KING ARTHUR
I finally got round to watching King Arthur after a couple of years of prevarication (and after a prod by JM) and I have to say I enjoyed it. The prevarication was due to fear of another Braveheart-type fiasco, but in fact this does seem to be a real attempt to get to the roots of what became the myth of the great and noble King and his beautiful Queen and the Round Table and the Knights Errant, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain and the rest, fighting what had to be in the long run a losing battle against the forces of darkness - had to be, inevitably, because we know that with their passing the lights went out all over western Europe and the so-called Dark Ages began, and lasted for centuries - many would say until the renaissance, i.e. right through the medieval period. It depends on your view of Catholicism.
The plot revolves around a legend that the knights had been brought in by the Romans from somewhere at the opposite end of the Empire, and were left to guard the Wall that marked its north-west boundary when Rome itself was falling and the legions were all called home.
The knights had been promised that after twenty years they would be given their freedom and allowed to make their way back to their homeland.
Now the twenty years are up.
Their captain, Arthur, is not one of them, he is a half-Roman half-British soldier, whose commission also now comes to an end and who dreams of going "home" to Rome.
At the last moment they are informed by the Roman bishop Germanus (a nasty piece of work if ever there was one) that they must rescue a Roman family who live beyond the Wall and whose lives are in danger now that the natives are once more getting restless.
They have no choice. However, the evacuation of the Roman family does not go according to plan. The natives are rather more than restless and are being led by (guess who) Merlin and Guenevere. But actually some of the best sources for Guenevere do point to her being a wild Caledonian/Pictish warrior princess, and Keira Knightley certainly looks the part, running around in the snow wearing little more than leather straps and body paint (it was known as woad in those days, and the Picti got their name from it, Latin pictus, painted).
To find out what happens next, see the film. I do heartily recommend it. Keira Knightley, and Clive Owen as a very low-key natural and believable Arthur, are excellent. My only criticism is of Lancelot. Ioan Gruffudd does his best with the part, but a Welsh Lancelot is highly unlikly. In fact any Lancelot at all is highly unlikely. He is almost certainly a later, medieval French addition to the story. And if he did have earlier roots then he would have been another Pict, or a Scot (Norma Lorre Goodrich equates his name with Angus). Either way his presence is rather pointless as there is no affair, or room for one in the plot, between him and Guenevere; all the electricity is between her and Arthur from the moment they first set eyes on each other when he, not Lancelot, rescues her from her appalling underground prison. In this film it is their story, and it is a good one.
MBG
