The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

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Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#51 Post by Roscoe » Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:44 am

The screening started a full half hour late at the festering shithole known as NYC's AMC Empire 25, which didn't put me in a particularly receptive mood. As it is, the film came off more like a retread of THE FISHER KING with dashes of BARON MUNCHAUSEN via Cervantes. This being Gilliam, there were some lovely flourishes, but the absence of an interesting or sympathetic leading man (Adam Driver's Toby has only slightly less charm than Jordan Belfort) makes the sound and fury and huffing and puffing seem rather remote. Gilliam gets 10 out of 10 for sheer persistence, but the film left me tired rather than exhilarated.

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Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#52 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:45 am

I wish I could comment on a film that I, too, have been waiting to see for twenty years. However, after arriving at my local AMC and taking my seat, an usher stepped into the auditorium only minutes before 7 p.m. to announce the screening had been cancelled due to a corrupted DCP file. By the time I stood in line to get my money back, it was too late to drive to the half dozen other theaters in the area showing the film. What irony in that Gilliam's film was showing in more area theaters than even some blockbusters, but with all screenings having the same start time! Oh well, I'm hoping that "limited" rollout that supposed to happen on April 19th will offer me a second chance at seeing the film in a theater.

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Mr Sheldrake
Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:09 pm
Location: Jersey burbs exit 4

Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#53 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:24 am

Imagination, ambition and deeply personal projects have appeal in a moment when they are in short supply, and there is an intriguing opening act before we plunge into the rabbit hole. One might groan at Gilliam's conception of women but Olga Kurylenko and Paloma Bloyd bring a committed exuberance so I was able to stifle mine.

Jonathan Pryce brings his A-game and that's considerable. The movie lacks funny, and I think that is due to the mis-casting of Adam Driver. He thrives in quietude and deadpan not needed here. His gawkiness lumbers through the obstacle course Gilliam creates. An actor of more physical grace would have smoothed the rough edges of the incessant franticness.

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Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
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Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#54 Post by Roscoe » Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:57 am

I just remember being rather disappointed with the film -- did it never occur to Gilliam that he was spending all this time and energy on a remake of THE FISHER KING? I rather wish he'd just gone ahead and done a straight up rendering of Cervantes, which, for me, is what he does in the film's best scenes, especially the Don's trip to the moon.

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Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#55 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:40 am

Roscoe wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:57 am
...I rather wish he'd just gone ahead and done a straight up rendering of Cervantes, which, for me, is what he does in the film's best scenes, especially the Don's trip to the moon.
The direct adaptation of Cervantes is what Gilliam originally intended (back in 1989), but found the novel too daunting to turn into a two-hour feature. He eventually hit upon the idea of combining "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" with the characters from "Don Quixote", retaining Twain's time travel conceit. After the project collapsed during filming in 2000, subsequent budget proposals did not allow for a strictly period film, so the script was rewritten for the film to take place entirely in the modern day.

I have now been able to see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote twice theatrically and found it to be middling Gilliam: on par with the more recent works like The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasses and The Zero Theorem, considerably better than Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas or The Brothers Grimm, but lacking the sustained brilliance of his great ten-year run from 1985 to 1995. It absolutely borrows a lot from The Fisher King, but the principal theme of the fanciful, creative mind's superiority to the dark forces of reality is a mainstay throughout virtually all of Gilliam's work. What I found unique about Quixote is a somewhat more pronounced defeatist tone than we're used to with Gilliam; this is probably the saddest movie he's made. The real world (racism, fascism, the plight of refugees, the subjugation of women) seeps in with an ugliness that is often not counteracted with whimsy. The film attains a level of tragedy that can leave a sour taste for those who expected it to be more of a comedy.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam, 2018)

#56 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:28 pm

Mr Sheldrake wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:24 am
Jonathan Pryce brings his A-game and that's considerable. The movie lacks funny, and I think that is due to the mis-casting of Adam Driver. He thrives in quietude and deadpan not needed here. His gawkiness lumbers through the obstacle course Gilliam creates. An actor of more physical grace would have smoothed the rough edges of the incessant franticness.
My thoughts as well re: Driver as the film’s biggest problem. I wouldn’t have necessarily expected him to be an ill fit here as he’s an actor I’ve come to like a lot and he can be quite funny, with a range too (see Logan Lucky and a great cameo in The Meyerowitz Stories as two examples that detract from his Girls perf). Here though he sticks out like a sore thumb with his failure to make any of the predicaments humorous, and for most of the film I couldn’t stop thinking about how actors like Depp or McGregor were better suited to deliver the same lines in a manner that let us in on the joke, playing the ‘straight man’ with a warmer, lighter touch that invited the playful jab necessary for the dynamic with Quixote to work. Driver is rough and frantic as you said, and this (possibly unfairly) exposes the screenplay as weak to that character when the right actor could have made all the difference. Pryce (and the rest of the cast) is excellent, and despite all the uneven methods in direction you’d expect from Gilliam, I always appreciate the energy and passion felt while watching his films, enough so to forgive all of the stylistic, editing, and narrative ‘flaws’ and embrace the ride. But then there is Driver, our surrogate, who is unlikeable and impossible to relate to, and just when a scene was soaring towards the clouds, he was always there (he has to be, by design of the film) to deflate the balloon, exposing the miscasting and blinding the magic.

I still liked this a lot in parts, and aside from those moments where Driver took me out of the film, I thought this was much better than the mediocre reviews suggest. I hate being unfair to a film because of one element, but this variable is the key to making the whole thing work, and it knocks it back far too many notches than it should.

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