The premise of this long-in-the-works feature concerns a director, Toby Grisoni (Adam Driver), helming a commercial in Spain where he once directed a student film starring a man who portrayed Don Quixote (Johnathan Pryce). This original student film showed all sorts of creativity that the modern-day Grisoni just can't seem to tap into anymore. While down in the dumps, Grisoni stumbles on the leading man of his original student film who is now convinced that he is, in fact, Don Quixote and that Grisoni is actually his loyal squire Sancho Panza. This is quite the unusual circumstances that Grisoni never expected to wind up in but it may just be the inadvertent adventure he needs to rekindle who he really is as a person.
Like the protagonist of a traditional quest narrative, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote takes a while to find itself. Elements of comedy in the first third of the story fixated on the debauchery of Grisoni just aren't all that funny and it's hard to truly connect with this character in the passage of the feature. A problem plaguing these early scenes and the movie as a whole is that the ramshackle production value of this independent production proves to be occasionally distracting. Plenty of much lower-budgeted movies are able to effortlessly mask their low-budget nature so it's strange that a movie starring Adam Driver has a tendency to look like a particularly subpar direct-to-video movie in its lighting and sets.
But then Grisoni stumbles upon Don Quixote (or, at least, am an convinced he is this literary character) and suddenly things do liven up, if only due to Johnathan Pryce's performance as Quixote. Like a kindred spirit to fellow Terry Gilliam protagonist detached from reality Parry (Robin Williams) from The Fisher King, Pryce never fails to imbue Quixote with 110% conviction in his behavior. Through his performance, Quixote comes off not as a goofy caricature but as someone who totally believes he's a classical knight in shining armor. He's got a sense of firm beliefs (in a moral code and in this delusion) that evade the more slippery and self-centered Grisoni and those are from the only traits that separate these two starkly different individuals.
Watching Driver and Pryce bounce off each other brings a lot of entertainment to the table, watching Grisoni get knocked down a peg by Quixote is one of those simple recurring pleasures in the film that never wears out its welcome. Quixote's presence in the storyline brings about a bittersweet contemplation of the intersection between fantasy and reality, whether that's in how Quixote interacts with the real world around him or a climactic sequence set at an elaborate party where seemingly dangerous obstacles (like a potential human sacrifice) never are what they seem to be. This theme of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote proves to be the strongest part of Gilliam's writing, especially since it gets enhanced by the real-life legendary production that preceded this movie.
This contemplation that ends up pondering the long-term influence and presence of certain stories certainly feels resonant under these specific circumstances, it's doubtful such an element of the story would have been as powerful (or even existed at all) if this had just been released in its original 2000 form. Though the titular character and wistful elements in the story certainly aid The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the film still can't quite shake off its flaws even once those parts of the production show up. A love interest character for Grisoni in the form of Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) is never developed enough for her to be as interesting as she could be while an overabundance of dutch angles are the only real visual flourish in what turns out to be a visually stagnant production. But despite its noticeable messy qualities, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote weaves a thought-provoking story that ensures the movie has notable traits to stand on beyond its lengthy battle to exist.
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