The Man Who Killed Don Quixote ★★★

A troubled passion project Dir: Terry Gilliam 2hr 13mins (15)

Terry Gilliam started work on this film 25 years ago, and its tortured production history (its funding drying up, its stars dying) long ago eclipsed the film itself, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. Now, though, it is finally here. In a role first slated for Johnny Depp, Adam Driver stars as a hack director who stumbles upon a student film he made about Don Quixote and returns to the Spanish village where he shot it. There he finds the cobbler he cast as Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) charging tourists to see “the living Quixote”. The pair then embark on a series of misadventures that – in true Gilliam fashion – blur the line between fantasy and reality The result is a meandering shaggy dog story that could serve as a warning about the need to keep directors away from their passion projects.

The cast do their best, said David Sims in The Atlantic. Pryce finds the right balance of “dignity and ludicrousness”, while Driver is a source of energy in a film that feels longer than its running time – and a “human figure” for viewers to identify with, “lest they drown in Gilliam’s overflowing imagination”. Let’s face it, the film is a mess, said David Fear in Rolling Stone, but it’s a magnificent mess. A riff on artists haunted by their earlier works, and old men pursuing impossible dreams, it’s a very personal film – and Gilliam’s best for 20 years. Admittedly, that bar is not set high, but his fans should celebrate all the same.