King Arthur - Director’s Cut (2004). I remember seeing an advertising poster for this film once, it must have been around Christmas 2003, and I just couldn’t wait to see it. However, for various reasons I never got around to watching it in the theatres, and after it was released on DVD, I’ve basically only heard bad stuff about it. So I’d never seen it, before tonight.

I think I got my study loan today (and if it turns out I’m wrong, I’m seriously fucked), so I spent a little more money than I should have, on DVDs, some CDs, and Mike Carey’s latest “Lucifer” comic book, “Morningstar”. Anyway, one of the films I bought was this one. King Arthur. And since I have nothing better to do on Saturday evenings than sitting around in my room doing nothing, i thought to myself, “What can a potentially bad movie hurt?”

So, following this dubious line of thought, I sat down in front of the computer (and with my brand new speakers on the ready on each flank, I might add). My knowledge of this theme — the legends of King Arthur and his knights — isn’t too impressive; the stuff I think I know is mainly pieced together from First Knight, Merlin, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and various comparisons between The Wheel of Time and the Arthurian Legends. So, my mind was open for different interpretations of the Knights, and I allowed myself to have expactations.

But ye Gods. The film was nothing but a three hour long fight scene, put together by a mad editor, with some triangular love drama in between the battles. The characters were two-dimensional cardboard figures, the “bad guys” were demonised to such an extent that it was almost a parody (I’ll remember to fetch my scepticism out from where ever it’s hiding, the next time I see the antagonists described as “evil” on the cover of a film), and it was furthermore impossible to relate to the characters, as they didn’t speak to each other. Instead, they preferred holding pompous, (quasi-) shakespearian speeches past each other. The Knights whose names weren’t Lancelot, were treated as props for Arthur, or were simply there because Lancelot needed someone to make jokes at. Both Gawain, Galahad, Bors, Tristan, and last, but not least, Dagonet (who, by the way, was the only character in the film who didn’t speak in some poor attempt at High Verse) were reduced to mere types, with only one or three characteristical traits.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, the film’s moral was a banality. Which would have been OK, if only the director’d been able to present it more clearly. Because it is fairly obvious that the moral of the film is that freedom is worth fighting for, and that “everyone wants to live in freedom in their own country,” as Guinevere (Keira Knightly) so simplisticly phrased it. When this is combined with an enemy who seems like a bunch of unwashed barbarians who’re only out to kill as many as possibly, and whose chief believes strongly in “pureness of our blood” (a metaphor for ethinc, or German nationalism, naturally), things look peachy. Just peachy.

But like I said, the director is unable to present this clearly, and so it’s easy to interpret the film as a conflict between two peoples who sure as hell aren’t gonna share this large, fertile, and largely uninhabited island. In the end, I thought I was watching a Mel Gibson film like The Patriot or Braveheart, not a film that claims to be based on “historical and archaelogical evidence”, and that purports to be “realistic”.

All in all, I ended up giving this film a 3.5/10, as it was kinda entertaining, at least, although little more.

Maybe I’ll watch “Excalibur” tomorrow, and try and see what’s best: American “realism”, or British myth. :P