Excalibur (1981)

Directed by John Boorman. Starring Nigel Terry, Nicol Williamson, Cherie Lunghi, Nicholas Clay, Helen Mirren, Paul Geoffrey, Gabriel Byrne, Keith Buckley, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Niall O’Brien, Robert Addie, Clive Swift, Corin Redgrave, Katrine Boorman. [R]

Boorman’s robust, refreshingly adult-oriented retelling of the Arthurian saga, primarily from the source of Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur”; mixture of mythical storytelling and hallucinatory dark magic with bloody, mud-soaked battles and sexual frankness. Covers a lot of ground, perhaps too much for the time allotted (the Grail quest is introduced abruptly and lacks orderly plotting), but its splendidly elaborate production gives the viewer plenty to look at. Trevor Jones provides a few bits of original music, but the well-placed classical pieces by Carl Orff and Richard Wagner are the ones that won’t soon be forgotten. Williamson is an arch, eccentric delight as Merlin; the film suffers for his absence during most of the last hour. Kick-started the sword & sorcery boom of the 1980s, few of which could hold a candle to this unrestrained epic. Rating pretty high on the “must’ve-been-awkward meter”: the character of Igrayne, who spends most of her limited screentime dancing seductively and getting undressed and bedded by the enemy, is played by the director’s daughter.

83/100