The once and future king
Jul. 11th, 2004 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThe intellectual review of the movie King Arthur:
Even when I was working as a film critic, I often felt out of step with all the other film writers in town because i didn't share that snooty, hermetic Cahiers du Cinema mindest that derided action movies, romance, sicience fiction, whatever was mainstream. These days critics seem to be divided into two camps, those asshats I just mentioned, all "French cinema is the only thing that counts" and the morons who wouldn't know Eisenstein from Einstein and came into film "crit" because they like going to free movies, but have never bothered to learn enough to be discerning. So it's not at all unusual for me to feel completely out of step with the derision being directed at King Arthur, but what bothers me most is that so much of it is being leveled at the film because it doesn't tell the familiar fairy tale of Camelot and tries to, while still being a very Hollywoody, old-fashioned action epic, get at something more accurately historical about where the legends sprang from. It's like they demand that a movie not succumb to the familiar treatments of a false story, but then they criticize it for doing exactly that and not having any of the elements everyone wants to love so much.
And to me, that's one of the things that made KA so enjoyable -- it' s not a perfect movie, not by a long chalk, but it's got enough qualities to recommend it, not the least is the stealing of major characters from the later fictions (Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, Tristan, you name it) and trying to tweak them into something new and slightly more believable. It shows that Antione Fuqua's original hard-R cut has been messed with in the attempt to have a summer kid-friendly bloody sword epic, but I still felt there was enough of a dynamic new story that the slamming is really unfair. But I don't think any movie these days that attempts history, even if somewhat muddied history, will ever get a fair shake from critics, especially if they have action in them, because action=bad.
While a lot of the movie has faults -- a voiceover narration that feels as false as Deckard's in Blade Runner, some seriously cornball dialog, just about everything with Keira Knightley as Guinevere (I used to adore her, why am I starting to dislike her so? Maybe it's the overused squint), and a horrible, exposition-laden flashback to a pivotal event in Arthur's childhood -- one of them, to my mind, is not the fact that Arthur himself is boring or remote, which seems to be something everyone is hammering on. This is a story of a place and time at a crossroads, and about a man at a crossroads, and I think the genius of what Clive Owen does with the character and Fuqua did with the story was to start before the crossroads, and keep the evolution of the time/place and the character going throughout the movie. Arthur is seriously conflicted -- he's a man who believes very deeply in the ideal of Rome, in his Christian faith, but neither of these ideals is serving him at all in the situation as the story unfolds. Then he finds himself having feelings for a woman who is both his enemy and someone who should be, in his worldview, dirt beneath his feet. Throw in the fact that his actions to save his enemies in the face of a new enemy make his knights doubt him, and make him doubt himself, and drives a wedge between him and his closest friend, Lancelot, and you get a great psychological soup-pot. This, for me, was the true joy of the movie and made the bad spots bearable. This Arthur is watchful and wary, cautious and removed, because he has to be: he's a leader, but suddenly he's leading something he doesn't know if he believes in, and the development of his changing character is wonderful. For once, a big action epic took the time to let a character develop from point A to point Z.
It's clear, though, that much of that development has been cut out of the movie, and of Lancelot's doubts, and I can only hope that we'll see them in the R-rated version that Disney promised Fuqua for screwing with his movie so heavily. The ending felt tacked on, and it was, because audiences didn't understand how this version of Arthur could give rise to the legendary, mythological version, and it will be interesting to see some of the scenes where I have the impression we get to see more of the inner turmoil of Arthur and Lancelot (but which were in commercials and trailers). But it's clear from the reaction of the critics that no matter how much people deride the legend, that's what they want to be fed. Take away things like the Lady of the Lake, Merlin as a magician (instead of a Pict warrior leader), the love triangle, all of that, and everyone seems to be left floundering, unable to see the richness of a character who's undergoing a great deal of change in a place that's also on the cusp of upheaval and turmoil.
The shallow review
I confess, I went to this primarily because of the eye candy. I've been disappointed in every single Arthur movie I have ever seen and had no overwhelming desire to subject myself to yet another stupid, overblown, tricked out story (and no, I don't consider MP & The Holy Grail a real Arthur movie), except that this had Clive Owen, one of my greatest heartthrobs, and Ioan Gruffudd, not to mention wonderful players like Stellan Skarsgard (who I'd forgotten has worked with Clive before, in one of the better BMW The Hire films), Hugh Dancy, and Ray Winstone (who always steals every movie he's in, and this is no exception -- he's a fantastic addition, with his great bovver-boy blowhard act and his dog-like devotion to Arthur). And oh my, was I not disappointed.
As a person who normally does not like facial hair on most men, I was surprised the first time I saw a picture from the film, seeing how good Ioan looked with that beard. He should keep it, always. And never give up the leather quilted tunic, either. Or the two swords. He's just stunning, and his voice is like buddah, and those big brown eyes are so soulful, especially when he's got them trained on Arthur. He does his best with a fairly sketchy role, and I get the impression there is more to his story that we may be able to see in a DVD release.
I seem to be one of the only people I know who went to it for Clive -- all anyone seems to talk about is Ioan, so apparently there aren't many folks I know who share my appreciation for the other one with a Welsh name. But I couldn't have been happier with the view in this movie -- there aren't many long shots of him, but whenever we got a full body shot of him in the Roman armor, I just about fainted, and when he stands on the ramparts of the fort in one shot towards the end of the movie, in only a black split-necked tunic and leather trousers and the big boots, I think my heart actually did stop. Good god, was that a look that worked for him, especially with his wavy curly black hair all grown out like that. He looks stunning throughout, and they clearly lit this movie for his eyes.
For years, I've watched Clive fans debate the true color of his eyes -- we get extreme closeups of his eyes in Second Sight, where they seem to be blue, but there are people who swear they're green and in some movies, they do look like that. Now, seeing those crystal irises 20 feet high and with exceptional underlighting, I know that they're both -- they are blue and gorgeous green and gold as well, that true hazel with golden inner tones that make them look other colors. If they made a movie just about his eyes, I would be a happy woman. I really believe he has the most gorgeous eyes of any actor working today. (Why, oh why, won't I'll Sleep When I'm Dead ever arrive here? It's so rare to get to see Clive on the big screen over here, and I just hate that it's not playing in my city.)
And as for the relationships -- while I definitely felt there was more sparkage between Keira Knightley and Clive than most of the snipers are saying (and why does everyone gripe about his age vs. her age? For crying out loud, the last big Arthur movie had Sean Connery with Julia Ormond!), it's really clear that this isn't where Fuqua wanted to place the emphasis. The intensity for both Clive as an actor and for the character comes when Arthur is with his knights, and especially with Lancelot. There is serious slash potential here, and I was giddy with joy at how intimately they touch each other when they're arguing at the end. And I kept thinking that this remoteness everyone is complaining about was what worked so well for Clive as Arthur -- even while the character is getting hammered on, most critics are talking about how Clive is usually such a charismatic actor, has this incredible aura, etc., but I think they're missing the point of what he's doing here. With the knights, he turns into a very dynamic, intense guy; with others, he's distanced, closed off, the way a leader must sometimes be. He's always watching things (with those incredible eyes!), always evaluating, and it's this caution that makes him so alive and human with his knights. I don't know, I guess I must be unusual, because I find that yummy, not boring.
Fuqua's element is manly men doing manly things and having mixed motives, etc. I think the characterizations here, even as cut up as they are, do that, and it's to the actors' credit that they're still able to bring in those qualities after such a harsh edit to the film. It would be impossible not to fall in love with all the knights; they seem like a truly believable band of brothers. I was hopeful that at last Clive might reach a larger audience and thus get the pick of cooler roles (the long-promised international stardom after Croupier never really happened, and Beyond Borders went nowhere, of course; though I was heartened to see him address the "he's the next James Bond" issue in EW this week by commenting that no one has ever approached him and he thinks it's really unfair to Pierce Brosnan that journalists keep bringing it up), but after Arthur got bumped from the EW cover by Brando's death (yeah, yeah, I have no respect), and it's been trounced by the critics and only done what used to be pretty respectable -- third -- at the box office, I'm doubtful. But my adoration remains unabated. Most actors seem to get scarier as they get craggier, like Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson, but Clive just seems to be getting prettier the older and more rugged he gets. He looks damn good swinging a sword, exchanging knowing looks with Ioan and sparking with him, and being all kingly and leaderly. And really, in the end? That's good enough for me.
Even when I was working as a film critic, I often felt out of step with all the other film writers in town because i didn't share that snooty, hermetic Cahiers du Cinema mindest that derided action movies, romance, sicience fiction, whatever was mainstream. These days critics seem to be divided into two camps, those asshats I just mentioned, all "French cinema is the only thing that counts" and the morons who wouldn't know Eisenstein from Einstein and came into film "crit" because they like going to free movies, but have never bothered to learn enough to be discerning. So it's not at all unusual for me to feel completely out of step with the derision being directed at King Arthur, but what bothers me most is that so much of it is being leveled at the film because it doesn't tell the familiar fairy tale of Camelot and tries to, while still being a very Hollywoody, old-fashioned action epic, get at something more accurately historical about where the legends sprang from. It's like they demand that a movie not succumb to the familiar treatments of a false story, but then they criticize it for doing exactly that and not having any of the elements everyone wants to love so much.
And to me, that's one of the things that made KA so enjoyable -- it' s not a perfect movie, not by a long chalk, but it's got enough qualities to recommend it, not the least is the stealing of major characters from the later fictions (Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, Tristan, you name it) and trying to tweak them into something new and slightly more believable. It shows that Antione Fuqua's original hard-R cut has been messed with in the attempt to have a summer kid-friendly bloody sword epic, but I still felt there was enough of a dynamic new story that the slamming is really unfair. But I don't think any movie these days that attempts history, even if somewhat muddied history, will ever get a fair shake from critics, especially if they have action in them, because action=bad.
While a lot of the movie has faults -- a voiceover narration that feels as false as Deckard's in Blade Runner, some seriously cornball dialog, just about everything with Keira Knightley as Guinevere (I used to adore her, why am I starting to dislike her so? Maybe it's the overused squint), and a horrible, exposition-laden flashback to a pivotal event in Arthur's childhood -- one of them, to my mind, is not the fact that Arthur himself is boring or remote, which seems to be something everyone is hammering on. This is a story of a place and time at a crossroads, and about a man at a crossroads, and I think the genius of what Clive Owen does with the character and Fuqua did with the story was to start before the crossroads, and keep the evolution of the time/place and the character going throughout the movie. Arthur is seriously conflicted -- he's a man who believes very deeply in the ideal of Rome, in his Christian faith, but neither of these ideals is serving him at all in the situation as the story unfolds. Then he finds himself having feelings for a woman who is both his enemy and someone who should be, in his worldview, dirt beneath his feet. Throw in the fact that his actions to save his enemies in the face of a new enemy make his knights doubt him, and make him doubt himself, and drives a wedge between him and his closest friend, Lancelot, and you get a great psychological soup-pot. This, for me, was the true joy of the movie and made the bad spots bearable. This Arthur is watchful and wary, cautious and removed, because he has to be: he's a leader, but suddenly he's leading something he doesn't know if he believes in, and the development of his changing character is wonderful. For once, a big action epic took the time to let a character develop from point A to point Z.
It's clear, though, that much of that development has been cut out of the movie, and of Lancelot's doubts, and I can only hope that we'll see them in the R-rated version that Disney promised Fuqua for screwing with his movie so heavily. The ending felt tacked on, and it was, because audiences didn't understand how this version of Arthur could give rise to the legendary, mythological version, and it will be interesting to see some of the scenes where I have the impression we get to see more of the inner turmoil of Arthur and Lancelot (but which were in commercials and trailers). But it's clear from the reaction of the critics that no matter how much people deride the legend, that's what they want to be fed. Take away things like the Lady of the Lake, Merlin as a magician (instead of a Pict warrior leader), the love triangle, all of that, and everyone seems to be left floundering, unable to see the richness of a character who's undergoing a great deal of change in a place that's also on the cusp of upheaval and turmoil.
The shallow review
I confess, I went to this primarily because of the eye candy. I've been disappointed in every single Arthur movie I have ever seen and had no overwhelming desire to subject myself to yet another stupid, overblown, tricked out story (and no, I don't consider MP & The Holy Grail a real Arthur movie), except that this had Clive Owen, one of my greatest heartthrobs, and Ioan Gruffudd, not to mention wonderful players like Stellan Skarsgard (who I'd forgotten has worked with Clive before, in one of the better BMW The Hire films), Hugh Dancy, and Ray Winstone (who always steals every movie he's in, and this is no exception -- he's a fantastic addition, with his great bovver-boy blowhard act and his dog-like devotion to Arthur). And oh my, was I not disappointed.
As a person who normally does not like facial hair on most men, I was surprised the first time I saw a picture from the film, seeing how good Ioan looked with that beard. He should keep it, always. And never give up the leather quilted tunic, either. Or the two swords. He's just stunning, and his voice is like buddah, and those big brown eyes are so soulful, especially when he's got them trained on Arthur. He does his best with a fairly sketchy role, and I get the impression there is more to his story that we may be able to see in a DVD release.
I seem to be one of the only people I know who went to it for Clive -- all anyone seems to talk about is Ioan, so apparently there aren't many folks I know who share my appreciation for the other one with a Welsh name. But I couldn't have been happier with the view in this movie -- there aren't many long shots of him, but whenever we got a full body shot of him in the Roman armor, I just about fainted, and when he stands on the ramparts of the fort in one shot towards the end of the movie, in only a black split-necked tunic and leather trousers and the big boots, I think my heart actually did stop. Good god, was that a look that worked for him, especially with his wavy curly black hair all grown out like that. He looks stunning throughout, and they clearly lit this movie for his eyes.
For years, I've watched Clive fans debate the true color of his eyes -- we get extreme closeups of his eyes in Second Sight, where they seem to be blue, but there are people who swear they're green and in some movies, they do look like that. Now, seeing those crystal irises 20 feet high and with exceptional underlighting, I know that they're both -- they are blue and gorgeous green and gold as well, that true hazel with golden inner tones that make them look other colors. If they made a movie just about his eyes, I would be a happy woman. I really believe he has the most gorgeous eyes of any actor working today. (Why, oh why, won't I'll Sleep When I'm Dead ever arrive here? It's so rare to get to see Clive on the big screen over here, and I just hate that it's not playing in my city.)
And as for the relationships -- while I definitely felt there was more sparkage between Keira Knightley and Clive than most of the snipers are saying (and why does everyone gripe about his age vs. her age? For crying out loud, the last big Arthur movie had Sean Connery with Julia Ormond!), it's really clear that this isn't where Fuqua wanted to place the emphasis. The intensity for both Clive as an actor and for the character comes when Arthur is with his knights, and especially with Lancelot. There is serious slash potential here, and I was giddy with joy at how intimately they touch each other when they're arguing at the end. And I kept thinking that this remoteness everyone is complaining about was what worked so well for Clive as Arthur -- even while the character is getting hammered on, most critics are talking about how Clive is usually such a charismatic actor, has this incredible aura, etc., but I think they're missing the point of what he's doing here. With the knights, he turns into a very dynamic, intense guy; with others, he's distanced, closed off, the way a leader must sometimes be. He's always watching things (with those incredible eyes!), always evaluating, and it's this caution that makes him so alive and human with his knights. I don't know, I guess I must be unusual, because I find that yummy, not boring.
Fuqua's element is manly men doing manly things and having mixed motives, etc. I think the characterizations here, even as cut up as they are, do that, and it's to the actors' credit that they're still able to bring in those qualities after such a harsh edit to the film. It would be impossible not to fall in love with all the knights; they seem like a truly believable band of brothers. I was hopeful that at last Clive might reach a larger audience and thus get the pick of cooler roles (the long-promised international stardom after Croupier never really happened, and Beyond Borders went nowhere, of course; though I was heartened to see him address the "he's the next James Bond" issue in EW this week by commenting that no one has ever approached him and he thinks it's really unfair to Pierce Brosnan that journalists keep bringing it up), but after Arthur got bumped from the EW cover by Brando's death (yeah, yeah, I have no respect), and it's been trounced by the critics and only done what used to be pretty respectable -- third -- at the box office, I'm doubtful. But my adoration remains unabated. Most actors seem to get scarier as they get craggier, like Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson, but Clive just seems to be getting prettier the older and more rugged he gets. He looks damn good swinging a sword, exchanging knowing looks with Ioan and sparking with him, and being all kingly and leaderly. And really, in the end? That's good enough for me.
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Date: 2004-07-11 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 09:08 am (UTC)