The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

It is too bad that Gilliam did not succeed the first time, because after eighteen years of hope, seeing this messy tangle of wasted chances, which is promising at the beginning, but then slowly disintegrates into a carousel of Don Quixote motifs stacked on top of each other haphazardly, this quarter-of-a- century-long project can hardly be considered successful. Gilliam wonderfully and playfully stylizes the protagonist, played by Adam Driver, into an alternative version of himself - a director cursed with his own creative desires and demands, who gradually loses his mind and becomes Don Quixote, fighting in vain against the windmills - but he is unable to surround the metaphor with a coherent story and to give his undoubtedly original, extravagant and colorful visions a supporting basis. Everything happens without any causality or clear focus on anything, the dialogues seldom have traction and the result is a Dadaist-surrealist bedlam, in which Muslims and Russian vodka also play a significant role for some reason. The traditionally good Adam Driver with the engagingly playful Jonathan Pryce only save the film when they aren’t asked to grotesquely fall down or frolic about. The best passages are in the first half hour and then whenever the echoes of the originally filmed material flash (three giants at the end), or the meta-jokes referring to the filming captured in Lost in La Mancha (the Japanese on the set, blaming problems on force majeure). Gilliam used to be a victim of circumstances, and now his film is a victim of his own boundless creativity. Who is the man who killed Don Quixote? Unfortunately, the same one that created him. (02/07/2018)

I’m glad that Terry Gilliam finally got to shoot his opus. And I’m also glad that I’ve watched it. But that’s about it. Unfortunately it’s nothing special. What else should I have expected from Terry but something totally wacky, right? But not to sound all that negative, I must admit that Adam Driver was a good fit for his role. I really liked his character, which has a lot of the director himself in it. The locations were perfect, too. Spain is simply charming, there’s no doubt about that. The filmmaking craft is once again at a high level, but the story contains more fantasy than reality. But when I ponder on this – what is reality, really? Not even Don Quijote himself knew the answer to that. (23/07/2019)

After many years of waiting and anticipation characterised by a whole range of problems, Gilliam’s battered project is finally here, and practically stands as an anti-commercialism manifesto of sorts. Toby, the arrogant and pampered advert director, returns to the location where, years earlier, he had shot his student film, and, on top of a generous dose of nostalgia, he encounters a loony old man that Toby’s work had thrown into the grips of madness, making him believe to be Don Quixote. While boundaries between dream and reality as well as past and present crumble apart, our central duo ends up in a bunch of wacky situations, which don’t always lead to happy endings. Many people will find this typical Gilliam-style film hard to watch, but I’m confident the fanbase will appreciate it. [KVIFF 2018] (05/07/2018)

Gilliam finally finished the project that once almost destroyed him. Great acting, although I found Depp more convincing than Driver. Pryce is classic in his delivery and I don’t know which of the femme fatales is more beautiful. Ironic references to the previous production, a fantastic climax and wonderful music. But I still can’t shake the feeling that the first version would have been better if they had managed to complete it. On the other hand, we would have been denied that depressing and devastating documentary about it. (30/11/2019)

Terry Gilliam and his Quixote don't have it easy at all. The disaster documentary Lost in La Mancha and the fact that filming began again after almost 20 years, raised huge expectations... without the audience knowing exactly what to expect. So it is a surprise that some people are now satisfied, some half satisfied, and some are not. Indeed, Gilliam himself writes in his pre-eminent memoir “Gilliamesque": “If we can finish the film someday, people will probably just be disappointed that we didn't get the ideal of don Quixote's futile struggle with windmills." Well, I'm not disappointed. True, I would have preferred if don Quixote and Sancho Toby had gone on their quest a little earlier and the film was quicker, but the experience of those great ideas and the absolutely perfect performance by Jonathan Pryce made up for it. The best scene, I think, is the one with the ride to the moon and the sun, in which there was absolutely everything from humor to emotion. Although Terry Gilliam did not do better than The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, he certainly did not make a disgrace out of this old dream. (23/07/2018)