Lost In La Mancha
Reviewed by Rich Drees
 When director Terry Gilliam invited documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis
Pepe to chronicle in the making of the science-fiction thriller Twelve
Monkeys, he said that “if anything should go wrong, at least I’ll have
witnesses.” It’s fortunate then, that based on the strength of their final
product, The Hamster Factor And Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys,
Gilliam invited the pair back to chronicle the filming of his latest project
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote as no one would believe the incredible
string of bad luck he and his crew were about to experience.
The resultant documentary, Lost
In LaMancha, details the battle that most film productions got through
to make a movie. Unfortunately, for Gilliam and his crew, it was a battle
that they couldn’t win. Limited by a budget that barely met the production’s
requirements, Gilliam struggles to realize a film project that he had been
developing for a decade. But a series of disasters including a flash flood
and the failing health of Gilliam’s Quixote, French actor Jean Rochefort,
force the production to shut down after just six days.
Gilliam has an unjustified
reputation in Hollywood as a visionary infant terrible. His fight
with Universal Studios chief Sid Shienberg over the release of his film
Brazil is legendary. (And has been chronicled in Jack Matthews’ book
The Battle of Brazil.) His 1988 film The Adventures of Baron
Munchausen went spectacularly over budget, though most of the blame
could really be laid at the feet of the producer rather than Gilliam. In
fact, the specter of Munchausen’s production hangs over Gilliam
throughout the film, even though since then he had helmed the hits The
Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys. It seems that sometimes, you
aren’t even as good as your most recent hit.
 In a way, Lost In La Mancha is a love story. Gilliam’s love for his
craft is evident in his eyes as he works through pre-production watching the
costumes and set pieces come into being. And you can also see the
frustration and heartache as things fall apart just weeks later. This film
is heartbreaking for Gilliam fans as well. The glimpses of costumes, set
designs and especially those few moments of completed film hint at a film
that could have been truly spectacular.
The parallels between Quixote and
Gilliam are readily apparent and thankfully the filmmakers don’t belabor the
point. It’s been said that while filming a movie Gilliam begins to take on
aspects of his protagonist, and its easy to see that in the face of mounting
disaster Gilliam is almost dementedly determined to continue forward,
ignoring the reality of the situation around him.
Of course, the film does raise the
question of whether or not there really is a curse that hangs over any
attempt to adapt the novel. Orson Welles struggled for 20 years to
unsuccessfully complete his version of the project. Maybe Cervantes really
did curse future generations when he wrote at the end of the book’s second
volume “For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; he to act and I to
record; in a word, we were destined for each other” and wasn’t just taking a
swipe at another author who had quickly published a sequel before Cervantes
had time to finish his own.
 In this day and age, “Making Of” documentaries are almost a de rigeur
part of a film’s marketing, showing happy actors and confident directors
having barrels of fun on set while in the incidental business of making a
movie. Rarely is the real struggle and toil that is the actually film
production experience shown. Up until now, the most revealing look at film
production has been Hearts of Darkness, which chronicles Frances Ford
Coppolla’s own journey through despair while shooting Apocalypse Now.
Unfortunately, Lost In La Mancha doesn’t have any kind of
triumph-over-tragedy, “Great-film-produced-over-unbelievable-odds” finish.
Instead, it will serve as a document for a project that seems destined to
join Welles’s version of Quixote and Marilyn Monroe’s Something’s
Got To Give in the cinema of great films that never were. |
