Viking Night: Excalibur
By Bruce Hall
October 7, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It’s really kind of a slam dunk, because whether you’re a middle aged drone slaving away in a cubicle farm or a member of ISIS living in a spider hole, dreaming up new ways to be the worst person ever, you’ve heard of the Knights of the Round Table. And even though most people aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the legend, almost everyone knows the basics. The Arthurian legends have got something for everyone - swords, sorcery, greed, betrayal, romance, violence, and on occasion, sex and drugs and rock and roll.
So you still want to make a movie about King Arthur? Okay, the only question left is which of the dozens of available versions are you going to use?
For the kids, Disney went with their usual sing-songy, talking animals approach. For the ladies, Jerry Zucker made an unintentionally funny version with Sean Connery and Richard Gere. For the dudes, Keira Knightley proved your high school teacher wrong by playing Guinevere in a leather bikini. Clive Owen proved that casting a film is harder than it looks. Monty Python threw the whole damn thing out the window and knocked the ball out of the park using nothing more than some coconuts and an animatronic bunny.
But the most common approach usually involves either T.H. White's The Once and Future King, or Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D'Arthur. John Boorman (Zardoz, Deliverance) went with the latter and conjured up the definitive 1980s version of the Legend in Excalibur. It's a beautiful, ambitious and baffling film, smothered with pretense and stuffed with top flight Shakespearean talent. Also, you could fly from Dallas to Miami, pick up your bags and get a table at Wolfgang Puck's in the time it takes to watch it. But despite all this, Excalibur remains one of the most fascinating and engaging interpretations you’re likely to see, and it’s no doubt worth your time - provided you have a lot of it.
Your nerdy friends will complain about the liberties taken with the source material, but the basic premise is more or less what you remember from eighth grade literature. Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne) longs to be king of Britain, and enlists the help of the eccentric wizard Merlin (Nicol Williamson) to make it happen. In order to be king, he must not only wield the enchanted sword Excalibur, but prove himself worthy of having it. After securing the sword - and a truce with his greatest rival - Pendragon celebrates by trying to get busy with the man’s wife, Ingrayne (Katrine Boorman). Forgetting all about that whole “King of the Britons” thing, Uther concocts a plan with Merlin that allows him to get Ingrayne’s husband out of the way and have her to himself.
The result of this union is a child, which Merlin claims for himself. And because he’s such a jerk, Uther manages to lose possession of the sword, leaving it trapped within an impenetrable stone. Prophecy dicates that the man who can retrieve the sword and prove himself worthy will become the rightful heir to the throne. Many men try, but none succeed. As a result, Britain is plunged into chaos and famine. Fortunately, Uther’s son, Arthur (Nigel Terry) matures into a fine young man under the care of a kind hearted nobleman. One day, Arthur unknowingly manages to retrieve Excalibur and before he’s even old enough to shave, finds himself King of England. With Merlin’s help, he manages to unite the warring clans and bring peace to the nation. But he is warned that one day, his rule will be tested when he is betrayed by a close confidant, engulfing his reign in a quagmire of lust and betrayal.
That’s all fine with Arthur, because once he gathers his best warriors and forms the Knights of the Round Table, there is meat and wine and dance and song, and every night is Saturday night because it’s good to be the king! Arthur eventually marries longtime love Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi), who catches the eye of his greatest knight, Lancelot (Nicholas Clay). This is a problem, but everyone is so fat and happy they fail to see the danger right under their own feet. Everyone, that is, except Sir Gawain (Liam Neeson), who tries to warn Arthur, but because he’s such a notoriously angry drunk, people find him more than a little hard to take seriously.
As if that wasn’t enough, further gumming up the works is Arthur’s half-sister Morgana (Helen Mirren), an aspiring sorceress who desperately seeks to be Merlin’s apprentice. She’s bitterly jealous of Arthur and wants power for herself, so she seeks to steal Merlin’s power and assemble an army to take the Kingdom into her own hands. And because Merlin, like a lot of the men in this universe, keeps his brain in his pants, he makes things a little too easy for her. Yes, a mid-30s Helen Mirren running around dressed like the cover of Heavy Metal magazine is pretty enticing, but come on, Merlin. You KNOW what she’s up to.
This is just me, but if I’m the greatest wizard in the world and I want to get busy with someone, I just crank my magic staff up to eleven and conjure up a Medieval Kelly LeBrock rather than take my adopted nephew’s bitter, angry, completely bananas half-sister under my wing. But Prophecy is Prophecy, and everybody’s got their role to play, even if it means making unimaginably stupid decisions when there’s a better way right in front of you.
And if you’re the kind of person who likes a movie to make sense, this is the problem you’ll have with Excalibur. All of these characters seem arbitrarily doomed to their fates, making (or not making) wise or stupid decisions not of their own volition, but because they feel they HAVE to. There are few heroes in this story; both good and evil characters come to rely on the actions of others to define them. This is meant to be the story of Arthur’s journey from a wide-eyed young boy to a wisened old king, but for most of the movie he sits idly by and delegates his fate - and the fate of the Kingdom - to the decisions of the people around him.
“I've lived through others far too long!” Arthur declares at the high point of the film, and you can’t help but agree with him at that point.
But bear in mind, this story IS based on a 15th century myth, and stories of that age were typically constructed as extended fables, meant to illustrate a simple moral lesson by making you sit through hours of exposition and flowery dialogue. In this story, Arthur and his contemporaries seem well aware of their status as myth and they act as such. The words they speak sound less like things people would actually say, and more like ancient etchings inscribed on stone tablets. Their actions are largely symbolic, driven by the unseen hand of fate rather than free will, all for the express purpose of making a moral point about their King’s intellectual development. And their world is a tableau patched together with pages from the Book of How to be a Good Person and Not Let Your Friends Down.
If you can accept that kind of a story, then maybe Excalibur is for you. This will not be the action packed clash of armies that you’re probably expecting. It’s more like an extended soap opera where everyone shouts hackneyed truisms at one another like the great stage actors they are, and you are meant to walk away with the realization that you should be living your life differently than you are. On this level it works well - Byrne has no indoor voice because he’s an impetuous, power hungry asshole who does not deserve to be king, and you are meant to KNOW this. Patrick Stewart serves little purpose other than to be Guenevere’s dad, but he Patrick Stewarts the hell out of his role, and you can see where his daughter learned the moral conviction that drives her.
I give Liam Neeson credit for quite possibly being actually drunk when his character is introduced, and whether that’s true or not, Gawain’s obvious pain at having to choose between his morals and his King are plainly evident. Helen Mirren could not possibly chew her lines more thoroughly than she does, and if you’ve ever dreamed of seeing some of today’s most respected thespians cut their teeth on screen together, this is one of the best chances you’ll ever have. On that front, Williamson damn near owns the movie as Merlin, who comes across as a delightful cross between George Carlin and Ben Kenobi. He’s sorely missed whenever he’s off screen, and is easily the best thing about the film.
It’s a shame that we rarely see him do anything truly magnificent. True to legend, Merlin’s powers are of the subtle variety. More often than not, he tricks people into believing they’ve gotten what they want, gleefully allowing them to ultimately betray themselves. If Las Vegas had been a thing at the time, I can easily see him opening a casino.
The second best thing about Excalibur is how visually lush the movie is. Alex Thomson rightfully won recognition for his cinematography, although filming on location in Ireland no doubt altered the curve a bit. Upon closer inspection, it’s easy to see that most of Camelot is merely spray painted plaster or plastic meant to LOOK like metal or marble, but the sets, the armor, and the film’s universe itself are wondrous to behold. Supposedly much of it was originally constructed for a Lord of the Rings movie that never happened and if so, it’s interesting to wonder how such a film might have turned out. Probably poorly, but it looks pretty good in my imagination.
Excalibur is a story pulled from a vastly different and distant time, and it plays that way. It plods along slowly, taking its sweet time - particularly in the second act - but it’s a lush realization of a world at least vaguely familiar to most of us, and it relies on themes that are relevant to us all on a daily basis. As a morality play, it more or less accomplishes what it sets out to do, but as an engaging film experience, it leaves much to be desired. But the sum of its parts are well worthwhile, and ultimately more entertaining than they seem once it’s all said and done. So if you DO want to make a movie about King Arthur, this is as good a template as you’re likely to find.