Perhaps just like Don Quixote himself, he needs to experience endless journeys and adventures to realize his own value. Many directors have done the same. They have paid a lot of hardships in the journey of making movies. The filming journey is not necessarily better than the journey of the 17th century.
For example, as early as the 1950s, the venerable Orson Wells began to try to photograph the great journey of the Spanish knight. He wrote and directed and acted by himself, insisting on and off until the 1970s. Unfortunately, this version of "Don Quixote" did not finally come out in 1992, seven years after the death of Orson Wells.
Another director who also has such aspirations has spent more than 20 years in the film "Who Killed Don Quixote", and that is Terry Gilliam.
The idea of filming Don Quixote can be traced back to 1989. In fact, Terry Gilliam may not be the best candidate for Don Quixote, if you remember his extraordinary imagination and mocking skills in "Wonderful Fantasy", or "The Python and the Holy Grail" A nonsensical adaptation of the legend of King Arthur.
Just relying on these inherent achievements is enough to make people look forward to. How will Terry Gilliam turn this absurd and idealistic journey of Don Quixote into a laughing and thought-provoking journey of Bo Jun? In the very beginning, no one had thought that this movie would become a "Lifetime" series.
The day was not fulfilled, and the film ran into funding difficulties before filming started. Finally, filming started at the beginning of the new century, but the Spanish studio was destroyed by floods caused by the storm. The French actor Jean Rechev, who originally played Don Quixote in one shot, also quit due to illness and had to find another candidate.
The film has not yet been completed, and these tragic experiences were made into a documentary "Help!" by the crew members. Don Quixote. This documentary was even recognized by industry insiders earlier than the film itself. Even Woody Allen, who has always been a venomous tongue, gave “extremely interesting” praise (at the same time, he also said that this is absolutely It is the worst nightmare of every film director).
However, the bad luck has not stopped there. Because of copyright issues, Terry Gilliam fought a lawsuit with the producer, and he narrowly won. Just a little bit, the media and the audience could not enjoy the closing film of "Who Killed Don Quixote" at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
Finally, at last, the director, who was in the era of the advanced film industry but still frustrated repeatedly, brought this extremely "difficult" movie to the big screen as he wished.
Just as Cervantes buried his own ideal and frustrated self-deprecation in Don Quixote’s story, Terry Gilliam also projected the quarter-century of bitterness in "Who Killed Don Quixote?" In the "Xue De".
At the beginning of the film, the accomplished but talented director Toby (Adam Driver) shoots a rather unsuccessful commercial film in Spain-yet another absurd story of Don Quixote.
In this "developed" film industry chain, he must simultaneously grasp the pace and progress of the filming, control the huge crew, carefully deal with his boss (investor) and even deal with the invitation of his boss's wife "with ease". Fortunately, Toby seems to be very proficient in this, or rather, too proficient.
In fact, this filming location is also the birthplace of Toby's film debut-the same theme, the same story; but the difference is that it used to be a student work with passion and dreams, although it eventually became Toby. A stepping stone to Hollywood.
Between shooting, Toby revisited his hometown, only to find that his highly acclaimed student work did not bring any good news to the locals, but disrupted their otherwise peaceful life. The worst of them is that the old man who plays Don Quixote can't "play" and lives wishful thinking in the fantasy that he is Don Quixote, and even recognizes Toby as his loyal servant Sancho.
Out of some misunderstandings, Toby could only mutter "WTF" bitterly while half-voluntarily embarking on a difficult journey like Don Quixote with the old man.
Forty minutes before the film, this very reflective self-referentiality may coincide with Terry Gilliam’s wry smile and his dissatisfaction and ridicule with the advanced Hollywood film industry-a film with the goal of dreaming. Industry, however, is at the cost of the disappearance of dreams or the "sacrifice" of others.
In such a seemingly "developed" industry, ideals are destined to gradually fade away under the threat of capital or other terrible things. This makes the film cast a layer of sadness in addition to the irony.
However, with the deepening of the journey, such an obvious emotional tone has not been continued. After the journey began, the film returned to the commercial genre tradition, creating a "heroic journey" for Toby as a film director.
Of course, Toby tried to escape from this absurd adventure repeatedly at the beginning, although he also harbored guilt for Don Quixote and the local residents whose lives were ruined by his works. With the reappearance of his former heroine, the girl who went to the big city to chase star dreams because of his debut, but was depraved, Toby rethinks the consequences of his movie.
When Toby and the girl faced a crisis again, to be precise, they were faced with "capital threat" and even life threats again, the "chivalry" hidden in Toby finally quietly awakened-he began to think of ways to save the obsession Don Quixote's old man and a girl who was bullied by life.
In all fairness, the lack of a reflexive tone in the first half of the film in the second half makes the film seem a bit split. But perhaps it can be said that it is this kind of separation that further proves the isolation and helplessness of idealism in reality.
Terry Gilliam has also beaten Don Quixote. In such a well-developed film industry chain, perhaps the idealist itself is a case of being destined to be "coerced" everywhere and mixed with joy and sorrow.
A film made in more than two decades, a film with such a huge investment (even a financial website made a special account), if Terry Gilliam could make more compromises that year, this "Who killed Don Quixote" may not be so difficult to give birth.
Fortunately, in the commercial mode of the second half of the film, there is still no lack of curious imagination, sometimes mixed with dreams and performance in a certain sense. Once the audience is distracted, they may enter the real and fake world made up by the "crazy" Don Quixote. What is moving is that Terry Gilliam still maintains his unique creativity and imagination.
Back then, Don Quixote realized his absurdity at the moment of his death, and the crazy Don Quixote in the film finally woke up when he was dying and spoke his own heart to Toby.
At the end of the movie, Director Toby once again filmed the scene of Don Quixote fighting the windmill. And this time, it was Toby himself who became Don Quixote. Of course, he was not mad. From the initial irrelevance to Don Quixote and the girl who did his best to save him, the spirit of chivalry has flowed. Himself.
This is the fairy tale ending of the film, and the question "Who killed Don Quixote" has also taken a grand turn. Don Quixote is dead, but what about chivalry? What about idealism above chivalry? Perhaps, this movie itself is a perfect answer.
Author | Songyuan; Official Account | Seeing Death in Movies
Edit | Riding a Rooftop Boy; please indicate the source for reprinting
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