Monty python

Finding a treasure (and I need your help)

/ antonioyrocinante / 2 Comments

In case you did not know this, my field of academic research is Francisco de Isla, an 18th C Spanish Jesuit who wrote Fray Gerundio de Campazas, Spain’s best-selling novel of the century.

Every Summer for the last few years, my friend Paco and I go to El Escorial to visit their old and antique book fair – and have dinner after. I normally just have a browse and rarely buy anything, as my reading list is already far too long. But this time, I found a gem.

The Biblioteca Jesuítico Española by Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro is basically a bibliography of Spanish and Portuguese manuscripts found in seven Roman libraries and then some. And guess what? It has a bunch of references to our man Isla. Manuscripts found in different libraries in Rome, Toledo, Madrid, even Loyola in the Basque Country. Not bad for 10 Euro!

Then something special happened. I noticed the bookseller’s T shirt, referencing Monty Python’s Life of Brian. When I pointed this out to Paco, he knew exactly the shop where the fellow bought the shirt!! So we had to take a photo!

So now I must figure out which libraries I want to investigate their Isla manuscripts. This will be based on if I can find some sort of research grants to go investigate. This is where you come in: do you have any tips on how to look for research grants? Let me know in the comments, please.

Thanks!

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

/ antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

The_Man_Who_Killed_Don_Quixote_poster

One good thing about the Covid-19 lock down is being able to catch up on things you were meaning to do. I will not come up with Differential Calculus like Newton did during the Black Death plague of 1665, but not because I am horrible at math, but because Newton already invented Differential Calculus!

At any rate, I had been wanting to write about a film I saw last year at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the artsy film theater in Madrid, and I finally found the ticket stub to remind me. If you consider that the film took 29 years to make, a year to write about it is not so bad!

The film is The Man Who Killed Don Quixote by Terry Gilliam. If the name sounds familiar it is because he used to be in Monty Python, remember them? At any rate, the film started filming in 1999, but the lead had a herniated disk on his first day of filming, then the set flooded… So, Gilliam had to duke it out with the insurance, then try to find new financing, then casting, etc. It finally premiered in 2018.

The film is not an adaptation of Don Quixote, it takes the characters and the story and riffs on them to create a brilliant Byzantine, Postmodern, surreal, Baroque work, drenched in Chiaroscuro.

But the plot is not the only asset of the film, the shifting narratives and narrators are accompanied at all times by a great cast led by Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgård, and a numerous international cast and crew. The set and locations are straight out of the novel, there is no denying you are in La Mancha, and you can feel it, and smell it, and taste it.

I do recommend the film, with the caveat that it is not for everyone. If you are looking for a logical, linear story, this is not for you, otherwise: enjoy!