THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE ****

 An opening credit informs us that this is the film that Terry Gilliam has been making for the last 25 years, (and then 'unmaking'), or rather for the last 25 years Gilliam has been trying to make a film of Cervantes' masterpiece 'Don Quixote' that never happend and this, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote", is the outcome of those attempts. It is, of course, another movie about a man making a movie, in this case Adam Driver's Toby, (Gilliam's alter-ego we must assume), making his film of 'Don Quixote' and failing and what's left is this glorious mess, a series of scenes, (very fantastical, very Gilliam), that in their way manage to approximate closely to what might have been in a 'real' film version of the novel and in some ways this might be the best version yet.

Jonathan Pryce, (superb as always), is Toby's Quixote, a cobbler the director discovers and who really believes himself the real thing and who also in turn mistakes Toby for his Sancho Panza. Their 'adventures' together make up the Cervantes side of the story until finally, and accidentally, Toby 'kills' off his hero just as perhaps Gilliam killed off the Quixote of his dreams leading, not to the film he wanted to make, but to the film we are watching. It should have been a disaster, and maybe Gilliam thinks it is, but I loved every mad moment.

It's not as funny as it thinks it is or it should be but it is highly imaginative and there are scenes here as good as anything Gilliam has given us. Of course, it helps if you know the movie's backstory, how it came to be made etc.; there's certainly more here than meets the eye. If Pryce's Don never finds his Dulcinea, Toby does in the form of Angelica, (the lovely Joana Ribeiro), the village girl cast as Dulcinea and in the end it's Toby who becomes his own Quixote. All the performances are fine and, of course in typically Gilliam fashion, it looks terrific, so even if it's not perfect it's so much better than we had any right to expect. Don't listen to its critics and seek this one out for yourselves.