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.