Tilting at celluloid windmills

When Terry Gilliam started work on his film version of “Don Quixote,” he knew he was taking a chance. Unable to raise the money he needed in Hollywood, he turned to Europe. And although he was forced to work with a budget of $32.1 million, which he estimated was maybe half of what he needed, he went ahead.

It was a disaster. In the documentary film “Lost in La Mancha,” which shows tonight and Thursday at The Met, the story of that disaster is told. Bad location planning (involving a Spanish air force base), bad weather (a flash flood ), a lead actor’s bad back and a whole lot of bad luck resulted in the film being canceled — wiping out seven months preproduction work and a 10-year Gilliam dream

But if there’s one thing that the film indicates, it’s that not much of what Gilliam put on film was any better than the puppets and drawings and story boards that he designed as a plan from which to shoot. So the question has to be asked: Why didn’t he just consider making an animated film ? It might have been something truly worth seeing.

Even better, we might have had a chance actually to see it.