The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Terry Gilliam finally conquered the windmills that he faced, and his “Don Quixote” has finally come alive.
It looked as though 2002’s documentary “Lost in La Mancha” would be the closest we’d get to seeing Gilliam’s unique vision of Miguel de Cervantes’s classic hero’s quest on the big screen. That documentary chronicled his aborted attempt to make his quirky, contemporary take on the man from La Mancha’s tale in 2000 with Jean Rochefort as the knight and Johnny Depp as Toby, a marketing executive thrown back in time, who becomes his Sancho Panza. What we saw showed much promise in the “Brazil,” “Time Bandits” and “12 Monkeys” director’s vision for the story, but natural disasters, and Rochefort’s health, forced the production to shut down after 6 days. In the 16 years after, Gilliam struggled to get the film back on the ground, and he eventually did with Adam Driver in the Depp role and Jonathan Pryce in Rochefort’s role. Was it worth the wait? I think so.
As the years went on, and legal battle over legal battle over Gilliam’s film collided with casting decisions coming and going- in the interim, Michael Palin, John Hurt, Robert Duvall, Ewan McGregor and Jack O’Connell were all linked to the main roles- Gilliam and co-writer Toby Grisoni continued fine-tuning the screenplay, and it became something a bit different than what, from our glimpses in “Lost in La Mancha,” it started out as. Now, rather than a time traveler, Toby remains in the modern era. He is still in marketing, but he is a director, now, and when the film opens, he is in Spain, making a commercial using Don Quixote as the protagonist- the first image we see is the commercial’s Quixote famously charging at windmills- but his vision feels forced. This is a big account, and it is just not working as he’d like, and his boss (Stellan Skarsgard) is in town with his wife (Olga Kurylenko), trying to inspire Toby. That night, at dinner, he brings over a local gypsy selling touristy things, and it turns out, Skarsgard pulls out a movie (called “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote”) that Toby actually made as a student a decade ago. Toby is intrigued to watch it again- so much so that his boss’s wife’s attempts to seduce him fall flat- and so inspired that he goes to the nearby village he shot in, and his memories of the shoot become vivid. He finds some of the people he met a decade ago, and hears the fates of others. He then comes across the old shoemaker he cast as Quixote, and so enthralled he was during filming he continued on as Quixote in the decade since. When he sees Toby, he sees Sancho Panza, and the two end up on a wild adventure together where past and present connect.
The years fighting to make this movie have clearly been difficult for Gilliam- although he has delivered two fascinating films in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” and “Tideland” along with two flawed films in “The Zero Theorem” and “The Brothers Grimm” since 2000- and that pain and stress, and cynicism about filmmaking, has found its way into the text of “Don Quixote.” One of the key points the film makes is how Toby’s student production had a negative impact on the locals in the central roles- the actor who played Sancho is passed, the young girl (Joana Ribeiro) who played Quixote’s muse in the film has gone off to become a star, and instead is now an escort, while Javier, the cobbler, never let go of the role of Quixote once he found his way into it. By removing the time travel component, and building his story around Toby being faced with the wreckage his production had on the non-actors he cast in his early film, Gilliam has made a film that feels lacerating about itself, and the journey to bring it to life. Does he see “Lost in La Mancha,” the film about his initial failure, as a ghost haunting him in his new attempt to bring “Don Quixote” to life? It’s impossible to think otherwise. In a way, Gilliam is both Toby and Quixote in the film he’s finally made of his vision- he’s both cynical of the world of producers and slick advertisers, and the value of art itself, like Toby, as well as struggling to hold on to the values of chivalry and love like Javier/Quixote. I don’t know that we were never going to get the initial version of the Gilliam’s film again after that aborted attempt in 2000- honestly, how could we? This is the work of a filmmaker whose most personal project fell apart, and he had to fight tooth and nail for two decades to finally make; the added baggage of its making was probably always destined to make its way into the film- personally, I cannot help but applaud Gilliam’s honesty in the way he makes it part of the movie outright.
As much as the film is awash in Gilliam’s cynicism about Hollywood, the romantic appeal of Quixote and his values in the face of a world that mocks them comes through. Jonathan Pryce’s work in the film as Javier/Quixote is sublime, and we don’t see the sad, delusional man but an individual who has genuine love in his heart, and who has a clear compass pointing him through the murky waters of what is right and wrong. This is one of my favorite performances of the year, thus far, and the last 15-20 minutes is heartbreaking for Pryce. As Toby, Driver continues to solidify himself as one of the best actors around, and we believe the shift in him as the film goes on as he comes to see Javier as more than just a crazy old man, and he finds himself actually seeing the fantasy world of Quixote himself. Like with Pryce, a lot of it boils down to that last 20 minutes of the movie, and Toby’s fate is an interesting one, as we see him begin to embody the ideals of Quixote himself. The twist at the end makes for a fascinating conclusion to the story, and the beginning of a very different one for Toby. For Gilliam, it feels like an acknowledgement that the purity of goodness in this world can survive, regardless of how difficult the journey is to get there. Toby’s spiritual quest in “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is Gilliam’s spiritual quest in making it. Now that his demons are excised, it’ll be interesting to see what may be next for the filmmaker.
