Excalibur

Through adult eyes I was finally able to see that 1981's EXCALIBUR, a comprehensive retelling of the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table legend, is a juvenile, hokey, and even campy affair.  A film that crams more story than can comfortably fit in its nearly two and one half hours.  Events unfold in a fairly choppy, abrupt fashion.  Slammed forward, if you will.  Almost as if the entire thing was a Monty Python skit, where characters tend to wander from one scene to another with great indifference.  You might even say that director John Boorman's lavish production invites unavoidable comparison with MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.  The clunky body armor and the cast's mighty efforts to ambulate in them might be enough for older viewers to guffaw.

But any such sins are forgiven, Mr. Boorman, for the thirteen year old who fell in love with and ate up this epic still lives and breathes within my critical soul.  Certain movies from this era take me right back to that wide eyed wonder of yesteryear.   Others just play embarrassingly now, but EXCALIBUR remains a feast for the eyes, if not necessarily the brain.

Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg based their screenplay on Thomas Malory's fifteenth century prose Le Mote d'Arthur.  The story begins with Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne), a king who enlists the sorcerer Merlin (Nichol Williamson) to help him seduce the wife of his allie the Duke of Cornwall (Corin Redgrave) and concludes with Uther's son King Arthur (Nigel Terry) defeating his son, the evil Mordred, born out of incest with his sister Morgana (Helen Mirren).  In between we have the familiar tale of Sir Lancelot's forbidden love (Nicholas Clay) for Arthur's wife Guinevere (Cherie Lunghi),  the introduction of Perceval (Paul Geoffrey), and the quest for the Holy Grail.  Through it all the title sword, gifted by the Lady of the Lake, will play a vital role.

Much ground to cover.  I noted that EXCALIBUR does play like a rushed storyteller's yarn, as if he's anxious to get to dinner or something.  Any part of these beloved tales can be their own movie, and have been elsewhere.  But John Boorman creates compelling, at times exciting cinema out of these old fantasies, and doesn't shy away from the sex and violence (yet never becoming excessive).  His film at time feels influenced by the STAR WARS sagas and Lord of The Rings.  I read that Boorman was at one time interested in adapting Tolkkien's books. 

Much of EXCALIBUR is cheesy.  The special effects, some of the dialogue, the awful dubbing (especially of Byrne).  Williamson is quite wonderful.  The battles are mostly well staged and Alex Thomson's cinematography is stunning in moments.  There's an unexplainable magic about this film, and that's what keeps it near and dear to this fifty-something.