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The Appropriate Tune - "Capricho arabe" by Francisco Tarrega
In the year 1605 the novelist and poet Miguel de Cervantes released the first part of a story called (as translated to English) “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha”. It told the story of an aging noble by the name of Alonso Quijano, who spends his days absorbed in the stories of knights in those heady days of chivalry. So infatuated is he with these fanciful tales that one day Alonso comes unstuck from reality and believes that he too is a knight, like Orlando, Lancelot and the rest. So he straps on a rusty set of armor, saddles up his old raggedy ass horse, grabs one of the local peasants to be his squire and sets off against the wishes of his family and friends to travel the countryside of Hapsburg era Spain as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, performing chivalrous acts of heroism and vanquishing wickedness wherever it might be found. Or to put it another, more realistic way, attacking inanimate objects and getting their asses kicked by almost everyone they meet. This was back in the day when the only known treatment for mental illness was severe beatings, you see.
Don Quixote was quite popular upon its release, a sophomore hit from the part-time writer and full-time soldier and tax collector Cervantes, and in the years following its completion and release has gone on to become one of most popular and acclaimed books in the entirety of Western literature. Having read it myself some years ago I can say that it is a multifaceted novel; Farcical at first, yet quickly opens up into satire, and metafiction as the would-be knight runs up against a world several hundred years removed from the landed gentry. One interpretation is to view it as an allegory about the division of mental and physical labor in class society, upper class Quijano's obsession with this romanticized vision of the world built on fiction and ephemera ultimately causing his transformation into Quixote and his attempted clashing against the lower classes more material, grounded understanding of reality. Other interpretations are a tad more metaphysical, painting Quixote as this injection of optimism and wonder into a cynical and jaded world, as much a noble figure as he is a tragic one. Either way, while the focus on this blog is on silver screen adaptations of books around here, if I did cover books then Don Quixote would certainly get the recommendation.
Speaking of film adaptations of books, if anyone were to adapt a story like Don Quixote, in turns a comedy and a tragedy, it would be Terry Gilliam right? The man built his film career on the fantastical clashing with the mundane with tragicomic results, Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, hell The Fisher King is essentially a riff on Don Quixote, it’s like the story was made for him. After reading the novel himself Gilliam thought so as well, and he immediately set about getting his vision of Cervantes’ story on screen. The year was 1990. He then spent most of the 90s trying to get it made, eventually starting production in ‘98, before being stopped two years later. Then he tried again in 2003, which didn’t gain much traction, and so on and on until 2016, when the planets aligned and he was finally able to complete the film I’m reviewing today. Given that filmmaking is a supremely laborious process in terms of time and money that has no guarantee of completion let alone recompense, as we’ve seen with The Thief and the Cobbler, and the fact that Gilliam has failed to make as many movies as he’s made, it is a small miracle that this movie exists at all. Is it an actual miracle though, or an ironic, genie’s wish kind of thing? I guess we’ll see.
Finally released in 2018, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni and produced by a number of people (including Gilliam’s daughter Amy and Spanish director Gerardo Herrero) through a number of production companies (including Recorded Picture Company and Entre Chien et Loup). Adam Driver plays Toby, a filmmaker currently in Spain to make a film adaptation of Don Quixote. A process that isn’t going well, mainly because Toby is a narcissistic primadonna piece of shit who is never satisfied. As he is setting the stage to fuck his producer’s wife, Toby happens to stumble upon a bootleg copy of ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ -- a student film that he had made a decade prior, coincidentally enough in a village not too far from where they’re shooting. So he decides to visit, mainly because it gets him out of work and out of sight of his producer, but it’s not quite a nostalgic reunion. The man who played Sancho Panza is long dead from consumption, Angelica the unnamed village girl (Joana Ribeiro) left for Madrid in search of fame and fortune as an actress and never returned, and poor Javier the cobbler (Jonathan Pryce) now suffers from the same condition as the character he played; He believes that he is Don Quixote, the knight errant tasked by god to reignite the age of chivalry, and that Toby is his squire Sancho Panza. Toby doesn’t believe and promptly abandons the place, but after a series of events involving a fire, a Romani thief, and a shot police officer, Toby finds himself stuck playing second-fiddle to this holy soldier of gallantry, traveling the countryside in the search of evil to vanquish and feats of derring-do to accomplish. Which of course they don’t because Javier is an old man who believes he’s a 400 year old fictional character, but the longer Toby travels with ‘Don Quixote’ the more the places and people around him seem to shift and mold themselves to the knight’s worldview and the line between fantasy and reality seem to blur. Sounds like the perfect kind of atmosphere for an adventure!
I wrote earlier that The Fisher King was Gilliam’s riff on Don Quixote, and ironically enough after watching The Man Who Killed Don Quixote I feel it’s a riff on The Fisher King with a metafictional semi-biographical ‘Don Quixote film about a director trying to make a Quixote film’ twist, which is in line with the Cervantes’ novel as the second part of that novel has the first part be an actual book in that world. Both films are about long-haired show biz douchebags who don’t have the healthiest relationships with women who stumble across quixotic figures who they inadvertently ‘created’, and then said figures intrude upon the douchebags' lives and over the course of the film push them towards a better direction. Gilliam stated that he read Don Quixote in 1989 and The Fisher King came out in 1991, so it was clearly on his mind at the time even if it wasn’t technically Don Quixote.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is closer, not quite an adaptation but a metafictional twist on the story that devolves into a sort of Apocalypse Now fever dream. The Fisher King posited that the world could be a cold and indifferent place but didn’t discount empathy, but not so in the world of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Here the virtuous poor are punished for their good deeds, the vile rich are not only successful but thrive, and our protagonist goes through what could be described as an anti-arc. The original novel was cruel in its way, it is about a series of people beating up and mocking a mentally ill old man, but Gilliam seems to dive into that cruelty with an orgiastic, nihilistic glee. It patterns itself off of the books, even recreating scenes from the book, but since it’s not just an adaptation but a sort of metafictional commentary I’m not sure what that commentary is meant to entail. That the world is shitty? Rather than learning from tragedy and developing oneself as a person that it’s preferable to retreat into delusions and madness? Neither feel all that satisfying an answer, but that is about the only thing we’re allowed to do as we sit for two hours watching Adam Driver complain about stuff while never taking action. It certainly aims for the Pythonesque wackiness, and at times I’d say it succeeds, but on the whole it just comes off as morose.
There’s no better example Gilliams misstep of excess than Joana Ribeiro’s character Angelica, the village girl from Toby’s student who dreams of stardom are scuppered and is subsequently pushed into prostitution. Prostitution by its very nature is a loathsome and dehumanizing practice that is better off in the trash, but Angelica can’t just be a prostitute; She has to have giant welts from getting the shit kicked out of her and lick shit off of people’s shoes, otherwise how would we know it’s bad? Similarly Toby’s moves to help her can’t just be out of a desire to stop abuse, because indeed Toby doesn’t really do anything to help people of any gender in this film, but because it’s within the context of a romantic relationship. Not an uncommon thing, which isn’t to excuse it, but then we get the added step of this entire romance being set up when Toby was a film student presumably in his 20s and Angelica was 15 (the irony of the Trump jab at one point of the movie is lost). Why? Is the ‘naive country girl’ trope suddenly untenable if she’s of legal age? It’s not like they age up Adam Driver any besides giving him a mustache, so they lose nothing by just having them start at similar ages. Though I suppose if they changed that they’d have to make other changes, like giving the Romani a name rather than just listing him as ‘Gypsy’, and Gilliam had already spent almost three decades on this movie.
Joana Ribeiro does put in good work here, despite my reservations of the character, and if there’s one thing I’d praise about this movie it’s the casting. Jonathan Pryce was downright fantastic as Javier/Don Quixote, capturing the essence of the character effortlessly and intimately, just as Boris Karloff did for Frankenstein’s Monster and Basil Rathbone for Sherlock Holmes. Seeing him here one wishes that this was just a straight-up adaptation, as he knocks it out of the park every time he’s on screen. Of course then we wouldn’t have as much time with Adam Driver...which is bad? When Toby is at his most cartoonish fish out of water asshole I think Driver is at his best, it’s those moments where he attempts sincerity that fails to excite. He’s like a lankier Shia Labeouf.
I’ll also give credit to the cinematography here in regards to the location shooting; We get a look at the beauty of the Spanish countryside and some of the ugliness, but the thing that gets me is the feeling of emptiness. Aside from when the film specifically addresses it all sense of time and space disappears, granting the film this atmosphere of surreality which aids in the metafiction angle. There’s also some special effects that look pretty good in spite of the obvious CGI. Not as much as you’d want given the possibilities provided by Quixote’s delusions, but it’s understandable given the hectic nature of the production and I don’t know how much a 16 million euro budget gets you in 2018.
Maybe this movie got me in a bad mood today, but I’m going to say that if it weren’t for the scenes with Jonathan Pryce then this would fail to get the recommendation. The best formula for Gilliam seems to be equal parts darkness and whimsy, knife in hand and tongue in cheek. Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, Jabberwocky, though they could be said to have their own individual issues all managed the balanced act; Subverting the overly sentimental or lampooning the darker and more cynical. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and by extension The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which was covered a while back, don’t have that balance. They might have good actors or good special effects, some good scenes, but they get too bogged down by the weight of their own concepts and plots to be an enjoyable film. As I said the scenes with Jonathan Pryce are the highlight, but on the whole The Man Who Killed Don Quixote doesn’t get the recommendation. Congrats Terry Gilliam finally getting his movie made though, it’s more than I’ve ever gotten the opportunity to do.
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