Excalibur (c) 1981 Orion Pictures Company

Excalibur is one of the great fantasy movies of the 80’s, directed by the great English director John Boorman.

Callum Berry.

Loosely based on the iconic Le Morte d’Arthur, this sprawling epic takes us through the life of famous mythological British monarch King Arthur, starting from conception and ending with his demise at the hand of his ill-begotten son Mordred.

The story of King Arthur and his knights is well-known, but there are less mainstream movies covering it than you’d assume. Excalibur is by far the best attempt at covering the mythology as a whole.

Alex Thomson‘s cinematography for this film is underscored by the creative choice in lenses and lighting which create a wonderful sparkling/bloom effect on-screen, giving everything a suitably otherworldly feel that makes you feel like you are witnessing mythological characters and stories play out. Thomson’s camera-work lines up well with Trevor Jones‘ score, which is a varied and engaging compilation that suits the subject-matter.

There are so many interesting parts of the Arthur mythology that a director could choose to focus on — his birth/childhood, his rise, his reign and of course, his death, but Boorman chooses to attempt a film which covers most of it. Which, honestly, gives us a mixed bag of a screenplay as we end up hurrying our way through Arthur’s later years, racing to get the climax of the tale.

The film starts with a great surreal sequence featuring the wizard Merlin and Uther Pendragon and covers the matter of Arthur’s conception, before moving straight into the drawing of the sword-in-the-stone, before segueing into Arthur’s early attempts to unite the kingdom and so-on. All of the acting is well performed, and everything looks great on-screen, but ultimately we don’t get to spend enough time in any one sequence for the story-beats to resonate with the audience. Characters come and go quickly, and Arthur changes quickly before our eyes — with most of his character development occurring off-screen during time-skips, understandable for the story but still frustrating.

The movie leans into the whole strangeness of the mythology, which is something I enjoy, the nature of ‘the lady of the lake’ not being explained, the connection between the King and the land being a matter-of-fact, the power of the famous sword Excalibur as well, not being overly explained to the audience. The screenplay excels at navigating the audience through the medieval realm of gallantry that also exists in a thematic miasma of low-level sorcery and pagan-magick that is slowly leaving the land with the emergence of Christianity — the powers of Christ usurping the Old Gods.

Excalibur is one of the more interesting adaptations of the mythology because it does investigate the religious themes in the tale, as we see an interpretation of the Fisher King characterisation of Arthur — with the land and the King being one, potentially in this expression a veiled Christ analogy in and of itself, but the ‘Holy Grail’ is something that suits Christian metaphor very neatly, but it also binds the pagan roots of Arthur’s story (as well as the notion that a King was his domain made flesh, something that predates Arthur’s mythology) to the emerging rituals and religious expression of the time (the importing of Christianity into Europe), and it’s this key element of the screenplay which elevates Excalibur above most other film-adaptations of the material.

Boorman does over-extend himself towards the end of the film, with a lot of very meaty character stuff hurried over to cram as much of the story into the back-half of the film as we can. It’s not a big problem, as the film is very strong over-all. I just can’t help but feel Excalibur should have been split into two movies, with the first covering his birth and the second covering his reign and demise.

4/5.

Callum Berry.