9 / 10
Official trailer
Excalibur is the definitive screen adaptation of the Arthurian legend and one of the strangest mainstream studio films of the 1980s.
John Boorman directed it. Nigel Terry plays Arthur. Helen Mirren plays Morgana. Nicol Williamson plays Merlin and steals every scene he’s in. Nicholas Clay plays Lancelot. Cherie Lunghi plays Guinevere. Liam Neeson plays Gawain. Patrick Stewart plays Leondegrance. Gabriel Byrne plays Uther Pendragon. The film traces the entire Arthurian cycle from Uther’s conception of Arthur through the death at Avalon, compressed into two hours and twenty minutes. (See also my tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart, who played Leondegrance)
What makes the film unusual is that Boorman shoots the legend as the legend instead of as a historical drama. The armor is too shiny. The forests are too green. Knights talk in archaic English.
Merlin is magical and behaves like a being from outside the world. The film is closer to a Wagner opera than to a costume drama, and it succeeds because Boorman commits completely to that tone.
Excalibur is gloriously overcooked, and I adore it for that. Every knight shines like a polished teapot, everybody talks like a Victorian poem read aloud, and Nicol Williamson wanders through it all like a cranky god on loan from another picture. Plenty of films have tried to be this sincere about Arthur, and none of the ones I know commit this hard.
The Visual Style
Almost every shot of Excalibur is over-lit. The armor reflects light constantly, the forests glow with mist and moss, and stone walls drip with water that catches color. The film looks like a stained glass window of the medieval period, and I think that’s exactly right, because Boorman is filming the myth and has no interest in the era. I’d frame half these shots and hang them on a wall.
The famous Charge of the Knights to the score of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is among the most ecstatic sequences in 1980s cinema. The use of the music is so iconic that it’s been parodied for decades, but the original sequence still hits because Boorman shoots it as the spiritual climax of Arthur’s reign instead of as a battle scene.
That charge is pure exhilaration for me. Decades of parodies haven’t dented it, because Boorman means every frame, and when the chorus comes in I’m grinning from ear to ear.
For Writers
Stylistic commitment separates Excalibur from the dozens of forgotten Arthurian films. Boorman chose a tone and held it. The film never blinks toward realism. The over-lit armor is the worldview. The lesson is that you can take a stylistic risk if you commit to it completely. Half-commitments read as confused. Full commitments read as artistic vision.
The Cast
Nigel Terry is a strange choice for Arthur and the strangeness works. He’s not the leading-man Arthur of other adaptations. He’s uncertain, then certain, then exhausted. He grows old credibly. By the final act he looks like a man who has been carrying a kingdom too long.
Helen Mirren’s Morgana is the closest thing the film has to a villain, but Mirren plays her as a woman who has been wronged and is also dangerous.
Nicol Williamson’s Merlin is the showpiece performance. He plays the wizard as alien, ancient, and exhausted with humanity but unable to stop intervening. Half of the great lines in the film go to him and he delivers them with a kind of weary wonder that no other Merlin performance has matched.
Williamson is my favorite Merlin by a mile. He’s funny, cranky and a little frightening, and the film sags a little whenever he’s offscreen. That sag is the one thing keeping it from a 10 for me.
For Writers
An ancient, magical character is hard to write because the audience can spot a wise old man cliché within three lines. Nicol Williamson’s Merlin works because the script lets him be irritated, tired, and occasionally wrong. He’s not a sage giving exposition. He’s a person who has lived too long. The lesson is that supernatural characters need limits, flaws, and exhaustion if they’re going to feel real. Power without weakness reads as plot device.
The Adaptation
Boorman compressed Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur into a single film. The Round Table forms and falls within ninety minutes. The Grail Quest takes one sequence. Mordred kills Arthur in the third act. Important sub-stories are missing entirely. Tristan and Isolde don’t appear. Most of the Round Table knights are nameless.
I think the compression is a strength. Boorman treats the Arthur story as ritual instead of plot. The audience is presumed to know the basic shape, and the film’s job is to make you feel the meaning of what happens. Losing Tristan and Isolde doesn’t bother me at all, because the speed gives the whole rise and fall the feel of a fever dream.
For Writers
Familiar source material allows compression that original material doesn’t. The audience for Excalibur already knew the Round Table would form and fall. Boorman didn’t have to explain. He could shoot the formation and the fall and skip the connective tissue. The lesson is that working with myth, legend, or canonical source material gives you permission to leave more implied than you could in an original story. Use that permission.
Craft Note
John Boorman directed and co-wrote. Nigel Terry as Arthur. Helen Mirren as Morgana. Nicol Williamson as Merlin. Cherie Lunghi as Guinevere. Nicholas Clay as Lancelot. Liam Neeson as Gawain. Patrick Stewart as Leondegrance. Gabriel Byrne as Uther. Adapted from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Filmed in Ireland. Released April 1981. Carmina Burana by Carl Orff used throughout, along with Wagner. Costume design by Bob Ringwood. Approximately eleven million dollar budget.
Does Excalibur still hold up?
9/10. It’s the best film adaptation of the Arthurian cycle and the strangest big studio picture of the early 1980s, and I wouldn’t trade a single overlit frame of it. Boorman’s commitment to the mythic tone is the achievement, and Williamson’s Merlin is the performance I remember first. The point it drops comes from those stretches without him. Watch it on a large screen with good speakers.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Excalibur (1981), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
- In Memory Of: Nicol Williamson, BAFTA
- Excalibur (1981), IMDb
