William Tell: The Swiss Folk Hero on the Big Screen

This crossbow-wielding warrior is sort of a Swiss Robin Hood or King Arthur. He is more a figure of legend than history, despite his inspiring folk-hero status. Of course, in the 1970s, leftist Swiss intellectuals like Max Frisch demonized Tell as a backwoods “deplorable,” while arguing his notorious nemesis Albrecht Gessler was just a well-meaning tax-collector. Needless to say, their radical reinterpretations never took hold. Instead, he remains the hero who shot that famous apple, which is exactly how director-screenwriter Nick Hamm presents him in William Tell, opening today in theaters.

The good thing about mythic figures with little evidence to prove their existence is the leeway they leave filmmakers like Hamm to fill in the holes. In this film, Tell fought as a crusader in the Holy Land, but the brutality he witnessed left disgusted with war. However, it was also there that he met Suna, his not very Swiss-looking wife. Initially, Tell would rather stoically endure the Habsburgs’ oppression, rather than risk re-igniting the horrors of war. However, he still feels compelled to help a poor yeoman farmer who killed the Habsburg agent guilty of defiling and murdering his own wife.

Of course, that puts Tell on Gessler’s radar. Recognizing the archer’s potential danger, Gessler sets a very public trap for him. Naturally, Tell refuses to bend the knee for a Habsburg monument, so Gessler forces him to attempt an impossible shot, targeting an apple atop his son’s head. Refusal means certain death for the entire Tell family, but making it would create a national hero.

Logically, Hamm starts with the apple and then flashes backwards, to explain how Tell got there. Yet, there is still quite a bit of story left after that. In fact, there is a whole rebellion to fight. Hamm is not known for action, but he stages some of the best ancient historical battle sequences on film since Gladiator II. Thanks to Tell, the crossbow figures prominently and Hamm fully capitalizes. In terms of grit and theme, William Tell is very much like vintage Mel Gibson.

Tales from the Loop: Science Fiction Gets Moody and Thoughtful, on Prime Video

This little Middle American community is a company town, but that plant where everyone works is an underground laboratory for cutting edge physics experiments known as “The Loop.” At its core is a huge Macguffin called “The Eclipse.” Think of it as three parts super-collider and one-part Obelisk from 2001. The Eclipse seems to make strange things happen for those whose lives revolve around—or maybe they just happen on their own in writer-creator Nathaniel Halpern’s sort-of science fiction sort-of anthology series, Tales from the Loop, which premieres Thursday on Prime Video.

Perhaps it is fitting Amazon supplied the press with non-sequential episodes, considering Tales addresses subjects like time-loops and alternate realities. Episodes 101: “Loop” and Episode 104: “Echo Sphere” pair up well together, because they closely follow the domestic dramas of the Willard, whereas Episode 106: “Parallel” could very well be the best of the series. Think of it as Somewhere in Time with more overt science fiction elements.

In contrast, the fantastical is decidedly dialed down in “Echo” and possibly intended as a matter for interpretation in “Loop,” despite the depressed looking robot constantly trudging across the background. The series starts with a suitably cryptic introduction from Russ Willard, the founder and director of the Loop. We then meet a little girl whose emotional disturbed mother works as a researcher at the Loop. She befriends Willard’s grandson, Cole, after her mother and all traces of the woman’s existence disappear after conducting an off-the-books experiment using a stolen fragment of the Eclipse. However, the well-meaning Cole has a hard time finding an adult who will bother to listen to them.

“Echo” is definitely the least genre of the episodes up for review, but it is definitely a showcase for Jonathan Pryce, portraying Russ Willard. It still features the same eerie retro-futuristic, post-industrial, alternate 1980s landscapes that distinguished Simon Stalenhag’s original conceptual art books, particularly the rusted out Echo Sphere itself. Supposedly, the number of times your voice echoes inside foretells the length of your life, so if it doesn’t echo at all, you can guess what that means.

Instead of the Willards, “Parallel” focuses Gaddis, the lonely and lonely-hearted security guard posted in a small booth outside the entrance to the Loop. He happens to find a tractor abandoned in the field behind the bungalow where he lives, which is interesting to us, because it appears to levitate like the landspeeders in Star Wars. However, it is interesting to Gaddis because he finds a picture of a man inside that becomes the focus of his romantic fantasies, much like Dana Andrews in Laura. When he finally fixes the tractor and fires it up, it returns through the wormhole it came through, where he finds his alternate, more sociable self is engaged in a relationship with the man in the picture.

Mereilles’ The Two Popes, on Netflix

Pope Benedict XVI listens to Thelonious Monk. Pope Francis listens to ABBA. That alone pretty well tips the scales in Benedict’s favor. They might have booth spoken for God, but they are still mortal men. Yet, despite their political-theological differences they find they faith still unites them in Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes, which premieres today on Netflix.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, had no desire to be pontiff, but he found himself the chief runner-up when Pope Benedict was elected by the Vatican conclave. Disillusioned by the new Pope’s theological conservatism, Cardinal Bergoglio returns to Argentina and considers resigning from the College of Cardinals.

Just when Bergoglio petitions Pope Benedict to allow his resignation, the Pope summons him to Rome. The Holy See has been rocked by the Vatican bank scandal and Benedict’s health is in decline, but not his mind. Both men are at a crossroads, but they will have to have their doctrinal debates before they can get to the really profound truths regarding the Church and themselves.

In many ways, The Two Popes is a surprisingly humanistic portrait of two men who both served in one of the most influential positions on Earth. Although it is glaringly obvious Meirelles and screenwriter Anthony McCarton are more sympathetic to the liberalism of Francis, they still treat Benedict with a good deal of respect. Arguably, the film humanizes both Popes to a great extent.

Regardless, what makes the film is the remarkable casting. Both Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce are absolute dead-ringers for Benedict and Francis, respectively. Of course, they both also happen to be very fine actors, but Hopkins finds more humor in his portrayal of the German Pope—and thereby creates an even more complex and human portrait.

Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

It is not just one of the earliest novels in publishing history. Cervantes’ Don Quixote is also one of the most self-referential, postmodernist novels in the history of the form. In large measure, this is due to the extended passages in the second published part, wherein the title character disowns and protests the various apocryphal accounts of the delusional knight-errant written by pretenders. You would hope that kind of dialogue between text and reality would bring out the playfulness in Terry Gilliam, but he shows surprising (and perhaps disappointing) restraint when it comes to the meta-ness of his long-awaited Quixote (and maybe Quixotic) film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Years ago, Toby Grummett shot a student film adaptation of Quixote on-location in Spain. It made a bit of a name and reputation for him, but he squandered it with his subsequent sell-out commercial work. Now, he has returned to Spain to shoot a Quixote-themed commercial for an ambiguous company owned by a Russian gangster. Alexei Mishkin might be dangerous, but he represents good business for Grummett’s boss (a.k.a. “The Boss”). Not surprisingly, the shoot does not go smoothly, so the frustrated and disillusioned filmmaker just walks away when he realizes how close he is to the town where he filmed his student Don Quixote.

Alas, the intervening years have not been kind to Javier Sanchez, the old cobbler he cast as Quixote, and Angelica Fernandez, the young girl who played Dulcinea. The association with Quixote has had a corrosive effect on Sanchez’s mind, leaving him convinced he really is the chivalrous knight. In the case of Fernandez, Grummett’s sweet talking convinced her she really could be a star, but instead, she wound up as Mishkin’s kept (and abused) woman.

Frankly, it is a little surprising there has not been more fanfare hailing the long-delayed release of Gilliam’s notorious film. Surely, it must be the only film that had a behind-the-scenes documentary (Lost in La Mancha) released seventeen years before its theatrical opening. Obviously, this is not the same exact Man Who Killed Gilliam would have made back then, which is probably a shame. The film we have is more than a little scattershot, particularly the third act, which gets clumsily didactic. Nobody likes Russian oligarchs, but (Spanish actor) Jordi Molla portrayal is a caricature of villainy well beyond any possible reality.

Jonathan Pryce is gaunt and convincingly addled as Sanchez/Quixote, but even more importantly, he consistently conveys a keen sense of the man’s innate dignity. Joana Ribeiro is easily the standout for her finely shaded, emotionally compelling performance as Fernandez. Adam Driver is desperately manic as Grummett, but he is as hit-or-miss as the film he appears in. Likewise, Stellan Skarsgard falls back on his old bag of cliched tricks as the crass “Boss.” However, Olga Kurylenko plays his lover Jacqui as quite the entertaining hot mess of a femme fatale.

It is always problematic when we find ourselves giving sensitivity lessons to films, but it should be pointed out the generally preferred terms are “Roma” (or “Rom”) and “Sinti,” rather than “gypsy.” More problematic, Gilliam never really exploits the opportunities Quixote offers for playing games with ostensive reality. Just consider the very premise, whereby Sanchez becomes deluded into believing he is a literary character who is himself famously deluded. That implies he is operating under two levels of delusion.

In at least one way, TMWKDQ directly compares to Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind. After waiting years for both, they turned out to be just okay. Gilliam shows flashes of inspiration and we can see echoes of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King, but diminishing return set in around the midway point. It is the sort of film you will want to like more than you really will. Recommended as an eventual online streaming option for the curious, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote opens tomorrow (4/19) in New York, at the AMC Empire.