Honour of the Knights

PRESENTATION

The film Honor de cavalleria is a free adaptation of Don Quixote. The shoot took both the artistic and technical team on a journey (cinematographically, but also in real life) that had a great deal in common with the journey taken by the novel’s two protagonists. For the two characters, theirs is a solitary, anonymous, desperate life yet, at the same time, their journey takes them through the heroic world of chivalry. In the case of the crew, theirs was the journey from the film’s initial conception, from how they dreamed it would be to the film that was ultimately made. The similarities between these two journeys represent the principal theme of the film. On an artistic level, therefore, this film is not the “narration of an adventure but the adventure of a narration”.
Honor de cavalleria is an aesthetic and conceptual synthesis of the most pure influences (including Lancelot du Lac, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Francesco, Giullare di Dio, Ozu, Sokurov), the innovative, eccentric cinema of the 60’s (Paradjanov, Godard), and the personal mythology of the author.
Lluís Carbó and Lluís Serrat play the two protagonists. They bring out the poetry, simplicity and beauty of the intimate relationship between the two characters. Their performances mark a return to the noble tradition of non-psychological acting. Shot entirely on location in natural surroundings, no man-made construction appears in the film.

PRODUCTION NOTES

Honor de cavalleria was shot during the months of September and October 2005. The film was shot on location in natural surroundings, mainly in the Alt Empordà area (St. Climent Sescebes, St. Miquel de Colera, Albanyà, St. Pere de Rodes, Espolla), but also in the Pla de l’Estany (Foncoberta) and the Garrotxa (Santa Pau) in the province of Girona.
The editor is Àngel Martín, with original music by Ferran Font and sound mix by Ricard Cassals.
Honor de cavalleria has been selected to participate in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the 2006 Cannes Festival, where it will compete for the Cámera d’Or. It is due to open in commercial cinemas in Spain on the 12th May.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

“The plot of Don Quixote, reduced to its fundamentals, is this: Quixote and Sancho, travelling. The desire to see images of the two of them is the reason why the project was born, but no more than that. The essence is actually in the details of the performances and the symbolic significance of the sum of apparently mundane occurrences. Yasujiro Ozu is a crucial influence on this manner of working and reaching an understanding of the beauty of cinema. To underline this approach it was necessary both to avoid a vulgar modernization of the story and to keep from choosing the most popular passages of the book. The only scenes taken from the novel are short and marginal to the plot but very powerful poetically. The rest of the scenes in the film are invented or freely adapted from other sources (Chrétien de Troyes’ The Knight of the Excursion Cart, Tirant lo Blanc, historical studies of chivalry by Martí de Riquer…). They portray the intimacy and fascination of a reality that exists purely in the mind, the only reality of importance in a film about Quixote. The tension between this mental reality and the actual daily life of the two protagonists is the recurrent theme of the film. It dominates the film to the extent that it takes the place of narrative development. The mystery and poetry of the film, which often recalls the ‘static and latent’ beauty of classical painting, stems from this, together with the original way in which this tension is translated into images.
This almost mystical atmosphere is also due, in part, to the hyper realistic and original performances of the two actors, Lluís Carbó and Lluís Serrat. Both are unknown, non-professional actors, like the actors in the films of Bresson, Emanno Olmi and (most of) Pasolini. These three directors, together with Godard, Ozu and Dovzhenko, are the inspiration behind the cinematic imagery that nourishes the film. Explicit homage is paid to them at various points in the script.”

Albert Serra