Honour of the Knights

The screenplay for Serra’s second film, following Crespià, the film not the village, was inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel . “Since Don Quixote and Sancho Panza appear in Honour of the Knights, I could focus on the atmosphere and the details, which draw me in more than the plot or the characterization,” explains the director. We’re all familiar with the adventures that the protagonists get up to, so Serra shows them in their “dead time,” as they carry on unhurried conversations, bathe in a lake or sleep under the open sky. These are just two men who have an attachment to one other but who are, at the same time, separate individuals. The roles of the famous duo were performed by amateur actors discovered by the director: the mature, expressive Lluís Carbó and the silent Lluís Serrat, now an icon of Serra’s films. Serra emphasizes the contrast between them, showing the silhouettes of the protagonists against the landscape, often from below, with the sky in the background, or resting in high grass. The absurdity of using cinematic tools to resurrect a historical period is replaced here by the construction of a space in which literary prototypes exist as a result of their physicality.