Holy Mists of Avalon! This summer's take on KING ARTHUR takes place way back when, before the Renaissance, or the Dark Ages, or the movie CAMELOT, or Jackie Kennedy even. According to a little blurb at the beginning of the movie, this version is based on some new archeological findings or something - if it's scientific, I'm a Saxon. But the lack of historical veracity didn't diminish my enjoyment of this rousing tale of handsome Lancelot, Tristan, Gawain, and the others in black leather battling Saxons and some typically bad English weather.
In this version, the noted king of ancient Britain was a half-Roman, half-Briton legionnaire (Clive Owen)-who spends his spare time reading Roman political philosophy and avoiding women-and the knights of his Round Table are conscripts from some place called Sarmatia, which looked to be in the neighborhood of Moscow on the totally realistic ancient map they showed. By the way, the Round Table is huge and is actually more of a doughnut shape. Meanwhile, northern England typically is beset with weather that would make the next Ice Age proud, which helps explain why Arthur looks forward to returning to sunny and (he thinks) democratic Roma.
We meet this international house of hunkhood as they are mopping up their final battle with the native Britons, a wild bunch favoring blue body paint, forest warfare, and "Romans Go Home" banners; their leader is Merlin, who is wizened if not a wizard in this story. It's 493 A.D, and after 15 years of servitude and wistful dreams of sunny childhood days spent in the family yurt back in Sarmatia, Arthur's men are about to be freed to go home. But the Bishop of Rome has other plans: they have to go north of Hadrian's Wall to rescue some wayward Romans and bring them back before the Saxons overrun Scotland.
Before they leave, we have the obligatory "night of historically accurate revelry" that so brightened TROY and allows us to see the men interacting with their local women, children, friends, and expendable extras who will no doubt die in the "big battle."
Next day, Arthur and his men reluctantly schlep north and are disillusioned to discover that the Romans aren't such nice people, the natives they keep as slaves are a comely and fair-minded people with the eternal appeal that comes with fighting for one's homeland in a mostly naked fashion, and no one's invented MacCallan's yet. Unsurprisingly, everyone thinks the Saxons are just bad news, play war unfairly, and have very bad teeth and hair.
Mostly, though, this adventure serves to introduce the boys to Guinevere (Keira Knightley), who is one fiercely proud and very accurate archer (and when cleaned up turns out to have very white teeth, bangs, and a pointy chin). She quickly becomes a favorite of shy Lancelot and manly Arthur, either because of this warrior quality or because of her flair for going into battle in an oversized Coach belt and some flimsy fabric. Like Mrs Astor on the Titanic, she lets others take her fur wrap and soldiers on. One look at her and suddenly you knew where Scarlett O'Hara got the idea to make a dress from the drapes.
The Britons make a final stand as the Romans scoot for Ostia and the Saxons are about to overrun the Wall and add their name forevermore to that scepter'd isle's native stock. After all these years, are Arthur and his Knights still Roman and Sarmatian, or are they Britons and potential mates for Guinevere and the other English maidens?
Well, I'm not going to tell you. Just think about it.
This movie may not be historically accurate (see note below), but it was packed with handsome strapping men, riding horses, sitting around the campfire, wearing woven leather and armor, and doing all sorts of honorable, proto-democracy manly stuff. As a friend said, if you could put the grooming issues into context, the guys were very worth looking at. Yeah, they were the type with dark hair and blue eyes that are kind of irresistible. Frankly, as a half Roman, half Anglo-Celt-Saxon myself, I enjoyed seeing a cast full of my "peeps" and couldn't help but think, damn, we make a good-looking group.
I also recently saw the unintentionally humorous and occasionally hair-raising time-travel movie TIMELINE, which had some crackpot story about archeologists, a battle during the Hundred Years' War, a Bill Gates-like evil software genius, faxing one's self to France, and cross-century love. It featured a dramatic battle scene using a device called the trebuchet that throws giant rocks or flaming rocks using a counterweight and some well-thought out geometry. In KING ARTHUR, the Britons also used a battle line of trebuchets to attack the larger Saxon army. Apparently, the early British invention of the for-some-reason-French-named trebuchet has been lost to history, as history tells us that it was invented in Siena, Italy, by the "Sienese Archimedes," Mariano Taccola, around 1400 AD. Just a little tidbit I picked up around town.