Excalibur

(John Boorman/1981/Ireland)

Boorman’s rendering of Thomas Mallory’s La Morte D’Arthur to film is both glorious and flawed but it succeeds more than it fails. It encapsulates the mythic qualities of the story with Wagner, back lit forest scenes, shining armour, courageous and noble actions, fog laden mystical events and a glinting magical sword. He marries all this with gritty and violent battle scenes, knights wading through ditch waters and mud to hack at each other and incessantly loud, commotion heavy background sounds. In fact almost every line of dialogue is delivered as if attempting to be heard at a very noisy party. But the constant walla and background action create the effect of a real life Brueghel painting where there is something going on all the time. It’s reminiscent of some scenes in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rubliev in that respect. However it veers dangerously close to Pythonesque farce too and the inability of the knights to appear without their full armour on is bafflingly comic. Uther’s macho man bedding of Igrayne is made ludicrous by the sight of him bearing down on her in full plate armour! It’s overlong also and begins to lose focus with meandering strands of the Holy Grail subplot. Edited down to 140 minutes one wonders what extra grist Boormans original 3 hours would have provided to tie in these strands. But everything is done with such orchestral bluster and fanfare that it carries through to the finale. Pedants might be irked by its setting in the “dark ages” while using garb and paraphernalia from a much later time period but it is in essence a raucous, romping mash up of the original myth with the historical diminishment of pagan mysticism through the rise of Christianity. There are wonderful performances from Nicol Williamson as Merlin, Nigel Terry as Arthur and Helen Mirren as Morgana.

(3.5/5)