LOST IN LA MANCHA (Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe, 2003) R

Reviewed: January 31st, 2003

It's like a greek tragedy for any movie lover; you know this can only turn out disastrous. Almost (if not completely) unheard of amongst making-of documentaries, the movie in question here -- Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote -- was never completed (I mean hell, even Apocalypse Now got finished). You watch incredulous as the production problems mount; within the first week of shooting the project's already pretty much doomed (you know it's a deadly omen when the cinematographer says he's never seen such bad luck in 22 years in the business). Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's wholly engrossing Lost in La Mancha illustrates better than anything I've ever seen what somebody in their movie calls "the fragility of cinema." We're often told the best movies are just happy accidents, a fortuitous fusion of fortuitous elements. We're often told how the greatest of films are born out of the most tumultuous circumstances (if they can survive them). Watching Lost in La Mancha we realize yes, fuck, it's all true. Movie-making really is just a precarious balancing act, a tipsy house of cards prepared to topple at the slightest provocation (in Quixote's case, mainly poor weather and an injured actor). The challenges grow exponentially more difficult when you're working on the fringes of Hollywood (Quixote was initially financed by a patchwork of European investors), a situation Gilliam was inevitably forced into since his visions are so grand and expensive, and his scripts so idiosyncratic. It's horribly sad listening to Gilliam discuss his age (currently 62) and commenting how he wishes he'd made more movies by now, especially considering the number of ideas constantly floating around in his head. It's even sadder to see Gilliam staging a reading of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote's screenplay (after the project fell apart), playing the parts himself, shouting the lines with a furious, defiant gusto, as the storyboards he drew oh-so-long ago (the movie was a decade in the making) animate his words. This is all he's left with.

There is the unshakeable, at times explicit, idea running through Lost in La Mancha that Gilliam thrives on pandemonium (at one point Gilliam even remarks whatever creativity he has seems to stem from it). But Terry Gilliam is not an irresponsible director, he's simply pushed to extremes by an incredibly faulty system that doesn't provide him enough funds to create the films he wants to make, in the manner in which he wants to make them. One's left with the conclusion that all too often the movie business is a pathetic fucking place.

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