It's not often we get a good old fashioned cursed film these days.
Probably no film of recent decades has had a production nightmare quite like Terry Gilliam's long suffering Don Quixote epic. It's taken the man 25 years to finally bring the Man of La Mancha to the big screen, and certainly if Gilliam were to look back at where he began his masterpiece, it would look quite different than what he somehow ended up with after all that time.
Toby is a young and hopeful American filmmaker touring Spain, seeking the perfect cast for his indie interpretation of Don Quixote. Finding the perfect rustic little Spanish village and choosing his cast from the folk that live there, Toby encounters Javier. An aged cobbler with a distinctive face, perfect for the title role. Javier is no actor, and a hopeless Don Quixote at first, but soon the joy of the role overtakes the man, and brings a taste of success to Toby and his little epic.
A decade later, Toby is the golden child of big budget high fashion advertising, and shooting his latest commercial in the Spanish countryside. Realizing his proximity to the old shooting ground of his past, he escapes the hectic set in search of some inspiration from his former indie years. The old streets are the same, the people aging or passed away. When he unexpectedly runs into the ancient Javier, Toby discovers that the cobbler has been trapped living the true life of Don Quixote ever since.
Recognizing his long lost squire 'Sancho' immediately, 'Don Quixote' drags the confused young director into the wilds of rural Spain, seeking monsters to battle, maidens to rescue, and the return of the lost age of Chivalry. Believe it or not, they find it.
While The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may take a while to get to the 'Gilliam-esque' elements of the tale, it's a wild ride when it does get there. The valiant knight and his hapless squire take a twisting road through their adventures, with startling changes in mood and style only a moment away at any turn. Set against an ever changing backdrop of the Spanish countryside, through windmill filled mountains, sleepy hamlets from the 14th century and medieval castles filled with carnival revelers, Don Quixote and young Sancho encounter the best and worst of humanity. The lines between what is real and dream, fantasy and reality, become hard to discern, and our hero's adventure soars through heights of slapstick comedy at one moment, to the depths of deep sadness the next.
Just as Quixote himself is lost in his world of make believe chivalry, the tale forces us to peer through this lens alongside him. After a while the evil giants and cruel wizards of the dream places of La Mancha are more likable than the detestable individuals in the world of the real. Foreign investors flashing money and dropping slurs around the Spanish locals, womanizing businessmen and philandering wives, all number among the real world monsters, and soon enough even Toby begins to question why he would wish to return.
Taking the expected weirdness of a Gilliam movie all aside, we are left with two really quite brilliant performances here. There's a multitude of characters crossing the paths of our heroes, but it truly is Quixote and Sancho themselves that absolutely shine.
Adam Driver gives us a Toby that is so out of his depth in the world of the fearless Don Quixote, with a constant refusal to accept the realities of the impossible situations he is cast into in the role of Sancho Panza. He's the perfect straight man against the endlessly excitable Don Quixote, acting almost as a personified audience reaction at times, and his modern sanchismos are a joy throughout the adventure.
Our titular hero, the chivalrous holy warrior Don Quixote, is so well portrayed by Gilliam legend Jonathan Pryce, with so much laughter and conviction and genuine love in his every delivery that he is a constant thrill to watch.
I am so in love with this playful, nuanced performance that I could watch Pryce's Don Quixote in ten more films. The labor of love in this sprawling tale is no more clear than in the heart shown by the Man of La Mancha himself.
The production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may indeed have been cursed, but what has arrived is a film that is wide in scope and grand in nature. It has the tenuous grasp on the real that we expect from Terry Gilliam, but is stood on more solid ground than you might at first expect, with touching moments, and perhaps an element of reflection from the mind of filmmaker looking back on what he started with so long ago.
