The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Terry Gilliam has long been obsessed with adapting Miguel de Cervantes’s early 17th-century novel Don Quixote. Originally, he cast Johnny Depp as a time-traveler and Jean Rochefort as Quixote (an ill-fated effort chronicled in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha). Over the years, Sean Connery, John Cleese, Ewan McGregor, Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, John Hurt, and Jack O’Connell were rumored to star. Inspired by Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Gilliam and co-writer Tony Grisoni finally fashioned this bizarre adventure comedy about Toby (Adam Driver), a cynical director of TV commercials who feels artistically unfulfilled. On location in La Mancha, Spain, he finds a bootleg copy of his old Quixote student film and realizes that the village where he shot it is nearby. The shoemaker Javier (Jonathan Pryce), who he cast as Quixote, suffers from delusions that his role as the chivalrous knight was real, and his Dulcinea (Joana Ribeiro) is now a high-class call-girl, abused by a cruel Russian oligarch (Jordi Mollà). Also on hand are Toby’s jealous boss (Stellan Skarsgård) and the latter’s predatory wife (Olga Kurylenko), plus his ever-attentive agent (Jason Watkins). For Toby, the line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly blurred as the chaotic, confusing script meanders into ridiculously madcap vignettes of irreverent absurdity. As with all Gilliam films, the opulent visuals here are evocative, recalling the Spanish artist Goya and the 19th-century Quixote illustrator Gustave Doré. A strong optional purchase. (S. Granger)