Honour of the Knights

Nothing much happens in the first 20 minutes of Albert Serra’s minimalist riff on Don Quixote. Not only that, it doesn’t happen with lead actor Lluís Carbó sat in tall grass with his back to the camera while Sancho Lluís (Serrat) squats, scarcely visible, beneath a tree in the middle distance. This pretty much sets the film’s hushed tone, and though there is a certain sereneness to be enjoyed by the pair’s voiceless repartee, there’s also the overriding sense that each shot, each idea, each nuance is crammed so full of reference points and homage, that the film looses any sense of its self.