Review: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
On the one hand, one has to applaud director Terry Gilliam for finally achieving his long-held dream of bringing Miguel de Cervantes classic novel, Don Quixote, to the big screen. His various attempts over the course of nearly three decades to mount the production are legend bordering on myth. The closest he ever came to realising his task was in 2000 when shooting began with Jean Rochefort as Quixote and Johnny Depp as a 21st-century marketing executive who goes back in time. As chronicled in the 2002 documentary, Lost in La Mancha, the already troubled production was soon beset by sets and equipment being destroyed due to flooding, Rochefort bowing out due to illness, and other financial difficulties. Production was soon suspended, and eventually cancelled altogether.
Now after "more than 25 years in the making...and unmaking," as a title card cheekily notes, Gilliam brings us The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and let's just say it may have been better to wonder what might have been. Chaos and sloppiness are part and parcel of any Gilliam film but, if one is lucky, this can be offset by an admirable striving and noble spirit. Whilst one can read the film as his most personal work, it doesn't make it any less terrible, ponderous, and almost entirely unrewarding.
It starts off promisingly enough with Don Quixote charging at the windmills he believes are giants before the whole scene is revealed to be part of a commercial that hotshot and arrogant director Toby (Adam Driver) is dispassionately helming. He comes across a bootleg copy of a student film he did nearly a decade ago. The film, also inspired by Don Quixote, sparks memories of its production in a small Spanish town where he discovered his Don Quixote in the form of a humble shoemaker (Jonathan Pryce), conducted a romance with an innocent village girl named Angelica (Joana Ribeiro), and was still full of passion for filmmaking.
By happy coincidence, the village isn't far from where he's currently filming, so Toby decides to ditch his directing duties and take a motorbike to the village. Once there, he discovers that sweet Angelica has left town and become an escort, much to her father's displeasure and disappointment, and the shoemaker has come to believe that he is, in fact, Don Quixote and that Toby is his trusty old pal Sancho Panza come to rescue him. All manner of shenanigans ensue as the two lurch from one misbegotten adventure to another, successfully taxing viewers' patience and willingness to endure such a journey of inertia.
Gilliam pitches the film too broadly for either Pryce or Driver to succeed in introducing any depth of characterisation to their roles. The helter-skelter nature of the proceedings prevents any genuine emotional investment or any sense of tragedy to Don Quixote, which is a shame for one wishes that the film had been worth the wait.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Written by: Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni; based on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Watkins, Sergi López, Rossy de Palma, Jordi Mollà
