{"id":9449,"date":"2003-02-02T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2003-02-03T00:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=9449"},"modified":"2010-08-08T19:13:54","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T00:13:54","slug":"review-lost-in-la-mancha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2003\/02\/02\/review-lost-in-la-mancha\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: LOST IN LA MANCHA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When director Terry Gilliam invited documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe to chronicle in the making of the science-fiction thriller Twelve Monkeys<\/strong>, he said that \u201cif anything should go wrong, at least I\u2019ll have witnesses.\u201d It\u2019s fortunate then, that based on the strength of their final product, The Hamster Factor And Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys<\/strong>, Gilliam invited the pair back to chronicle the filming of his latest project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote<\/strong> as no one would believe the incredible string of bad luck he and his crew were about to experience.<\/p>\n

The resultant documentary, Lost In LaMancha<\/strong>, 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\u2019t win. Limited by a budget that barely met the production\u2019s 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\u2019s Quixote, French actor Jean Rochefort, force the production to shut down after just six days.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> is legendary. (And has been chronicled in Jack Matthews\u2019 book The Battle of Brazil<\/em>.) His 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen<\/strong> 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<\/strong>\u2019s production hangs over Gilliam throughout the film, even though since then he had helmed the hits The Fisher King<\/strong> and Twelve Monkeys<\/strong>. It seems that sometimes, you aren\u2019t even as good as your most recent hit.<\/p>\n

\"\"In a way, Lost In La Mancha<\/strong> is a love story. Gilliam\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The parallels between Quixote and Gilliam are readily apparent and thankfully the filmmakers don\u2019t belabor the point. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s second volume \u201cFor 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\u201d and wasn\u2019t just taking a swipe at another author who had quickly published a sequel before Cervantes had time to finish his own.<\/p>\n

\"\"In this day and age, \u201cMaking Of\u201d documentaries are almost a de rigeur part of a film\u2019s 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<\/strong>, which chronicles Frances Ford Coppolla\u2019s own journey through despair while shooting Apocalypse Now<\/strong>. Unfortunately, Lost In La Mancha<\/strong> doesn\u2019t have any kind of triumph-over-tragedy, \u201cGreat-film-produced-over-unbelievable-odds\u201d finish. Instead, it will serve as a document for a project that seems destined to join Welles\u2019s version of Quixote and Marilyn Monroe\u2019s Something\u2019s Got To Give<\/strong> in the cinema of great films that never were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cif anything should go wrong, at least I\u2019ll have witnesses.\u201d [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[3036,182,3035],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-review","7":"tag-lost-in-lamancha","8":"tag-terry-gilliam","9":"tag-the-man-who-killed-don-qiuxote"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9449"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=9449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}