Excalibur (1981), dir. John Boorman

"The best thing for being sad . . . is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails" - The Sword in the Stone

Arthurian legend was my first childhood obsession. Before Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Real Ghostbusters, there was the story of King Arthur, Merlin and the knights of the round table. With that in mind, it is a little bit surprising (to me, at least) that it has taken so long for this particular film fan to watch what is probably the most famous cinematic adaptation of this very British myth (Monty Python and the Holy Grail excepted), John Boorman's Excalibur.

Boorman is a British film director, best known for Deliverance, in which Burt Reynolds showed he could act when he wanted to, he just chose not to most of the time and who cares about acting when you can wear a moustache like that(?), and Zardoz, in which Sean Connery wears a red nappy, thigh-high kinky boots and not a lot else. Set against that backdrop, Excalibur is a more straightforward film than I was expecting.

The film starts with Uther Pendragon at war, but with the help of the otherworldly Merlin, who finds for Uther a Sword of Power, Excalibur(!), the lord with whom he is fighting, Gorlois, soon abandons arms, bends the knee and their two kingdoms are united. Then, Uther, driven into a lustful frenzy by the dancing of Gorlois’ wife, Igraine, commands Merlin to use his power to disguise him as her husband so that he can have his way with her. Merlin agrees to do so on the proviso that any child born of the coupling be given over into his possession (“straightforward” - is that really the word I used? Wew). That child is, of course, Arthur.

Boorman gives us all of the Greatest Hits in the Arthurian canon: The Sword in the Stone, Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, Parzival and the Search For The Grail, Morgana and Mordred. It’s a little episodic with literal fades to black as we transition between the scenes; my sense is that Boorman avoided title cards only because it would have made comparisons to Monty Python a little too direct.

Indeed, the ghost of coconuts and “Camelot, ‘tis a silly place” is always lurking—a spectre is haunting serious drama, the spectre of bathos—but Boorman successfully finds a path through by being unashamedly brash and embracing any absurdity as part and parcel of the subject matter. The performances are melodramatic, not naturalistic; the costumes are expressionistic, not historically accurate; Excalibur glows green and the Lady of the Lake is a beautiful blonde woman who just exists submerged in water for the purpose of providing swords to the Worthy. Nicol Williamson, dressed as Roy Wood during his Wizzard era, with the addition of a stainless steel cap on his head, presumably to protect against Medieval radio waves (smart!), is given free reign to be as quirky as he dares and elicits many of the biggest laughs in the film.

Thoroughly entertaining, I give the film four and a half Holy Grails.