Gilliam's truly 'Lost in La Mancha'

Perry Gilliam is a director of immense skill. Churning out works of sheer brilliance ("Brazil," "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys"), or at the very least flawed yet fascinating filmmaking i.e. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- the man's a master (albeit a strange one) of his field. That's part of what's so disheartening about "Lost in La Mancha," the documentary chronicling the rise and fall of Gilliam's Don Quixote-themed dream project.\nWhat presumably began as DVD filler evolved into a cautionary tale of vision and ambition gone awry. Gilliam arrived in Madrid in August 2000 to lens his now unfinished rendition of the Cervantes classic. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" would have starred French film luminary Jean Rochefort as the titular character and co-starred Johnny Depp as a modern man transplanted in both time and place, who finds himself acting as a Sancho Panza-esque figure. Glimpses of what the film might have been are seen through storyboards and dailies.\n"La Mancha" serves as an oftentimes fascinating and revealing glimpse behind the filmmaking process. Gilliam's stumbling blocks weren't of his own making, budgetary and scheduling conflicts plagued the production from the get-go. Also, extras weren't properly rehearsed by fellow crewmembers, F-16 fighter planes frequently flew overhead ruining take after take, a flash flood destroyed sets and equipment and Rochefort suffered two herniated discs -- removing him from filming entirely.\nThe mood is lightened by screen tests taken of three obese Spaniards auditioning for the roles of confrontational giants and by Gilliam's obscenity-laden tantrums (rightful, though they might've been). But it would take world's more than a few sets of cellulite man-boobies and some interspersed "fuck's" to brighten these proceedings. Sure, "La Mancha" is informative, but it's depressing as all hell. Essentially, viewers are watching one man's dream flushed down the toilet.\nNot as funny as Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," nor as heartfelt as Steve James's "Hoop Dreams" and certainly not as bizarrely intriguing as Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb," "Lost in La Mancha" is a mediocre documentary concerning what could've been a great film.