|
Lost in La Mancha
7.5 of 10
It's a pretty well-told documentary which does a nice job of tying together the subject of the film being made with the production of the film itself. Unlike the often forced soap opera drama of Project Greenlight, here the audience sees what real cinema disasters look like and they are sickening to watch. At one point a flood begins to carry all of the equipment and set pieces away and my stomach just dropped even though I knew the film was doomed anyway.
It could have scored better if it had dealt a bit more with the emotional exchange that had to be going on with the players rather than spending most of the film as a semi-neutral recorder of history. For all the disaster we don't see too much in the way of real conflict, though its clear that there had to be some very spirited moments between the crew.
In that way La Mancha is all problems without the drama while Greenlight is all drama without the problems (at least the big boy problems that Gilliam's team was met by).
In the end I was impressed with the brief glimpses of the film, sets, costumes and storyline. It really does appear that this would have been a fantastic film, at least for Gilliam fans like myself. It really seems unfair that it fell apart like that.
|