Toby, a disillusioned film director, becomes pulled into a world of time-jumping fantasy when a Spanish cobbler believes him to be Sancho Panza. He gradually becomes unable to tell dreams from reality.
Sam, a disenchanted young man, finds a mysterious woman swimming in his apartment's pool one night. The next morning, she disappears. Sam sets off across LA to find her, and along the way he uncovers a conspiracy far more bizarre.
Director:
David Robert Mitchell
Stars:
Andrew Garfield,
Riley Keough,
Topher Grace
A hugely talented but socially isolated computer operator is tasked by Management to prove the Zero Theorem: that the universe ends as nothing, rendering life meaningless. But meaning is what he already craves.
Director:
Terry Gilliam
Stars:
Christoph Waltz,
Lucas Hedges,
Mélanie Thierry
Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.
Director:
Terry Gilliam
Stars:
Jeff Bridges,
Jennifer Tilly,
Jodelle Ferland
A former radio DJ, suicidally despondent because of a terrible mistake he made, finds redemption in helping a deranged homeless man who was an unwitting victim of that mistake.
Toby, a cynical but supposedly genius film director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth - a film that changed the hopes and dreams of a small Spanish village forever. Can Toby make amends and regain his humanity? Can Don Quixote survive his madness and imminent death? Or will love conquer all?
Gilliam started working on the film in 1989, but was unable to secure funding until 1998 when it entered full pre-production with a budget of $32.1 million without American financing, with Jean Rochefort as Quixote, Johnny Depp as Toby Grisoni, a 21st-century marketing executive thrown back through time, and Vanessa Paradis as the female lead. Shooting began in 2000 in Navarre, but a significant number of difficulties such as sets and equipment destroyed by flooding, the departure of Rochefort due to illness, problems obtaining insurance for the production, and other financial difficulties led to a sudden suspension of the production and its subsequent cancellation. The original production was the subject of the documentary film Lost in La Mancha, which was intended to be a making-of but was released on its own in 2002. Gilliam made repeated attempts to relaunch production between 2005 and 2016, which included Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, and John Hurt as Quixote, and Depp, Ewan McGregor, Jack O'Connell, and Adam Driver as Grisoni. However, all ended up being cancelled for various reasons, such as failing to secure funds, Depp's busy schedule and eventual loss of interest in the project, and Hurt being diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually result in his death. After yet another failed attempt, it was unexpectedly reported in March 2017 that filming had finally started, with Driver still attached as Grisoni, Jonathan Pryce as Quixote, and Olga Kurylenko as the female lead. On 4 June Gilliam announced that the shooting of the film was complete, 17 years after it originally started. See more »
Maybe it helps to be familiar with Terry Gilliam's canon of work. But as a whole The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a multi-layered story of the Ages of Man. The Dreamer and the Raconteur living in parallel lives.
What's fascinating is how the meanings of each of the characters and their story arcs fold into each other from the director, Terry Gilliam's own life to Adam Driver, playing a Gilliam figure all the way to Jonathan Pryce's man who's seemingly lost his mind. Part of me wonders how much of this is a farcical documentary or auto-biography.
Still as heady as it can be it still entertains. The acting is great, the characters are fully realized and the settings, cinematography and production design are signature styles of Gilliam: hand-crafted to bend to the will of his vision...as mad as it may be.
This is not a run-of-the-mill linear movie. It's not a popcorn flick. There's a lot to interpret and involve the audience so, don't expect instant gratification. To a lot of reviewers it seems they were overwhelmed by an unclear story. Which that may be true for those who don't want to be involved in the story. It asks a bit of self-reflection, it asks a bit of trust that the characters, working on several levels of psychosis, dreams, hallucinations and madness will all come to a natural conclusion in their story arcs and bring the global story of the film into one single point of focus:
We all had dreams once and we got lost. We may remember those dreams in our middle-age and yet in our old age we may become consumed by the dream to point of dreaming of our own existence.
If you like BRAZIL or THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS you will like this film.
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Maybe it helps to be familiar with Terry Gilliam's canon of work. But as a whole The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a multi-layered story of the Ages of Man. The Dreamer and the Raconteur living in parallel lives.
What's fascinating is how the meanings of each of the characters and their story arcs fold into each other from the director, Terry Gilliam's own life to Adam Driver, playing a Gilliam figure all the way to Jonathan Pryce's man who's seemingly lost his mind. Part of me wonders how much of this is a farcical documentary or auto-biography.
Still as heady as it can be it still entertains. The acting is great, the characters are fully realized and the settings, cinematography and production design are signature styles of Gilliam: hand-crafted to bend to the will of his vision...as mad as it may be.
This is not a run-of-the-mill linear movie. It's not a popcorn flick. There's a lot to interpret and involve the audience so, don't expect instant gratification. To a lot of reviewers it seems they were overwhelmed by an unclear story. Which that may be true for those who don't want to be involved in the story. It asks a bit of self-reflection, it asks a bit of trust that the characters, working on several levels of psychosis, dreams, hallucinations and madness will all come to a natural conclusion in their story arcs and bring the global story of the film into one single point of focus:
We all had dreams once and we got lost. We may remember those dreams in our middle-age and yet in our old age we may become consumed by the dream to point of dreaming of our own existence.
If you like BRAZIL or THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS you will like this film.