The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

Toby (Driver) is making
a movie because that’s what he’s supposed to do at this point in
his career. The character feels like a cliché at the start, with a
sycophant agent fluttering around mouthing empty praise of everything
Toby does. Turns out that once upon a time, Toby had been a serious
film student. And in those days, he had made a movie of Cervantes
“Don Quixote”. Made on a shoestring budget, he used people from
the Spanish village to play the roles. A mild-mannered shoemaker
became the Man of La Mancha. The movie changed both of their lives.
It launched Toby into the profitable but superficial world of
television commercials and launched the shoemaker into a world of
wonder, fantasy and terror. Their paths cross again, and Toby becomes
Sancho to the old man’s Don Q.

What happens after that
is pure brilliance.

Pryce is brilliant as the older man.
He finds his own giants to assail, and terrors to conquer. He is
funny, sorrowful, honorable and mad. His ability to cast a spell on
those around him is delightful, even when it doesn’t result in the
ends he expects. Playing off that is Driver who gets the chance here
to display his acting talent. The transformation of the character
from shallow fraud to dedicated squire to the complete transformation
at the end is amazing to watch. I only knew the actor from his
spoiled brat Sith character in the latest Star Wars movies. This
movie was a revelation for me. Pryce’s Quixote is the heart of the
movie, but it is Driver’s Toby that is the spine.

This
movie was a legend before it hit the screen for the first time at
Cannes. It took 16 years to finish, went through multiple castings,
had the production destroyed by a flash flood, and the story goes on
and on.

I started watching expecting some silly fun, but
my unexpected reward was a movie of depth and nuance that I will
recommend others to watch for