The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

You want to applaud the persistence of eccentric filmmaker Terry Gilliam just for getting The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to the finish line.

After all, following more than a quarter century of stops and starts — and even the release of a 2002 documentary about the struggles to get the movie made — Gilliam (Twelve Monkeys) has finally wrapped his longtime passion project. Yet for the rest of us, it raises a basic question: We waited 30 years for this?

Perhaps predictably, the movie is an erratic mess, with moments of inspired lunacy buffered by frustrating stretches that are rambling and unfocused, and probably made more sense in Gilliam’s head than they do on screen.

The story follows Toby (Adam Driver), a fledgling commercial director whose latest project returns him to the Spanish town where he filmed a student version of Don Quixote using ordinary villagers a decade ago. After becoming sidetracked during the troubled production, he begins encountering some of his erstwhile collaborators.

Most noteworthy among them is an aging cobbler (Jonathan Pryce) who now believes that he’s the real Quixote in pursuit of his beloved Dulcinea, and that Toby is actually his loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza. Toby initially tries to distance himself, but winds up on an anachronistic adventure that includes meeting the commercial’s financier (Stellan Skarsgard) and his flirtatious wife (Olga Kurylenko), an innkeeper’s alluring daughter (Joana Ribeiro), and a Russian mobster (Jordi Molla).

As the lines gradually blur between reality and fantasy, and between truth and legend, Toby isn’t shy about venting his frustration to the locals: “What are you talking about? It’s the 21st century. You’re in the European Union.”

Indeed, Toby feels perfectly normal by comparison to those around him. He comes off as a bumbling scoundrel, but his surreal odyssey fueled by obsession, hallucinations, and borderline insanity has an amusing self-reflexive quality considering the director.

The film conveys a genuine affection for the Cervantes source material and for grassroots artistic ventures that dare to try something different. In other words, there’s a heart beneath the parade of random idiosyncrasies.

Benefiting from a scenic visual backdrop, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote turns into a defiantly offbeat series of vignettes that becomes progressively darker and weirder in ways that might appeal to ardent Gilliam fans willing to dream the impossible dream — while other moviegoers are left scratching their heads.

Not rated, 132 minutes.