Rent The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)
3.0 of 5 from 233 ratings
2h 8min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Toby (Adam Driver), a cynical advertising director, finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of a Spanish cobbler (Jonathan Pryce) who believes himself to be Don Quixote.
- Actors:
- José Luis Ferrer, Ismael Fritschi, Juan López-Tagle, Adam Driver, William Miller, Will Keen, Jason Watkins, Paloma Bloyd, Óscar Jaenada, Sonia Franco, José Aser Giménez, José Antonio Fernández, Viveka Rytzner, Alberto Jo Lee, Bruno Sevilla, Stellan Skarsgård, Olga Kurylenko, Jordi Mollà, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribeiro
- Directors:
- Terry Gilliam
- Producers:
- Mariela Besuievsky, Amy Gilliam, Gerardo Herrero, Grégoire Melin
- Voiced By:
- Peter Dickson, Terry Gilliam, Tony Hertz
- Writers:
- Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra
- Studio:
- Sparky Pictures
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Collections:
- A History of Films about Film: Part 2, And Now For Something Completely Similar: Solo Pythons, Getting to Know..., Introducing a British Film Family, A Brief History of Film...
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 21/09/2020
- Run Time:
- 133 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English LPCM Stereo
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.35:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Locations
- Quixote's Nose
- Art
- Make-Up
- Working with Terry
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Reviews (2) of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
A disappointing folly - The Man Who Killed Don Quixote review by JB
Terry Gilliam's long-awaited reimagining of the classic Cervantes novel Don Quixote sadly turns out to lose itself in La Mancha.
Adam Driver plays a director, filming an ad in rural Spain. He comes across a pirated DVD of his adaptation of the Don Quixote story that opens up an existential crisis for Driver, seeing him plunged into a fantasy world partly inspired by the novel and his own memories of filming the story, where he becomes Sancho Panza, Quixote's sidekick. Quixote himself is played by a game Jonathan Pryce.
In all his films, Gilliam's grip of storytelling can be almost charmingly tenuous but here it's almost non-existent. At times, that's ok - there's a pleasing chaos to some of the scenes that blend fantasy and reality. But at other times it becomes grating in its repetition. There are too many moments of drama that devolve into incessant shouting and hammy performances. There's a running (and running) joke involving Quixote confusing the word "squire" with "squirrel" that I could have done without, too. You always feel Gilliam's enthusiasm but it frequently overwhelms everything.
It also does feel a bit dated - some dodgy CGI and rather retrograde attitudes towards women (throwing themselves at the male characters and not having much substance of their own) are disappointing.
Although not a terrible movie, The Man Who Killed Quixote feels anticlimactic in relation to its infamous conception and also disappointing in its place in Gilliam's career. The man who made Brazil and The Fisher King can do better.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Funny Fantasy Drama - The Man Who Killed Don Quixote review by GI
This is exactly what you expect from a Terry Gilliam film although considering the troubled history of getting it made it ultimately feels a little underwhelming. But it has a charm, an originality and a delightful innocence to it that makes it quite watchable and at times hilariously funny. Adam Driver, on top form here, is Toby, a cynical and stressed film director who is in Spain making an ad. As he is close to the location of his first student film that he made years ago about Don Quixote he decides to look up the locals he cast from a small village. He soon discovers that his little film has left a lasting and not too good an impression especially with Javier (Jonathan Pryce), a humble cobbler who now believes himself to be Don Quixote and is looked after by the villagers. When Toby visits him Javier takes him to be Sancha Panza, his faithful servant, and a series of mishaps cast the two of them onto a surrealist fantasy adventure that has Toby believing he is going crazy. This is a comedy that is about lost love, regrets and trying to be something. It lacks the dark edge of Gilliam's better films but it is quite a fun film and worth a watch.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
In the early 2000s, Terry Gilliam attempted to film his surreal fantasy of Don Quixote. As seen in the documentary film Lost in La Mancha, the project did not go well. The location became an issue as soaring planes ruined the sound and rain created mud that made equipment hard to move. Actors suffered accidents and were unable to perform to their full potential. Errors were made with the crew, pushing production back even further. The movie became such a disaster during its production that the financers eventually pulled the plug on the project. Many years later, Gilliam went back to fighting for his film and was able to get through a production that eventually wrapped. One long legal battle later, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is finished after 25 years in hell.
It’s just unfortunate that after all that time the film turns out to be fairly predictable in Gilliam’s own weird and surrealist ways of conceiving stories of madness. Adam Driver plays the downer director Toby, currently working on a commercial inspired by the tale of Don Quixote. He once had big dreams of making movies and now finds himself drowning in troubling productions and sleeping around with the wives of people he works with. There’s a gap of unfulfillment in his life that desperately needs to be filled. Consider how he halts sex with a woman during foreplay to take a gander at his old film. He needs some artistic inspiration ASAP.
What he gets is a magical transportation to a surreal world where he is mistaken for Sancho Panza. At first, he believes his production is starting to improve when his Don Quixote actor (José Luis Ferrer) starts getting more into the role. Then he starts wondering if he’s just dreaming how he wants this shoot to go. Then it’s starting look like maybe he truly is in the age of Don Quixote. Or is this a dream? It seems like a different era but there are still production crews and security people present? What is real anymore?
The film essentially does what most of Gilliam’s movies do with their troubled protagonists; kick them down a confusing hole and watch them frustratingly try to find their way out while whacked out on drugs. There’s certainly a more meta approach this time around for focusing on the madness of a filmmaker, the amount that bled over from the original production of this film is debatable. On this level, the film feels most genuine, where the viewer can feel that same level of crazy to some degree the way Gilliam often drives himself mad. There’s a certain empathy reached within this filmmaking that is almost as admirable as it is frustrating to comprehend.
Per Gilliam’s style, there’s plenty of beautiful visuals coupled with a great sense of character locked within the cerebral structure. Off and on the film continued to bring me in and out of its world, often daring me to ask the questions of what is a reality and what is a dream. The blurring of this perception can be a fun aspect, as many of Satoshi Kon’s film have illustrated well. But when I find myself more questioning the structure than enjoying the grander sense of character and mind-bending aspects, it’s a bit tough to just enjoy the rousing ride of dutch angles and dream-like flow. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is not the film that killed Gilliam, having been made, but it’s certainly not the masterpiece for such time on an opus as one may think.