THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2018)

[GRWelsh]

I bought this on Blu-Ray and watched it yesterday and this morning. I am mainly a Terry Gilliam fan due to his association with MONTY PYTHON and his early movies like TIME BANDITS (1981), BRAZIL (1985) and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988). This movie does have some thematic and visual links to those, which I enjoyed. Still, I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you are Terry Gilliam completist... This one is a creative jumble that never quite feels put together. I can't rate it without talking about the history of it. Gilliam has been trying to adapt DON QUIXOTE to film for a long time, like thirty years, and the project is infamous for its development hell. The "making of" documentary for the movie that got derailed was turned into a documentary named LOST IN LA MANCHA (2002), which is interesting because pursuing this dream became like a real life parallel for jousting at windmills and getting ridiculed for not giving up on a ridiculous dream... That's sort of what DON QUIXOTE is all about, so the whole history of this is very meta level. The 2018 movie that finally got made is something that evolved beyond simply trying to adapt the book DON QUIXOTE and became more of a movie about the experiences of making a movie and a director's relationships and responsibilities to other people he makes movies with. It is grounded in the modern world, but it blends fantasy sequences in as well, yet it is never implied they are anything other than delusions, except there is a hint that Don Quixote may be a sort of spirit or idea that can possess others and so continue down through the ages. Jonathan Price, who was also the lead actor in BRAZIL, plays the Spanish villager who was cast as Don Quixote and comes to believe he actually is Don Quixote -- and he does an amazing job. The cast is excellent, and the fantasy sequences are enjoyable... But what is bad is the writing, the pacing, and the directing, sadly. The third act in particular felt blurry like they were making it up as it went along. I kept wondering what emotional impact the director was wanting me to feel at certain plot points, and so a lot the time I spent feeling confused or melancholy.

I'd like to believe the central message was that when someone pursues a dream wholeheartedly at first you think they are crazy but in the end you don't want them to give up on their dream because people who dream big make the world a more interesting place, even if they don't always succeed.

Here are a few quotes from the book that I am sure inspired the movie:

“Don Quixote is so crazy that he is sure no author could have invented him.”

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

"To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest."

[geneweigel]

As I get older, I start to see that everything in a restaurant starts as a lobster or steak dinner but sometimes through ups and downs something else is offered. However sometimes you can still taste that intention of a lobster or steak...

Heh, Gilliam, everytime that he talks I picture him as the American he played in MEANING OF LIFE (1983).

GEOFFREY (Graham Chapman): Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?

HOWARD (Terry Gilliam): I don't see it that way, Geoff. [sniff] Let me tell you what I think we're dealing with here: a potentially positive learning experience to get an--

GRIM REAPER (John Cheese): Shut up! Shut up, you American. You always talk, you Americans. You talk and you talk and say 'let me tell you something' and 'I just wanna say this'. Well, you're dead now, so shut up!