Terry Gilliam
L'uomo che uccise Don Chisciotte

Two years ago, around this time, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was in theaters, the film with the longest and most troubled gestation in the history of cinema, a hymn to perseverance and love for this art.

Why is this testamentary film by Gilliam one of the most beautiful and precious of the last decade?

Because it is a film that shows how the power of cinema, imagination, and stories is not at all something intangible, but rather something deeply physical and spiritual at the same time, an utterly timeless and limitless force, something we still need now more than ever, and something we will need forever. And it has a real and concrete influence on the life of those who are captivated and in love with it. Something that, in the end, does not leave you and never will.

Immediately considered by many as Gilliam's ‘8 1/2’ (the Fellini masterpiece has always had a great influence on the director of Brazil - the latter is precisely the example), in reality, it is something extremely personal and intimate, and perhaps it is in this respect that the comparison becomes fitting. A director and the work he wants but cannot stage, and reality and fantasy, dream and imagination become one. But is this conventional and schematic - and, at times, reassuring - distinction really important?

For all this and much more, I consider Gilliam's work an invaluable masterpiece. Of love and vitality.

And for this, I will never stop thanking him for the emotions of that theater viewing, right from the ironic opening caption, which referred precisely to the endless and tortuous epic labor of this dream. Seeing it finally realized was a moving feat and, in itself, already a fairy tale with a happy ending.