Reclaiming the Blade

I learned a lot about a subject I knew nothing about- European Martial Arts. When purchasing it, the clerk asked "Is that John Wayne doing Kungfu?" Hardly! All the star interviews were REALLY interesting as I am a big fan of The Lord of the Rings. The passion of the ordinary practitioners devoted to sword making and others who compete in sword play in serious competition were inspiring. The sword has been used in films since the 1940's to inspire audiences to long for truth to ultimately triumph. The hundreds of historical books about the techniques of the ancient warfare are discussed by experts which an average person can follow. The Bob Anderson interview was one of a kind. He is a sword choreographer from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp.

How can one not love this movie? It is obviously the product of people who love European history, especially what the late Donn Draeger termed "hoplology", the study of the use of (manual) weapons. This is almost a doctoral dissertation on the rediscovery of what are called European martial arts. Using cinema and stage sword masters, sword makers, historians, old manuals, Asian martial artists with the tragic exception of genuine Japanese koryu (ancient school) members, Society of Creative Anachronists and actors, prop masters, a collage of people interested in Western swords and swordsmanship comes together as a fine and entertaining motion picture. From adolescents pretending to be swordsmen to world famous scholars, from the ridiculous to the sublime, this is a cross section of Western swordsmen and swordswomen today as the study of European swordplay is born again. After more than half a century in Japanese Budo I find much in this film to enjoy but a few areas where it fails a bit but on the whole it is superb and not often silly. A final thought on the Bonus Features: these vary as the film itself but the presentation of the Oakeshott system pf classification, despite the odd pronunciation of "mediaeval", is almost worth the price of the DVD all by itself.

It might not seem like it at first, but the documentary does have a structure and does present a good amount of useful information. I didn't really like the documentary much 10 minutes into it, but by 50 minutes into it, I was stuck to the TV.

This documentary was kind of unusual. It seems to have very high production value, as in, expensive. They interviewed a number of actors, celebrities and other important people. The music was nearly all big name bands. There was stock footage used from big name movies. The animations were very high quality. Someone knew how to do top notch animations.

But, everything was kind of haphazardly put together. There wasn't really a sense of 'chapters' or ... whatever. There was no sense of what direction the documentary was going to go in. The music was very annoying. It's odd to have Dandy Warhols blaring over the voice of some scholar that's talking about swords. The whole documentary is like a big long trailer. In fact, that is the best explanation you will get of this film. Go watch the trailer for this film... then imagine that the trailer is over an hour long... that's exactly what it's like.

Despite its flaws, it is definitely worth a watch. Look past the problems this documentary has and watch it for the reason you watch documentaries... to learn.

"Reclaiming The Sword" isn't much to rave about as a documentary feature, it's not very inspired in terms of editing and presentation, the constant use of stock footage gets annoying pretty quickly, and the music is overbearing.

But as a document - as a piece of research and presentation of facts - it's quite fascinating. If the premise of the film interests you; if you're interested in ancient European history, if you have an interest in martial history, if you've ever been a fan of medieval historic films or even medieval fantasy; if you've ever been a D&D nerd - you'll find quite a lot to enjoy here, lots of interesting information, good and varied interviews, and lots of swordplay of every kind imaginable.