It is from Malory that the majority of Arthuriana was encapsulated – Arthur’s birth and upbringing, the sword in the stone, the wizard Merlin, the adventures of Arthur’s most trusted and heroic knight Lancelot, as well as the doomed, adulterous romances of both Lancelot and Arthur’s queen Guinevere and similarly the tragedy of Cornish prince Tristan and the queen Isolde. Arthur was supposed to have existed in some time in The Dark Ages (the latter half of the first millennium after the birth of Christ) and was a ruler who brought together the majority of Britain as one (‘one ruler, one land’, to quote the words of Arthur’s father in this film) after defeating the Saxons in battle – over the next 500 years the building blocks of what became the Arthurian myth were set in motion, be it through the works of the British cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth and the French poet Chretien de Troyes in the 12th century or, and this was the most substantial influence on Boorman’s film, the epic poem Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) which built on or fully established much of what we recognise about the legend today – it is this text that Boorman and co-writer Rospo Pallenberg used as their main source of inspiration for Excalibur.
As far back as I can remember, elements of the Arthur myth have always been there in my life, be it in the abridged versions of children’s literature I read, or a viewing of Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, and even in the countless stories that in some way or another, have borrowed many a classic narrative from one part or another of Arthurian myth without explicitly referring to it. Whether or not Arthur was real (the overwhelming consensus is that he wasn’t) is now beside the point – his life and legacy has become a world of fascination for researchers, readers, viewers, listeners and gamers of all ages and all generations. The legend of Arthur is so complex and has been subject to so many retellings, homages, parodies, inversions, critiques and subversions across a myriad of mediums that to try and take them all in requires almost scholarly dedication. It was a phenomenal return to form for director John Boorman, who for many had lost his way big-time with the double-whammy of 1974’s Zardoz (a film I like) and 1978’s Exorcist II: The Heretic (a deeply flawed work, but not entirely without merit) – it’s a bold, bravura and brilliant epic retelling of Britain’s most enduring myth – the birth, life, death and expected return of King Arthur. When it comes to all-time great fantasy films, Excalibur is one of the greatest.
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