The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

If the release of Ter­ry Gilliam’s long delayed and much bal­ly­hooed fan­ta­sy satire The Man Who Killed Don Quixote proves any­thing, it’s that not all long delayed, much bal­ly­hooed pas­sion projects need come to fruition. The fates tried to stop the direc­tor from mak­ing this film for near­ly 30 years, throw­ing down a gaunt­let of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, bad luck and bud­get short­falls that even­tu­al­ly halt­ed each attempt at pro­duc­tion. Maybe Gilliam should have listened.

But the direc­tor per­sist­ed, and final­ly in June of 2017 his opus was in the can thanks to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of influ­en­tial cre­ative bene­fac­tors like Adam Dri­ver. Despite such a long ges­ta­tion peri­od, the end result feels like it’s been cre­at­ed on the fly using a hodge­podge of meta-com­men­taries that strip Miguel de Cer­vantes’ orig­i­nal text of its true mania. Gilliam instead embraces one of the lazi­est forms of film­mak­ing; the hack­neyed sub­par Felli­ni homage.

In the open­ing scene, a pouty, enti­tled com­mer­cials direc­tor named Toby (Dri­ver) admits that forc­ing his entire crew to relo­cate to Spain in order to shoot a more authen­tic adver­tis­ing spin on Don Quixote might have been a bad idea. The firm’s over­bear­ing Boss (Stel­lan Skarsgård) doesn’t much care though; there’s a Russ­ian oli­garch with a vod­ka com­pa­ny who needs wooing.

All seems lost until Toby hap­pens upon a pirat­ed DVD of his old stu­dent film, which was filmed in the same area near­ly a decade before. See­ing images of the black-and-white art film about an ill-fat­ed, men­tal­ly ill, self-described knight errant inspires this young man to stray from the cor­po­rate assign­ment and inves­ti­gate the ghosts of his cre­ative past.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote makes cer­tain that this jour­ney into the abyss of mem­o­ry and regret will be, well, quixot­ic. Upon enter­ing the moun­tain­side town he so fond­ly put to cel­lu­loid, Toby quick­ly dis­cov­ers that his pres­ence per­ma­nent­ly altered the course of many lives, includ­ing the cob­bler Javier (Jonathan Pryce) who now actu­al­ly believes he’s the Man of la Mancha.

Gilliam’s ram­shackle, uneven adven­ture nar­ra­tive push­es Driver’s cocky Hol­ly­wood ass­hole through a strain­er of ama­teur sur­re­al­ism and polit­i­cal sym­bol­ism just to hum­ble his ego. Jump­ing from one loose­ly con­nect­ed con­fronta­tion to the next, Toby fol­lows Javier down a black hole of ram­bling mono­logues and unthink­ing chest thump­ing, all in the name of chivalry.

What’s most sur­pris­ing about The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is its lack of ambi­tion. Gilliam has always been an enve­lope push­er with films like Time Ban­dits, Brazil and 12 Mon­keys, but here he’s oper­at­ing on autopi­lot. The bloat­ed run­time and redun­dant nature of most dra­mat­ic scenes makes for a tire­some, exhaust­ing experience.

The film cul­mi­nates with an extend­ed cos­tume par­ty sequence set inside a cas­tle owned by Putin’s kin­dred spir­it, a Russ­ian fas­cist who just wants to watch the world squirm. Jour­ney­men by trade, Toby and Javier appear sym­pa­thet­ic by com­par­i­son, but to what end? Gilliam pigeon­holes them as con­duits for a world (and artis­tic medi­um) that leads only toward mad­ness, but the wor­thy kind. It’s such a lim­it­ing and strange­ly banal per­spec­tive for a film­mak­er who for so long has been laud­ed for his lim­it­less imagination.