April 2024

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote 

Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce
Release date 2018
Running time 212 minutes
Rated M, contains mature themes, violence, and course language

The Man who Killed Don Quixote by Terry Gilliam takes us on a fantastical adventure where the realm of medieval chivalry and modern filmmaking become an allegory for identity and self-conception. The complicated plot weaves in and out of the characters' understanding of reality and explores the roles we choose and are forced to play in our interactions with others.

The talented director, Toby Grummett, is making an advertisement in Spain. At dinner with the crew and backers, he is given a random copy of his first film, The Man who killed Don Quixote, and realises he is very close to the location he filmed at 10 years ago. He revisits this place and learns that his impact on the locals has been negative, rather than the positive influence he thought he might have as a young and enthusiastic filmmaker. In particular, he finds Javier, the local shoemaker he convinced to play his protagonist, Don Quixote. We learn that Javier has spent the last 10 years convinced he is the real Don Quixote, on a quest to defend the innocent and uphold the values of chivalry. He recognises Toby as Sancho Panza, his squire, and treats him as a peasant. Toby is in trouble with his Boss, and with the local police, after he was involved with a fire in the village. He escapes with Quixote, who chastises him for his peasant stupidity and ignorance. After falling into a rotting corpse and relieving it of its stash of gold coins, Toby is separated from Quixote and finds Angelica, the young girl he convinced could be a movie star but who now is something of a fallen woman. Angelica is “rescued” by the thugs of a Russian businessman, Alexei, who is now Angelica's lover and who is working with Toby's Boss. The Boss puts on a medieval pageant for Alexei, and Toby is dragged into this performance with Quixote who is convinced that his heroism and chivalry is being put to the test. Toby must play along if he is to protect Quixote but in doing so, his own understanding of what is real becomes skewed.

The film explores the role stories have in identity making. In some of his previous films Gilliam examines the line between sanity and reality and how the stories the characters tell themselves affects others. This is also the case here. When he makes his student film, Toby wants his characters to live in his imaginary film world and this changes the future for these characters. When Toby returns the village, he expects to be welcomed and remembered. Instead, he is forced to be a character in their reality, and Toby finds himself as an outsider watching the action take place without being able to prevent it.

The ending of the film has a neat, circular closure to the story, although it is uncertain if this is a form of redemption or insanity for Toby. However, it does reflect the theme of the film, that ultimately we are responsible for our choices and that sometimes those choices alienate us from the world around us.

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March 2024

The Lighthouse 

Directed by Robert Eggers
Starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson
Release dates May 19, 2019 (Cannes) and October 18, 2019 (United States)
Running time 109 minutes
Rated MA 15+, contains strong sexual themes and violence

Robert Eggers is building himself a reputation for making films that combine history and horror, while exploring the psychology of his characters in their environment.
 
The Lighthouse is set on an isolated island off the New England coast (north-eastern United States) at the end of the 19th century. Ephraim Winslow begins his four-week commission as a 'wickie', a lighthouse keeper, under the supervision of an older, more experienced sailor, Thomas Wake. Wake is taciturn, worldly, and often drunk while Winslow keeps information to himself and maintains a dogged sobriety. Wake maintains a strict routine that asserts his dominance over the younger man, demanding Winslow complete all the physical work and preventing him for entering the lantern room. Along with other maritime lore, Wake reinforces the sailors' superstition to not harm the birds. The thread of this theme can be seen throughout the plot and connected to older literary traditions: Coleridge's albatross, Prometheus' undoing. The day before he is due to travel back to the mainland, Winslow kills a one-eyed gull. Suddenly, a wild storm prevents him from leaving the island, creating tension between the two men as they realise there is little food, although their search of the lighthouse reveals more alcohol. Under the influence of the booze, Winslow's personality is stripped of its puritan rigidity to reveal more base needs and motivations. Interestingly, the exploration on masculine stoicism, brotherhood, and hedonism between the two men makes this a much more complex entanglement, with extreme emotional swings of loathing and admiration, anger and neediness, and Winslow's relentless need to move out of the shadow of Wake's dominance and authority at whatever cost.
 
Egger's storytelling style is to examine what happens to his characters when the accepted status quo begins to crack under the pressure of changing circumstances. Winslow, for example, becomes a raging alcoholic when he is unable to leave the island. His personality unravels as he reveals information from his past life. From here we see a change in the relationship between the two men, where Wake pokes holes in Howard's story, toying with his perception of reality and exposing the kind of man he really is.
 
The landscape imagery of The Lighthouse is wild and menacing, tapping into the horror stylings that Egger has become known for in his other films, The Witch, and more recently, The Northman. The black and white cinematography is reminiscent of the early horror films of the 1920s and 30s, and hints at the binary that exists in this film: water/land, old/young, sane/insane. Violence underlies the identities of the two characters and this is revealed as the layers of interaction with each other are peeled back.
 
The tight cinematography, and the narrative acts of repetition that set up a façade of stability, place the viewer in the claustrophobic world of the two men—watching them self-destruct in their confinement as the truth of their identities is revealed. The end of the film is almost a relief despite its violence, as the tension between the two comes to a head and order is restored.


 

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February 2024

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once 

Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Release dates 11 March 2022 (SXSW), 25 march 2022 (United States)
Running time 139 minutes
Rated MA 15+ contains strong violence and crude sexual humour

Multiverse adventures are the new time-travel story, where the consequences of the past and the possibilities of the future create chaos and confusion in the present moment. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is an Academy Award winner that adapts the sci-fi flavour of the month as a metaphor that explores self-worth and connection.
Evelyn Wang is a middle-aged, Asian-American woman with strained family relationships, facing a tax audit for the family business. Her husband Waymond attempts to serve her with divorce papers, her daughter Joy is trying to win her mother's approval and acceptance of her relationship with Becky, and her father is constant in his disapproval and criticism of Evelyn. Evelyn is struggling to hold all the pieces together.
Waymond and Evelyn take their paperwork to the IRS. Here, Evelyn's husband undergoes a swift personality change when he is possessed by Alpha-Waymond, a Multiverse traveller who is searching for the ultimate version of Evelyn, the one who can defeat the great menace of the multiverse, Jobu Topaki.
 
Through Waymond's guidance, Evelyn learns the skill of 'verse-jumping', connecting with every other incarnation of herself, and tapping into each of their skills and experiences. She learns that in the Alpha universe, she was an expert jumper, pushing Jobu Topaki so far to become the same that she fractured, becoming present in every multiverse, spreading the rule of the 'everything bagel', a nihilistic black hole of despair. She has also been searching for Evelyn, in order to show her that when you don't feel anything, then nothing matters, a state of being experienced by Evelyn's daughter Joy.
 
Under the layers of the multiverse adventure lie the fractured communication between the family members. There are many themes in this film; parent-child relationships, mental health, immigrant experience, personal potential and personal choices. Ultimately, the message that shines through is the choice to act with kindness.  Evelyn has spent her life under the weight of her own father's disapproval, and it has affected her own life choices, and the way she interacts with her daughter. She is a failure at everything, says Alpha-Waymond, which is why she can succeed at everything, by verse-jumping and gaining the skills of all her other possibilities. And she does, saving herself and Jobu Topaki's multiverse lackeys by validating who they are, in a way that she has missed throughout her life.  
 
Despite the heavy undertones, there is a bubbling sense of humour in this film that lightens the seriousness and at the same time provides the solution to the chaos and nihilism. It's also an antidote to the underlying destruction that threatens to be unleashed by the conflict between Evelyn and Jobu Topaki.  
 
The film has an emotional subtext that blossoms through the fast-paced combat and the sci-fi escapades. It reflects how our emotions are often buried under our day to day lives, and how those emotions affect how we represent ourselves. The film is funny, silly, even absurd, and the quick action makes it sometimes challenging to follow, but the combination of technology, fabulous costuming, fight scenes and cinematic technique makes the viewer want to watch to the end, and genuinely care for both the hero and villain, although it is never quite clear which is which.
 

 

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