Lost in La Mancha

Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe, UK / USA, 2002
**1/2 stars

Definitely a letdown. I’ve seen and enjoyed a few films by Terry Gilliam and I know he has something of a bad reputation (he released yet another dog this year in the form of The Brothers Grimm, apparently) so I thought I would get some interesting insight into the creative but troubled mind of an auteur.

Instead, perhaps out of an unwillingness to indict the maestro they set out to chronicle, the faceless filmmakers show us a series of unfortunate coincidences and have us wondering, “okay, and so what?” There are a lot of suggestions and implications but none are really realized.

The interesting thing about documentaries is that no one watches them, yet they can sometimes seem like prototypes of intellectual reality shows. This one, I think, goes too far into that realm. Many encounters feel staged, although you do see some interesting glimpses of Gilliam’s frustration on set.

Mostly though, there isn’t enough here to hold my interest, and certainly not enough for a feature film. I’m tempted to say a 30-minute TV special would have been better, but in fact, I think a decent-sized article would have sufficed! It’s really enough to say in conversation, “did you hear Gilliam tried to make Cervantes but failed?” (in fact I had this exact conversation with my parents on Tuesday) The fact that a film came about by documenting this failure adds an interesting layer to your conversational tidbit, but the film itself doesn’t really add to it. Maybe with a stronger authorial (directorial) voice or a better selection of footage, this could have been something, but I’m not entirely certain about that. The "flair" they do use is downright awful, like the constant slow motion they use when they want to cut away in the middle of a sentence. Yuck.

The worst thing is, this wasn't even as good as the one-hour "making of" feature on the History of Violence DVD, entitled "Acts of Violence." Since there is actually a story to tell here, I find that really inexcusable (and since this "film" started life as a similar project, I find the comparison to be fair as well).

Source: Newvideo DVD
1 April, 9:02 PM