King Arthur Movie - Review

It’s an epic tale of sex, violence and religion. No wonder the armour-plated deeds of King Arthur still appeal, says Ronald Hutton

Jerry Bruckheimer’s King Arthur, released at the end of the month, is being hailed as the “most historically accurate” version of the legend brought to film. It is the latest product of the current revival of epic cinema - not since the Fifties have so many actors buckled on breastplates - and the only puzzling thing about it is that it didn’t arrive even faster than it did. The cycle of tales about Arthur add up not merely to one of the most famous legends of history, but the greatest in the modern world. Between 1965 and 1985 more than 8,000 books were dedicated to it, and the figure for the period since seems to be still higher. On the screen, its dominance has been even more obvious, as over the past 50 years it has been the subject of more cinema and television dramas, in both filmed action and cartoon, than any other tale: in other words, Arthur has apparently been portrayed more often, as a hero of moving pictures, than any other figure that the planet has ever known. If the knight in armour is our society’s traditional image of the ideal warrior, combining muscle-power and glamorous hardware with high ideals, then Arthur and his band of followers are the super-knights of all time. This star quality is so obvious, and so familiar, that it is easy to forget how peculiar a phenomenon it actually represents. As warrior, statesman or lover, Arthur is thoroughly outclassed by many other characters in history or literature. If he existed at all, he left no obvious lasting achievement, and his legend makes clear that both his public and his private life ended in disaster. So why is he so compelling?

The easy answer to that question is that his story is simply such an effective one. He is an ordinary lad made good, brought up in obscurity only to be revealed on the edge of manhood as the rightful heir to the throne of Britain, by drawing a magical sword from a stone. He then fights his way to supreme and unchallenged power with the aid of a wizard and a still better sword, given by a fairy woman, and gathers the finest knights of his age, seated as equals about a Round Table.

Now the story darkens, to bring in elements of deeper mystery and of tragedy. His knights get sidetracked into a quest for the Holy Grail, a marvellous and sacred object which confers spiritual glory but few practical advantages on the kingdom. Returning exhausted and reduced in numbers, they fall out among themselves.

Arthur’s wife betrays him with his best friend, he is then betrayed by his own nephew (in some accounts his own son), and his fellowship of comrades is destroyed in a bitter civil war, out of which he is carried desperately wounded, and disappears; perhaps to die, perhaps to wait, in an immortal realm, for the time when his kingdom needs him again.

What we have here, therefore, is a heady mixture of sex, violence, chivalry and piety. It comes in a single long tale that makes perfect sense overall, but has lots of different episodes that can be made into stories in their own right. Bits of plot, and characters, can be deleted, enlarged, arranged and reinterpreted more or less as anybody wants: a screenplay writer’s dream.

The resonances of Arthurian heroes are so many that they can be fitted to a range of modern figures, adapting as societies change. At the opening of the 20th century any young soldier heading off to fight for his country abroad could be compared to one of the Round Table’s knights: Lawrence of Arabia took with him into the desert a gun, a knife and a book of Arthurian tales. Churchill, squaring up to Hitler, was regarded as an Arthur returned from the shadows to save his nation. Two decades later it was the courtly and debonair J. F. Kennedy who took on the mantle.

In the present age it is a Beckham or a Rooney, voyaging away to do battle for national honour, according to a code of rules, who wears it with pride. A cynic would also notice that the popular film industry is dominated by the US, the parent nation of which is Britain. As Arthur is the greatest hero that British tradition has produced, he automatically gets celebrity status from Uncle Sam in a way that (say) a French, Arab or Indian leader would not.

These facts do not, however, do enough in themselves to explain his popularity: British tradition has other heroes, and other stories are just as powerful, but his is the one that goes furthest. It does so because, more than any other, it is situated at a meeting-point of nations, cultures, loyalties and ideas: it can face in more directions than any of its competitors. To put it another way, Arthur is both bankable and user-friendly.

The first boundary at which he operates is that between fact and fiction. As nobody is sure of whether he ever existed, let alone what he actually did, any writer of a novel or screenplay is going to be immune from historians grumbling about inaccuracies or traditional peoples claiming that their ancestors have been unfairly represented. On the other hand, because his story exists in so many traditional versions and forms, any adaptation of it is equally safe against fans who complain that a beloved original story has been corrupted.

Arthur provides an automatic indemnity for creative licence. Furthermore, he has come in three quite different, and equally acceptable, forms. There is the glamorous version of medieval romance, of battlemented castles, plate armour, fair ladies, tournaments and heraldry: the “establishment” monarch. Then there is the Celtic chieftain, living in a thatched hall with a warband who sport trailing hair and moustaches, leather gear, designer jewellery and tattoos, sponsoring folk music and hanging out with feisty women who can match the menfolk in everything except the moustaches: the “counter-cultural” Arthur.

This character appears in the early medieval legends, but could also plausibly be historical, as could the third face of the hero: the “post-imperial”. In this version, he is the last of the Romans in Britain, a leader hanging on to civilised values and stable government as his world dissolves into barbarism and chaos. All three have been popular in the past half a century, the first appearing most obviously in the cinema, the second on television, and the third in novels.

The current Bruckheimer production must be given credit for coming up with an angle that manages to blend versions two and three, within a plot framework more novel, and more historically adventurous, than any tried before. Its Arthur is the leader of a band of Sarmatian mercenaries (meaning that he comes from what is now southern Russia or Ukraine), sent by the Roman Government to restore order in Britain.

The problem with this concept is that it makes both the Roman interest in Britain, and the Sarmatians themselves, last for about a hundred years more than they did. By claiming a unique historical accuracy for their portrait, the makers of the film actually mean that they have embraced an idea for it so remarkable that nobody has imagined it before; a bit like declaring that Julius Caesar faked his own assassination or that the Vikings built the Mayan pyramids. That this can be done to Arthur, however, proves again what an obliging character he is.

His story, moreover, operates between other worlds as well, such as natural and supernatural, and Christian and pagan. It belongs equally to the Welsh, Scots, Cornish, English and Bretons, and so transcends comfortably the rivalries that have rent Britain and divided it from Europe in historical times.

It also operates at the interface between male and female. It has always included powerful women, some of whom move events in their own right and challenge prevailing values. Admittedly they do so by adultery and sorcery, neither of which are supposed to recommend them in the medieval tales; but all that is needed in the present is a little adroit refashioning and they can grab the sympathy of a modern audience. Perhaps the most distinctively contemporary thing about the current production is that the poster for it that I have most commonly seen is not of Clive Owen, as Arthur, but of Keira Knightley, as Guinevere, dressed in a leather bikini and aiming an arrow at the viewer. Arthur has something for everyone - even, it would seem now, Buffy fans.

King Arthur is released on July 30