Retrospective: Excalibur (Patreon)

Thanks to Martin Scorsese for lending his personal 35 mm copy of Excalibur to the Dryden Theatre in Rochester, New York. Full disclosure: I am a paying member of the Eastman Museum and the Dryden Theatre.

When the opening lecturer at our screening said Martin Scorsese had lent the Eastman Museum his personal 35mm copy of Excalibur, I audibly "holy shit." A lot of people in my vicinity laughed. I hope they laughed when I feel asleep halfway through this screening of one of my favorite movies of all time. Being a television producer is hard work. And sometimes it makes you so tired that you sleep through Nicol Williamson as Merlin describing himself as "a dream to some... A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!" I am drafting a letter to my alma mater in which I demand restitution for getting driven into this career.

Anyway. Excalibur is soaked in Tolkien. This has lots of John Boorman's abandoned Lord of the Rings script (which is one of the most insane things I've ever read). In some ways, Excalibur follows Tolkien's themes more closely than Peter Jackson. Excalibur doesn't track the exploits of a single character throughout its runtime. Merlin, the only character who's present throughout nearly the whole movie, is largely defined by his fading nature (and indeed, the third act starts when he's removed from the action). Excalibur is the protagonist; the Grand Mechanism of History whose presence or absence determines how power works. And ultimately, the Britain of Excalibur is a land in decline. Shit, the movie ends with Perceval casting the Sword of Power away. This is not pure Arthuriana; this is Arthuriana by a filmmaker who really wants to make The Lord of the Rings.

While Excalibur is dazzlingly weird (with some of the trippiest lighting ever captured on film), it's a deeply psychological and personal work. The whims and foibles of Uther, Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and Morgana drive the story. It's a tapestry of debauchery, lust, and foolishness. Power gets disrupted by sex, but sex is power. It's bizarre, messy, and has no sense of coherent space time.

Which is to say it's a perfect adaptation of Arthurian myth and one of the greatest films ever made. It is enrapturing from beginning to end, with tremendous set design, lighting, and performances (Nicol Williamson as Merlin gives perhaps the single greatest performance in British cinema). And it's shockingly funny; this isn't humorless weirdness like Boorman's Zardoz; at times it's outright hilarious (Merlin being shocked by the sight of lightning striking a tree made me holler). There's nothing didactic, hateful, or slavishly loyal to the source material here. Excalibur is simply pure joy from beginning to end. If Britain produced a movie like this, maybe it deserves to survive.