Terry Gilliam is known for directing films like The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys and a little gem called Monty Python and the Holy Grail. For years, he wanted to make a version of the Cervantes story of Don Quixote. Gilliam’s version was called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. If you’ve never heard of it, there’s a reason: It was never finished. Lost in La Mancha is the documentary about what happened to this somewhat overly-ambitious production and the disasters that befell it.
For film industry buffs, Lost in La Mancha is a treasure trove of information and examples of what not to do when making a movie. For everyone else, it will deglamorize the job of a director. Apparently, when you’re on a film set, you’re on the phone with insurance agents and investors a lot of the time — at least on the Man Who Killed Don Quixote set anyway.
Without getting into the myriad of problems that Quixote ran into, Lost in La Mancha has several problems of its own. It’s more akin to a bloated “making-of” promotional short than a full-blown documentary. I walked away from the film with a sense that film production is an incredibly complex and extremely frustrating process but not much else. I realized that the reason there are so many shots of Gilliam in meetings and on-the-phone is because this wasn’t planned to be a real documentary. It was supposed to be a “making-of” promotional film.
Things liven up a bit when Johnny Depp arrives on the set to film his scenes, but he’s on-screen for less than 1/8th of the movie. The Quixote production was so plagued with problems that there is very little footage of the film in existence. What is present in Lost in La Mancha made me yearn to see the finished product.
There’s no doubt that what happened to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was an unforeseeable set of events that could only be described as extremely bad luck. However, the documentary about those events could have been a bit more concise and quite a bit shorter. Still, it does merit viewing if you’re a hardcore film production buff. If you’re not, you may want to steer clear of Lost in La Mancha.
2.5 out of 5.0 stars
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