Mari Ness -

The five year old at our screening summed it up best: "I didn't get it."



Many of you have attempted to make the claim that Knight's Tale is the worst Arthurian adaptation ever, and until today, I would have agreed with you. But I have seen this movie, my friends, and it lifts Knight's Tale into the realm of High Art.

Now, I love King Arthur legends; Malory's version is still one of my favorite books. My mother read one of the books to me when I was a kid -- I think Howard Pyle's version -- and my friends and I played King Arthur on several occasions, learning the very important lesson that when you tie your brother up to a tree because you have made him play Guinevere and you're planning to rescue him later, you should remember to rescue him before your mother finds him because otherwise you won't get to have any cake that night. This is the sort of important moral strength King Arthur tries to give the audience, and utterly fails, in most part because the movie lacked the credibility of my 3 year old brother's performance as Guinevere.

King Arthur starts off with a happy note chatting about the "classical 15th century" and the observation that now we shall be told the "true" history of Arthur, which would be more convincing if the writers had remembered that "classical" in the historical sense does not refer to the 15th century, or indeed to the historical Arthurian period, which would have been in late antiquity (not the Dark Ages). This sort of historical garbage boded well for the film's badness, indeed, and my hopes shot up.

They were to be sustained. We move on to a nicely pretentious scene meant to introduce the young Lancelot and give him an excuse to play with a little carving of a wolf in later scenes for no particular reasons, a scene which leads us to ask deep questions about Roman conscription techniques, such as, why, with all of these manly men around, are they only taking young Lancelot and his little wolf carving, and what is a Russian barbarian doing with a French name like Lancelot? But onwards! Young Lancelot fails to hold the interest of anyone, including the audience and the screenwriters, and we skip ahead a few years to watch some men bouncing on horses. They are using, in a brave defiance of historical reality, stirrups. Hopes fulfilled.

These are, we are to learn, Arthur's knights. To reinforce that point, they are given the names, if not the personalities, of Arthur's knights -- Lancelot, Gawain, Tristan, Galahad (apparently not related to Lancelot after all), Bors, and, oddly enough, Dagonet, who, if I recall correctly, was Arthur's court jester in the Malory version. You'd think that Dagonet would seize the moment to tell a few jokes, but he doesn't. You would think that Galahad would be pure and --

Well, actually Galahad might have been pure. Which one was he again?

(blackgryphon complained a few weeks back that it was silly to claim that any film was attempting to tell the "true" story of Arthur and put Lancelot in it instead of, say, hmm, the Keltic heroes Bedwyr or Kay. He's right, but what's even worse is putting someone named Lancelot (or Tristan or Galahad or Gawain) into a film and using absolutely nothing of the original character. Nothing. This, my friends, is a Lancelot that runs around telling people to stop fighting. Greatest knight in the world indeed. Sheesh. And that love triangle with Guinevere? The movie forgot it before you could.)

In fact, the knights, for the most part, don't even need names; with the exception of Bors they are all so unmemorable that we couldn't figure out who died at the end. (Whoops! Spoiler! But the movie keeps telling you that somebody is going to die, what with everybody saying that somebody is going to die and with the somber music and all, and I'm telling you, we couldn't figure out who it was, so this is not exactly much of a spoiler.) The knights do fight somewhat confusingly against some people called Woads, who may, or may not, have been intended to be Picts. What the Woads are particularly good at is showing off bare skin, a talent that shows to particular advantage when their skins are glistening against the bright Styrofoam snow. (Did you know that MS Word automatically capitalizes Styrofoam? I have just learned this.)

This does not give the Woads, as villains, lots to do. So, to keep a semblance of a plot going, the film introduces some New Villains, the Saxons, who look rather disgruntled about having to appear in this film, but who also have the aid of lots and lots of little computerized boats. Who knew technology had reached such heights in the 5th century? First Styrofoam, and now computer graphics. No wonder those evil Saxons conquered that little island.

Saxons, as one character (Tristan? Gawain?) helpfully explains, kill everything in their path. Luckily, the Saxons realize that if Arthur's knights are going to ignore history and use stirrups, they can also ignore their historical and notorious skills at sneaking up upon villages, and instead bang on really big drums to let everyone know they’re coming. (Yes, really.) This somewhat undercuts their Villain Credibility, so they kill somebody without much of a reason and then lurch on through the snow.

Of course, we have to get the knights there to fight them. Luckily for the plot, a group of Romans just happen to be living on the other side of enemy lines (foresighted of them to help the plot along, don't you think?) and rescuing these Romans will not only bring Arthur and the knights near the Saxons, but also treat us to a rather pointless and unhistorical scene that will rightly draw the ire of Christian critics who have, unlike the screenwriters, actually read medieval chronicles. (It's also poorly acted.) Moving on. We meet Guinevere, who has nice legs, and Merlin, who can’t decide which side to fight on, and we have a smashing battle scene on ice. None of this stops the Saxons who spend part of the movie thinking cheerfully of kidnapping the Romans as hostages, and then, when said prospective Roman hostages ride away pretty much unprotected, the evil but not particularly smart Saxons decide to attack the well-guarded, high walled fortress instead of the defenseless Roman hostages. They also take the moment to declare, stirringly, "I'm going to kill your people. I think you should watch." Right, because by this time, most of the audience won't.

It's one thing to have your characters act dumb. It's another thing to have your characters act this dumb.

And then we have a final battle, but talking about this would be painful.

Linguistically, the film is baffling; technically, the only people who really should be speaking English would be those evil Saxons, but no such thing: everybody speaks English except for the bilingual Woads, who also speak a language that I assume was meant to be a form of Keltic and is rather reminscent of a strange Navajo ritual, intonation and all. The movie wants us to assume, I suppose, that everyone is speaking Latin, which would work were it not for a scene where a monk is babbling in Latin and people don't understand him, so I suppose Arthur et al are speaking some form of Keltic except the Woads are speaking another version of Keltic and the Saxons are carrying around Star Trek translator thingies. Historically, the film is a giant mess, even leaving aside the stirrups, the anachronistic armor, the anachronistic use of the word "pope," and, of course, the small but critical note that by all historical accounts, the Saxons won.