We watched an oddball film for our Saturday pizza and bad movie night, a sad movie that dealt with dreams, fantasy v. reality, guilt, and a bit of insanity.
Plot:
The movie opens the line: And now… after more than 25 years of making… and unmaking.
The viewer first sees a storybook of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza riding along the road. “I was born by the special will of heaven in this age of iron to restore the lost age of chivalry,” the narrator says.
Don Quixote (José Luis Ferrer) and Sancho (Ismael Fritschi) ride up a path. As the mist clears, Don Quixote spies a giant.
“It’s a windmill,” Sancho says.
Don Quixote rides full till at the windmill, getting his lance caught in one of the blades. He’s carried aloft.
“That’s a wrap,” says an off-camera voice.
A caption on the screen reads, “Shooting a commercial… somewhere in Spain.”
Later, at a working dinner, the director Toby (Adam Driver) notices a local (Óscar Jaenada) selling a copy of a student movie he made ten years earlier, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
The Boss (Stellan Skarsgård) (I guess the guy who is in charge of financing the movie?) tells him he’s going away for a while and wants him to look after his wife Jacqui (Olga Kurylenko).
Toby agrees, thinking he can watch his old black-and-white student film in her suite. She wants sex and sets out to seduce him. Once he tears his eyes away from the screen, he’s willing enough. Unfortunately, the Boss comes home at an inopportune time. Toby barely gets away with his DVD.
He continues watching the film in his room. In one of many odd sequence changes, the viewer sees Tody interview the cobbler Javier (Jonathan Pryce), trying to talk him into playing Don Quixote, speaking to him in poor Spanish. He also recruits Angelica (Joana Ribeiro), the fifteen-year-old daughter of the innkeeper,
He realizes the place they’re currently working is near where he made the student film, Los Sueños (= “dreams”). While the crew is setting up, he borrows (commandeers?) a motorcycle and heads off alone.
In short, he finds that his student film ruined the lives of both Javier and Angelica.
Thoughts:
The movie is long and profoundly sad on many levels. Elements of the absurd also abound, however. At one point, Toby and the young man who sold him the copy of his film have been arrested. Javier arrives on horseback, believing that he is Don Quixote and that Toby is Sancho Panza, and attacks the squad car they are riding in, demanding that Toby be released.
Now, there’s something you don’t see every day.
The movie plays with timelines and reality. Toby later falls into a cave where he finds the corpse of a horse with a saddlebag full of pieces of gold. He stuffs his pockets full of the gold. But is it still gold in the light of day?
In one sequence from the black-and-white student film, a smiling Dulcinea holds a cup of water out to a thirsty Don Quixote. She spills it, then disappears. The sequence is short but says a lot.
Adam Driver is excellent as Toby. He portrays him as arrogant in the early parts of the movie then often confused and guilt-ridden later on. He shows compassion for the apparently insane Javier, even when Javier, convinced he’s Sancho Panza, treats him like a servant and refers to his “peasant” sensibilities.
Jonathan Pryce makes a great Don Quixote—and a great cobbler. He’s credible in both roles and, just as the literary Don Quixote was sincere and delusional, so is his character. I don’t know whose idea it was for him to wear his helmet crooked, but it works well.
The story is hard to follow in places. Sometimes, not everything makes complete sense, at least not on the first go-around. Despite genuinely funny situations and lines, there is an underlying sadness throughout the movie, which the ending does not redeem.
This film received five awards and twelve nominations from various European film academies and festivals, including two Goya Awards and three nominations from the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain.
I can easily recommend this film for adults. It takes some thought and is not something to watch when you’re in the mood for a bit of light entertainment, though there are plenty of funny moments. Nevertheless, if you’re in the mood for a flick that leaves you with questions and sadness, this is it.
The movie can be streamed here: Watch The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) Online for Free | The Roku Channel | Roku
Title: The Man Who Kill Don Quixote (2018)
Directed by
Terry Gilliam
Writing Credits
Terry Gilliam…(written by) &
Tony Grisoni…(written by)
Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra…(novel)
Cast (in credits order)
José Luis Ferrer…Don Quixote (commercial)
Ismael Fritschi…Sancho Panza (commercial) (as Ismael Fritzi)
Juan López-Tagle…Spanish Propman (as Juan López Tagle)
Adam Driver…Toby
William Miller…1st AD – Bill
Will Keen…Producer
Released: 2018
Length: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
It sounds like an interesting movie. Adam Driver is certainly a good actor. I have to think about whether it is for me. It was a very informative and helpful review.
It was interesting. It’s hard to say whether you’d like it. I did. There was a lot of beauty amid the absurdity and confusion. At the same time, I found myself asking, “What’s going on here?”
Yes that is the impression I got. It is hard to know unless you try watching it I guess.
try the trailer. There’s not enough of anything to make sense of it. But it gives you the style
The trailer is intriguing and Adam Driver was great in it.
Coincidentally, I spent a good part of my weekend watching Stellan Skarsgård in Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: Andor,” a well-made Disney+ TV series that mixes espionage and high-stakes intrigue in a story that is set before the events of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “Star Wars: A New Hope” (the original 1977 film). Skarsgård plays Luthien, a spymaster who is helping the nascent Rebelion against the Empire in the first decade of Emperor Palpatine’s regime. He is quite good in that show, which (considering it’s a Star Wars project) is engrossing and feels gritty and real.
I also have another film in which Skarsgård has a role: 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October.” There, he plays one of the Soviet adversaries to Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) and Captain First Rank Marko Ramius (Sean Connery): Viktor Tupolev, captain of the Alfa-class attack sub “V.K. Konovalov” and once a friend and student of the defecting Capt. Ramius.
And, to top that off, his son, Bill Istvan Günther Skarsgård, stars as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 2017-2019 IT duology.
What a weird and wide range of roles. Here he was half-mob boss and half-jealous/abusive husband.