A very flawed movie, but still one I enjoy, if mainly as a visualization of the Arthurian legends. One problem is that John Boorman, director, co-writer, and overall driving force behind the project, tries to cram the entire legend of King Arthur into 140 minutes, and as a result is unable to sustain much narrative momentum and often seems to be rushing through the story. Excalibur is often cheesy, with bad dialogue ("I, the best knight in the world, bested!"), and overacting, particularly in the opening scenes, where the knights can't seem to utter a word without growling. The production design, while evocative in some scenes, in others reveals Boorman's stretching of a less than generous budget, such as in the cut-rate set of Merlin's "crystal" cave. And despite the scope of the film, the number of participants in a battle rarely suggest more than a small-scale skirmish. For all of these flaws, I don't hate Excalibur. Some of the cheesy acting and dialogue is unintentionally funny, though the rustic accent used by Nigel Terry to play Arthur in his younger years is truly irritating. Luckily, by the end his performance has greatly improved, gradually taking on the kind of quiet, uncomplicated dignity that I always imagine Arthur as possessing. The actor who plays Percival also turns in an effective performance in the potentially embarrassing role of the "holy fool." The best performance by far, however, is by Nicol Williamson as Merlin. He probably overacts more than anyone else in the movie, but in his case it's obviously intentional. Boorman's choices for Guinever and Lancelot are least impressive, with Guinevere coming across as little more than a pretty Irish peasant girl, and Lancelot as a bland hunk. Their affair is one of the film's weakest elements, a casualty of Boorman's determination to fit the entire Arthurian corpus into a single movie. This is how he establishes the beginning of their illicit feelings for each other; Guinevere runs into Lancelot, he gazes soulfully into her eyes, she gazes soulfully back, and the opening theme from Tristan and Isolde blares onto the soundtrack. This problem extends to Boorman's use of musical themes in general; his choices are unoriginal but effective, but they're also too few, and are consequently are used too many times with too little variation. On the plus side, Excalibur is visually spectacular, and Boorman crafts plenty of plenty of memorable scenes, such as Merlin's hilltop, torch-lit exhortation to the knights following a battle (cribbed liberally from Henry V). Boorman also handles Arthur's conception with plenty of audacity and stylistic panache. Arthur's father Uther, transformed by Merlin into the shape of the Duke of Cornwall, has sex with the man's wife while the real Duke lies dying in battle against the King's troops. As if this wasn't weird enough, throughout the entire sex scene Uther wears full armor (or nearly full armor, I guess), and all of this is juxtaposed with Cornwall dying, bloodily impaled on a spear. In contrast to the baroque insanity of the opening scenes, Boorman creates a touching and reverent conclusion for the story, capped off by the indelible image of Arthur, revived from a sort of spiritual coma, riding out to battle with his men through a shower of flower petals.
