Excalibur

The legendary story of King Arthur is surprisingly a source material that is very rarely turned into high budget films. While there have definitely been plenty of versions done in recent times like a 2004 adventure film directed by Antoine Fuqua, a 2017 re-imaging directed by Guy Ritchie, as well as a pretty popular BBC series, Merlin, which also took the story in its own unique direction, but in terms of a straightforward adaptation of the medieval legend, the options are surprisingly sparse (probably because both feature films didn’t fare well at the box office, so no one else is really willing to try). One of the first people to give it a go was John Boorman, the man best known for directing movies like Deliverance, Hope and Glory, The General, and Exorcist II: The Heretic, who tried in 1981 to cram the entirety of King Arthur’s story into a movie length picture, resulting in the underground hit, Excalibur. Chronicling the events of the titular myth, after the downfall of Uther Pendragon (played by Gabriel Byrne), his son, Arthur Pendragon (played by Nigel Terry) proves worthy enough to wield the famous sword Excalibur (which was thrust into stone by Uther to make sure only someone was worthy could take the sword), which in turn makes him the King. His strength in battle gives him the respect of several knights including Leodegrance (played by Patrick Stewart), Uryens (played by Keith Buckley) and Lancelot (played by Nicolas Clay), which eventually forms the infamous Round Table. During this period, a tragic love affair between his Arthur’s wife, Guinevere (played by Cherie Lunghi) and Lancelot causes Arthur to mentally collapse, which in turn brings the land down with him, with the only hope to reversing this horror being the Holy Grail, which is sought after being one of Arthur’s last remaining knights, Percival (played by Paul Geoffrey). With all of this being a plot from the wicked sorceress Morgana (played by Helen Mirren) and the villainous child of her and Arthur, Mordred (played by Robert Addie), the grail must be found in order to awaken Arthur from this state so that he can reclaim his title and stop the plot of Mordred, who is now pushing to take Arthur’s crown for himself. Based on a well-known, but not infamously known 15th century Arthurian romance, Le Morte d’Arthur written by Thomas Malory, Excalibur feels like a film that is massive in scale, effort, and presentation, but a bit lost in terms of its connectability and narrative flow.

The movie was planned out by Boorman way back in 1969, yet no one would accept it due to its three-hour long length, instead offering him up Lord of the Rings instead (which in turn would inspire a lot of the visual and set design for this film). With a story as lengthy as the Arthur legend, it probably would’ve required an extensive length to piece everything together, and when the film was eventually released, Boorman decided to cut the film back from three hours to a still weighty but manageable two and a half hours, and much of that cutting can be felt even if it was intentional. The film feels very much like a reel of the ”best-hits” of the story, featuring all too familiar scenarios, characters and situations from the tale just presented on a more grand and epic scale. While this is good in practice, it’s practically impossible to provide the proper amount of focus all these elements require without making it longer. Ironically the film probably could’ve used its full length to make this really work as a structured movie as without it, the entire movie feels incredibly rushed and a bit shallow in its content. This isn’t to say that it lacks depth as the script by Boorman along with Rospo Pallenberg does do a decent enough job capturing each era of Arthur’s life in a way that makes these singular events pretty memorable on their own, and Boorman’s direction does bring a spiritual atmosphere to the whole picture that definitely makes it feel more like mythical fantasy rather than historical fiction, but it just doesn’t allow its audience to properly engage with the material because they don’t really have time to. When it feels like its setting up a good story line, it jumps ahead in time so haphazardly, the audience cannot keep up and it leaves them confused and lost. The movie is crammed packed with story, and this thankfully means that the film is never dull and always keeps at a good pace, but its told in such quick almost impact-less way that it’s hard to keep invested as the motivations for the characters and even the purpose of the story keeps changing every jump forward in time.

The characters suffer extremely because of this fast-paced narrative structure and considering how much of the film is dedicated to focusing on a lot of key moments in the Arthurian legend, you can tell that the film is solely focused on plot, not on its characters. They aren’t really shown to progressive towards their expected outcomes as it seems more focused on reaching that point rather than explaining, so when certain characters do things that feel back-stabby or weirdly cruel and stupid, it’s not going to get as strong of a reaction because it’s not giving the audience time to really know them as people. These roles should be the driving force of the narrative and not the other way round, so this delivery results in the overall picture having scale and even personality through its visuals and even acting, but its characters aren’t going to leave any impression and will only be recognized by who they are in the legend. With that said, while they are very bare-bones and just archetypal of the legend’s roles, the ones of focus are likeable enough and have a unique sense of personality due to the film’s unique vibe. Merlin (played by Nicol Williamson) is actually pretty entertaining, with him having the usual epic wistful teacher aspect mixed in with a kookier sarcastic old mentor type element that is very rarely seen in this kind of character and especially in the role of Merlin. While it can sometimes be a bit too over-the-top, he is easily the best part of the movie and the character that does stand out the most. Most of the others work in a similar fashion, where they are saved by their actor’s talents and abilities rather than whatever the script gives them, and that is helped out by the fact that this movie has a cast full of recognizable names. Helen Mirren is barely utilized but works well enough as Morgana, Nicolas Clay is pretty good as Lancelot, Cherie Lunghi is passable as Guinevere, and even most of the knights are portrayed in a decent enough way to feel appropriate within the environment in the way they talk and act. While it isn’t all spotless, like Nigel Terry is not that good as Arthur despite the importance of the role kind of requiring someone to be a bit stronger, it does show its strengths in parts and it’s also a film that started a ton of acting careers for people like Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, and Ciarán Hinds, so that’s a nice detail.

The movie was filmed on-location in several parts of Ireland, which did help to give the film a nice old-fashioned atmosphere that felt right in the time period of Arthurian legend. The scale that the film has is largely impressive; it features a lot of great locations as well as some fun sets, the physicality behind some of the action scenes are appreciated even if none of the fights are really that memorable, the environment is a nice mix of simplistic yet somewhat mystical, the costumes by Bob Ringwood and Terry English (who designed all of the armor worn in the film) feels time appropriate, and it all matches perfectly with the tone the film is going for. Boorman himself stated that a lot of the film’s set design and imagery were created with his original version of Lord of the Rings in mind, which examples how the locations seem almost too fanatical but just that right touch of real in this movie. With the extensive use of smoke and harsh blaring lighting which brings an almost ghostly air to the entire picture, it does capture an element of mysticism that brings a fun creative splash into what could’ve been played as very dull and straight. The tone of the film was also noted by Boorman to be reminiscent of Monty Python’s 1975 comedy film, Monty Python, and the Holy Grail (which was arguably the first attempt at a film based around King Arthur ironically), and while this could have easily failed as the film is definitely trying to tell the full story without any satire, this quirky vibe against the more over dramatic presentation is just enough of a blend that it doesn’t contrast with the darker themes and harsher visuals (despite the film only being M). Even though there was an R rated version released in the US, the other version was the one that was eventually distributed widely.

Excalibur did take a risky step with trying to create a movie out of various aspects of the King Arthur legend, especially in a time when fantasy films were not as popular as they are now (this was pre-Lord of the Rings). While it was a nice attempt and clearly had a lot of impressive work put into it, when the titular item of the movie stops being a plot point after the first 40 mins of the movie, you start to notice that something is a bit misguided in this film. With serviceable actors and a cool tone and atmosphere holding up a film with too much plot and not enough character development, this is an imperfect film with admirable qualities that still make it worth checking out. With enough entertaining actors and pretty imagery to keep you invested, this is a flawed but still fun interpretation of the Legend of King Arthur. Not the stuff of legends, but still one worth witnessing all the same.