Director: Terry Gilliam
Writer: Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni (Screenplay) Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra (Novel)
Starring: Adam Driver, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Jonathan Pryce, Jordi Molla, Joana Ribeiro
Plot: Toby, a disillusioned film director, is pulled into a world of time-jumping fantasy when a Spanish cobbler believes himself to be Sancho Panza. He gradually becomes unable to tell dreams from reality.
Tagline – Today’s a marvelous day for adventures!
Runtime: 2 Hours 12 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote starts when Toby (Driver) a film director looks to return to the place where he once made his first movie in film school, one that hired locals instead of actors including a shoe maker Javier (Pryce) who now believes he is the character Don Quixote.
Toby needs to find a way to bring Javier back under control, only to find himself trapped in the middle of fantasy and reality in the world.
Thoughts on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Thoughts – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a film that will leave you scratching your head more than anything. We get caught up in the middle of not knowing what is the movie being produced, fantasy and reality. Jonathon Pryce is brilliant in the role of Don Quixote, with Adam Driver strong in the leading role. This is a film that does seem to have gone development nightmare and still doesn’t feel like it is complete now, leaving everything feeling empty by the end, or at least overly confusing for what it is trying to achieve. A lot of this film is mainly Adam Driver wondering around the desert town looking for answers himself.
Final Thoughts – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a slow movie that gets caught up trying to hard to blend reality with the movie making process.
2 replies on “ABC Film Challenge – Adventure – Q – The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) Movie Thoughts”
I own “Lost In La Mancha”, the 2002 documentary about Gilliam’s previous attempt to make the film…you see him in action as a Director, and he is far too focused on the trees to see the forest – your points about his inability to focus the story seems to be his major weakness: he goes off on flights of fancy that are just out of place in linear storytelling…his unique approach is more a hindrance than a help…great review as always!
Thanks for the comment, I know I did hear so much about this film maybe being made for years