Excalibur (1981): time, truth and dragon’s breath

Award - defender man of filmic wonderness

Forged when the world was young, and bird and beast and flower were one with man, and death was but a dream..

It was 1981, and Excalibur’s hungry gleam was again hidden from the world. A man called John Boorman awoke at the dawn of a new decade, and saw two possible worlds – for there are many. His eye fell upon the fetid loping of bankers and politicians, on greed and shiny surfaces, on people chopping out lines of self-importance. The building of buildings, yet no sprite of stream, no dryad of deciduous forest. One ear quavered at the menacing wail of the synth, that seemed to tell of tribal viciousness in New York subway toilets, and of prisoners under assault by anarchists contemptuous even of death’s rule

And yet Boorman’s other eye watched his golden haired son gambol and laugh, free and full of the future. Could this not also be an age of huge helpless hopefulness massive positive wonderment…. unselfconsciousness a silent watchword? One ear might quaver, but the other revolved anti-clockwise when Nicol Williamson spoke. An idea ascended, yea, as if a lady’s fair hand propelled it aloft to break the surface of a lake upon which he goggled, and held it there in the sunshine. A merry band of modern knights. Lighting rigs instead of maces. Shiny shiny metal of shining metal. The eyes of time rolled up and back, cast forward and ceased to be. A hand reached forth and grasped destiny’s destination. Excalibur was once more in the hands of a king.

Today films are more real, grittier, darker, better looking… but they just aren’t honest. I don’t believe them. They’re fat and slick and full of the most over-studied acting and cinematography like a huge unkind man with an expert ironic haircut standing at a bar carefully not laughing at someone’s joke, even if he thinks it funny. Or maybe he’s so practised he doesn’t even think it is funny anymore. Orrrr he craftily overlaughs big lungfuls in posthuman mockery. I see this man everywhere, and with this man everywhere it stands to reason that some of him make the films we watch now.

The ’80s had its share of arrogants and terrible empty illusion pimps, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. But they were big, self-believing arrogants, believing in things they were doing, childish and foolish and brash and over the top and paranoid but pure in these things, and the so the films feel free and brave and not even brave but ignorant of the need for bravery, just people doing things they wanted to do, and lo, Excalibur, Flash Gordon, Back To The Future. They don’t feel like films made with worry for what the audience wants or expects or what awards are around. Please allow me to contradict myself: few ’80s films are among my favourites. They aren’t, when it really comes down to it, any good. But I am fonder of these films than any other. They are fun and honest and foolish and embarrassing, but sometimes the laughter at the man dressed in a codpiece stops because he has said something wise about the nature of time. Sometimes you can’t help but feel today that a modern film is so terrified of saying anything straight for fear of losing it’s cool image that it ends up hardly saying anything at all.

I will no longer be ashamed of my love for Excalibur and its brethren films, I love them for great and noble reasons and if you say otherwise I’ll adopt your physiognomy and make off with your wife! My defiance is thrilling and probably makes your wife want to make off with me anyway, but she and I know the truth:

‘The days of our kind are numberèd. The one God comes to drive out the many gods. The spirits of wood and stream grow silent. It’s the way of things. Yes… it’s a time for men, and their ways. ‘

Reasons to be cheerful

• Dragon’s breath, Merlin and the dragon, is it magic, is it everything, is it England
• It’s so real…
• If in doubt, shout (letting volume and speed take the place of conveying anything)
• Jesus, the Dark Ages, the Holy Grail, myths. When did anything happen?
• Chases should be much slower and longer. Struggle through that mud, fall in that mud. The terror of the creep.
• How to kill someone covered in metal plates. When you gleam, you’ve made it. Beware the golden nipples.
• Dreams very important, the secrets of self and possibly of eternal life.
• Beauty, actual beauty.
• A crap film to watch, point at and laugh? No friends, no. Well a bit yes. But also poetry, wisdom, all of time, pockets of plenty and (this really can’t be stressed enough) Nicol Williamson giving possibly the most important vocal performance on record as Merlin.

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