This makes me angry, and I’m usually so easy going.
Pajiba cooly announced to the world that Warner Bros and ‘Mr. Producer’ Joel Silver are developing a big screen version of Miguel Cervantes literary quagmire of a novel, Don Quixote, and they are doing so with words such as ‘swashbuckling’, ‘tentpole’ and ‘blockbuster’ firmly in mind.
They also claim that the intention is to make the world as seen through the eyes of Don Quixote the actual world of the film. In other words, they’ll rip the beating heart out of the book and serve it up on a CG platter with windmills morphing into giants, Angelina Jolie as Dulcinea and Chris Rock as the voice of Rocinante.
I was nicely surprised with what Silver and Warners did with Sherlock Holmes, though it faded from memory the second I walked out the screening, it was diverting, and yet I can’t see how you’ll get anything other than the basest, superficial rendering of the mistaken chivalry and epic misguidance of Cervantes delusional then melancholic knight with this premise.
You may remember the struggle Terry Gilliam had in making his own take on the story, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, documented in Lost in La Mancha, the wonderful and depressing film of the erosion of Gilliam’s film as natural disasters and injured actors conspired to shut down the 2000 production. Now that production has begun again on Gilliam’s vision of Quixote, with an all new cast (including Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor) what effect will Warner’s apparently populist production have?
Put it in context it’s as if George Lucas put out Indiana Jones and the Totalitarian Dystopia instead of Temple of Doom in ’84.
Gilliam’s take on Quixote will undoubtedly have far more to entertain than any generic take on the epic novel, but put up against the wall with a Pirates of the Caribbeanesque bombastic romp and you can guess which one will be run through with a lance first.
Whatever next? War and Peace as a romantic comedy?
Like I said. Angry.
