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DVD REVIEWS
Shanghai Star. 2004-09-09
King Arthur
Director: Antonie Fuqan
Starring: CliveOwen, Iran Cruffud, Ray Winstone, Keira
Knightley
This latest account of the King Arthur saga is said to be the real McCoy. The
movie has been promoted as the story of the "real" Arthur - it's supposed to
be the "definitive version" that strips away the myths to get at "the truth
behind the legend".
Well, it's certainly like no other movie ever made about King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table. In fact, there's a "Lord of the Rings" feel about
the story and the cinematography.
There's not a glint of shining armour anywhere, there's no quest for the Holy
Grail or Christian chivalry and the knights aren't even Britons - they're
Sarmatians.
According to Herodotus - writing 1,000 years before the time of the Arthurian
legend - the Sarmatians used to live around the lower Don in modern Russia.
They later moved westward towards the Danube where they were defeated
by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Sarmatian cavalry was
incorporated into the Roman army and it is true they served in the Roman
province of Britannia.
After that, it's all conjecture. The basis for the Arthurian legend lies mainly in
the fact that the Saxon invasion of England - after the Roman legions left
early in the 5th century - was temporarily halted for a couple of generations.
The reason the Saxons suffered this setback is unknown as is the identity of
whoever led the fight against them - if there was a fight.
The Welsh chronicler Nennius says they were defeated by a Roman-British
war-chief ("dux bellorum") whom he called Arturius. Nennius writes that the
Saxons were defeated in battle 12 times by a force of native Britons under
Arturius and the last bloodbath was at a place Nennius called "Mons
Badonicus".
Historians agree that the story of the 12 battles is an impossibility although
some say one big battle may have taken place. To this day they argue about
the site of the mythical "Battle of Mount Badon" and locations ranging from
Strathclyde to Glamorgan to Wiltshire have been put forward.
However, the age-old dispute about whether or not Arthur really existed has
never bothered Hollywood or British movie-makers and certainly not anyone
connected with this "Roman-Western". Producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Pirates
of the Caribbean", "Blackhawk Down"), writer David Franzoni ("Gladiator")
and director Antoine Fuqua ("Tears of the Sun") have created an entirely new
"King Arthur" although he does have a Round Table.
Arthur (Clive Owen) and his six Sarmatian knights ("The Magnificent
Seven''?) have been given a "quest'' and this serves as the movie's main plot.
The knights have to rescue what must be the last Roman family left in
Britannia before they fall into the hands of the invading Saxons.
The twin historical impossibilities that this family lives in Scotland on the
wrong side of Hadrian's Wall and that the Saxons are advancing on England
from the north (and not from the south as they did) do not bother
Bruckheimer, Franzoni or Fuqua. Nor does the fact that "armour-piercing"
arrows fired from crossbows and trebuchets throwing balls of fire would not
be invented for another 700 years.
Be that as it may, the rescue "quest" is well done and, as in the excellent
"Tears of the Sun", Fuqua winds up the suspense as the hunted RomanBritish convoy flees south pursued by the terrible Saxons. On the way we
meet the British Druid patriot Merlin (Stephen Dillane) and Guinivere (Keira
Knightley) who turns out to be his lovely and feisty daughter! Only Arthur and
his knights stand between the refugees and the blood-thirsty Saxons led by
King Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgard), ably supported by his equally crude and
cruel son, Cynric (Til Schweiger).
The battle scenes overall recall those in Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" and one an extended encounter on an ice lake - is truly spectacular. Fuqua and
Franzoni, making their own history, place the climactic "Battle of Mount
Badon" at Hadrian's Wall and it is satisfyingly gory,
The legendary love triangle of Arthur, Guinivere and Lancelot (Ioan Gruffud)
is barely hinted at (a smouldering glance between Guinivere and Lancelot is
all we get) but maybe that's because this is "the definitive version".
The other knights, Bors (Ray Winstone), Gawain (Joel Edgerton), Galahad
(Hugh Dancey) and Dagonet (Ray Stevenson) show themselves to be
fighters of the first rank and Bors especially stands out as a roistering giant
with an explosive temper.
However, if one's idea of the Arthurian legend is of Camelot and the stories of
Malory and Tennyson, this movie and its Hobbesian world of squalor and
violence will be a bit of a shock.
In the end the philosophy of the great John Ford comes to mind. As the
newspaper editor in Ford's wonderful Western, "The Man Who Shot Liberty
Vallance", says: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Barry
Porter
24 Hour Party People
Director : Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Paddy Considine, Steve Coogan, Sean Harris,
Lennie James
This deeply flawed yet engaging movie charts the emergence of
"Madchester" - the Northern English city of Manchester re-baptized as the
capital of the UK rave music scene - guided by the cultural entrepreneurship
of a single highly provocative individual: Tony Wilson. Wilson is a complex
and in many ways absolutely infuriating figure, egotistical, pretentious,
immature and preposterous, yet his own repeated claims to "genius" are not
easily dismissed.
Wilson's Factory Records and Hacienda night-club centrally involved him in
the fate of two of the most consequential British bands of modern times, as
well as the crystallization of the DJ-based rave scene and the birth of
contemporary dance music. "24 Hour Party People" follows his career from
the origin of punk in the mid-1970s, through the short but miraculous
flourishing of Joy Division - whose two Factory LPs are among the most
perfect pop music products ever to grace the human ear - to the drug-soaked
chaos of The Happy Mondays and the introduction of Detroit Techno rhythms
to the UK.
This story is a fascinating one, explaining much about the peculiar
"Madchester" take on recent cultural history. Unfortunately the movie dilutes
its core narrative unnecessarily by wasting far too much time on Wilson's
tedious broadcasting career and other irrelevant exploits - such as a winter
visit to meet (and insult) Keith Joseph in London, an episode whose
significance is left entirely obscure.
Approximately a third of the movie could have been cut without the slightest
damage, enabling Winterbottom to treat the musical content with more
respect. While some viewers might appreciate the brutal truncation of a Joy
Division live performance in order to dwell on a journalistic assignment
involving a dwarf and an elephant, I suspect most of those interested in this
story would vociferously protest against such bizarre directorial choices.
Coogan plays an absolutely convincing Wilson, but the most outstanding
performance in the movie is unquestionably Harris' Ian Curtis, the wound-up
brittle lead-singer of Joy Division who turned his florid psychopathology and
social incompetence into the most compelling acoustic creation to arise in
post-punk pop, before hanging himself at the age of 24. Every moment of
Harris' perfectly judged performance is sheer thespian magic.
When focused, Winterbottom brilliantly captures the shifting atmosphere of
the Manchester music scene, from the angry heyday of punk set against a
backdrop of generalized social collapse through to the delirious rise of DJdriven dance-culture accompanying Britain's exuberant market-driven
recovery in the 1980s.
Cameo appearances by Wilson himself, along with such musical luminaries
as Mark E. Smith, add sparkle for pop nerds (especially those with
Mancunian connections).
Nick Land
Copyright by Shanghai Star.