1981 Directed by John Boorman
A surreal adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur", chronicling Arthur Pendragon's conception, his rise to the throne, the search by his Knights of the Round Table for the Holy Grail, and ultimately his death.
Nigel Terry Helen Mirren Nicholas Clay Cherie Lunghi Paul Geoffrey Nicol Williamson Corin Redgrave Patrick Stewart Keith Buckley Clive Swift Liam Neeson Gabriel Byrne Robert Addie Katrine Boorman Ciarán Hinds Niall O'Brien Charley Boorman Brid Brennan Michael Muldoon Liam O'Callaghan Garrett Keogh Emmet Bergin Eamon Kelly
Excalibur l'epee magique, Εξκάλιμπερ, The Excalibur
Acid psych-out ambivalence toward the Arthur-as-Christ backbone of this story. Boorman laments some bygone pagan natural harmony. Almost a Judeo-Christian KWAIDAN by way of Hammer Studios, and brutally violent with an often clumsy physicality (appropriate for 60 pounds of anachronistic plate armor). A brilliant analog phantasmagoria so radiant in its artifice that it not-infrequently verges on camp. Extra cool points for Nicol Williamsons's freaky ADR voice.
Maybe cramming the entire Arthurian legend into 2 hours was a bit much, but man, it looks cool as hell.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how I managed to make it through 40 years of my life without having ever seen this. Or, who knows, maybe I did watch it as a kid and just forgot. I watched a lot of movies like this back in the day and I don't remember half of them. What amazes me more, however, is that I've also never heard a single person discuss this film. Why is that, huh?
I don't really have much history with Boorman. I never got around to watching Deliverance, I've only seen bits and pieces of Zardoz over the years, and I didn't care for Exorcist II: The Heretic. So, imagine my surprise when I pop this sucker…
Excalibur is quite the beautiful disaster, a filthy feast of psychedelic sorcery & blood served up by Chef Boorman. Arthurian legend coming to life as a hypnotically wonderius vision at the hands of a crazy master... Magic, insane battles, eye candy images galore—Excalibur is such a treat, and if you ask me... a damn masterclass on epic fantasy filmmaking.
It’s a hot mess too, which makes me love it a leetle more every time I revisit it.
I was looking for a slightly higher T version of Arthurian legend after seeing The Green Knight and within the first ten minutes of this Merlin uses dragon magic to trick a guy's wife into fucking Gabriel Bryne. It slayed.
One of the truly lunatic masterpieces of mainstream cinema. Like somebody mashed up Ran and Richard Lester's Musketeers movies.
With a cast packed with generational acting talent (Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Ciarán Hinds) it's Nigel Terry (the worst actor in The Lion in Winter) who plays the lead (he's pretty good though) and Paul Geoffrey who gives the second-best male performance.
Best performance though is Nicol Williamson, who bounces his lines between menace and comedy and high and low pitched voices seemingly at random. Unstable and incomprehensible, the old weird world personified. Helen Mirren almost matches him.
Through it all the identification with the people and the land, embodied in the King. A kind of proto-environmentalism maybe. Merlin's…
A summoning of brutal + ecstatic dreams. Lustrous, hack n' slash myth of cyclical power and corruption as bizarre, prurient, and splendid as Zardoz, as cosmic and primordial, as prone to silliness, often as bent on dreamlike lunacy. Berserk violence in foggy, verdant lands — a grand prophecy fulfilled through sheer force and bloodshed... in the frenzied haze of eternity. Words are spoken so matter-of-factly as to be absurd; words are as flesh, all iconic + corporeal pieces of this unexpectedly dark, merciless, ravishing vision.
Serpent's breath,
Charm of death and life,
Thy omen of making
A true epic, attuned to the superhuman level of a myth (Arthur isn't merely the king of England, he IS England) but also moored to the grisliness of heroic tales built on the bodies of the conquered in a way few large-scale properties have even attempted. Game of Thrones comes to mind, but it often feels self-consciously "real" compared to the more confident balance of the fantastical with the repugnant. Boorman reminds the viewer of the lust and violence upon which the Arthurian legend is based, and how lust and violence ultimately spell the end of Camelot. His rough, sturdy camera style clashes with his impressive grasp of scope, not grounding the film so much as shoving it forward. The…
Excalibur
"Today all of these mysteries have lost their force; their symbols no longer interest our psyche." Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
The modern age provides anti-heroes and celebrities, but not heroes of the caliber that Boorman depicts: redeemers, who not only fight for good, but for the existence of goodness. These mythological archetypes depict the struggle of order against chaos and civilization against savagery.
The King Arthur Legend originated around the 5th/6th centuries. Like Robin Hood, there is no definitive version, though each contain common patterns that capture the rites of passage that universally define life's hopes, struggles and triumphs through the ages.
Boorman’s Excalibur was developed after his attempt at a live-action Lord of the…
ENGLISH below
In "Excalibur" aus dem Jahr 1981 zeigt uns Regisseur John Borrmann den rasanten Aufstieg und Fall des berühmten König Artus. Der Film war einer der erfolgreichsten Fantasy-Filme der 80er Jahre. "Excalibur" ist eine Verfilmung des Romans von Thomas Malory aus dem 15. Jahrhundert und bleibt einer meiner liebsten Ritter- und Fantasyfilme.
Natürlich kenne ich die Artussage und habe Auszüge aus Malorys Roman gelesen. Alle wichtigen Passagen des Romans finden sich in Borrmanns Film wieder, der allerdings manchmal zu überladen wirkt, weil manche Szenen recht schnell abgehandelt werden. Aber was hätte man weglassen sollen? Genau, nichts! Es ist Boorman also wirklich sehr gut gelungen, Malorys Roman auf die Leinwand zu bringen. Zugegeben, "Excalibur" ist in Bezug auf die Spezialeffekte…
wagnerian sex poetry. achieves a kind of stupid brilliance, with all these shiny knights getting coated in layer-upon-layer of grime and blood and the weight of aeons past; every line of dialogue here feels like the first time that anyone has ever spoken those words in recorded history. a film that's head-over-heels in love with the romance of death, the beauty of dying, the grace of a mythic corpse.
