EXCALIBUR Ambiguous? Maybe... I admit, my familiarity with Arthurian legends is pretty limited, mostly picked up one bit at a time from any number of sources over the years. I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon, but found it to be pretty tiresome (yes, I get the point that Guenevere's a whiner, thanks for flogging that out for six hundred pages). With a title-screen prologue underscored with the doom-laden strains of Wagner, Excalibur introduces itself by telling us where it's set: The Dark Ages. How Dark? Well, when one fellow later in the film is warned that a journey would take twenty days, he replies "Twenty days? The world's not that big!" We next see a blazing battle of fire and death, a nice introduction to the film's first act detailing the rise and fall of Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne, madly chewing scenery). The leading contender for the King of England, mostly because he managed to convince Merlin (Nicol Williamson) to fetch the sword Excalibur for him, Uther isn't above bartering off his firstborn so he can shack up with a hot chick. (though later scenes suggest that after his death, Uther was much revered as a noble figure) A palpable air of doom hangs over these scenes, since even the least informed people in the audience should know that this isn't about Uther but Arthur, so Uther isn't going to live that long. Byrne overacts outrageously, like he's always done, but it's in the roles like this where I can put aside my usual dislike for the guy's acting and revel in the madness of it. Byrne plays Uther as a lusty, power-hungry, rash, bordering-on-mad tyrant, but not without the occasional streak of Kingly inspiration. Sure, he throws it all away because he's jonesing for his rival's wife, but he does carry that air of regal authority, even though we all know it would be better placed on better shoulders. Based on a French novel, The Death Of Arthur (never read it), the movie proceeds from that to Arthur's birth to his death (don't tell me that's a spoiler, look at the title back there!) and the return of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. Little things are left out; Tristan and Isolde are nowhere to be seen, and the story of Nimue is sublimated into that of Morgana LeFay, but all the big bases seem to have been covered. If there's any problem with Excalibur's overall structure, it's the episodic nature of the story it tells, a frequent problem when translating myth into film. Some things, you just have to accept as being larger than life; for example, Merlin refers to Arthur early on as "the one", leaving me to wonder, "To do what?" Uther's time was a time of war even when the kingdom was united; young Arthur's time is at peace, even though the kingdom is divided. I'm still not clear on what Arthur's big achievement is, since even if he did find the Grail, he obviously must have lost it again. If there's one thing I appreciate the most about Excalibur, it is the unashamed, unabashed way it handles the inherent cheesiness of the story. Director John Boorman gives us every "money shot" we could hope for in a movie like this - Merlin giving us a fire-and-brimstone speech about the origins of Excalibur (and delivering the last phrase in a way that suggests he knows how pompous he sounds), Uther putting the sword in the stone in one last act of defiance (shown as something of a moment of what-have-you-done horror), Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone, Lancelot lamenting his "curse" of never having been defeated in battle, the Lady of the Lake both giving and taking the sword, squire Percival (Paul Geoffrey) suicidally volunteering to defend the Queen, scenes with Uther and later Arthur where they make their presence known by holding Excalibur up for the ENTIRE SCENE...this isn't the kind of movie you just see, you BEHOLD!!! The dialogue is WAY larger than life, loaded with grand speeches where people profess their undying loyalty (I can just imagine stuff like this coming from Manowar), grand speeches where people die in each others' arms, grand speeches telling people to always remember this day, and crowd scenes where every line seems designed to provoke applause from the crowd. Yes, it's cheesy, but it works because the film asks us to take it all quite seriously, without the ironies which are almost a gimme today, its only winks and nudges coming from Merlin, alien as he is, appropriately standing a little outside of the material. (for that matter, the possibility that he's an alien is explicitly addressed later in the film, where he mentions that "there are other worlds" - whether he means other worlds like Valhalla and Gehenna, or other worlds like Krypton and Tattooine, I don't know) Nothing here is watered down for the kids and teenagers who, conventional wisdom has been saying for decades, are the only people who go to see swords-and-sorcery movies. It's courageous where First Knight played it very, very safe. Things bog down a little in the film's last act, where the quest for the Holy Grail is shown not as a valiant and noble quest, but one of desperation and fear, where everybody dies. (I've never understood - is somebody out there supposed to HAVE the Grail, or is it supposed to be buried in some future archeological dig somewhere?) There is no happily ever after for those at this round table, or the kingdom itself; Merlin concludes that the age of magic is at an end, and maybe it's the point that the movie feels a little emptier around this time. Even the people believe that Christ has abandoned them. This last act also concentrates more on the forbidden love of Lancelot and Guenevere, the movie's least convincing plot thread, and the bloody rise of Arthur's son/nephew Mordred, conceived by Morgana with the same spell Merlin once cast on Uther. Mordred's story is hampered mostly by his costume; Morgana makes for him an impenetrable golden armor (if these things were easy to make, everybody would be wearing them, so we know her skills have advanced far indeed). While the young man playing Mordred (Robert Addie) holds his own as an actor when he's called upon to speak (note the scene where he tells Arthur what he does and doesn't want from him), he's so skinny that he not only doesn't seem like much of a physical threat, but that costume brings C-3P0 irresistibly to mind. Also problematic is that Percival is more or less the central character of this last act, and yet he spends much of it (several years) wandering around in the woods. Nigel Terry is excellent as both "young Arthur" and King Arthur, though I don't think I've seen Arthur portrayed as being Irish before. It's interesting to watch how he handles things after he pulls the sword from its stone; he fears the role of King at first, but takes to it VERY quickly once he accepts his destiny. He charges off to battle, and fights the way a well-meaning but inexperienced fighter would - more interested in just getting past his opponents, than killing them. It's a great role for Terry, with lots of highs and lows of victory, defeat, humility, wrath, you name it, and he gets to age about twenty or thirty years over the course of the film, too. Why has so little else been seen from this man? Every time I see this, I can't help but marvel that this is such an interesting Arthur; so many tellings of this tale present such a dull, one-dimensionally noble King Arthur. It's nice to see him portrayed as human; the first thing we see him do as king is break Excalibur! His best scene comes when his wife's faithfulness is questioned, and he has to place his role of King before that of husband. (Although, even after this is recanted, one wonders why Gawain isn't fired, or at least, the object of scorn and avoidance for the rest of his days as a knight.) Near the end of the movie, Arthur explicitly reminds us of more failings that we may or may not have picked up on, suggesting that he doesn't even believe he's a very good king, but his continued effort to be one is of course what makes him great. Terry's only serious misstep isn't even his own, it's a continuity error - Arthur was impaled pretty deeply on that spear, so who pulled it out of him? Nicol Williamson has a LOT of fun as Merlin, a chrome headpiece taking the place of the long beard and star-covered robe one more often hears about. Sometimes, maybe a little too much fun - occasionally, he's used as something of a Jar-Jar Binks character, but mostly, he's like a wise imp who gently pokes fun at the cheesiness of the material around him, like Yoda with a better sense of knowing humor. After scaring Arthur half to death with stories of a dragon so vast and horrible and terrifying that to merely look at the whole thing would kill you, Arthur reasonably asks where this dragon is. With a wild look and dramatic hand gestures that must've taken decades to master, Merlin says "It is everywhere! It is everything!" I'm tellin' you, that's one of the funniest goddamn things I've ever heard, and I'll bet it wasn't even intended as comedy in the script. Williamson finds exactly the right moments where the cheese factor would've gone overboard if presented straight, and gives us a wink to prevent it all from going over the edge. In spite of this, he makes for one of the more imposing and menacing Merlins; even in the heat of battle, nobody attacks him, or anyone who's taking a time out to talk with him. It is with chillingly immovable logic and no little coldness that he comes to claim what was promised to him from Uther, just as Uther was starting to turn around and become a worthy King. At any rate, Williamson gets a lot of sparks with the rest of the cast; reportedly, a lot of people were reluctant to work with the notoriously difficult actor, particularly Helen Mirren, the two of them in the midst of some nasty tiff at the time. It all helps out the film, though, their scenes together full of fire and venom; and it gives her lines of begging forgiveness and "I can ease your loneliness" that extra edge of insincerity. The only disappointment in acting is quite intertwined with the only disappointment in the story; the doomed love between Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) and Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi). Much is made of how beautiful and dashing Lancelot is, and though he's well-spoken enough, he doesn't seem to have enough personality to be genuinely charming, and his good looks are...I hate to criticize a person's physical attractiveness of lack thereof, but I just don't see it, and it's a good bet that most viewers today won't either. Maybe it's one of those "stuck in 1981" ideas of male beauty which haven't survived, like Tom Selleck's chest hair. Additionally, his character is just plain weird. Almost every scene where he's shown sleeping, he's sleeping way out in the woods under a tree, and that's actually quite a few scenes. He even gets one scene where he freaks out and runs off naked into the bush, and the next time we see him, he's a crazy old man with a huge, bushy beard and wild-man hair. (eventually, he's found by that wandering-in-the-woods Percival) This is not how civilized people behave, not that some of us don't come awfully close sometimes. And his first scene with Guenevere is a little embarrassing; he tells her "I love you as my Queen, and as the wife of my best friend. And while you live, I shall love no other." No pressure. The parallels between his obsessive "love" (really, has this ever been the right word?) for Guenevere and Uther's for Igraine are hard to miss. And his last exclamation of his despair before he runs off into the woods ("The King without a sword...the land without a King!") makes no sense, because even though Arthur left his sword behind, he's still the King. Lunghi is hopelessly dull as Guenevere, and the two of them have absolutely no detectable chemistry between them, which is easily the worst flaw that the story of Lancelot and Guenevere can have. Their story is vague and shakily done, as well; after their affair is discovered, Guenevere just kinda disappears (we find out much later that she's gone to a convent) and when Lancelot runs off naked into the bush, years pass before we see him again. It's mostly thanks to Terry's wonderful performance, working well off both other actors, that their story manages to carry even the slightest dramatic weight - and most of it, only in how it affects the King. The rest of the cast is a mostly enjoyable grab-bag. Watch for a young Liam Neeson as Gawain, the first knight to dare (however drunkenly) speak about the romantic tension between Lancelot and Guenivere, and Patrick Stewart as the first knight to recognize Arthur's kingship (the scene where he "pumps up" to try pulling the sword from the stone is pretty funny - the way he says "Give me the power!" is freakin' hilarious). And, of course, Helen Mirren as Morgana (cleverly introduced with a repeated reference to her father's eyes) tries her best to give Williamson a run for his money (though it's a bit of a shame that her lines in her last scene are almost all just grunts and gasps). Production design is a wonderful mishmash of the classy and tacky, shiny and rusty. No place in time is suggested by the film itself, though Arthur is supposed to have lived in the 6th century (all that armor wouldn't be invented for hundreds and hundreds of years yet). It's gritty, but too fanciful to be called "realistic". It's filled with magic, but lacks the glitz and easy-living sheen that a magical element often brings to this kind of film. The Star Wars movies are probably its closest kin in their overall look and feel; it's of little wonder that this was originally released in a PG-rated form as well as the more widely-seen R-rated version. Unlike the battles in the Star Wars films, though, the battles here are bloody and almost frightening in their intensity; nobody's survival is ever a foregone conclusion for the sake of the plot (well, except Arthur's at the siege of Leondegrance's castle). There are a few of Boorman's directorial decisions I didn't quite understand, making for my confusion about whether or not much of this film is meant to be ambiguous. Does Uther give his son to Merlin because he fears the wizard, or because he believes that's what's best for Arthur and for the kingdom? Young Arthur comes across a boa constrictor while in the woods; is this to suggest that this England of mythical yore had giant snakes, or to suggest that we should know that it didn't, and there are supernatural goings-on here? When Arthur swings Excalibur around for the first time, are we meant to get the impression that it is magically teaching him swordfighting, or is it just the youthful enthusiasm for a newly-acquired plaything? Later, in a duel, is Lancelot lamenting Arthur's rashness, pride, and quickness to anger, or praising his bravery and willingness to risk all for the integrity of his kingdom? When Arthur decrees that there shall be a trial by combat because it is well-known that no knight which is false can defeat one which is true, are we to understand that in this England of myth, this really is the case, or that no matter who's right, the better fighter will win (just what would lead otherwise sensible people to that conclusion, anyway?)? (spreads hands helplessly) And there's a lot more where that came from, so hell if I know. Maybe that's the reason for Merlin's Jar-Jar-ringly silly scene where he slips and falls into a stream trying to catch a fish; his lines here explicitly point out to us that "there's always someone more clever than yourself", but the implied message is that things aren't always as they immediately seem. The biggest ambiguity is, of course, trying to tell if this all is meant to be ambiguous, or if it's just unclear storytelling. I try not to let that bug me. Whatever its flaws, I adore this movie. You get to see two people get knighted (albeit both times in rather unorthodox fashion), sieges a'plenty, lines quoted by Metallica back when they were on top of the world (only recently have I really understood what Merlin means by "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world"), Helen Mirren cackling madly holding a bloody baby she just yanked out of herself, people wearing armor ALL the time (even during sex, and dinner, and while swimming), and you get to learn that the opposite of desire is not repulsion, but regret. There's more movie packed into 140 minutes here than you'll find in twenty hours of other films. I have often lamented the scarcity of modern, quality, adult-oriented clashing-swords movies that take themselves seriously, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few. Gladiator was good, Braveheart, much better (despite its tack-on plotting and everybody-knows-this-anyway drift from historical fact). Conan The Barbarian, also, one of the best ones. But Excalibur is, for my money, the best of the lot. BACK TO THE E's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE