Questions about the ending.

That would explain it. it still felt a bit weird. Maybe he is a ghost, appearing in the theater to battle the endless reason and unimaginativity brought on by the Horatio guy. or maybe the whole film just sets out to confuse audiences.

I haven't watched it in a while but it is a story in a story in a story.

There is so much going on and it is all so wonderful is it kind of hard to keep the base story line in mind. This is one of the few movies where I've seen it many times but you could drop me into the middle of it and I can't tell you which scene is coming next.

Doesn't matter as it is very enjoyable in it's parts and if you can keep it together you get a master message as described by the april 25 message by someone calling this Gilliam's most important film.

I riddled myself but I understand it this way that he tells the story of his adventure how he freed the country from the Turks and ended the war.
The people belive him except for the burocratic mayor to prove his point, he orders to open hte gate, and in deed the siege is over.
Now when he leaves with his horse towards the sunset, the question is did it all really happen or was it all a Muchhausen story ?

I believe that it is supposed to be relative to the actual "Baron." He supposedly returned from his campaign against the Turks, in real life, with all sorts of wild stories about his adventures. In this case, the ending is just to show us how the entire movie could be percieved as true or false, but what matters is the fun in how the Baron, at the end, tells it. It is incosiquential whether his stories are real or not, because they still captivate the people's minds, even in a time of great troubles. And as said, the novel and movie both do mock the Age of Rationalism, most evidently seen in the character of Horatio Jackson. He would rather see people dull, uninterested about fantasy and worried about their prediciment, in the "real" world at the end, for the purpose of concentrating their faith and confidence towards the invading Turks. But as we see at the end, the Baron's stories have the power to turn a simple actor into an inspiring revolutionary that helps lead the people in rebellion and open the gates to their "enemy." But, who is the real enemy? Is it the "invadors" or is it rather the man who would rather supress the people's imagination and wit, for the purpose of order? And oddly enough, we find out that the Turks are gone, so strangely enough we are left unkowing whether the Baron's fantastic stories are false or not, but we DO know that Horatio's propoganda was based upon a falsified story.

So really, it is for you to decide whether the stories are real or not, but all the ending is trying to show us is this: how do we inspire, and where do we put that inspiration?

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The ending just proves what strange things go one with the Baron. The story he tells (his adventure with Sally) seems to have actually happened, although it was only a story. He also says that that was "One of the many times [he] died", indicating that such occurances have happened before. He also seems to tell the story in such a way that indicates that he considers it true and in the past (as if it had already happened).

Another take on it...

Munchausen's story is actually Gilliam's story: the fantasy of his storytelling directly affecting the reality of the people listening in the theatre.

This is, in truth, the ultimate goal of any storyteller (which Gilliam always seems to describe himself as, over 'director' or 'animator'): that your stories can change the world and shape it for the better, perception of reality (baroque) possibly being more important than 'actual' reality (Newtonian).

After all, what the hell is 'reality' anyway?

Have you ever saw an interview with the man? I'd say Gilliam is just a nutcase. In the good way.

He enjoys making things with no logic what so ever, while trying to make it seem like there is a logic behind. There always is a logic behind anything, if you want to. Reasoning is a matter of choice, you can always find a reason, every question has at least one answer built in on it.

That been said, the dog is there in the end, age less, the daughter asks if it was all real, again, and the father shows the daughter the theater sign corrected as she wished.

The pretty lady in the end, who gives him kisses when he disappear in the horizon, could be the first kid who lived with him that previous adventure, the one told by the movie in which he dies, and he would be telling the second theater that he was talking about the same story to another audience when the town began to crash, and he caught a bullet, and so on.

He could be just inventing it all since the first scene, when he begins telling the story from the turk sultan, including the theater going down. That's what someone said as a story, inside a story, inside a story.

In the end it is just a story.

By the way, did you know that story and history are the same word (historia) in portuguese? It's one word used for both meanings, as there was no actual difference between the two. It's all in the past, and we may never know what's fact and what's fiction.

I loved this and almost every other piece of Terry's solo job, specially the rest of this "trilogy", Twelve Monkeys and Fisher King. Great stuff. Keep it comming TG!