Excalibur (1981)

This is my dad’s favourite film; it’s always been a part of my life, and is instrumental to not only how I think about the Arthur myths, but I’ve found it bedded deep in Fencraft’s myth of the Sun King. Alongside Gullermo Del Toro’s never-to-be-seen adaptation of the Hobbit, it’s bittersweet that we will never see John Boorman’s Lord of the Rings, which would have been something very special I think.

But he couldn’t get the rights – so he made this instead. Oh, reader. Oh, reader what a film.

A few years ago, I saw a youtube film essay about how modern films (such as Doctor Strange) following trends set by Joss Whedon and Quentin Tarantino can’t help but undercut their own gravitas, almost embarrassed of their own emotion. They wink at the audience, don’t fully commit to the sincerity of the story they want to tell. The video used the 80s and films like Rocky and ET as counterpoints, as the power of cinema when it commits wholeheartedly.

I always think of Excalibur, because it is so unashamed. No cleverness, no “realistic grit” or stripping out of the magical element: so many moments that just send shivers down my spine. Excalibur is unafraid to adapt the mythic Arthur – the once and future king, the boy who pulled the sword from the stone, the holy grail – and it does it in a way that will make you believe. It’s also an incredible adaptation of a huge mythic cycle into a coherent, well-structured whole: using the repeated symbolism of the sword Excalibur, the cycles of the land and the fallibility of man to tie everything together. This might upset Arthur purists, but I think it’s very well done, finding a way to pull all these disoriented/overlapping myths into something with its own narrative.

Surrounding it, is this 1970s pastoral witchiness which first turned me on to this era as one to watch. There’s a pastoral/pagan/psychedelic/folk/back-to-the-landness in a lot of 70s lore, including for children’s media. Something fairy-tale, like in the soft-goth stylings of Morgana; something visionary, as if the director of photography had been looking at tarot cards before lifting his lens to the land. As well as its visual stylishness, classical music like Carl Orff’s O Fortuna and selections from Wagner are used to fill out this bombastic, epic sound, this truly heroic scale.

There’s something hypnogogic in its intensity, something eternal in its use of symbol. And yes, it is pretentious: all Shakesperian actors booming faux-historic dialogue in their full-plate armor that they never take off, not even when feasting or having sex. But I defy you not to be pulled into the huge heart of it all, the scale of its ambition and sincerity. You will never see Arthur told like this again, ever. It needed the weirdness of its place and time, the blending of 60s psychedelia, 70s pastoralism and 80s sincerity into this, the one true Arthur adaptation.

“The film has to do with mythical truth, not historical truth,”

John Boorman (director)

Also, Merlin. Nichol Willamson’s Merlin is unforgettable, the trickster energy offsetting the po-faced knights – mercurial, wise, lonely and powerful.

Honorable Mention: Merlin (1998)

As a concession to my husband, I’m also going to mention this lovely little adaptation, telling parts of the Arthur myth from Merlin’s perspective, mixed in with fairylore. Some lovely special effects and moments in this.