The film “lost in la mancha” shows the hardships of filming a movie. The director of the failed film, Terry Gilliam dreamt of recreating Don Quixote, but his dreams fell short due to environmental troubles as well as funding. the production of the film can be seen as an archetype for Don Quixote. Like Don Quixote, the film crew faces many hardships and challenges. Although they face many failures they keep going, just like don Quixote. Ironically the filmed ended up “dying” also like our beloved protagonist.

The failure of the film also shows that strength doesn’t always measure up to intelligence. To elaborate, the director Gillian may have the man power and idea to produce the film, but it didn’t really seem like he had an ethical plan. This theme is also showed numerous times in chapters 17-25 of the actual text.

For example the “altercation” between Don Quixote and the lion. While the lion had the power and strength to kill Don Quixote, he didn’t. The lion exhibited self control. Unlike Don Quixote who blindly took an unnecessary risk with no real plan of action or reasoning.

A second time this theme is shown is the dual between the two scholars. One scholar who was strong went up against a very strong student. The smarter student beat the strong student using his fast wits.

A second theme that keeps reoccurring theme in the novel is love. This time love is introduced as something that takes away our intelligence as well as our strength. Cervantes believe that love makes us blind. It clouds our judgment, and makes us weak. This is shown in the story of Quiteria and Basillo.   Don Quixote believes that Basillo is not to blame for his antics because he is so overcome with love. He also believes this is why our parents should choose our significant other.

Although most of us know Don Quixote is crazy, he may have a pint. The global divorce rate for arranged marriages is around 6% as opposed to the 55% divorce rate of people who chose their significant others. While I would not want my parents to choose who I marry, I do believe that the idea of marriage has changed in the past 400 years. Today with the over sensualization of pretty much everything, our idea of love has become confused with lust.  The counter argument that can be made is that arranged marriages don’t actually contain true love, just two people who can tolerate each other forever.

Whether it’s success of failure, strength or intelligence, love or lust Cervantes constantly reminds us that nothing worth having comes easy. That we may fail many times and still not even meet our goals, but it is better to attempt and fail than never t attempt at all.