Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Written by: Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni
Produced by: Mariela Besuievsky, Gerardo Herrero, Amy Gilliam, Grégoire Melin, Sébastien Delloye
Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgärd, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Watkins.
Thirty years in the making (and unmaking), director and writer, Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was determined that, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote would be made.
Based on the famous classic novel, Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha) written by Miguel de Cervantes (in two parts in 1605 and 1615), the film echoes the metafiction view, where the fiction both creates and lays bare that illusion.
Lead Toby (Adam Driver), the director of the film, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (that’s just one of many circles within circles here in this film of the same name), wipes the English subtitles literally from the screen, announcing they’re not required – there’s that laying bare the illusion.
Here, we have a film about making a movie about Don Quixote while combining elements of the classic novel in Tody’s present.
No wonder the script was written and re-written for thirty years.
There’s even a documentary about the difficulties of making this film, ‘This hellish adventure […] captured in great detail in the documentary feature film, Lost in La Mancha (2002),’ if you’d like to explore further.
I myself was dubious setting out on this adventure, thankful the flashbacks weren’t an attempt to hark back to the 1600s. That would have felt pat. Instead we have a man driven insane by Tody’s college film, yep, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, casting an old shoe-maker, Javier, (Jonathan Pryce), working in the small Spanish village, Los Sueños (Gallipienzo), where Toby decides to film his college project using real villages to avoid being cliché.
When Toby returns, years later, as a famous slick director, he finds the people of Los Sueños damaged after his last visit; the young and beautiful fifteen-year-old Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) broken while searching for the promise to be made a movie star, the shoe-maker cast as Don Quixote mad, with the belief he is the real, Don Quixote.
With events that range from amusing to the ridiculous (hence my initial dubious take of the film), Tody ends up in the unfortunate position of becoming the present day’s Don Quixote’s (AKA the shoe-maker) loyal squire, Sancho Panza.
This is where the movie starts to get somewhere: the slick director sitting atop a donkey, commanded by a crazy old man not afraid to hit him with a stick turns the ridiculous and amusing into outright funny.
Adam Driver as Toby bouncing off Jonathan Pryce as the mad pseudo Don Quixote make for some hilarious moments. Only Jonathan Pryce could have pulled-off such a character, his theatre background pronouncing itself in the twinkle of a cheeky eye.
Then, as Tody gets more absorbed into his role as Sancho, the more dramatic and romantic the story as Angelica returns as the beautiful girl who needs saving from a Russian oligarch, Alexei Mishkin (Jordi Mollá) who ends up hosting a spectacular costume party in an ancient castle to celebrate Holy Week.
The setting of the film was shot in locations from Spain, Portugal and the Canary Island of Fuerteventura; ruins and castles including the Castillo de Oreja, Almonacid de Toledo and Monasterio de Piedra giving that Spanish flavour of Cervantes’ classic.
There’s also the addition of the Spanish guitar in the soundtrack and flamenco dancing with costuming that lift the film beyond the ridiculous into something more fantasy then drama or even comedy. It’s all of it, rolled into an interpretation of the novel that mirrors Cervantes’ introduction of metafiction into the literary world, giving us that extra layer where the fiction is able to take a look at itself from the outside.
Not that the film dwells in this extra layer – this is more, a circle within a circle storyline that if you can get through the awkward moments at the beginning (Adam Driver helps here), then the reward is a film that successfully pushes the boundaries of cinematic perspective.