Terry Gilliam
L'uomo che uccise Don Chisciotte

Asking Terry Gilliam to be strict is like expecting a sphere to have edges. Demanding it from a work about the dreamer par excellence, who tilts at windmills as if they were giants, would be even more absurd. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may at times be frayed, incomplete, uneven, and lopsided, but it is an act of love towards cinema (and more so, literature, art in its most authentic sense) that feeds precisely on those asymmetries, those irregularities that are not comprehensible to the rigorous world of producers, seasoned and cynical directors, sponsors, who have the means but do not really understand what they are talking about. They refuse to understand what cinema is, like a Sancho Panza faced with Don's flights of fancy.

There is no denying it; what Gilliam proposes is a metaphorical parallelism that works precisely because it is frayed, incomplete, interwoven with other ideas and visions, in a chaotic, deliberately unclear way. Not everything is clear, not everything needs to be. Gilliam's discourse seems to insist on the concept that cinematic art should not be geometry, should not be reasoning, but a whim, a great fable you can't believe in, but which gradually captivates, reveals that that world, haphazard, absurd, paradoxical, is more appreciable than the frustrating logics of reality. It's not a particularly innovative idea, sure, it's the first modern novel. But its "implementation" is irresistible, and the contemporary references are truly strong. It's the right moment in the history of cinema to recall these artistic axioms.

This film is an act of beauty, with no need for arguments to sanction its value. A self-evident beauty, material, tangible. A simple beauty that reconciles with the true dimension of cinema and the sense of storytelling: in the era that celebrates vision, the image at all costs, the story of Don Quixote and Toby is made "only" of words (with some exceptions, between visions and dreams) that stand out against real scenarios, made of objects, dilapidated buildings, castles, stairs, windmills, and caves. There is very little computer graphics, minimal post-production intervention on the scenarios: the magnetism of what the protagonists say is such that no great objects or details are needed to give credibility. Two actors raving in the desert, in front of a ruined castle. Nothing else is needed. The credibility is maximum also because these events are based on the exact opposite, on fanciful delirium, which has no credibility yet has them all, because it conquers them piece by piece, convincing everyone that that world is decidedly preferable to the one we all know.

The viewer walks in perfect parallel with the protagonist Toby, who lets himself be entwined by the imaginative demon slowly and gently, without tears. Contingent reality often knocks at his door, but after a while (also surprising us who find ourselves living the same exact lacerations and impulses sitting in the theater) the pragmatic gives way to literature, Don's escapes become more and more necessary and moving, also because the world shows its cruel, disrespectful face. The more the world mocks him, the closer Toby gets to Don, understanding the nobility of his soul.

It's an astonishing cognitive journey the viewer takes with the protagonist. Throwing everything behind, understanding that life without that mad spark becomes mere prostitution, selling oneself to gain something, licking feet to have "everything one desires." No, all of this is more fake than Don's whimsical wanderings; it has a soul of pure hypocrisy, of quiet living that submits to the impositions of those above. Instead, in Don's hyperboles, there's no enemy that cannot be faced and defeated.

In short, the internalization of the message inherent in the novel is total, and there was little doubt after such a long gestation. In a game of Chinese boxes and multiple mise en abyme, Gilliam's work itself is a testament to this extreme freedom, this radical otherness compared to functional logic. And the filmmaker adds a diachronic dimension that adds an additional polemic note to the vision: the director who as a young man put passion is the same who ten years later does not believe in Don Quixote's oddities.

But there's more: [in this paragraph there are spoilers] the Don Quixote that the director will meet on his journey, recognizing him as Sancho Panza, is exactly that cobbler that he, the director, chose as the protagonist of his youthful work, on the same subject ten years earlier. His identification with the character made Javier a real Don Quixote because nothing else is needed to be one. But today, the very one who gave him the imaginative spark no longer believes in that wonderful hallucination. A creative short circuit in which the character survives the creative vein of his author and indeed finds himself urging him, attempting to bring him back to that hallucinatory and beautiful world. The work is always bigger and more powerful than those who created it.

Life and literature (and cinema, which is a sort of double) interpenetrate, complete each other stringently. Even the young Angelica seems unable to exit the role, becoming a half-whore just to stay in the spotlight. The dualities are continuous, because reality and fantasy (and dream) continue to alternate in a strikingly organic way. And real people return in the fantastic narrative because Don absorbs them, or because they offer themselves to his vision, to heal him, in some cases, to bring him home or simply to make him a sideshow attraction. Reality and fantasy form a continuum; there is no solution between the two dimensions.

A profession of faith in art as a quirky joke, as a moving and stubborn farce, deeply desperate and inevitably painful. Painful because that journey leads to clashing with the corners of the real world that inevitably resurfaces. The dream is wonderful, but it rests on the foundations of the material world; as wildly as one might dream, from time to time, a wall appears along the path, even the most imaginative one. One falls, gets hurt, gets humiliated. One loses, the man of fantasy loses to the man of money and contingency. But what has been sown has incomparable fertility, allowing him to eternalize his journey, to transmit that vocation to successors. A resounding, enormous failure, but a successful one. The success lies in not surrendering to the world besieging dreams; it's not necessary to conquer it, just to resist it. And it's nice to think that all this perfectly applies to the good Terry Gilliam, who presented himself in early 2018 with a film that possesses the imaginative and dreamlike strength of a debut. That radicalness that does not fear to hit hard against the wall of concrete facts (see box office).

Wonderful settings, on which the stories of Don stand out vaporously, made of words in the wind and tumbles, head bumps, and ruinous falls. Wonderful actors, who play a huge role in a film that builds all or almost everything on the credibility of their facial expressions, translating their flights of fancy first and foremost. An amazing consecration for Adam Driver, but also splendid Jonathan Pryce.

8/10