The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

Directed by: Terry Gilliam | 132 minutes | adventure, comedy | Actors: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Watkins, Sergi López, Jordi Mollà, Eva Basteiro-Bertoli, Paloma Bloyd, José Luis Ferrer, Hovik Keuchkerian, Eudald Magri

There are movies where the stories around them are almost more interesting than the movie itself. The most famous example is ‘Apocalypse Now’, in which the title seems to cover the entire production process. Director Terry Gilliam (’12 Monkeys’, ‘Brazil’) saw a passion project about Don Quixote slowly develop into an ongoing headache: physical discomfort, constant financial mores and multiple lawsuits; it is just a small anthology of the production process that spanned almost thirty (!) years. But despite Gilliam’s inspiration, if ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ is the result of thirty years of blood, sweat and tears, then something is really wrong. The film certainly has potential, but it mainly turns out to be a painful farce that wants to be everything, but is actually nothing at all.

The arrogant director Toby (Adam Driver) shoots a commercial in a Spanish village. White suit type, sexual harassment of assistants and hideous scarves. By accident Toby comes across his old graduation film ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, which he shot in the same environment. After a series of coincidences, he runs into the old shoemaker (Jonathan Pryce) whom he cast as Don Quixote at the time. Over the years, the old man appears to have come to believe that he is Don Quixote himself, a fact that is gratefully exploited by the locals. What follows is a torrent of ‘adventures’, in which Toby gets a chance to revisit his past and reflect on the fate he has brought upon the old man and the rest of the village.

‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ opens with the text: ‘and now, after 25 years of making and unmaking, a film by Terry Gilliam’. It’s arguably the funniest joke in the movie, because “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is a total failure in almost every other way.

It starts with the mediocre elaboration of the characters, so that the actors do not reach maturity at all. Adam Driver is a fine actor, but constantly touches on caricatural edges and does not manage to make the confusion that plays tricks on his character tangible. Pryce starts subdued, but changes as the film progresses more and more into a rattling fairground attraction that makes all nuance fade. He barely manages to let the tragedy of his character shine through in his playing. Partly because of this, you will never believe that there is anything of a bond between these two characters.

The supporting characters aren’t much better. Stellan Skarsgård appears for a moment as a rogue producer who abuses his wife, while Jordi Mollà presents a Russian caricature that even the worst James Bond imitation film would not dare to attempt.

But Gilliam misses the mark on several fronts. For example, the female characters in this film are no more than blond bimbos and naive twats. The way the women appear in the film might have been possible thirty years ago, but in this era it is completely misplaced and outdated. Illustrative of this is the role of Olga Kurylenko (‘Quantum of Solace’), whose contribution mainly consists of loudly shouting out during sex with Toby that she is the boss’s wife.

When Gilliam also incorporates jokes about Muslim terrorism into his film ad nauseam (‘oh no, they’re praying, now they’re going to chop off our limbs’) it gets abrasive at times in a completely wrong way. Being politically incorrect is not a problem, but then you have to do it well (and above all: subtly!).

One of the few aspects that makes the film somewhat manageable is the blurring between fantasy and reality, but Gilliam certainly pulls out so many moronic registers in the last hour that this also seems much too difficult. Somewhere in the film there is a nice story hidden about the ethics of making films, or about a director who has sold his soul to commerce. Themes that would have been extremely relevant during this time, but in which Gilliam seems to have little interest. Also themes such as the tragedy of being forgotten and the maintenance of illusions against better judgement, simply do not come into the picture. The countless subplots that lead nowhere are also quite in the way of the big picture.

All this means that after an hour you can make up your own mind about the film: if you have to laugh at recurring jokes like forgetting the name of a sexy assistant, you can probably appreciate the film. If, like the undersigned, you are especially annoyed by the outdated farce that cleverly manages not to be funny for a moment, then it will be a very long sit (‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ takes too long anyway). When Gilliam tries to add some moral to the whole at the end, it’s too late and time to leave Don Quixote for good.

It’s a shame that ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ turned out to be a fiasco. At rare moments you notice Gilliam’s love for the source material, but you start to wonder all the more why Gilliam had to mix this with so much nonsense. However much you would grant Gilliam that his passion project would succeed: ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ is a clumsy, messy farce that does not convince for a moment and becomes more and more annoying towards the end. Halfway through the film, Toby yells that it’s all ridiculous. He couldn’t have summarized ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ better with this.