The Canterbury Tales

Every Christmas, people complain about the dire schedules, but among the exhaustedly-repeated films and bloated 'specials' can be uncovered animated gems like this. I don't know why Christmas should be deemed appropriate for a profusion of 'adult' cartoons, but the viewer wins regardless, because they are daring, inventive and witty in themselves, even without a festive background of mediocrity to shine against.

I watched the first part of this last year, but only finished it last night because I'd lost the tape. I'm afraid I didn't dare watch it in its original Middle English, an option admirably open to me. To my eternal discredit, when I was at college, despite the best proselytising efforts of an amiably barmy lecturer to affirm his bawdiness, flexibility and great humour, I'd always avoided Chaucer because, you know, 14th century English. What does it mean? How can you even read it without a luggage load of notes? So I can't really discuss the film's success in visualising Chaucer's text.

What I can tell you is that it does achieve an extraordinary recreation of medieval life, in all its squalor, bustle, yet fertile energy. Far from being the received scowling monks and yobbish yahoos, Chaucer's pilgrims are recognisably human in their flaws, desires and talents, yet strictly grounded in the medieval social order that produced them. Each story they tell to ease the boredom of the journey to Canterbury, reflects, however obliquely, both its teller and his time.

The framing narrative of the pilgrimmage is told with puppets, but each tale utilises a different mode of animation. Being an expert neither in animation or Chaucer, I cannot tell whether there is an apt connnection between form and content. But the fluidity of each story; the ability to depict experience, emotion and event unavailable to live action; the exquisite, glaring colours; the remarkable draughtsmanship alternating between painstaking detail and broad flourishes are all a joy to behold.

As are the stories. The second part features a rich old blind man cuckolded by his young wife; a TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE-like tale of gold greed and murder; and an aristocratic Romance about a loyal wife who is forced to sleep with a courtier after a supernatural miracle. The mixture of bawdy comedy and touching pathos is superbly contrived.

If I have a complaint (or two) it is that it is often difficult to hear the dialogue (realistic but ANNOYING), and that the arrival in Canterbury fails to grasp a sublime that is Chaucer's counterpoint to earthiness. But then we have the Archers' immortal A CANTERBURY TALE, so that's alright than.

The three most popular of the Canterbury Tales are those of the Miller, the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath: perhaps the makers of the series felt that they had been wrong to exclude the Miller's tale from their original two-hander (whose six tales, in various but equally beautiful animation styles, were those of the Nun's Priest, the Knight, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner and the Franklin, with nods to the three unfinished tales - the Cook's, Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas, and the Squire's: the Cook, too drunk in the original to complete his story, is here too drunk to begin it; Chaucer's doggerel is cut off by the Host as originally, but much sooner, and is not replaced with the rather boring prose Tale of Melibee; the Squire merely makes a few noises about the kind of tale he wants to hear before the Franklin tells it). So, here are four more tales: the Squire's, with an invented ending; the Canon's Yeoman's; the Miller's, and the Reeve's, told in alternating episodes.

Pluses: the evocation of fourteenth century life in the between-tales segments (and the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, which, like the Pardoner's, uses the same faux-plasticine style of animation as the "real" segments of the story) is as rich as ever; and the watercolourish animation of the Squire's tale is exquisite, possibly the most gorgeous in the series.

Minuses: the Squire's Tale rambles all over the place with no real narrative strength; the rivalry played up in the first two episodes was that between the Summoner and the Friar, not the Miller and the Reeve (indeed, I don't think the Reeve even appeared), so we haven't been prepared for their fighting and interruption; the language in their tales is excessively modern; and, worst of all, the grotesque computerised animation of these last two tales is unimaginative and ugly.

The third episode is still worth seeing, but it cannot bear comparison to the first two.

Nearly two years after the initial episodes were broadcast, BBC2 finally got round to showing the concluding part of its trilogy of 'Canterbury Tales' in this, the 600th anniversary of Chaucers' death. The format is the same - three tales are framed by the journey of a ragbag group of pilgrims, this time on their way back from Canterbury, where they prayed at the shrine of the martyr Thomas a Becket.

This episode is the least satisfactory - the last two tales somewhat deficient in narrative or visual imagination. The first tale, though, the Squire's, is arguably the most beautiful of the whole series, telling of an Eastern kingdom, visited by a mysterious Red knight bearing magical gifts. His good intentions seem to go awry, as his magic leads to both the king's sons and generals vanishing, leaving the kingdom open to enemy invasion. The Red Knight promises to save the kingdom if he is crowned monarch, and his true intentions seem apparent; so thinks the princess he loves at any rate, as she refuses to marry him.

The animation of this tale is truly sublime, otherworldly, evincing a genuine magic, the bright, bleached primary colours creating a cool, Oriental atmosphere combining the magical and expressive, the watercolour texture achieving an emotional limpidity. This style allows for great freedom, especially when compared to the clumping puppetry of the succeeding tales - in one brief sequence the Red Knight talks about the power of his bird-shaped ring - the ring becomes a flock of birds, which in turn becomes the armour of the Knight, setting off a series of connections and meanings that run through the animation, and appropriately mimic the narrative and figurative complexity of Chaucer's poem.

If the other tales disappoint, the framing story delights, once again achieving a portrait of vibrant, bustling medievalism usually unavailable to live-action films. The sacred purpose of the Tales is quickly jettisoned for earthier pleasures - food, drink, gambling, sex etc. The cockfighting and pig-gutting give rather too vivid a picture of the time, as does the exposure of aristocratic and pious hypocrisy, the fruity language and the bawdy innuendo.

Although the pilgrimmage is supposed to be an ascetic journey, a purifying of worldly baggage, it becomes an excuse for all kinds of revelry and gorging excess. This is amply shown in the final story. The destination, the shrine, is supposed to be a celebration of God, wholeness, unity, his Word, which was made flesh. And yet the film does not end with this wholeness, but with the final tale, which is actually two tales, those of the Reeve and the Miller, which interrupt each other with increasing speed and violence, until the authority of the single narrator is broken, and the Babel of stories and voices spills open. From the Word of God to the uncontainable, diffuse narratology of the people. Chaucer may shut them out and praise God, but follow him and we'd have no tales. Or 'Tales'.

The animation is great of course, and the diverse styles to some extent conjure up the rich pageant of Chaucer's book. What's lost is the classiness of the telling. Chaucer could treat broad subjects without being crass, and equally he could write beautifully on the most elevated of themes. Inevitably, the screenwriter cannot do those things and comes depressingly close to tabloid-ese at times. Equally inevitable I suppose, was the focus on the more lurid, bawdy stories; and it's sad but not surprising that the makers failed to understand the pilgrims' essential sincerity - their foibles notwithstanding. Certainly the claim that the pilgrimage is only 'an excuse' for a holiday shows a fundamental failure to understand the medieval mind. Chaucer did not see it as any such thing.

In short: it's as good as we have any right to expect - no worse, and no better.

... and adults will enjoy it as well.

This is a 'popular' introduction to The Canterbury Tales, which, like the animated Shakespeare series, is sure to fascinate inquisitive children (and adults for that matter); a point some detractors here seem to have overlooked. OK, if you're well-versed in the stories then you probably won't want to watch this adaptation (much edited and abridged as it is), however, you might want your children to see it - they'll love it; and maybe sometime later they'll be inspired to pick up the original stories and explore the rich and vibrant world of Chaucer more fully.

The animation is superb and each tale is presented in a different style. Each style is beautiful in it's own right and has obviously been picked to match the style of the individual tale. The voice-over is courtesy of a quality cast of British actors. For those who are studying the original text, or who just revel in the exotic, there is a parallel Middle English voice-over (the advantage of animation now becomes clear) and that alone makes this a really worthwhile project.

I'm not sure if it's available on DVD but it certainly should be - it seems perfectly suited to that format. All three episodes (with ME) could be packaged onto one disc with subtitles for the ME, and with historical background stuff included in the "extras" section. I'd certainly grab one if it was released.

(Correction: apparently the DVD has all the above elements on it - excellent value)