Directed by Terry Gilliam. Cast: Craig Warnock, John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelly Duvall, Katherine Hellmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Sir Ralph Richardson, Kenny Baker, Peter Vaughn, David Rappaport, David Warner.
Plot Synopsis: A young boy named Kevin (Warnock) hears a commotion in his closet and, then, is surpised when an armored knight comes crashing into his bedroom. The next night, a group of overly excitable dwarves abduct the boy and take him on a wild adventure across time as they run from Evil Incarnate (Warner) and also from the angry Supreme Being (Richardson). It seems that the dwarves have stolen God's map of the universe and are using it to collect treasure and wealth. God, otherwise totally uninterested in His universe, is annoyed at the loss of His map.
A final confrontation between Evil Incarnate and the Supreme Being leaves everything destroyed. God gets His map back and Kevin is unceremoniously returned to his home, orphaned, and left to fend for himself.
The message of the film is that there is no meaning to life or anything else. We exist as specks of dust on an insignificant speck of dust within a massive dust cloud. God may exist, but He is uninterested in our affairs and will be irritated if we bother Him.
This nihilistic philosophy has been adopted by many modern people, especially in the form known as materialistic determinism, which holds that we are merely the sum of our chemical and physical processes, completely devoid of free will, and, in the most extreme versions of this philosophy, even of conscious thought. Since there is no meaning outside of the physical processes involved, there are no moral absolutes.
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