Lost in La Mancha (2002)

Wow! Such a good movie.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The acting in this movie is really good.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I came to this after watching the finally finished Gilliam's Quijote. It probably works better to watch this one, the "sketch", the "failed attempt", after you saw the finished product. That film, the finished one, is imperfect and chaotic. And that's good. It it as a film, what it was as a work in progress. It reveals Gilliam, and has a special place in his carrer. It's the final product of an obsession, and it follows the path of its very theme.This one is nice, because we see in it some of the anchors that were kept in the later finished film, and that would probably have worked better in the original, at least from a cinematic point of view. It is clear that Gilliam had in mind the replacement of the "book layers" of the original Quijote by the layers of films in films. In other words, he wanted a world where several layers of paralel realities would affect each other, contaminate them, blur them. This is something he has been doing all his life as a filmmaker, and as such it is apt that he adapts Quijote. In the book, at least in my reading, Sancho is the pivot, he is the articulation of all the layers, the one that keeps all the madness tolerable, and the one who places us, the "viewers" in the narrative. So having Johnny Depp play that role would have been magnificient. We can only imagine how it would have been, watching the few conversations between Gilliam and Depp in this documentary, watching the short bits of footage that were recorded (the fish fight is amazing) and trying to imagine Depp whenever we see Driver.I got the impression that Depp was the one who suggested what is in fact the beginning of the new film. At least the breaking of the 4th wall in the matter of "la nuit américaine". That shows he understands the layers. He is a very fine actor.Take this little film as a piece of a grander puzzle in the mind of an interesting guy. A Quijote film will probably always be better as a sum of bits and pieces, chaos and unreachable goals... This fits. I had a little too much of burocracy (whose fault, who's gonna pay, who should have done what...) and too little of Gilliam's mind. But these documentaries almost always fall on that trap."The Man Who Killed Quijote" was the first film in 2018 that completes a seamingly "lost project". We'll likely get Welles' The Other Side of the Wind later this year.. Year for completions, and probably for disappointments. Welles also had an ongoing Quijote project for half his life. Ah, those windmills...

Even in its length, I wanted to see more. Yes, Gilliam has the "Cimino Curse," but it is unwarranted. This documentary shows his "madness," but it is no more than that of other directing legends (Kubrick comes to mind). What happens to Gilliam is NOT his fault. If not, very little is. As the filmmakers keep repeating, "Munchausen, Munchausen, Munchausen." This documentary shows its audience all of the problems with making movies. It isn't as easy as many think. Gilliam and others do as much as they can to get the movie made, but flight training overhead, storms, and medical problems are always sprouting. I remember the good days of making student movies. For me, it was just terrible. Everything had to fit into a perfect line: timetables, money, actors, crew, sets. Hollywood just throws everything to some talentless hack, but those directors who have talent are constantly fighting any and all problems that arise. Does that make them eccentric? No. It makes them hard workers with a true love for the art of cinema. That being said, this documentary shows the problems with film making. Extremely insightful and well done. To boot, the narration is given to Bridges.8 of 10, mostly for it feeling too brief! 9 of 10 for the DVD with the Salman Rushdie interview, which is MUST SEE! ----- E.

Maverick filmmaker Terry Gilliam may have been the mastermind behind such great works as "Brazil" and "The Fisher King", but he created his largest, most brilliantly conceived undertaking to date with 2001's "The Man who Killed Don Quixote". Oh, wait. You've never heard of it? The stellar documentary "Lost in La Mancha" will present precisely why Gilliam's big budget indie flick went from one cataclysm to another without missing a beat. Like Orson Welles before him, Quixotic director Gilliam struggled against immovable and unpreventable odds to get his vision of Quixote to the screen, even after having put more than a full decade's work into it. The film that began as an on-set making of featurette soon blossoms into a movie-making parody no one bothered to pen. It could be said that independent film-making constitutes the bulk of the actual output of the 'film industry', and this documentary rings quite true of those struggling in the trenches of it. It's a wonderful crash course in film-making for those prepared to see the darker, sadder side of it.

A brilliant documentary about what indeed can go wrong on a film and how fortunate we are too see many great films come to life. Making a film is like re-creating life, and this film show us how difficult it can indeed be. If ever, it's here where Murphy's law applies deeply.After reading the comments here I have little to add - All of them say what I want to say. I would have liked to see this film come out though! Since I am a great fan of Terry and all his films.I think there should be made a documentary on Gilliam, it's definitely something that I would like to see. His imagination and his self-destructiveness are what make him an excellent filmmaker.