All reviews copyright 1984-2021 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE GREEN KNIGHT and Other Arthurian Films:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/24/21]
I recently watched THE GREEN KNIGHT and that brought to mind comparisons with other Arthurian films, so here are comments on some of those, as well as on THE GREEN KNIGHT.
The best-known Arthurian movie is probably CAMELOT (1967), but it also may be the worst, and not just on a historical basis. Yes, everything is too clean, and the make-up and hairdos are all wrong, and where on earth did Guenevere (this movie's spelling) get that ridiculous-looking carriage?, but go a little deeper and there is even more wrong.
What an ego Arthur has, that he thinks everyone is thinking, "I wonder what the king is doing tonight?" In fact, he's pretty obnoxious throughout the film--but then, everyone is.
Clearly this is Christian England, but it must be somewhere between when the Romans left and before the Normans arrived. On the other hand, chivalry seems to have been invented already. Pellinore makes a reference to Charlemagne, putting this at least in the 9th century. So we're pretty much between 800 and 1000.
When her entourage stops to rest, Guenevere asks for tea. There was no tea in England then.
"By 9PM the moonlight must appear." How exactly is this managed when the moon is new? Or for that matter, in general? This seems astronomically questionable.
There is no way Guenevere's wedding train could be splayed so perfectly if she walked unattended.
The English Channel is labeled as such on Arthur's map, but was not called that in England until the 18th century.
"The knights will whack only for good. Might for right." But who is defining what is good or right? I mean, I suspect the knights thought that having the peasants grovel to them was good and right. (Later Pellinore reinforces this theory when he is having a Socratic dialogue with Arthur about trial by jury.)
The Queen won the May Day footrace--what a surprise! Her requests to the knights before the joust also seem quite bloodthirsty.
"I'll barbecue him." The word was first used in English in 1661.
There is THE SWORD OF LANCELOT (1963) with Cornel Wilde, which may be more accurate, but the dialogue and the music are both a bit over-ripe.
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (1973) was basically a children's film which had very little to do with the actual Gawain legend. Yes, the Green Knight shows up with his challenge, but the film concentrates on Gawain's adventures during the following year rather than his temptations by the lady of the castle at the end, although the green scarf and Gawain's flinching do make an appearance. And there is also SWORD OF THE VALIANT (1984) with Sean Connery, but that got even worse reviews than GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, so I watched only part of it.
EXCALIBUR (1981) claims to take place during "the Dark Ages", but the armor, stirrups, and so on are basically those of the 15th century.
Merlin makes Arthur a king upon whom the health of the land depends (the Fisher King), rather than any sort of Christian king. (There are echoes of this sort of king/leader in THE WICKER MAN.)
EXCALIBUR certainly shows more of the dirt and blood of the time (either time) than CAMELOT.
The scene where the callow youth (Perceval) wants to serve Lancelot, is rejected, catches and cooks dinner for Lancelot, and then is accepted seems inspired by a similar sequence in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. The sword between Lancelot and Guinevere is taken from the legend of Tristan and Iseult.
THE MISTS OF AVALON (2001) was based on Marion Zimmer Bradley's book of the same name. It is much more focused on the women of the story, and much more centered on "the religion of the Goddess" and its power. (The priestesses of the Goddess must have special powers: their cloaks always drag at least a foot on the ground, yet remain completely clean, with no trace or dirt or mud.) It's not very accurate to Malory et al, yet it is not wildly divergent either, and certainly better than a lot of more traditional Arthurian films.
Then there's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT (1948), a musical comedy that has both Sir Thomas Malory and Mark Twain spinning in their graves.
The movie doesn't even have Hank Martin get hit on the head in Britain; he goes unconscious in Connecticut in 1912 and wakes up in England in 528--a very clean England, by the way. The filmmakers seem to have decided that Pendragon Castle is in Cornwall, although the name "Pendragon" is Welsh. For reasons unknown, everyone calls Hank "Monster". The date being 528, there are anachronisms galore: stirrups, battlements on castles, full armor, a telescope, and slave markets. The language is a totally mangled version of Early Modern English.
In reality, London was basically abandoned in 528, and there is no way the characters could have walked from any reasonable location for Pendragon Castle to London in the time shown. And finally we have the latest film, THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021).
[My first comment is that it was a mistake to try to watch this right after I got home from a cataract operation. Between one eye being partially covered by the tape holding the shield on, the distortion caused by the shield itself, the pain in the eye which made me want to keep it closed, and the falling asleep that happened when I closed my eye, my first viewing was less than ideal. So I watched it again the next day under more normal conditions.]
There are quite a few changes in this version from the canonical poem. In this version, for example, that the "game" involves a beheading is not explicitly known before Gawain accepts the challenge, so Gawain has no reason to think there will be any sort of real reckoning in a year. It becomes, therefore, a different sort of test--he had the option to show mercy and not behead the Green Knight. The Gawain of this film also tries to avoid seeking out the Green Knight, and there seem to be multiple green sashes. The ending, much discussed, is also different from the poem's (and I won't reveal it here). The film was worth watching, and better as a film than either of the two earlier versions I watched.
(Apparently Dev Patel is considered quintessentially English, having now played both David Copperfield and Sir Gawain. Still, when I picture him, it is in his roles as Sonny in THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and as Ramanujan in THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY.)
THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT by T. H. White:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/08/2016]
THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT by T. H. White (Collins): This is the third part of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. The first part, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, was about the young Arthur and was a finalist two years ago. This part is about Lancelot and Guinevere (and Elaine and Arthur). Although the cover of my copy is a movie tie-in to CAMELOT, there is very little other than a bare-bones plot summary in common.
White has an unusual style for historical fantasy. Later on, I will comment on how Jack Williamson "slips" a couple times and has an anachronistic tone or word choice. But Williamson has this in the ancient world, while White's style is to be writing specifically for a modern (well, then-modern) audience. So in writing about Arthur, he says, "We civilized people, who would immediately fly to divorce courts and alimony and other forms of attrition in such circumstances, can afford to look with proper contempt upon the spineless cuckold." It is true that at times he also carries this into the dialogue ("That was Bruce all over"), but it is less jarring given the modern narration.
But in contrast to the addressing of a modern audience, White seems
determined to see every obsolete chivalric term he can find:
bannerette, pennocel, habergeon, morion, brigandine nails,
gambeson, quintain, jupon, vambrace, and fforbeshynge. And that's
all in one paragraph. Maybe he thought the reader would look all
these terms up, but I doubt it. (Actually, these days,
In spite of the vocabulary, this has survived the best of all the
finalists, and still seems fresh and modern.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING
by T. H. White:
Continuing with recommendations from James Cawthorn and Michael
Moorcock's FANTASY--THE 100 BEST BOOKS, I read T. H. White's THE
ONCE AND FUTURE KING. I will readily admit that I didn't look up
every unfamiliar word, or it would have taken me weeks to get
through it. For starters, I would have had to use the Oxford
English Dictionary--the standard desk dictionary simply doesn't
have all the specialized terms needed to describe British royal
hunts during the Middle Ages. (Here's a list of words on just
page 142: chine, singulars [of boars], skulks [of foxes],
richesses [of martens], bevies [of roes], cetes [of badgers],
routs [of wolves], os, argos, croteys, fewmets, and fiants. A few
pages later we get huske, menee, alaunts, gaze-hounds, lymers,
braches, austringer, and lesses. Some of these are not in the OED
either.) (Hint: surely someone could do an annotated ONCE AND
FUTURE KING. Then again, I'm still waiting for the annotated "A
Dozen Tough Jobs" by Howard Waldrop.)
Most people are familiar with the Arthur story as told by White,
even if they've never read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (or even the
first section, THE SWORD IN THE STONE). White, for example, was
the author who came up with the idea of Merlyn living backwards.
And White also goes directly from Arthur pulling the sword from
the stone at the end of Book 1 to King Arthur waving Excalibur
around at the beginning of Book 2, which has probably served to
reinforce most people's belief that the two were actually the
same.
What most people seem not to be familiar with is White's anti-war
stance. This is no doubt due in large part to the British
experience in World War I, and the gathering clouds of World War
II. Arthur's experiences in the animal kingdom are such that he
comes to respect the most the animals that are the least
aggressive and warlike. And his joy in battles (where of course
he has been victorious) is tempered by Merlyn's reminder than
while the knights in their armor all survived with little more
than bruises, the peasants who fought for them died in great
numbers. These days, were White an American, he would probably
end up labeled a traitor for expressing these opinions. Yet he
was by no means a complete pacifist--Merlyn is very specific that
defensive war is justified and even necessary, but war is never
glorious. In fact, a check around the web shows White labeled an
anti-Fascist rather than a pacifist, and in addition to his
description of life among the ants emphasizing the fascism as much
as the warlike aspects, he has Merlyn explicitly commenting on
Hitler as well as on the Boer War, and then at the end a
description of Mordred's goings-on that are clearly a parallel
with the Nazis.
White also skips over a lot of the "canonical" Arthurian story,
often saying (in effect), "Well, if you want to know about
thus-and-so, read Malory, because he describes it better than I would."
So in some sense he assumes a previous knowledge of the story.
However, while I have some familiarity with the story, I am not an
Arthurian scholar, and I still had no problem following what was
going on.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING consists of four books, written over a
twenty-year period. A fifth book, THE BOOK OF MERLYN, is
supposedly even more anti-war, but I decided to stop (for now)
with these.
THE SWORD IN THE STONE
by T. H. White:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/06/2014]
THE SWORD IN THE STONE by T. H. White (first part of THE ONCE AND
FUTURE KING, ISBN 978-0-441-62740-0) (204 pages): One note here:
The text of THE SWORD IN THE STONE by T. H. White has been modified
from the original 1938 text. First it was edited for its American
publication, and then further modified when published as part of
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. Supposedly, stand-alone editions of THE
SWORD IN THE STONE retain the original American edition. Be that
as it may, I am reading the 1958 text.
The best description I can come up with for this is Thomas Malory
meets Mark Twain, except of course, Twain did it first with A
CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. By this I mean that
both authors take the King Arthur story, set in some unspecific
time, and gave it a modern twist in language and attitudes. Twain
did it by adding a modern man to the mix; what White did was to
bring it up to date to 1938 by making it totally anachronistic.
This is clearly intentional; White says so on page two when he has
a character talk about sending Kay and Arthur to Eton, and then
writes, "It was not really Eton that he mentioned, for the College
of Blessed Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of
the same sort. Also they were drinking Metheglyn, not port, but by
mentioning the modern wine it is easier to give you the feel."
So when characters talk about Indians with bows and arrows, and
turkey feathers, and such, we are supposed to understand that they
are talking about something else entirely. This makes things a lot
easier for White, because he does not have to worry about being
accurate.
I just wish White would be consistent. In Chapter 3, he refers to
a bunch of turkey feathers in Merlyn's upstairs room (along with
dozens of other anachronistic items), but in Chapter 15, he says
there was no turkey for Christmas dinner, because "this bird had
not yet been invented."
However, White also seems to have decided he has to use every
arcane medieval-sounding word: gad, goshawk, snurt, craye, swivel,
varvels, rufter, merlin, tiercel, mute, asting, yarak, austringer,
rouse, sounder, gore-crow, warrantable, fewmet, libbard, brachet,
mollock. And those are just from the first two chapters! Maybe
this is to counteract the modernity of some of the imagery so that
you remember you are in an earlier time.
The big difference between Twain and White is that while Twain's
goal is to show the reader the darker side of the whole medieval
"myth," White shows its foolishness by cranking it up to the
ridiculous: "In the spring, the flowers came out obediently in the
meads, and the dews sparkled, and the birds sang. In the summer,
it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did
rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange
it so that it rained while you were in bed. ... And, in the
winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay
evenly, three feet thick, but never turned to slush." (Or as
paraphrased by Alan Jay Lerner, "The rain may never fall till after
sundown / By eight the morning fog must disappear.") In fact, all
of Chapter 15 is like this and it, along with the joust in Chapter,
are the two tours-de-force of the novel.
(This reminds me of what I always say, that I do not mind if it
snows, as long as it snows only on the lawns and not on the roads
and driveways.)
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