Director: Terry Gilliam
Actors: Adam
Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribeiro, Stellan Skarsgard
Genre:
Adventure / Comedy
Rating:
M
‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ is not
a direct adaption of the novel, but rather a well-blended film of a director – Toby/Sancho
(Driver) – making a film of Don Quixote, and one of the actors from his first
student film – Hector/Don Quixote (Pryce) – having suffered a mental break
which makes him believe he’s actually Don Quixote. The film takes a little while
to set this all up, but once it gets going, it dovetails nicely, with Toby
getting lost in the Spanish countryside and Quixote ‘rescuing’ him.
The film looks great, as it was shot on
location in Spain and Portugal, so that’s all authentic. Angelica (Ribeiro)
becomes more prominent as the film goes along and has an interesting arc, and both
the Boss (Skarsgard) and Alexei (Molla) are believably nasty. Jacqui (Kurylenko)
is mostly wasted. The core of the film is Driver and how he assumes the role of
Sancho as Quixote’s squire and helper, while trying to get back to civilization
and his filmset. Driver is great, moving between anguish, sympathy and
arrogance seamlessly.
The contrast of real and delusion is handled
well, always keeping you on your toes, especially with the lavish castle-based
final act (hosted by Alexei). There’s certainly lots going on, and it does go a
bit long and seem disjointed in parts, but if you’ve read the novel and seen ‘Lost
in La Mancha’ (when Gilliam first tried to film this, 20 years ago), then you’ll
be impressed with how the film honours scenes/passages from the book, without
doing them verbatim. Not bad for a novel over 400 years old!
Overall: Slightly crazy, well-acted
adventure story.
Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.
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