LOST IN LA MANCHA []
An un-making-of documentary. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated R (language). At the Lincoln Plaza and Sunshine Cinemas.
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FILMMAKER Terry Gilliam is such a rare talent you can’t help but root for him to succeed in whatever wildly ambitious project he takes on.
Movie lovers have reaped the rewards of his vision fulfilled in such classics as “Brazil,” “The Fisher King” and “Twelve Monkeys.”
But even the crazily enthusiastic Gilliam – perhaps best known for providing the surreal animation for the “Monty Python” series – bit off more than he could chew when he took a tilt at filming the story of Don Quixote, a literary stand-in for Gilliam, an idealist and dreamer in his own right.
When Gilliam began work on “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” a version of the classic tale that had been fomenting in his head for a decade, he gave documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe his blessing to film this fascinating making-of documentary
The two follow Gilliam as he takes the production to Spain, where he is hoping to “make a Hollywood film without Hollywood.”
With only half the $32 million budget in place, and none of the actors, including the stars Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, yet on the set, the project looks rickety from the start.
“It’s got a lot of potential for chaos here,” says Gilliam during what seems like an endless series of pre-production meetings.
But Gilliam remains optimistic and cheery – perhaps deluded? – even when he’s given a soundstage that’s not sound- proof, the desert scenes turn out to be set in an area adjacent to an active NATO bombing range and a flash flood sweeps away the equipment six days into production.
Then his Don Quixote (French actor Jean Rochefort, who had spent seven months learning English for the role) turns out to have a herniated disk, and riding horses is out of the question.
As the project continues to unravel amid dark mutterings of it turning into a repeat of “Baron Munchausen,” Gilliam’s famously overbudget, out-of-control disaster, the director’s shoulders start to slump and his enthusiasm wanes.
When Gilliam is finally forced to admit defeat, it is nothing short of heartbreaking – for audiences, too, as the few shots that made it into the can hold such promise.