Has the curse finally lifted on director Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited opus “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote?” Yes and no. The bad news is it’s in a legal dispute and won’t debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May as originally expected. The good news is that it’s apparently done and the first trailer is here out of nowhere, which honestly seems weird for a movie that’s currently in a legal tug of war.
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is an opus Gilliam’s been trying to make since the late 1990s. The original version of the film with Jean Rochefort as Quixote and Johnny Depp as Toby Grisoni, a 21st-century marketing executive thrown back through time, shot and soon fell apart in 2000. The excruciating making of the film was captured in the 2002 doc “Lost in La Mancha.” Gilliam’s been trying to make it ever since with versions that included Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, and John Hurt as Quixote, and Depp, Ewan McGregor, Jack O’Connell, as Grisoni. One would think with so many aborted version, Gilliam would eventually get the hint, but he persevered and the film is finally here.
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Here’s the official long-form synopsis released last year.
Once upon a time, Toby was an idealistic young film student. His great achievement, a lyrical re-working of the Don Quixote story set in a quaint old Spanish village. But that was then; these days he is a jaded, arrogant and over-sexed commercials director. Money and glamour have derailed him, and now he juggles his boss’s wife Jacqui, a biblical storm and his own ego as he tries to complete a new commercial shoot in Spain. Until a mysterious Gypsy approaches him with an ancient copy of Toby’s student film: Toby is moved and sets off to find the little village where he made his primary opus all those years ago. To Toby’s horror, his little film has had a terrible effect on the sleepy village; Angelica, the young girl who was innocence personified, now works as a high class call-girl, and the old man who played Quixote has now gone completely mad, believing he really is the ‘Knight of the Mournful Countenance’. A series of accidents leads to a fire that threatens to destroy the village. The police come for Toby, but he is ‘rescued’ by the deluded old man, who, mistaking him for his loyal squire Sancho, leads Toby away into the countryside on the quest for his perfect lady, Dulcinea. On their quest, Toby comes face to face with demons, both real and imagined, modern and medieval. Damsels are rescued, jousts are fought, giants are slain and women have beards! Reality and fantasy blur on this bizarre road trip which leads to a phantasmagorical finale.
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” stars Jonathan Pryce, Adam Driver, Olga Kurylenko and Stellan Skarsgård. The movie will be released stateside eventually by Amazon Studios who ponied up the dough for the movie in the first place. Watch the trailer and let us know what you think.
