It seems almost poetic that the screening of the documentary about a film that failed horribly also failed horribly.
More specifically, not only did “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” director Terry Gilliam’s $32 million attempt at adapting Cervantes’s famous story, end in unbelievable disaster, but he also has to see it over and over again thanks to documentary filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. To add insult to injury, a reel of the documentary was mislabeled, causing the second to last reel to be shown backwards at the press screening.
Gilliam just can’t seem to catch a break. Screening problems aside, Gilliam should recover just fine from his setback, as “Lost in La Mancha” is terribly sympathetic to the director’s problems, as though the same problems could have happened to anybody.
Having begun filming eight weeks before “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” was supposed to start, Fulton and Pepe capture everything that impedes the filming, which wouldn’t be believed if they hadn’t caught it all on tape.
In the initial stages of development, things seemed to be going okay for Gilliam. Although he hoped for twice as much funding as he got, he was lucky enough to secure as much as he did – the $32 million is the biggest amount ever funded exclusively by European companies. He also convinced Johnny Depp and legendary French actor Jean Rochefort to squeeze his film into their busy schedules.
Then the problems started – the soundstage had terrible acoustics, filming was constantly interrupted by fly-bys from the nearby army base and a flash flood ruined some of the crew’s equipment, delayed filming and changed the landscape of the desert to make it not match up to what they had already shot.
Perhaps the biggest problem was Rochefort’s prostate infection. Because he was playing the film’s title character, he often had to sit atop a horse, which was nearly impossible for the actor, who turned 73 on Tuesday. Thanks to a clause in his contract, if Jean was recast, the film had to be completely refinanced.
But just because “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” was a failure doesn’t mean “Lost in La Mancha” suffers the same fate. Fulton and Pepe selected just the right moments from their filming – besides getting the problems, they also get a giddy Gilliam on occasion, especially when something finally goes right. Because he comes from the renowned Monty Python troupe, it doesn’t come as a surprise Gilliam is still just a kid at heart.
In fact, I’m sure he would have approved of the best part of “Lost in La Mancha” – a sequence early in the film combining photography and animation to recount the directing career of Gilliam, from the successful “Time Bandits” to the failure of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Kudos to Fulton and Pepe for using the technique, but jeers for using it only once.
It’s actually unfortunate that Gilliam never got the filming completed, because he seemed to be doing things right. Rochefort was perfect for the part of Quixote, and Depp, as a modern advertising executive thrust into the past, seemed to work perfectly in the few scenes actually filmed. Gilliam even found three hefty Spanish actors to perfectly portray the giants Quixote saw when he looked at the windmills, although in the documentary, they are less scary and more comical than giants should be.
The documentary also makes reference to Orson Welles’ two-decade failure to produce a film based on Don Quixote – he too had problems, such as when his lead actor died before filming was complete. Hopefully Gilliam learns from his own problems, abandons the project and can find humor in his monumental failure as depicted in “Lost in La Mancha,” because everyone else assuredly will.
