But perhaps that says more about the value we as a society place on imagination than it does about anything else. Certainly, there's an uncomfortable lightheartedness about Don Quixote that has everything to do with the unimaginative tone with which the story is presented. What should be disturbing events are presented in a straightforward, uncommented-upon manner, and with seemingly little connection to anything that comes before or after. Alonso leaves in his adventuring wake escaped criminals, unpaid innkeepers, and wounded soldiers. The filmmakers go for laughs here, and nothing else.
Nothing is left to our imagination.
That sounds like an odd criticism of such a visual medium as film, I know, but when such lavish attention is paid to phantasms and the horrors of the real world are ignored, I feel justified in complaining. I have to wonder, then, what anyone saw in Cervantes that was worth adapting, aside from the opportunity for special effects. The Flick Filosopher had no choice but to see it on the small screen. This column first appeared 04.11.00. Copyright 1997-2000 MaryAnn Johanson.