| Excalibur (1981) | |
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Rating: 7.3/10 (66,544 votes) Director: John Boorman Writer: Thomas Malory, Rospo Pallenberg, John Boorman Stars: Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay Runtime: 140 min Rated: PG Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy Released: 10 Apr 1981 |
| Plot: Merlin the magician helps Arthur Pendragon unite the Britons around the Round Table of Camelot, even as dark forces conspire to tear it apart. | |
1981 film by John Boorman retelling the legend of king arthur, drawing inspiration from Le Morte d’Arthur by Malory, with a few nips and tucks combining some events or characters (the sword in the stone here being Excalibur), and adding inspiration from other similar myths and legends.
Merlin makes a deal with Uther Pendragon to satiate the desires of the one who wishes to be king – when his first born son from a deceptive union is born Merlin steals him away until he is older and the teenage boy Arthur can claim his right as king, uniting the land. However, Arthur’s life is tied to the land, and events that affect him deeply also drag the land back to despair.
I first caught this at maybe too young an age for what is essentially a AA or 15 rated film in the UK – I must have been around 10. I had a fascination with the myth and legend, and many books on Arthurian myths, or fictional tales inspired by them had already been lent from the library. So, VHS rental time, and I got to see the myth realised in a beautifully, brutal, and sometimes gritty manner.
The casting of Merlin was the first thing that struck me – gone was the long beard and pointy hat – instead a robed figure with a silver headpiece who acted rather peculiarly. He was eccentric and witty, but also mysterious, devious, and trod a line between good and bad – and Nicol Williamson was magnificent in the part. The memorable nature of this version would make for a hard bar for future incarnations over my life to live up to.
But the rest of the cast was an interesting mix also – and whilst many were pretty much unknown now, over the years going back to the film and seeing Cherie Lunghi, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, and many others offers some great “spot the…” moments. Stewart is hilariously overacting in his first scene as he tries to pull the sword from the stone, but in doing so adds a bravado and gusto to Leondegrance that kind of fits.
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The fights are muddled and confused at times, which instead of the derring-do of mythical knights, we have clumsy, brutal battles in mud, sullying the shining armour, offering a more realistic depiction of trying to fight in clunky armour.
If anything the ‘search for the grail’ is the only aspect of the film that feels a tad uneven to me – more because of what we don’t see than what we do, and I suspect the edits to bring this down by half an hour are where this suffered.
But, as definitive a King Arthur tale that there is, even though it isn’t as definitive as it could be.
