Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribeiro, Olga Kurylenko, Jose Luis Ferrer, Ismael Fritschi, Juan Lopez-Tagle, William Miller, Will Keen, Jason Watkins, Paloma Bloyd, Oscar Jaenda, Sonia Franco, Jose Aser Gimenez, Jose Antonio Fernandez, Viveka Rytzner, Alberto Jo Lee, Bruno Sevilla, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Jordi Molla, Jorge Calvo, Juan Machin, Inma Navarro.
If you could attain immortality for effort and striving through the minefield of adversity, then Terry Gilliam, quite rightly, will live forever.
No doubt his work certainly will, for there are few film makers that capture the imagination as the Monty Python stalwart, few that could bare the on off delay of putting a hopeful masterpiece together, of losing so much Time, effort and control over his grand image, only to have the reversal of hallucinatory vision restored, and the magnus opus he had always dreamed of, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, being greeted with honour, not only in critical circles, but by those who love his genius the most, the viewer.
Genius is madness made not only acceptable, but appreciated, the ability to take what others see as the fallibility of psychosis and folly and turn it into magic, into rationality of dreams, and throughout his career, Terry Gilliam has done just that, creating some of the most memorable film to have graced the screen in the last fifty years.
Genius though is not always enough to see you through the pitfalls that come your way, and there will those that see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote as one of the biggest open pits to have swallowed any film. The endless joke of Time is that it waits for no person, and yet if art is meant to be conceived, if it is meant to breathe, then not even Time itself can hold back the frustration of the artist, one way or another, a classic will live.
“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd”, and in the audacity of producing the homage to life itself through the medium of the absurd, through sublime performances by Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Joana Ribeiro and Olga Kurylenko, and with every obstacle that Terry Gilliam has had placed in his way, the impossible has not only been realised, but also stood firm against all rationale thought of despair and the soundness of lucid grievance.
From start to finish this has Terry Gilliam’s own observational lance thrust right through the armour of illogical effect, to watch The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is to understand that art is not about the financial reward, but about the herculean effort it takes to bring it to the attention of the public. Classic Gilliam, meaningful, beautifully bonkers, outstanding!
Ian D. Hall