The laughter of director Terry Gilliam should give hope to
all who suffer. It is an unquenchable flame. It endures through
hardship, critical assault, and utter failure. Mr. Gilliam laughs, he
picks himself up, he gets back on the horse. He laughs again.
Lost in La Mancha chronicles yet another
conspiracy to stop his manic cackling. But this time, the conspirators
are not studio execs like those who chopped his movie Brazil off
at the knees. Nor are they sneering film critics, like those who booed
his adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the Cannes
Film Festival. This time, the forces between Gilliam and the realization
of his dream are wind, water, sickness, injury, and worse. It might seem
that God Himself is trying to stop Gilliam from bringing another picture
to the screen.
Unlikely. God has a friend in Gilliam, a moviemaker
whose visions consistently insist on the virtues of childlike faith and
love over the baser behaviors of reason and bureaucracy.
Gilliam’s films are unique in all of the Hollywood
catalogue. No filmmaker has such an interest in the tensions between
logic and imagination, between fantasy and reality, between genius and
madness. From the whimsical Time Bandits to Brazil’s dark
fable of modern chaos; from The Fisher King’s celebration of
romance and chivalry to the triumph of childlike faith in The
Adventures of Baron Munchausen—Gilliam challenges us to consider
what is possible when we stop trying to control our world and instead
follow the Divine, the Uncontrollable.
Gilliam practices what he preaches. In his
filmmaking, he dreams out loud and then pursues his dreams, sometimes
recklessly. And like many creative types, he has trouble when it comes
to the practical details of how to Get Things Done. Thus, he is as
legendary for his perceived “failures” as he is his triumphs. Brazil
endured more bureaucratic nightmares than almost any film on record
due to arguments over length and marketability. Baron Munchausen’s
budget ran grossly over-budget (no pun intended).
And now it has happened again. Lost in La Mancha
chronicles the rise and fall of Gilliam’s dream picture: The Man
Who Killed Don Quixote. It was to star Jean Rochefort, Johnny Depp,
and Vanessa Paradis. It was to involve time travel, frightful giants,
towering windmills, and dizzying rides through visions and dreams. It
was to be intense, exhilarating, twisted, and funny. And it fell to
pieces in his hands.
It’s an astonishing and tragic story. We are
treated to intimate interviews from the time the costumes were being
designed to the time they were put in boxes and sent into storage. We
watch the director giggling giddily with his actors as they discuss the
best ways to shoot scenes. And we watch them go silent, brows furrowed,
as one unforeseen problem after another befalls the production.
It is a painful process. The actors look fantastic
in their Quixotic get-up, especially Rochefort, who looks so good in his
armor that we would gladly reach for our wallets if it would buy him
more screen time. Alas, we are shown the sum total of their efforts: a
few fragments of scenes and some shadowy screen tests.
It’s hard to know how much credit to give the
filmmakers on a project like this. Like Sam Jones who brought us the
story of Wilco’s maddening experience with record companies in I Am
Trying to Break Your Heart, Keith Fulton and
Louis Pepe were really just in the right place
at the right time. They kept the camera running, without any idea of the
catastrophes they would soon witness. And, unfortunately for us, even the
interviews and on-the-spot reporting can’t make much of this story
visually. There are a lot of talking heads, a lot of scowls, a lot of
sighs and shouting matches. It’s not the filmmakers’ fault, but La
Mancha just is not a very revealing picture. Those who aren’t fans
of Gilliam’s work won’t get much out of the experience, and those who
are will have spent their money only to be teased with what might have
been.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie and recommend
it, if only to see a masterful filmmaker behind-the-scenes, to catch
glimpses of the way he works, and to be strangely reassured that
disasters and misfortune happen even to the best artists, even to the
most inspired dreams. I doubt I’ll ever forget the image of the
cinematographer’s equipment bobbing away down a river that rose almost
instantaneously in the desert. Most inspiring of all, Gilliam presses
on, undeterred by financial trouble and calendar calamities. He is first
and foremost a dreamer. He’ll take what he is given and give us the best
we could hope for. I have faith Quixote will ride again, laughing all
the way.
Jeffrey's Rating:
B
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