A Knight's Tale on DVD |
When A Knight's Tale was released, it
seemed as if no serious film critic dared to find anything remotely acceptable about it
(except, not surprisingly, Roger Ebert, who not only got it, but found it
delightful). It seems that writer/director Brian Helgeland's strategy of using
contemporary (relatively speaking) rock music to illustrate how little has changed since
the 14th century actually offended many movie scribes. They huffed and puffed about
Gen X's attention-span deficiencies and MTV market strategies and totally missed the
movie's foursquare comedy/action/drama nature.
But when I turned on the television not so long ago and
actually caught a glimpse of the film, I was amazed, first, by how good it looked --
Helgeland has a very good eye, and his 14th-century tournaments are bright
explosions of color and detail that serve as a completely believable setting for the
action in the foreground. Managing to pull that off without getting bogged down in
irrelevant details is a task that many far more experienced directors would do well to
learn.
That glimpse was enough to send me running to the video
store to find A Knight's Tale on DVD -- and I discovered there are two! One's the
widescreen anamorphic release from Columbia/Tristar in Dolby Digital; the other is the
Superbit Collection edition in DD and DTS.
If you come to A Knight's Tale expecting realism,
you'll be disappointed. If, however, you're willing to accept the narrative conventions of
a Hollywood film -- everyone is good-looking, there's a virtuous triumph, and the spirit
of the noble, common man is undefeatable -- it's a rousing good time.
Don't worry -- you'll know whether you love or loathe A
Knight's Tale pretty much from the beginning. The acid test is an early scene that
sets a medieval crowd clapping and chanting to Queen's "We Will Rock You." As
the camera pans the crowd we see bored-looking nobles, shirtless beer-swilling rowdies in
the bleachers, face-painted fans waving pennants, and blessed-out girls dancing in the
aisles -- and just as Brian May's guitar solo swells to a climax, the camera pulls back
and we see seated fans doing the wave.
The screen is alive with action and color, and
chock-a-block with enough period detail to set the scene. It's not profound, certainly,
but it's good-spirited and infectious -- and I think it works. Is it anachronistic
to set a medieval tale to rock? Probably -- but what wouldn't be? The symphony orchestra
is a 19th-century invention (okay, grafted on 18th-century roots, but you get the point).
Even if Helgeland had decided to go with music of the 14th century, he could only guess as
to its sound -- we have no way of knowing what it really sounded like. Besides, A
Knight's Tale is popular entertainment, not capital D "Drama" or high art,
and the rock music is just another example of its wit, energy, and cheerful disregard of
fussy historical accuracy.
A Knight's Tale does a great job of seeming
to portray 14th-century life, and in many of its particulars, it's not grossly wrong. That
was the era in which the ritualized combat of the tournament became mass
entertainment, sort of. There wasn't a league or league standings or even a true circuit
-- all conventions of modern professional athletics that the film parodies. But we
21st-century viewers understand how those things work and grafting them onto the film's
milieu saves a world of explanation. That's part of film's "magic." We know
that the 14th century was filthy, disease-ridden, and smelly, but we don't want to see
those aspects, so our films conveniently ignore those inconvenient bits of accuracy.
Basically, A Knight's Tale is the story of a
workingman's son, who is sent off as a child to work for a noble knight and assumes his
dead master's identity in order to win enough money to eat. He dreams of being a knight,
however, and having succeeded in his imposture, continues to impersonate a nobleman in
order to compete at the joust. He falls in love with a noblewoman, makes an enemy of a
powerful nobleman, and becomes a popular champion before his secret is discovered. The
question is, can true love, clean living, and noble sentiment triumph?
Hey, I said it was a Hollywood movie, not high art.
What makes A Knight's Tale work is the energetic
glee the film takes in telling its story and its immense good humor while doing so.
For instance, it's graced with a fine cast. Heath Ledger,
who plays William Thatcher, (Sir Ulrich Von Lichtenstein of Gelderland while impersonating
a knight) is conventionally good looking and pleasant enough, although not nearly as
charismatic as his nemesis, Rufus Sewell (the nasty Count Adhemar of Anjou), who has a
dark, glowering sexiness. Shannyn Sossamon, William's noble lady love, gives the role
about as much feistiness as it can reasonably support -- I'd certainly like to see her
assay some Rosalind Russell screwball-type parts. The film's standouts, however, are the
actors in its character roles: Alan Tudyk (Wat), Mark Addy (Roland), Laura Fraser (Kate
the Farrier), and Paul Bettany (ahem, Geoffrey Chaucer).
In this sense, A Knight's Tale reminded me of those
classic Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn adventure films of the '30s, which also had soap-opera
plots, great costumes, and stirring action scenes, and which were made memorable by the
sheer number of marvelously credible bit-players who populated them.
Not a bad comparison, really -- but A Knight's Tale
is only Helgeland's second film and he hasn't learned Curtiz's pared-down economy. The
film clocks in at 130 minutes, which seemed interminable -- especially since much of it
consisted of scenes of armored guys in horses breaking lances on one another. Curtiz could
have told the story and gotten to its stirring finale in barely 90 minutes -- and the film
would have been far stronger for it.
A Knight's Tale is far from alone in this. Bloat is
the bane of narrative art at the moment. Most movies take too long to reach their
denouement -- probably a reaction to television with its setup-complication-resolution
narrative style served up week after week in 30- and 60-minute portions. But length in and
of itself doesn't confer seriousness or power to a story -- in fact, it can blunt impact
and obscure meaning. It certainly can sap the vigor of even as energetic a story as A
Knight's Tale.
But that's a lesson that can be learned, and
Helgeland is obviously a smart director, so I suspect he will learn it. What can't
be learned -- and what Helgeland has in spades -- is the confidence to get in there and
tell the story in a different way. Helgeland has the stories to tell, a great voice to
tell them with, and a fantastic eye that makes us all see things his way. So what
if A Knight's Tale isn't perfect? It's fun and it's eye candy. And it bodes
extremely well for greater things to come.
Watch it -- and then keep an eye on Helgeland. I think
someday soon, he's really going to show us something.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
