The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. (15.)
Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribiero, Olga Kurylenko, Stellan Skarsgard and Jordi Molla. 133 mins.
The mystery and allure of unmade films is a dangerous thing to mess with – after a period of time that passion project is probably best left unmade. Though the cinema re-release of Jodorowsky's first three films this year has shown that his work stands up after the passing of half a century, none of them are as intriguing or thrilling as the version of Dune he didn't make at the end of the seventies. That is probably the most speculated over unmade film ever, though the speculation and regret is tinged with the guilty knowledge that the Jodorowsky Dune of our imagination is almost certainly superior to the Jodorowsky Dune he would have made.
Second to that used to be Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but now he's gone and made it. (Actually he made it a couple of years ago.) The opening credits proclaim it to be 25 years in the making and you'll probably be familiar with the documentary Lost In La Mancha which covered his previous attempts to film it falling apart a few days into filming. Though even having made it, the project has managed to maintain much of its mystery.
Perhaps the strangest thing about Quixote is that this Gilliam passion project, the obsession he couldn't let go of, is his least distinctive film yet. Other than the medieval theme, there is nothing particularly Gilliamesque about it. The cinematography is appealing but the visuals are basically realistic with hardly any of his trademark visual flourishes.
This take on Quixote has Driver (in a part at various times due to be filled by Johnny Depp, Ewan MacGregor and Jack O'Connell) as Toby, an ugly American advertising executive filming a Quixote parody ad in Spain, who decides to look up some of the locations he used, and locals that he had cast, in his student film version of Quixote made ten years earlier. He meets with the shoemaker who was his Quixote (Pryce, rather than Jean Rochefort, Robert Duvall or John Hurt) and discovers that he is now living with the delusion that he really is Quixote.
There is a scene early on where Driver is talking to a bar owner in faltering Spanish and he suddenly wipes away the subtitles with his hands and everybody starts talking in English. This is a lovely touch and a good way to explain away everybody speaking English. But having established that, the film doesn't stick to it and that is symptomatic of the problem with the whole film: you never know where you are with it, or why. The original version had this character, Toby, going back in time to join Quixote but now their adventure happens in the present day through a series of contrivances and it is difficult to know how we are meant to take a lot of what we are being shown. It should be an outrageous flight of fantasy, but the film seems stuck in dull reality.
Probably the biggest problem most people will have with the film is that it comes across as a very sour vision, and you're never quite sure why. As a reflection on filmmaking, it is the anti-8½, full of loathing for the profession and viewing it as a force that degrades and destroys everything it touches. Where does this come from? I would point the finger at his co-writer Tony Grisoni. In his early days, Gilliam often used to co-write with actor Charles McKeown. Now, nobody could accuse Brazil of being a light-hearted experience, but it wasn't oppressively grim and there was an impish spirit to it that made it a film worth repeat viewings. Admittedly, Grisoni first worked with him on his very fine Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas adaptation but after that they combined in 2006 on Tideland, an almost unbearably ugly vision. Quixote isn't that bleak, but there is almost no joy in its two hours. The film seems to be trying to make a statement about imagination and old fashioned chivalry making a stand against the corporate blandness and oppression of the modern age, but it feels defeated and ground down.
One of the more depressing aspects of my time as a reviewer has been all those occasions sitting in a cinema with audiences watching a new Gilliam, all us willing it to be good but all us slowly losing heart. (The one exception to this was the joyously entertaining Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – co-written by McKeown.) Quixote isn't a horrible film or a terrible one but it is largely unrewarding. At least now it's done, though you are still left wondering what it might have been like if it had been made with a bigger budget. Most frustratingly of all, the finished film doesn't explain what it was that hooked Gilliam on Quixote.
Directed by Terry Gilliam.
Starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribiero, Olga Kurylenko, Stellan Skarsgard and Jordi Molla. 133 mins.
The mystery and allure of unmade films is a dangerous thing to mess with – after a period of time that passion project is probably best left unmade. Though the cinema re-release of Jodorowsky's first three films this year has shown that his work stands up after the passing of half a century, none of them are as intriguing or thrilling as the version of Dune he didn't make at the end of the seventies. That is probably the most speculated over unmade film ever, though the speculation and regret is tinged with the guilty knowledge that the Jodorowsky Dune of our imagination is almost certainly superior to the Jodorowsky Dune he would have made.
Second to that used to be Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but now he's gone and made it. (Actually he made it a couple of years ago.) The opening credits proclaim it to be 25 years in the making and you'll probably be familiar with the documentary Lost In La Mancha which covered his previous attempts to film it falling apart a few days into filming. Though even having made it, the project has managed to maintain much of its mystery.
Perhaps the strangest thing about Quixote is that this Gilliam passion project, the obsession he couldn't let go of, is his least distinctive film yet. Other than the medieval theme, there is nothing particularly Gilliamesque about it. The cinematography is appealing but the visuals are basically realistic with hardly any of his trademark visual flourishes.
This take on Quixote has Driver (in a part at various times due to be filled by Johnny Depp, Ewan MacGregor and Jack O'Connell) as Toby, an ugly American advertising executive filming a Quixote parody ad in Spain, who decides to look up some of the locations he used, and locals that he had cast, in his student film version of Quixote made ten years earlier. He meets with the shoemaker who was his Quixote (Pryce, rather than Jean Rochefort, Robert Duvall or John Hurt) and discovers that he is now living with the delusion that he really is Quixote.
There is a scene early on where Driver is talking to a bar owner in faltering Spanish and he suddenly wipes away the subtitles with his hands and everybody starts talking in English. This is a lovely touch and a good way to explain away everybody speaking English. But having established that, the film doesn't stick to it and that is symptomatic of the problem with the whole film: you never know where you are with it, or why. The original version had this character, Toby, going back in time to join Quixote but now their adventure happens in the present day through a series of contrivances and it is difficult to know how we are meant to take a lot of what we are being shown. It should be an outrageous flight of fantasy, but the film seems stuck in dull reality.
Probably the biggest problem most people will have with the film is that it comes across as a very sour vision, and you're never quite sure why. As a reflection on filmmaking, it is the anti-8½, full of loathing for the profession and viewing it as a force that degrades and destroys everything it touches. Where does this come from? I would point the finger at his co-writer Tony Grisoni. In his early days, Gilliam often used to co-write with actor Charles McKeown. Now, nobody could accuse Brazil of being a light-hearted experience, but it wasn't oppressively grim and there was an impish spirit to it that made it a film worth repeat viewings. Admittedly, Grisoni first worked with him on his very fine Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas adaptation but after that they combined in 2006 on Tideland, an almost unbearably ugly vision. Quixote isn't that bleak, but there is almost no joy in its two hours. The film seems to be trying to make a statement about imagination and old fashioned chivalry making a stand against the corporate blandness and oppression of the modern age, but it feels defeated and ground down.
One of the more depressing aspects of my time as a reviewer has been all those occasions sitting in a cinema with audiences watching a new Gilliam, all us willing it to be good but all us slowly losing heart. (The one exception to this was the joyously entertaining Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – co-written by McKeown.) Quixote isn't a horrible film or a terrible one but it is largely unrewarding. At least now it's done, though you are still left wondering what it might have been like if it had been made with a bigger budget. Most frustratingly of all, the finished film doesn't explain what it was that hooked Gilliam on Quixote.
