"EXCALIBUR" MEDIEVAL MOVIE HOLY GRAIL

          Authoritative, sober, grounded in mythology, John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) is the tale of the Sorcerer, Merlin, the Coming of a King, and the Sword of Power.
          Recent attempts at King Arthur and also Robin Hood in film totally botched it and tanked hard because, as even merely the trailers clearly reveal, the filmmakers give zero attention to authenticity and literary grounding.
          Excalibur flat-out looks and sounds exactly right. Lots of hacking and screaming, nobody pulling any modern mixed martial arts moves flying around on cables, none of that phony computer animation look, just real filmmaking with a filmmaker's eye crafting the frames.
          Boasting great music by Richard Wagner and Carl Orff--the latter being responsible for the famous "O Fortuna" piece from Carmina Burana--Excalibur is the tale of power, lust, and deception woven into the very fabric of Western culture.
          It begins with Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne) coveting Igrayne (played by the director's daughter, Katrine Boorman), the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. With a wizard's help, Uther gets his wish, but the product of this union must go to the wizard.
          The product is Arthur (Nigel Terry), and the wizard is of course Merlin (excellently played by Nicol Williamson). Long before Dumbledore or even Gandalf, there was Merlin. The Disney cartoon The Sword and the Stone, based on T.H. White's The Once and Future King, presents a silly curmudgeon as out of keeping with the character as the youthful "early years" presentation in a recent TV show. Williamson's portrayal of the Druid-like figure has the right balance of eccentricity and mystery.
          Williamson, by the way, plays Little John to Sean Connery's Robin Hood in the fantastic 1976 movie Robin and Marian, also starring Audrey Hepburn.
          Excalibur features terrific supporting performances by Liam Neeson and Patrick Stewart as Knights of Camelot, and features also Helen Mirren as Arthur's evil half-sister, Morgana.
          The Dark Ages, of course, refers to a few centuries in Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire. On the one hand the tale of King Arthur is the story of a sun god who enlightens, descends, and will return. So Arthur's Round Table not only heralds the coming of pizza, it signifies equality, justice, and order.
          Boorman, who also directed Hell in the Pacific, Deliverance, and The Emerald Forest (starring his son Charley), was likely influenced by John Steinbeck's last and unfinished book, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, for which Steinbeck studied Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Conceivably, Boorman, jealous of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), tried his best to make a funnier version, and simply failed. We'll never know.
          Quest for the fair Guenevere, the unbeatable Lancelot, the well-armed Lady of the Lake, nasty little Mordred, and the whole Excalibur gang online through Netflix and other sources.


EXCALIBUR
Starring Nigel Terry,
Helen Mirren,
Nicol Williamson,
Nicholas Clay,
Cherie Lunghi,
Paul Geoffrey,
Robert Addie,
Liam Neeson,
Patrick Stewart
Directed by John Boorman
Written by Rospo Pallenberg, John Boorman
Based on Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Mallory
Runtime 140 minutes
Rated PG


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

HERZOG'S "CAVE" IN-DEPTH

          In 1994 three men found a cave in France with 32,000 year-old paintings inside, which is more than twice as old as the previous oldest cave paintings known.
          At some point in its history, a landslide sealed off the cave, creating a time capsule.
          At the time of the renown German filmmaker Werner Herzog's visit to Chauvet Cave with a camera crew, we see the entrance to the cave protected by a massive steel door "like a bank vault."
          Lascaux Cave, well-known worldwide for the similar paintings by Paleolithic artists, was shut down because tourist breath caused mold to grow on the walls.
          Herzog's visit to Chauvet is limited by a time constraint and the stipulation that no one touch anything inside the cave, nor step off of the two foot-wide metal walkway.
          Inside, painting of animals "look so fresh, there were initial doubts to their authenticity."
          Mammoths, cave bear, horses, bison, lions, and more dance across the walls, contours of the rock taken into account to create greater effect.
          The play of light and shadow from flickering torches might have been intended by the artists to help bring the renderings to life, but in some cases illusions of movement were definitely included. A bison on one panel painted with eight legs gives the impression of movement in nearly "a form of proto-cinema," and a wooly rhino with lines of multiple horns looks "like frames in an animated film."
          Using lasers, scientists have mapped the cave so well, the "position of every feature in the cave is known."
          We see wavering lines of delicate rock curtains, stalactites and stalagmites shining with otherworldly crystals, cave bear skulls littering the floor covered in tens of thousands of years of calcite deposits incorporating the bones like candle wax. For the viewer, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is an opportunity to visit the past without hurting it.
          In his 71 films, Herzog, who was born in Bavaria, has directed such other notable documentaries as Encounters at the End of the World (2007), his Antarctic adventure, and Wheel of Time (2003), wherein Herzog goes to India to film the world's largest Buddhist ritual.
          In addition to making unforgettable documentaries, Herzog directs major motion pictures featuring intense performances, such as Aguirre, Wrath of God and Rescue Dawn.
          To see "one of the greatest works of art in the world" through the camera of the visionary auteur, look for the 2010 film available on Netflix.


CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
Starring Werner Herzog,
Jean Clottes,
Julien Monney,
Jean-Michel Geneste,
Michel Philippe,
Carole Fritz,
Dominique Baffier
Written and directed by Werner Herzog
Runtime 90 minutes

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"NIGHT OF THE HUNTER" CAPTIVATING NOIR

          A father of two robs a bank during the Great Depression. Just before the cops can nab him at his house, the dad (played by Peter Graves) hides a wad of money and tells his kids, John and Pearl, to never reveal its location.
          However, while in jail, he meets a man named Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). When Powell, who calls himself Preacher, gets wind of the missing money, he becomes obsessed with relieving John, Pearl, and their beautiful mother (Shelley Winters) of the $10,000 in loot.
          To achieve this end, Powell carries a switchblade which he calls a "sword" and has conversations with the Lord about smiting widows in Holy Battle.
          Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by one of film's greatest actors, Charles Laughton, is a gem of a picture concerning sex, money, religion, and murder all in one.
          As Harry Powell, Robert Mitchum is perfectly cast. When asked what religion he claims to preach, Powell growls, "The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us!"
          It's the movie where Mitchum sports tattoos on his knuckles proclaiming LOVE and HATE. An "inwardly ravening wolf," Powell's not just out for money, he's legitimately nuts at all times. He hates women, and reminds God during their one-sided chats how God hates "perfume-smellin' things," too.
          Another character spends a deal of time talking to God and she's played by Lillian Gish, one of film's first stars, famous among other things for her role in D.W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920).
          The attractive widow of the bank robber, excellently played by Shelley Winters, bends God's ear in her own way, praying for "cleanliness" in the eyes of a supposed preacher who's killed around a dozen widows.
          Many of the shots that are intended to be outdoors clearly aren't. For whatever reason--probably greater filmmaking control--several scenes require indoor studio setup prevalent in cinema. Doesn't help the general look to suddenly see fake river. But there it is.
          As a film about repression released in particularly repressive times, it (or rather Laughton) gets away with a lot. The matronly Mrs. Spoon waxes philosophic at a church picnic on the subject of women wanting sex and concludes that sort of fiddle-faddle is "just a pipedream" and maintains that in all those years with Mr. Spoon she just thinks about her canning.
          Speaking of pipes, Mitchum liked smoking his. Got arrested for marijuana possession in 1948, and on the strength of that became extra-famous as Hollywood's sleepy-eyed, badass stoner. Less well-known: The screenplay for Thunder Road (1958), in which Mitchum starred, was based on a story he himself wrote about a Korean War vet's attempts to make moonshine.
          Stanley Kubrick seems to have been inspired by the film. Comparisons between Jack Torrance and Harry Powell abound. Look for Mitchum also as a great bad guy chasing around Gregory Peck and family in the 1962 film Cape Fear.


THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
Starring Robert Mitchum,
Shelley Winters,
Lillian Gish,
James Gleason,
Evelyn Varden,
Billy Chapin,
Sally Jane Bruce,
Peter Graves
Directed by Charles Laughton
Written by James Agee
Based on the novel by Davis Grubb
Runtime 92 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE