SWERVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

By: Peggy Nelson
July 5, 2021

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite unfinished masterworks, legendary obscurities and cherished almost-weres.

Image: Diego Lopez Calvin/Cannes.

THE CURSE OF QUIXOTE

“Quixotic” has entered the language to describe an idealistic and impossible quest. Appropriately, it is also a description of multiple attempts to film Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605, 1615). The story has proved irresistible to auteurs over the years, as its epic picaresque encompasses the whole of human emotion and experience. The illusions of the Don should be a natural fit for the cinema whose currency they are; in fact, Don Quixote is almost a screenplay avant la lettre. Or so it has seemed.

It seemed that way to Waldo Salt, of Midnight Cowboy fame, who wrote a script (1965-66) that still languishes, unproduced, in a Hollywood vault. It seemed that way to Orson Welles (1955-85), the grandmaster of unfinished projects, whose initial inspiration was silent movie comedies, although he set it in midcentury Mexico City, and intended to overdub all the voices himself. Or (changing his mind), perhaps an essay film…? Cobbled together after his death, the resulting pastiche (1992) is hardly the masterpiece he may have imagined.

And it seemed that way to Python alum Terry Gilliam (1989-2000; 2008-2017), whose absurdist oeuvre made him the natural heir to the javelin and shaving basin helmet. Gilliam’s first attempt, to be shot on the spaghetti-western plains in Northern Spain, failed immediately and spectacularly on all levels. Some of the mayhem was salvaged as a “making-of” documentary, Lost in La Mancha (2002), but for almost two decades, “disaster” was the keynote to Quixote and his quest.

When Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, the era of chivalry and courtly love was not only over but had never existed. Don Quixote’s insistence on its reality provokes mockery, pity, frustration, and anger, but also admiration, and real love. To live a life of honor and “walk the walk” is a rare and inspiring goal. To believe in an ideal and act as if it makes a difference, is how we forge meaning. To love someone and persist in seeing the best in them, even (or especially) when they don’t see it in themselves, is a gift. What arid soul could refuse such a gift? Not the high desert landscapes of Spain. Not the grindingly poor Sancho Panza. Not the beaten-down and hopeless Dulcinea.

And not Terry Gilliam. By 2008 he had restarted production. By 2014 he had swapped out lead actors several more times. By 2017 he was back on location tilting at windmills, and by 2018, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote premiered to reportedly the longest standing ovation ever received at Cannes. After which, it promptly disappeared.

Towards the end of the film, in one of its nested meta-fictional turns, Don Quixote is again riding off across the plains. As he charges a stray windmill left over from a vodka commercial (appearing to his eyes as one of the animated giants that are a Gilliam trademark), we realize that Don Quixote can never be truly finished. There will always be — there must always be — someone to pick up the helmet and spear. It is in the nature of a quest to continue. It is in the nature of the grail to be sought. It is in the nature of the impossible to dream. And it is in the nature of a noble knight to tilt at any and all windmills in his way.

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SWERVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

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