The Beauty in Truth and Plain Dealing
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

There have been many cinematic stabs at realizing “Don Quixote,” including a musical (“Man of La Mancha”), a 1957 Russian film adaptation, and even a documentary (“Lost in La Mancha”) devoted to a catastrophic attempt by director Terry Gilliam to bring Cervantes’s hero to the screen. But none are quite like Albert Serra’s disarming “Honor de Cavalleria,” a 2006 Cannes alumnus that starts a welcome theatrical run today at Anthology Film Archives under the title “Quixotic.”
Tender, absurd, and gorgeous, this digital-video re-imagining of Cervantes’s canonical tome essentially consists of heavy-duty hang-out time with the decidedly undynamic duo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. That requires sitting back, tuning into the elongated rhythms of their hilariously simmering rapport, and accepting that action, much less adventure, is about as realistic an expectation here as the Don’s notorious windmills, whose outright absence is not even the most notable feature of Mr. Serra’s edition.
Make no mistake: “Quixotic” has the unrelentingly life-size pace of a landscape film. Shot on various locations in the Catalonian region of Spain, it features sporadic, often one-sided dialogue, and its marathon “scenes” range from sitting around in high grasses to taking a dip in a watering hole to, well, standing up and shouting in high grasses.
But what sets “Quixotic” apart from good-for-you avant-garde adaptations is the deep soul to its humor, the magic-hour cinematography approaching “Days of Heaven,” and two nonprofessional actors tailor-made by the heavens to be Cervantes’s mismatched pair. You could call this a quixotic endeavor, sure, but Mr. Serra gets a feel for the landscape and the terrain of the characters in a way that’s hard to dismiss.
In rumpled, grubby tunics, the self-styled chivalrous knight Don Quixote (Lluís Carbó) poses obscurely, while his dutiful vassal Sancho (Lluís Serrat) abides, spear in hand. Crickets chirp, a dry wind blows. The Don softly scolds Sancho for some imagined bit of laziness, then asks, “Ever had a dog?” Later, a blood-orange moon rises behind them. More than an hour goes by before anyone else passes them in their ambling.
Sancho, with bovine reluctance, is effectively our proxy: familiar with the fantasies of his liege, he knows nothing much happens. In Mr. Serra’s endless, elegant variations on two-shot compositions, we often get close to Sancho, and see a heavy face that says so much: beleaguered loyalty, half-formed “What am I doing here?” consternation, and, most touchingly, genuine affection in spite of himself. The classic comic conceit of Don Quixote’s character — self-assurance in folly, compounded by his batty authority over Sancho — remains effortlessly intact in Mr. Carbó’s matter-of-fact performance. The unselfconsciousness plays out in different ways. It’s hilarious in the Don’s perfectly timed, totally ignored kiss-off as Sancho tries to leave. It’s darned sweet when the Don coaxes Sancho into a swim (and then talks up their impending picnic of … walnuts).
“You’re a scatterbrain, Sancho, but I love you,” Don Quixote declares. Sancho, suggestible and unaccountably trusting in the codger’s scenarios, begrudgingly calls out to God in the heavens at the Don’s prodding.
In the frequent shots in the gloaming and at other transitional moments, Mr. Serra lets us feel what happens in a meadow at dusk. His characters are occasionally mere shadowy, fuzzy forms being absorbed by nightfall. Scraggly-bearded Don Quixote has all the atmosphere he needs for a mystical hush before twilit battle, and we’re right there by him, even if the battle is a no-show.
Mr. Serra, who was a writer before taking up filmmaking, claims several sources and inspirations for his Catalan-language adaptation besides “Don Quixote,” from the non-professional acting in Robert Bresson’s masterworks to the 12th-century author Chrétien de Troyes. To the list I would add the grace and camaraderie in the best silent comedies. Inviting us into the experience lived between the lines, “Quixotic” is a fittingly original tribute on the heels of the Cervantes masterpiece’s 400th anniversary.
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