Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot, dir. Giles Alderson

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot, dir. Giles Alderson (2020) 

 

Reviewed by:

Christopher Berard, Providence College

cberard2@providence.edu

3.5/4 STARS

 

Arthur’s Return Home: Giles Alderson’s Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot

 

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot is a beautifully made and intelligently written low-budget adaptation of a core Arthurian tale: Arthur’s journey home from the Roman War to reclaim Britain from his usurping kinsman Mordred. Director Giles Alderson and cinematographer Andrew Rodger shot the film entirely on location in Wales at Caerphilly Castle, Dunraven Bay, and Ogmore-by-Sea. The breathtaking Welsh landscape and natural lighting lend an air of Arthurian authenticity to the production. Equally brilliant is the plot, une belle conjointure of narrative details and themes from medieval Arthurian literature and plot devices and tropes from such action-adventure films as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Thor (2011), Skyfall (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).

 

The film opens with a flashback sequence: young brothers-in-arms King Arthur (Richard Short) and Sir Lancelot (Tim Fellingham) race their horses along the coast. Traveling into a forest, the pair hear the siren song of a lady in a cave. Entranced, Arthur approaches the maiden, who then transforms into an old hag and bites Arthur on the neck. Lancelot comes to Arthur’s rescue and dispatches the vampiric witch. Arthur and Lancelot then hear a cry for help within the cave and discover the witch’s prisoner, Guinevere (Stella Stocker), whose appearance the witch had simulated. Here, writers Giles Alderson, Simon Cotton, and Jonny Grant rework the False Guinevere motif found in the Old French Prose Lancelot (c. 1210) and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1470).

 

After this opening, which would have been more effective as a pre-title sequence, Merlin (Richard Brake) introduces the narrative proper, explaining to the audience that Arthur married Guinevere and later left her in the care of his son from a previous relationship, Mordred (Joel Phillimore). Arthur, Merlin explains, has just spent the better part of eight years fighting the Romans. Within the existing Arthurian tradition, Thomas Hughes’ Senecan tragedy The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) offers a precedent for this narrative starting point. In Hughes’ play, Arthur’s Roman War parallels the Trojan War in duration, and Arthur, as a war-wearied hero returning to a troubled home, finds himself in a situation analogous to the Greek heroes Odysseus and Agamemnon.

 

Arthur, Merlin explains, is haunted by the memories of the gruesome Roman War. He appears to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In France, the king drinks to excess to dull his pain and engages in bare-knuckle boxing to prove his martial prowess. Arthur’s display of brute masculinity evokes Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur and calls to mind Daniel Craig’s damaged and conflicted portrayal of James Bond at the start of Skyfall.

 

Learning of a Saxon threat to Britain, Arthur wants to remain in France and let Mordred attend to Britain’s defense. Wallowing in self-pity, he calls himself an “old drunk” and laments the loss of his sword Excalibur. In a verbal exchange with Lancelot, Arthur declares: “There is no king without Excalibur”. Lancelot responds: “It is not the sword that made you either. It has abandoned you because you have abandoned yourself.” Just as Thor loses Mjölnir in Thor (2011) until he proves himself worthy to wield it again, so too does Arthur lose Excalibur. Here we are reminded that the good king must first rule himself before ruling over others. Why Arthur lost Excalibur in the first place remains unclear. Was it on account of his deeds of war or his difficulty coping with the trauma of war? If the latter, our modern sensibilities are more forgiving than those of the Lady of the Lake.

 

The setting shifts from a disreputable inn in France to the royal court at Camelot. Mordred is seeking to take possession of not only Arthur’s kingdom but also his queen. Guinevere rebukes Mordred, remarking, “I am neither your lady nor your creature”. Shortly thereafter, Mordred attempts to persuade the remnant of Arthur’s faithful vassals to swear allegiance to him and to let him pursue a policy of appeasement with the Saxons. A debate ensues between Mordred and Arthur’s loyal men regarding the merits of the absent king’s rulership. Arthur’s supporters proudly declare: “Arthur has no throne. Our king takes his seat at the table equal to all his knights.” Mordred reminds them that he compelled his woodsman on pain of death to destroy the Round Table. Through this exchange, we learn that Arthur is a good feudal monarch who rules as primus inter pares with the advice and consent of his vassals.

 

The next matter of debate concerns the justness of Arthur’s Roman War. His supporters claim that Arthur fights for honor and for Camelot. Mordred defames Arthur as a “warmongering opportunist” who fights for his own private good to the detriment of the public good of Britain. This dialogue encapsulates the just war debate at the heart of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (1137), the Alliterative Morte Arthure (c. 1400), and Hughes’ Misfortunes of Arthur. Mordred does not wait for a consensus opinion or the consent of the governed; instead, he crushes dissent by force of arms, stabbing one of Arthur’s faithful supporters.

 

In an ironic parallel, it is not the counsel of Arthur’s knights that moves him to return home to Camelot, but rather a failed attempt on his life that spurs him into action. Mordred’s assassins succeed in killing one of Arthur’s knights and, as is the case in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, feelings of guilt and responsibility for the loss of his men compel Arthur to act. His return home calls to mind the opening of Kevin Reynolds’ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Whereas Robin of Locksley returns from the Third Crusade to find his ancestral castle in ruins, Arthur returns from the Roman War to find his entire kingdom in shambles.

 

After some cutting back and forth from palace intrigue to the hero’s progress, Arthur receives counsel from Merlin. The sage tells Arthur that he is distracted from his cause and that his heavy drinking is not helping the situation. Arthur, filled with angst, asks: “What is my cause? I fought a war and I cannot remember why. I sent ten thousand men to their death, and the reason has been lost.” Merlin responds: “What better reason than home?” Arthur, ridden with guilt, answers: “a home that I have not protected…Excalibur was my destiny, and even that has abandoned me.” Merlin consoles Arthur by stating that Excalibur will return to him when he is ready for it. Arthur then expresses fear that the day will never come. Merlin essentially tells Arthur: “fake it till you make it,” or to quote an even more popular and patriotic English aphorism: “keep calm and carry on.” This episode calls to mind Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises (2012), when an injured and aging Bruce Wayne must overcome self-doubt, escape from an underground prison, and save Gotham from Bane’s nefarious plans.

 

After Merlin encourages Arthur, it is Arthur’s turn to inspire his faithful followers with a rousing speech. Just as Merlin found it necessary to remind Arthur of his identity and purpose, so too does Arthur remind his knights of their greatness as the chosen knights of the Round Table and also their duty to defend Camelot and one another. Curiously there is no explicit mention of God in this monologue. Arthur’s Circle of Avalon speech is a far cry from Hal’s St. Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V, and this was one of the few stodgy moments in the film.

 

After another surprise attack that again results in the death of one of Arthur’s knights, the king sends Lancelot west for reinforcements and orders the rest of his men to make their way to Camelot without him. Arthur knows that a skilled female assassin is tracking his movements, and he wants to prevent her from harming his beloved companions. As seen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), the division of Arthur’s men allows individual quests and shifts in narrative focus.

 

Meanwhile, Mordred learns that Guinevere and Lancelot are lovers. He sends his sorceress Vortigone (Jennifer Matter) to impersonate Guinevere and thereby capture Lancelot—a recurrence of the False Guinevere motif. Mordred’s plan works. Elsewhere, Arthur must confront his own demons in the form of the female assassin. She blames Arthur for not protecting her family from Mordred’s cruelty and injustice. Arthur reluctantly kills her in self-defense and then lapses back into despair. Merlin returns to Arthur in his moment of need and gives him another instruction on good kingship: “A king,” he says, “endures so that he can protect his people and his country. Most of all, he endures so that he can empower those who cannot dream of sitting at the Round Table.” Heartened, Arthur continues on his journey and encounters the Lady of the Lake. He undergoes a process of purification through immersion in water and then receives Excalibur.

 

At last, everything comes to a head at Camelot. Lancelot is imprisoned and awaiting execution in the castle and Mordred is about to wed Guinevere in a grand ceremony against her wishes. Arthur and his knights secretly enter the castle through a storm drain and launch a surprise attack. This combined castle invasion and wedding crash calls to mind Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Arthur is Robin Hood; Guinevere is Maid Marian; Mordred is the Sheriff of Nottingham; and Vortigone is Mortianna, the evil witch. Such a home invasion is certainly a familiar and convenient plot device, but it does have precedent in British history, namely the Nottingham Castle coup of 1330 that enabled Edward III to end the regency government of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.

 

Although the attack on Camelot is a familiar action-adventure plot device, the denouement of the film is not the customary Twilight of the Gods that we have come expect from Arthurian films. Arthur and Mordred do not deliver fatal blows to one another. Instead, Guinevere rescues herself by killing the sorceress Vortigone. Guinevere and Lancelot ride off into the sunset. Arthur, despite the heartache of losing his queen and his best friend, retakes his castle, his kingdom, and his crown. Arthur disowns Mordred but permits him to run away from Camelot in disgrace. The love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot remains unresolved as does the looming Saxon threat. The closing frame of the film features King Arthur wearing his crown and sitting on his throne, an iconic image evocative of the end credits of John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian (1982).

 

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot has an uninspired title, and parts of the script, especially the Circle of Avalon speech, are lackluster. The clever plot, beautiful cinematography, and earnest performances from the cast more than compensate for these relatively minor quibbles. A better title for the film, in this reviewer’s opinion, would be “Arthur’s Return Home,” which encapsulates the plot of the film and subtly references Jack’s Return Home (1970), the novel by British writer Ted Lewis that was adapted into the 1971 British cult classic Get Carter—yet another film involving a man of blood who returns home to restore order and exact retribution. The presence of such timeless and substantive Arthurian themes as self-mastery, just warfare, and good rulership in a screenplay that honors both the medieval Arthurian literary tradition and the modern action-adventure genre makes this film a worthy British addition to the ever-growing catalogue of Cinema Arthuriana.

 

Christopher Berard

 

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot, Giles Alderson: director / writer; Simon Cotton: writer, Jonny Grant: writer, photography by Andrew Rodger, design by Jamie Foot, costumes by Robyn Manton, music by Nick Samuel. Signature Entertainment, 2020. 130 minutes.

Merry Medievally Speaking, December 2021

Merry Medievally Speaking 2021 to all our readers! For this message, I thought I’d share with you an example of seasonal medievalism I gleaned from Jan Ziolkowski’s magisterial reception history of the medieval Juggler of Notre Dame, here from volume 6, War and Peace, Sex and Violence (2018). It shows the expected links of medievalism to (medieval) Christianity, but much more:

 

Otto Blechman retold/redrew the juggler narrative in 1953 (The Juggler of Our Lady). Freshly graduated from Oberlin, the young artist was offered to design a “graphic novel” on a Noel theme. He was Jewish and apparently knew little about the Christian holiday. However, as part of the ubiquitous nature of postmedieval medievalia, he and some of his friends were familiar with the story of the juggler, which seemed to have enough of a connection to fulfill the publisher’s mandate for a book that would sell as a seasonal gift. Although the young artist could very well have secularized the story into a parable of his own life (the juggler performing to a world full of indifference for his art and dedication), he decided not to obliterate the religious theme involved. Armed with the outlines of medieval culture in Will Durant’s influential cultural history, specifically the volume on The Age of Faith, he resolved to situate the juggler’s story in a medieval monastery, but managed to ecumenize it so that it became attractive and acceptable to a larger audience: it could speak to those with a nostalgia for such a simpler “age of faith” as much as to those only deploring the general lack of spirituality in the twentieth century. Blechman’s imaginative and unassuming transmutation was adapted into a nine-minute animated version in 1957, with a voiceover by none other than Boris Karloff. Here is this brilliant heart-warming adaptation, provided by YouTube. Enjoy!

 

The Green Knight, dir. David Lowery (2021)

 

Grappling with the Green Knight: David Lowery's The Green Knight

Reviewed by:

Kevin J. Harty, La Salle University

harty@lasalle.edu

3.5/4 STARS

 

An initial voice-over promises us a tale, and students of Chaucer know that good medieval tales contain both sentence and solaas, so does David Lowery’s mesmerizing, multi-layered adaptation of what is arguably the finest romance from medieval England, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

            In Lowery’s film, simply called The Green Knight, we meet a young Gawain (Dev Patel) on Christmas morn fresh from the brothel and on his way to mass at the castle—presumably Camelot.  The film never tells us that the King (Sean Harris) is Arthur, that his sister (Sarita Choudhury) is Morgan Le Fay, or that his Queen (Kate Dickie) is Guinevere—but it is easy enough to infer so, and it ultimately makes no difference one way or another if we are indeed in Camelot.  The film is a coming-of-age story of Gawain, a child of privilege—he is nephew to this king and son to this king’s sister—who has yet to perform any deeds of derring-do.  At best, he seems to manage trips to the brothel, where he loses his boots (and more), and to the tavern, where he brawls rather than battles.  He is not yet a knight, nor does he seem to be anyone’s squire.  At the film’s beginning, we would then seem to have Gawain the Slacker.

            While the court is set to celebrate Christmas, vestiges of the old pagan religion survive, often thanks to the practices of the women of the court.  There is a version of a roundtable, around which sit knights who, we are told, are living legends.  While Gawain sits in their company, he is more at home with his brothel and tavern friends, especially his bedmate, Essel (Alicia Vikander), who craves more respectability than her social station will ever allow. Whether Gawain is in love or simply in lust with her is not always clear.

            Heirless, the King looks with affection on his nephew, hoping for great promise from him, but, again, Gawain has no tales yet to tell.  It is a time of peace, though hard-won peace, as the King boasts of his slaughter of the Saxons—later we see a vast battlefield littered with rotting corpses—thanks to the efforts of his brothers in arms. But the feast requires a tale—we have come a long way, yet are back to where we started, a pattern of interlacement that Lowery repeats throughout his film. And Gawain has no tale to tell, though, as in the poem, something even better than a tale, a game, will soon present itself when a huge Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), looking somewhat like a gigantic version of Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, barges into the court and proposes a game of exchanges—tit-for-tat: someone chops off my head, and, in a year, I chop off theirs. Those knights of legend want no part of the bargain, but, surprisingly (perhaps even to himself), Gawain accepts the challenge and decapitates the verdant visitor with the King’s sword (Excalibur?). The visitor promptly retrieves his head, reminds all present of what is to happen at the Green Chapel in a year, and rides off leaving his massive green axe behind.  With feasting set to commence, the King reminds Gawain that what has just happened “is only a game.”

            But homo ludens is nothing if not complicated.  Gawain spends much of the ensuing year in the brothel or in the tavern, though two Punch and Judy shows remind everyone what awaits him.  As in the poem, Gawain is suitably armed, with the Queen chanting the passage about the five fives as he dons a coat of chainmail, a Bishop (Donncha Crowley) blessing his shield bearing an inner image of the Virgin, a pentangle—previously seen hanging conspicuously around the King’s neck—affixed to the other side, and a green sash—the first of two—given to him by his mother to protect him from harm. Somewhat incongruously, Gawain even poses for his portrait, profile right in a ludicrous stance of a victor returning from the wars—the painter, further complicating the anachronism, is an unidentified woman.

            Suitably accoutered, Gawain sets out on his journey to the Green Chapel passing through a countryside littered with dead corpses—perhaps those of Saxons earlier killed by the King to achieve peace at any cost.  That journey contains four encounters.  The first is with a Scavenger (Barry Keoghan), who alternately taunts and guides Gawain, and eventually betrays him after asking for “a little kindness” for supposedly pointing him in the direction of the Green Chapel.  Their encounter represents the second exchange in the film, both anticipating further ones and raising a question about whether gifts are ever given freely, or only with the hope of receiving something in return.  The Scavenger and his companions ambush Gawain, steal his horse, break his shield, ride off with the great green battle axe and the green sash, and leave him bound and gagged on the floor of the forest. In a frenzy, thanks to a quick 360^o camera pan, Gawain imagines his corpse rotting away months later in the forest.  But Gawain’s sword is still to hand, and he manages to cut the ropes that bind him and free himself.

Gawain then encounters a red fox, an animal rich in symbolism in the medieval bestiary and crucial to the original poem, who becomes his vulpine sidekick, as he journeys on, next encountering a race of giants—digital special effects are de rigueur in action-adventure films, after all—and finally a woman named Winifred (Erin Kellyman), who has lost her head.  The original poem simply notes in passing that Gawain’s passage to the Green Castle takes him near Holyhead, site of St. Winifred’s Well. 

Winifred may have been a 7^th century Welsh “honorary martyr.” Legend and later medieval vitae have it that she refused the advances of a suitor, choosing instead to become a nun. Enraged, the suitor cut off her head which fell into a spring or well that became a source of miraculous healings.  Winifred’s head was, however, quickly restored to its rightful place by St. Beuno, who also called down God’s justice on the suitor who was in turn just as quickly swallowed up by the earth. Winifred then lived a happy conventual life, establishing several monastic communities for women.  Wells associated with her cult can still be found today in Shropshire and Cheshire.

            Winifred’s presence in the film is appropriate because of her beheading (hers is the second decapitation tale in the film), because of the price she is willing to pay to maintain her chastity (Gawain has already given his away rather cheaply, and will do so again), and because of an exchange she has with Gawain when she asks him to retrieve her head from the spring and he asks what she will give him in return.  Gawain has yet to sort out the difference between being selfish and being selfless.

            Nearly at his wit’s end, Gawain stumbles upon a castle where he is welcomed by a gracious Lord (Joel Edgerton), his equally gracious Lady (Alicia Vikander, who, in an interesting case of double casting, also plays Essel), and an unidentified Blindfolded Woman (Helena Browne), who like all the film’s women is more prescient than her blindfold should allow. Events play out at the castle in a pattern familiar enough to those who have read the poem. The Lord of the castle hunts and promises to exchange whatever his trophy is with Gawain’s, as the Lady of the castle hunts Gawain. The Lord produces a dead wild boar and the red fox in a sack; Gawain offers a kiss, though he has also had from the Lady of the castle a second protective green sash and a masturbatory ejaculation that proves he is “no knight.” Embarrassed and ashamed, Gawain flees the safety of the castle—castles have never been all that safe here or earlier in the film—and reaches the Green Chapel where Lowery offers viewers two possible outcomes for Gawain’s encounter with his green nemesis, after the fox, instead of a servant from the castle as in the poem, offers him a coward’s way out of his bargain with the Green Knight. 

In the poem, Gawain flinches, but eventually submits to the axe.  In the film, Gawain (or so it would at first seem) repeatedly refuses the blow and runs away returning to the now-ailing King’s court—there is a suggestion here in Lowery’s film of a parallel to the plight of the Fisher King in the Grail legend—only to succeed him to the throne, have a son by Essel, abandon her, marry a Princess (Megan Tieran) who bears him only daughters, renew the King’s wars, suffer utter defeat, and sit on his throne as his castle’s walls collapse around him.

            In an alternate ending, Gawain is initially hesitant, but submits, only to be spared by the Green Knight as the credits roll.  By posing two very different outcomes, Lowery suggests that Gawain has a clear choice to make, and that choices have consequences.  In a pattern that we have seen him follow before, Gawain can be selfish, and the consequences will be disastrous for more than himself, or he can be selfless, and he can save himself and presumably prove that he has grown up. In the film’s opening scene in the brothel, someone calls out “you a knight yet?”

Lowery has then made a film that is less in keeping with the plot of the poem and more with its themes, and, as such, it succeeds in ways that the two previous film adaptations of the poem failed.  Stephen Weeks’ 1973 Gawain and the Green Knight is perhaps most memorable for Murray Head (remember him?) as Gawain’s terrible hairdo; Weeks’ 1983 remake, Sword of the Valiant, for its iridescent Green Knight played by, of all people, Sean Connery.

More importantly, Lowery has given us a Gawain for today.  As Kaufman and Sturtevant convincingly argue in their The Devil’s Historian, extremists of various stripes consistently abuse the medieval past, recreating a Middle Ages that never was to suit their agendas.  Gawain may indeed represent the flower of knighthood, but such flowers are often depicted as blonde and blue-eyed, or some other markedly Caucasian variation thereof, to shore up fictional ideas of Anglo-Saxon racial purity and superiority.  When I saw Lowery’s film, I was also treated to a trailer for The Last Duel, a film based on the last trial by combat fought in France in 1386, starring the all-American duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who has subsequently been replaced by Adam Driver). Medieval knights don’t come much more red, white, and blue than they do. But Lowery has made some bold casting choices, especially for Gawain and his Mother.  Neither plays easily into any political miscasting of the medieval. 

Some critics in the trades and dailies seemed hard pressed to know how to react to Lowery’s film, often comparing it to other medieval or Arthurian films.  In the New York Times, A.O. Scott, for instance, situated The Green Knight, somewhat incongruously, between The Seventh Seal and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If Lowery’s film has any connections with earlier attempts to bring the medieval to the screen, it would be with Ridley Scott’s 2010 Robin Hood, which attempted to show how a yoeman archer might have become Robin Hood, and with Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which attempted to show how an orphaned grifter might have become King Arthur. But Lowery’s film is much better than either of these two films in exploring how the storied Gawain did, or did not, rightfully become so storied, and how the Middle Ages were anything but a perverted fairy tale establishing Anglo-Saxon racial superiority.

            Lowery’s film also earns points for its strong depiction of women.  The Mother—be she Morgan Le Fay or not—is clearly empowered by the vestiges of the old pagan ways.  And the Lady of the castle is not only a temptress playing out her role in what is “only a game,” but also an accomplished scholar.  She owns an impressive library of manuscripts. She can read and write, and even compose—indeed, she literally composes one chapter in the tale of Gawain when he sexually assaults him, proving he is “no knight.” She also produces a second portrait of Gawain—anachronistically with what is in essence a camera obscura—which hangs scowling behind him in the less than noble alternate ending Lowery first posits for Gawain’s quest.

            Technically, Lowery’s film is flawless.  The cinematography is breath- taking.  The sound and music—a blend of medieval and post-modern—are first-rate.  Location shots in Ireland use landscapes and multiple sites in Wicklow and Tipperary, where the 12^th century Cahir Castle serves as the location of the King’s court—as it did for John Boorman in his 1981 film Excalibur. Arthurians may continue to debate whether there are indeed any good Arthurian films, or, if there are, which are their favorites. Elsewhere, I have argued that there are indeed good Arthurian films, and I have readily added David Lowery’s The Green Knight, telling as it does a tale of Gawain full of both sentence and solaas, to my list of such films.

 Kevin J. Harty

The Green Knight, David Lowery: director/writer/editor, photography by Andrew Droz Palermo, design by Jade Healy, costumes by Malgosia Turzanska, music by Daniel Hart. A24 Films, 2021. 140 minutes.