May you have a Don Quixote year.
Some weeks back, I rewatched Lars and the Real Girl (2007) with a fresh set of adult eyes and an adult brain that had ~experienced~ some life since my first viewing. I remember renting it from my local Rogers Video at 13 years old and not sitting with it for too long after. I thought it was an enjoyable film, and I knew it was an opportunity for Ryan Gosling to flex his acting chops beyond the pretty boy roles he was known for.
By the way, do any of you Canadian 90s babies remember him in Breaker High (1997)? The theme song (“na na, na na na hey hey, carry me away”) serves as elevator music in my brain whenever I’m rebooting.
What stood out to me in this recent rewatch was a brief scene in which Lars reads an excerpt of Don Quixote to Bianca:
“And so he solaced himself with pacing up and down the little meadow. And writing and carving on the bark of the trees and the fine sand, a multitude of verses all in harmony with his sadness, and some in praise of Dulcinea.”
Lars, like the namesake protagonist of Don Quixote, is a man living with delusions. He has a quiet life in what looks a small town in upstate New York. We’re introduced to him as an introverted 27 year-old man who keeps to himself in the carriage house on the same lot as his childhood home, where his brother and sister-in-law live. Lars works an unexciting 9-5 job and shares a workspace with a sex-crazed nerd who tells him about a website where one can order an “anatomically correct” doll. Unlike any decision he’s ever made before, Lars orders one with dark hair dressed in a fishnet outfit. He tells everyone her name is Bianca and that she’s a missionary from Brazil. At first, the townspeople find it strange - his brother most of all, who doesn’t know how to support him when they haven’t been close most of their lives. But with time, and with new routines put in place for Lars and his partner, his family and the townspeople learn to come together for this once-reclusive man. Through Bianca, he tells his psychologist what he could never express about himself. Life for Lars becomes fuller and filled with moments to be savoured. You catch him smiling to himself while swaying to “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads at a party, and it may be the first time in his life that he feels he fits in.
Lars and the Real Girl is an endearing film of self discovery, growth, and how the trajectories of life can change when a community comes together to uplift those who most need it. It makes you wonder what kind of world we could live in if everyone treated the mentally ill the same way Lars’s neighbours treated him. And for me personally, it begs the question of whether or not there’s power in “being delulu” as the kids call it - or, is there such a thing as healthy delusion at all?
For Alonso Quijano, who identifies as The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, the answer is an undeniable “yes.” In his world he isn’t just a middle-aged hidalgo, but a brave knight crossing great terrains to fight crime. His neighbour Sancho Panza isn’t an illiterate peasant, but his trusty sidekick in restoring justice and order where it is desperately needed. And the object of his affection who he claims to do all of this for, Dulcinea de Toboso, is a precious and highborn young woman, and not a peasant girl named Aldonza Lorenzo.
It seems wild to even suggest this right now in 2025, but what if we looked forward with this type of fervour? What if we planned ahead for a world that conspires for us to land where we need to be? I don’t expect we’ll be happy or comfortable every step of the way. I don’t expect that anguish, disappointment, and grief will magically disappear. But what if we trusted that vulnerability and strength don’t need to be mutually exclusive? What if we doubled down on truly doing good in a time when it seems like empathy just isn’t cool anymore?
Here’s to a year and beyond of believing in ourselves and not giving up on better days ahead. And when being the bigger person doesn’t fit the situation anymore, we can look to this guy for guidance.
