heart-stopping.

Gilliam hits all the right notes with this gem; from slapstick and nonsense to pithy wit and genuine emotion, he directs a seasoned cast in a delightful fantasy that never takes itself too seriously, yet somehow feels as though it has a serious point to make. If only we could work out what it is…

If anyone else has seen Time Bandits, what were your thoughts about the ending? Is it genuinely impossible, or am I missing something?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Devil’s Details: I’ve Seen That Minotaur Before

I am admittedly a bit of a technology geek. Not that I’m into coding and all that mess – I just like my toys. Life would be impossible without my iPhone, and very, very difficult without my iPad.

The truth is, though, that whilst I do read, check news, and sometimes even work on these devices, I actually end up mostly just playing games on them. Kind of sad, right?

One of the games that has sucked my time more than others is a thing called Infinity Blade. It’s honestly a pretty basic, boring game: you are a knight, you fight your way through hordes of demons to reach the God King, and try to defeat him. If you don’t, you go back to the beginning. If you do…you go back to the beginning. The main draw of Infinity Blade is that, for a mobile device like an iPhone, the graphics are actually pretty decent.

However, that’s really besides the point. One of the enemies in Infinity Blade is a ghastly creature called a Rookbane, who sports a scary horse head and wields an unpleasant-looking sword:

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

Rookbane from Infinity Blade. Kind of creepy.

The other day, Little Satis and I were watching Time Bandits for the first time. There’s a scene where the little boy Kevin inadvertently helps Agamemnon defeat a minotaur in ancient Greece:

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Minotaur from Time Bandits. Also kind of creepy.

Is it just me, or is the resemblance uncanny?

 

Thought of the Week: Fix me, Doc. Fix me.

pictureThose of you who’ve been with me for a while will know of my ongoing struggle with depression and other, as-yet unidentified mental difficulties. From crippling myself to the point of catatonia to self-diagnosing as autistic, I have been struggling with these difficulties for pretty much all of my life. Many years ago I was on heavy antidepressants and undergoing extensive therapy, and while it certainly didn’t turn my life around, it did help me through some issues at the time at least.

And then I just sort of let it slide. I stopped the meds, and…nothing seemed to get any worse. I stopped the therapy, and I could still talk to people. My head was still f***ed up, but it seemed like I didn’t need those things.

I met my wife. We had our child. And throughout all of this, on and off, I was on the brink. The interesting thing is that my “condition” has mutated and changed over the years. What was once straight-up major depressive disorder turned into depression with a whole lot of other weird stuff thrown in there, and now there’s kind of just the weird stuff left. Is that a good thing?

Sounds about right.

Sounds about right.

I haven’t genuinely wanted to kill myself for over six years now. In fact the thought doesn’t really pop into my head anymore. However, I was bawling my eyes out because we didn’t go out to lunch the other day (all right, there was a lot more to it than that, but it sort of sums it up). I haven’t self-harmed in over ten years, but I still sit and stare at things for minutes on end. I repeat phrases to myself over and over again when I’m upset, and my speech turns into torrents of vowels and consonants that might mean something in Urdu, but I really couldn’t be sure.

So while I’m not “depressed”, I’m certainly not right in the head. And…sigh…I’ve never quite figured it out. Sometimes I behave like a sociopath. Sometimes I behave like I’m autistic. Sometimes I behave just simply depressed, and sometimes I share characteristics with full-on psychopathic disorders. None of them really quite fit. Not bipolar…nope.

Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it.

So a year ago my doc gave me meds. After ten years, I started medications again, and it hasn’t been…unsuccessful. I started with a mood stabilizer. Did a little, but not a lot. Added an antidepressant; sort of helped. Added a booster for the anti-depressant, but had to reduce the mood stabilizer or I might freak out. Still…I don’t freak out quite so much. Anything else? No real change.

Sort of feel like I've got those things on my arms sometimes.

Sort of feel like I’ve got those things on my arms sometimes.

For years and years my wife has been urging me to seek help. Step one was the medications. Step three is, presumably, mental stability and the ability to not feel like that creep from Iron Man 2 with the frazzling tentacles everywhere.

So what’s step two? Therapy, it turns out. And two days ago – after years of procrastinating – I booked my first appointment.

And you know what? I feel so, so relieved. As if all of sudden I’ve been freed from a form-fitting vice that has been slowly crushing me for decades. I haven’t met the psychologist, have no idea whether we’ll get along, but just the knowledge that the answers (if there are any to be had) aren’t solely in my hands anymore is like a great release.

Is this what AA members feel like?

Remember this scene from Blade? Yeah, sort of crushed.

Remember this scene from Blade? Yeah, sort of crushed.

Suddenly I can’t wait; I feel like I need to talk to this person, desperately, as though my very soul depended on it. Who knows…maybe it does. It might all go wrong; she might say there’s nothing wrong with me and that I should stop being such a baby, or she might say I’m beyond help and should be institutionalized. She might just not like me (I might just not like her). But for now, I’m going to leave myself open and hope beyond hope that this will help. Because for the past several years now I’ve felt my mind slowly descend deeper into complete insanity, and I’m pretty sure at some point it’ll be too late.

You don’t think I’m expecting to much from the psychologist, do you?