The Impossible Dream of 'Don Quixote'
It's been said that it takes just as much work to make a bad movie as a good one; the HBO making-of-a-movie reality series "Project Greenlight" showed not only that the road to hell was paved with good intentions, but also that Satan's contractors were taking bids on the job. After watching the fascinating and compelling new documentary "Lost in La Mancha," you may forever wonder how it is that movies are made at all. "Lost" may not be a great piece of filmmaking, but it is a great story; its directors display dramatic intelligence.
"Lost" is an inside view of how a film, Terry Gilliam's "Man Who Killed Don Quixote," can fall to pieces even under the guidance of a master director. It's a 180-degree spinout from "Greenlight," a voyeuristic tale in which a neophyte filmmaker mortgages his soul to see his dream come true, only to have fate — and an insidious crew and producer — undermine him. What's clear and astonishingly entertaining about "Lost" is that the directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's only good luck was that they happened to be safely behind the scenes when epic mishaps struck so often on the set that Beelzebub probably put in for overtime.
Imagine watching a real-life version of Ian McKellen's kindly, indomitable Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings" give his life for his cause, only to find that his supreme gesture is meaningless because his fellows are slaughtered, anyway. That's what "Lost" is like. The wizard under siege in this montage of misadventures is Mr. Gilliam ("Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits"), whose constant blinking suggests that more ideas are firing inside his massive skull than his mind can contain and that he's flinching from all the fireworks.
The directors of "Lost," which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, were given unlimited access to Mr. Gilliam as he was making his film, an adaptation of "Don Quixote" that was one of his dream projects. They had previously followed him as he made "12 Monkeys," an adaptation of a short by the avant-experimental director Chris Marker.
For "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," Mr. Gilliam persuaded Johnny Depp to star as a modern office worker flung into the past to be Quixote's steadfast servant; Mr. Depp's punk delicacy would make him a dead-solid perfect choice to play a man mistaken for Sancho Panza. And for the Man of La Mancha, Mr. Gilliam recruited the French comic actor Jean Rochefort. In his 70's, this actor has the bent-branch dignity of Cervantes's creation. But like his fictional counterpart, his age would prove to be part of the problem.
"Lost" burns across the screen like a fever dream, the bad luck coming hard and fast. Some nonfiction films enchant us with the cool, sure hand of filmmaking; that's not the case here. Most great documentaries are about willfulness, either the filmmakers' or the subject's. In "Lost," it's the latter, and the drama comes from our awareness that despite the proud determination of Mr. Gilliam, in the end his efforts will be utterly and completely meaningless.
"Don Quixote" is a project that has hobbled other talents. Peter O'Toole, ostensibly in more pain than he endured as Lawrence of Arabia, suffered starring in a 1972 screen adaptation of the musical "Man of La Mancha." And Orson Welles, probably Mr. Gilliam's nightmare realization of himself as a luckless maverick, tilted vainly at filming "Quixote," and is referred to here.
Mr. Gilliam's "Quixote," for which he pulled together more than $30 million of European financing, suffered every misfortune a director could imagine, like losing days when a usually arid location was hit by monsoon rains. And then his opus was struck by disasters he could never have imagined. The entertainment — yes, that is a terrible but unfortunately apt word — comes with watching Mr. Gilliam duck Fate's right hook, only to have it strike back with a catastrophic body blow that catches him unaware.
Some of the destruction seems self-inflicted: Mr. Rochefort's accented English does such a linguistic tango that part of Mr. Gilliam's blinking seems to come from trying to comprehend what his Quixote is saying.
It's hard to fight the impulse to give all the awful missteps away in unrelenting detail, but "Lost" demands to be seen fresh. One welcome surprise that I can reveal is that the film captures Mr. Gilliam's dented but intact confidence, a quality that comes from having survived battles with overbearing studio executives. (His dystrophic, paranoid comedy "Brazil" and the battles it provoked are detailed on a lovingly assembled DVD from Criterion.) He also fought forces beyond his control on "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."
This is, after all, a man who had his reputation ruined by "Munchausen" — he was accused of profligate spending when the ambitious film was underbudgeted — and who bounced back with "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys." J. K. Rowling acknowledged that Mr. Gilliam's powerfully imaginative "Time Bandits" inspired her Harry Potter books.
We are able to see the tiny amount of film that was actually shot, and some ingenious tests that Mr. Gilliam made. (The only regret is that "Lost" was made with digital video cameras, so we don't get the head-blasting, wide-screen image he filmed.) Finally, after watching the spectacular "Lost in La Mancha," you may wish you'd had your jaw wired shut, since having it drop wide open so often could exhaust you. Mr. Gilliam is such a bizarre, magnetic and ultimately sympathetic figure that you'll find yourself wishing for a happy ending.
An end title says he's still looking for financing to resuscitate his "Don Quixote." If he were smart, he'd start putting together money to make a fictional film of "Lost in La Mancha." I'd bet Ian McKellen would make himself available to play the director.
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