Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, has been anticipated for so long, it was hard to imagine that it could live up to the mythology and hype of its storied delays. Lawsuits, death, and natural disasters galore plagued the film’s 25+ year production history, so much so that documentaries were made about Don Quixote NOT being made. When it finally came to theaters for a one-night only engagement, I entered with a lot of trepidation, worried that all the build-up would likely lead to nothing really worth talking about.
Fortunately, I was wrong. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is Terry Gilliam in top, weird form.
This iteration of the film stars Adam Driver as Toby, a
pretentious, selfish advertising exec filming a commercial in Spain. It’s clear
from the get-go that Toby is a cad and kind of a jerk as he casually uses women
in his crew and treats his staff like barely existent idiots. Then he comes
across a DVD copy of his own student film that he shot in that same area of
Spain ten years before back when he was an idealistic film student. In a fit of
nostalgia, he returns Los Suenos, the village where he filmed to find that
Javier, the man who played Don Quixote in his film still thinks he is Miguel
Cervantes’ famous protagonist. (Incidentally, Los Suenos is Spanish for the
dreams.) Through a series of mishaps, Toby sets the village on fire and ends up
in trouble with the law. Our would-be Quixote rescues him and the two go on the
run in a kaleidoscopic quest through gorgeous Spanish backdrops. There’s time
travel and/or an elaborate dream sequence, jousting, a damsel who may or may
not need rescuing, and plenty of bickering between Quixote and Toby who he
thinks is actually his sidekick, Sancho Panza.
When Gilliam is at his best, as he is here, his work is
loose, unpredictable, and weird in a fun way. He definitely has his stylistic
quirks – he never seen a rearing horse he didn’t want to film in slo-mo and
he’s never met a tilted camera angle he didn’t like. But despite these
idiosyncracies, the film remains spry and enjoyable instead of quirky for
quirk’s sake. The cinematography is rich and lovely, and the special effects,
while state of the art, maintain the same cartoonish nature Gilliam developed
as an animator for Monty Python.
Driver is truly the star of this film and is a surprisingly gifted
comic actor. His line delivery made me laugh out loud repeatedly throughout the
film. Richard Pryce as Javier/Don Quixote is pretty great. His lunacy serves as
an excellent foil to Driver’s exasperated Toby.
The film is packed with Gilliam’s inside jokes, references
and meta-filmic gags. Early on, characters speak in subtitled Spanish but soon
Toby simply says, “We know each other. We don’t need these” and sweeps the
subtitles off the screen with his hand like dust off a windowsill. During the
flash flood that halted filming back in 2000, famously there was footage of two
mattresses being swept away. In the 2019 film, when he’s on the run from the
law, Toby dives inbetween two dirty mattresses on a garbage heap that looks
like what was left after a flash flood. For people who followed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for the
last quarter century, there are plenty of Easter eggs to reward their attentive
viewing.
In the end, the title of the film proves to be truth in
advertising as Pryce’s character does indeed die. However, the film
demonstrates that characters like Don Quixote and the obsession they inspire
never really die. Instead, they get passed on almost like a virus from one
reader or believer to the next.
The Man Who Killed Don
Quixote is unpredictable to say the least, but the most suprising thing
about it is how it managed to be a pleasant surprise after all this time.
