UPDATED!! Review For LOST IN LA MANCHA & Where You Can See It This Week!!

Hi Harry,

Long time demander, first time supplier. By some strange coincidence, I read your article on Terry Gilliam appearing in England in support for "Lost in La Mancha" just as I got back from seeing it in the Jerusalem film festival. So here's a quick review of the film that might convince a few more Brits to see it on Thursday.

(And yes, I did say Jerusalem. The one in Israel. To answer your questions, yup, there's an armed guard outside the cinema, and yup, one is still nervous walking around, but nope, like our soul-mates in the US, we are not going to let a bunch of massacring morons prevent us from partaking in life's pleasures, fine films being chief among them.)

And this is a fine film: although it's a documentary, this could easily have been turned into a drama. It's got everything: a dreamer fighting against all odds, disasters striking in the most inopportune moments, Vanessa Paradis in form-fitting outfits... The only thing it's missing is a happy ending.

To those of you not familiar with the background, here's a brief recap of the long tale behind "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." Terry Gilliam has been dreaming about making this project for over a decade. He wrote the screenplay with a fellow by the name of Tony Grisoni, and from the little we see of it in the documentary, it was terrific. The story follows a young advertising executive (Johnny Depp) who travels back in time during a commercial shoot. He finds himself replacing Sancho Panza as the Quixote’s sidekick, and together they set off on the type of adventures that only Gilliam could do justice to: fighting giants, fencing living puppets, and a bit with a fish that you'll just have to see for yourself.

Gilliam finally managed to get the movie financed - not by Hollywood, of course - the script was way too good for that to happen - but by European investors. And not just big producers with checkbooks: from the looks of it, many rich housewives with nothing to do took part in the financing of this film. One of the more surreal moments in the documentary takes place on the day "the investors came to visit." Imagine the Disneyland bus stop. You know all those camera-wielding shorts-wearing tourists who come out of the bus? That's exactly what it looked like, only these folks had Terry Gilliam to entertain them instead of Mickey Mouse.

The documentary (which was made by the same team that made "The Hamster Factor," the terrific documentary about the making of 12 Monkeys) follows Gilliam and his crew as they pre-produce and then shoot the film. But since you're not seeing it as extra on the film's DVD, you can already guess that, for reasons I'll describe a moment, the film was never completed.

And here then is a short listing of the reasons (don't worry, I won't spoil all the fun): a schedule that, due to lack of funds, leaves no margin for error. An actor with a double hernia. A desert shooting location that neighbors a NATO base (try acting medieval when F16s are screaming above you). A storm. A desert shooting location that blooms after said storm. A Spanish studio which looked like it used to house frozen meat. And other calamities that which you think are funny, until you realize that they prevented us from seeing what could have been a great flick.

This is not a movie about the evil art-hating producers fighting with the director to have younger, sexier actors in his movie. Gilliam's nemesis is God. The tragedy in "La Mancha" is that Gilliam is convinced that he can make this movie no matter what. No money? Shoot anyway. Actors missing? Shoot anyway. Rivers of mud? Shoot around them. You're cheering for him, and the romantic in you wants to see just how the show will go on (it must, right?), wants to believe it'll all work out in the end. Like they said in Shakespeare in Love, you wait for the miracle that'll sort out the chaos. But there is no miracle, and in the end, the message of this movie is that sometimes, chaos wins. Or as Terry Gilliam says, "reality fights back."

This is a terrific documentary, far removed from the usual 30-minute infomercials that the studios give the networks before their big summer hit comes out. The directors had access to everything: they caught the moment the Assistant Director couldn't take it anymore. They show us Gilliam saying "fuck" a hundred times after yet another disaster, and then immediately cracking a joke to lighten the mode. The cameraman who thinks everyone around him is insane. All those surreal, seemingly-boring moments on the set when the movie is actually made. It's all fascinating to watch, even if you're not a film buff.

There is so much irony in the "La Mancha" it's almost hard to believe it all just happened by accident. Gilliam, an aging dreamer who never gives up, is shooting a movie about an aging dreamer who never gives up. Both of them lose in the end. At the start of the film, everyone on the set keeps talking about this movie not turning into "Baron Munchhausen" (the tanking Gilliam production that unfairly ruined his reputation as a responsible filmmaker). And yet everything that happens on the set mirrors that unfortunate production - in fact, it makes it look like a day on the beach.

And yet, "La Mancha" doesn’t make you feel like you’re being manipulated. We're not automatically against the producers because we can see the worry lines on their faces - a lot of their money is at stake here. And we don't always cheer for Gilliam either: eventually, we just want him to call it off and go home. The inevitable, we know, will be too painful to watch.

So if you were thinking about catching this documentary at a film festival near you, let me just say this: go. It's got better jokes than most comedies, better characters than most dramas, and a story that rivals most adventures. It’s just too bad about the climax though - this'll be the one case where you'll be sorry the producers didn't tack on the happy ending.

If you publish this, please call me "Moonshine."

Have I mentioned that I hate you for already seeing this? Because I do. Deeply.

"Moriarty" out.