Excalibur

I first saw this film back when it came out and I was an usher at a local theatre (I was in high school). I have seen many films based on King Arthur, and for some reason this one always causes a stronger reaction in me. I think it is because it is so dark as well as intense. Merlin is borderline looney yet powerful; Arthur starts off as a good-hearted child and then before your eyes self-destructs under his self-imposed weight of leadership; Modred is mocking and disgusting. The fight scenes and the costumes/armor are disturbing; this is no desensitized movie! I own the VHS and sometimes I like to watch up to the point where Guin's deceit with Lancelot takes place, and then stop. After that point, until the very end, the movie is about the fall of a legend, and I like my legends on their pedestals.

Movie that succeeds to be at the same time bad movie and the best adaptation of legend of King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table. For 1981. it's visually fascinating and deserves Best Cinematography Oscar it's nominated for. But however magical and hypnotizing it may be, it's also full of flaws. It's poorly written, story is undeveloped, things just happen without explanation and movie makes rough time jumps without transition. Characters are two-dimensional and occasional attempts to add them some depth are tragicomic. With few exceptions, acting is better left uncommented. When I was a child I was stunned with this movie, but from current perspective, changed by few decades of movie experience, this movie is so hollow that I simply can not turn the blind eye to all its flaws, but still so beautiful that I can not rate it low either.

7/10

This is a film that needs to be watched differently from most films. It operates very differently from the more realistic bent that the vast majority of films lend themselves towards and leans very heavily into a much more formalistic approach. It's an effort to bring Romantic painting to life with an operatic feel, and if you can't get into that different style of reality, then the movie's going to just be funny. Buy into the hyper-reality, though, and you have an entertaining 140 minutes ahead of you.

Everything about this film is big. Costumes entail men walking everywhere in full plate armor. Sets are huge and completely impractical. Performances reach for the rafters. The world is filled with magic and the implication of a huge dragon. It's very much of its own style, and the fact that Zach Snyder considers Excalibur his favorite movie makes just so much sense.

It's the traditional Arthurian legend filtered through the crazy mind of John Boorman. It goes beyond the formalistic stylistic approach to the story, but the inclusion of every weird factor of the original myths plays into Boorman's wheelhouse. Merlin using the magic of the dragon to disguise Uther to trick Igraine is a prime example. But Boorman also includes some extra-mythical elements like having Morgana be Mordred's mother and Arthur his father, creating an incestuous relationship that was never there before. It's rather fertile feeding ground for Boorman's insanity, and I'm really glad he used it.

It blows through the Arthurian legend, mostly propelled by Nicol Williamson's awesomely weird performance as Merlin, watching Uther father Arthur, Arthur claim the sword in the stone and rise to become king, the peace that follows, and the dissolution of that peace precipitated by the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot. Alongside is the rise of Morgana, her tutelage under Merlin, and her raising of Mordred. All of this is big and entertaining (if weird and uncomfortable at certain moments), but it's the late introduction of the Grail Quest that kind of derails the latter half of the film for me.

The Grail isn't mentioned until about 90 minutes into the film, and it's just very suddenly dropped in as a very important thing that needs to be found right then. Arthur is sick, the country is sick, and they need something to revive the nation and its king. Suddenly, "Hey, Percival, go find the Holy Grail."

The Grail Quest feels really tacked on. There are some striking visuals like the actual vision of the Grail that Percival has and the image of Percival hanging from the tree because of where the Quest took him, but it's a sudden late introduction that actually doesn't come to fruition. Maybe if the Grail had been introduced earlier in the film it would have worked better, but as it is, it feels like the Grail is in the film because it's a common part of the Arthurian legend and not because there was a compelling reason to include it in this telling.

Overall, though, the film is really quite an experience. Divorced from reality and existing in its own fantasy realm, it creates its own rules of behavior and sticks to them. It's really pretty from beginning to end, well using the Irish countryside (around John Boorman's house) with mise-en-scene that really evokes Romantic paintings. The performances, especially Nicol Williamson's as Merlin, fit well with the material, and it's an entertaining look into another reality that follows different rules from our own.

Excalibur is a truly atmospheric film. It has the ability to take you back to the time it depicts, without using sentimentality or rose tinted spectacles. Having seen the film numerous times, I still get more out of it with every viewing. It certainly seemed to start many careers on the right path and many of the actors are very well known now. My only sadness is that Paul Geoffrey and Nigel Terry, two of the main character actors, seem not to have become such household names. They both stand out in the film and to my mind have made it what it is, brilliant. Great direction, production, photography and music. King Arthur himself would have been proud of it.

Late in the film, King Arthur is about to fight his last battle against his estranged son Mordred. His kingdom of Camelot is falling. The knights of the Round Table are disbanding. Guinevere has entered a convent. In short, Arthur's world is collapsing. He rides to the nunnery to see Guinevere for the last time. And there, she produces the ancient timeless object hidden beneath some linen: the sword Excalibur, still gleaming, still magical, still potent to fight in the battle that Arthur cannot win. He sheathes Excalibur, and, in full knightly regalia rides with his remaining loyal knights through the English countryside, their pennants and banners flying in the wind. The fortissimo chorus of Carmina Burana accompanies their ride in perfect harmony, chanting the lyrics from the medieval poem "O Fortuna". This is the stuff of legend...

Artistic treatments of the Arthurian legends date back to illuminated codices from the Middle Ages. Thereafter the first, and one of the greatest, attempts to bring the stories into a novelistic form was written in the late 1400's by a knight, Sir Thomas Malory, entitled La Morte d'Arthur ("The Death of Arthur") which is probably the most famous work of English letters proceeding Chaucer but before Shakespeare. Even later renditions include T.H. White's "The Once and Future King". By the 20th century, theatrical adaptations began appearing as well, including "Knights of the Round Table" (1953), Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" (1963), and the musical "Camelot" by Lerner and Lowe which was possibly the most popular rendition of the story before "Excalibur". These last renditions, although they have their appeal, cannot measure up to the movie "Excalibur" which was largely based upon Malory's original tome.

Many here have detailed very well the merits of the film, and since most people know the story, I will keep this short. The reason why this is the best of the Arthurian-based films is its imagery and its dedication to the original Arthurian myths. The entire look of the film, which I have not seen in a movie since, reeks of Medieval Legend. The lush forests, the huge castles, and the glittering swords give a visual and dream-like reality. This is NOT how it was in the Middle Ages. This is how people in the Middle Ages would have liked it to have been, which is the entire point of the Arthurian myths. The filmmakers of Excalibur understood that myth is about dreams.

Several moments in the film are inspired directly from Malory and earlier Medieval codices. For example, several Medieval illuminated manuscripts feature the hand of the Lady of the Lake bestowing the sword Excalibur to Arthur. Strangely this episode, which becomes an important theme throughout Excalibur, is lacking from other theatrical versions and yet it is central to the original myth. Another is the strange rhetoric that Arthur and the land are one, and when Arthur becomes ill, the land of his kingdom becomes barren. This concept was a widely held belief in the Middle Ages: that the sovereign was essentially married to the kingdom.

Another aspect that makes this film outstanding is the portrayal of Merlin by Nicol Williamson. This was possibly the best Merlin ever to come to the large screen. Some of the most humorous moments of the film occur with Merlin. Instead of being the absent-minded wizard of "The Sword in the Stone", he is the last of the Druids, a race giving way to Medieval Christians. Worth the price of admission. It is sad that he obtained very little recognition for this portrayal.

The fact is, a viewer either experiences "aesthetic arrest" with Excalibur, or he or she doesn't. If the scenes when the knights go riding through countryside with their pennants flying behind them doesn't give you the shivers, this is not and will never be your kind of movie. If Malory had lived to see this film, he would have been awed and proud. Malory gave Arthur to the world, and Excalibur gave Arthur back to Malory.