The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a 2019 drama about a disillusioned film director who becomes pulled into a world of time-jumping fantasy when a Spanish cobbler believes him to be Sancho Panza.
No one ever claimed Terry Gilliam made conventional movies, his filmography a famously odd blend of peculiar fantasy that has found a large following and the occasional critical celebration. From visionary spectacles like Brazil and Time Bandits to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm and many more, he’s built a weird and wild collection of undeniably fascinating films that have all been works of great personal passion. The one that got away so to speak, was his efforts to adapt Miguel de Cervantes‘ novel Don Quixote, famously documented in the Lost in the La Mancha. Now, after thirty years of trying, his movie is finally made.
We meet Toby (Adam Driver), a director of commercials, in Spain on a major project, though he is uninspired, dulled by the business and longing to be doing better. His boss (Stellan Skarsgard), has him under some stress, adding to that by asking him to watch over his trophy wife Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko), though in the process comes upon a 10-year-old copy of his student film, shot in the same location and called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. It inspires him to leave the production he’s on and find the local cast who starred in his film, discovering that the man he hired to play the titular character – a shoemaker named Javier (Jonathan Pryce) – now believes he is in fact Quixote. Toby, already on edge and vulnerable to a breakdown, slips into a puzzling world of fantasy and reality, the line between the two slowly disappearing.
Hardly a big budget epic, Gilliam’s film is more a robust student film of its own, most surely purposely so, with awkward production values and his usual flair for hardscrabble practical effects. It starts weird and stays firmly in that channel to the end, like much of his movies, challenging its audience to slip into the mania and hopefully enjoy the ride.
Fortunately, if you’re even the slightest bit a fan of Gilliam, he delivers, with the cast all finding their groove in overcoming the script’s gaps. That begins and ends with Driver, an actor of gifted intensity, who balances the story’s decidedly quirky attitude with some genuinely funny moments, his unique delivery fitting the off-beat narrative style very well. He is a modern day Sancho Panza and this is a demented but wildly entertaining performance. Perfect for Gilliam.
The story sees Toby slip in and out of dream states that we are meant to question is real or not. However, Gilliam isn’t all that interested in the traditional landscapes of such things and so The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is not what you might expect, the movie keeping the two leads on horse (and donkey) back encountering all sorts of mischief and mayhem and bound together by loads of tricky dialogue. What Toby sees and experiences all feel real, even as they often, right before his eyes, morph from one thing to another. At one point, that is a pretty girl to a mangy sheep. It’s trippy stuff because we become convinced some things are real but then prove themselves to be, well, not. Maybe it isn’t all that complicated but Gilliam certainly works hard to keep us on our toes.
It mostly works, though with its very long run time, singular setting and general oddity, can strain the patience of those not familiar with the director’s style. Gilliam is, as always, clever, though this is not nearly as dramatic or as creative as so many of his earlier films. It has loads of energy but isn’t as sustainable or as memorable as it should be. Of interest mostly for enthusiasts and those curious to see what Gilliam’s long-gestating vision for this story have finally become.