The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Terry Gilliam – 2018 – Spain

The significance of Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is twofold. The near-legendary behind-the-scenes drama he experienced for nearly two decades is part of it, but not the only part. The film was long on the list of famous unmade projects by great auteurs; notably David Lean’s Nostromo and Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon. But, like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014), the production of the film, however remarkable and inspiring, does not make the film itself great; it is great on its own, whether it took one year to make or twenty. In his 70s, Gilliam has made a dynamic and vigorous film – light but not frivolous – completely free of the angst and solemnity that characterizes the work of some of his more prestigious younger colleagues, and which might be expected from a director certainly aware of the inflated expectations for his film. But the film gives no hint that it was any trouble to make. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is another of Gilliam’s dark contemplations, disguised as a quirky comedy, of madness and the toll on the human spirit exacted by politics and commercialism. Stylistically, it has the familiar vibrance of Fellini but underneath it all is Gilliam’s distinctive and ample skepticism about human nature. We’ve seen it before – in his Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), Tideland (2005) and The Zero Theorem (2014); the speculation that the only solace from an insane world may lie in insanity. The film tells the story of Toby Grisoni (Adam Driver), a jaded, arrogant advertising director who seems to have lost his soul around the time he gave up on a once-promising filmmaking career. While shooting a Quixote-themed commercial in La Mancha, Spain, Toby discovers DVDs of a student film he made 10 years earlier being sold among trinkets in a local restaurant. Seeing that film again – an arty, black-and-white adaptation of the Cervantes story – sparks in him both nostalgia and a crisis-of-conscience, sending him on a journey to revisit the amateur stars of his film, including a young woman who pursued a doomed career in Madrid, and a modest shoemaker, Javier (Jonathan Pryce), who played Quixote for him. Javier is now completely senile and believes himself to be the real Don Quixote, reduced to being kept as a roadside attraction by a woman who controls him with a cattle prod. Whether Javier’s condition is contagious or Toby’s breakdown is exacerbated by his worsening professional situation is unclear, but in any case he’s soon suffering from hallucinations not unlike Javier’s and his own fictional scenarios. Though Gilliam is known for florid visuals, this is one of his more grounded films, making the most of the gorgeous rural locations in Spain and Portugal. The theme of the film is undoubtedly disquieting, lacking any assurance that serenity can be found at least in art if nowhere else in a corrupt world, but despite the melancholy there is a curious kind of catharsis on display as the film’s characters – as in many Gilliam films – break through to a naked truth; namely that release from the pain of life only comes via madness and death, and therefore perhaps they need not be so feared. This is why Gilliam is such a unique filmmaker; I can think of no one else who has such a zest for life and is able to translate that energy onto the screen in truly pleasurable films, while also rigorously refusing to indulge in clichés, cop-outs and Hollywood-style moralizing, all symbolized by the proverbial “happy ending” of mainstream movies.