BEFORE: Before I get too far into the last third of the year, let me give a quick preview of what's coming up, at least what's going to get me through the summer. I'm diving back into the past first (more on that in a minute) for the first of FOUR films about King Arthur, made decades apart. I'll have to keep an eye on the differences in the plotlines and report on that, for sure. I've got a few more films in August about other British kings and queens - there were a few notable films last year about Queen Anne and Mary, Queen of Scots, plus I've got a way to work back in that film about King Edward VIII that I couldn't fit in earlier this year. Another film is also about Robert the Bruce, who was Scottish, but that counts on the theme, too. And I've also got that new version of "Robin Hood" that tanked at the box office last year, that's probably king-adjacent.
That's not all for the Brit films, I'm going to add to my World War II theme that began with "Defiance" and "The Zookeeper's Wife" by finally getting around to "Dunkirk", "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour", in some order. Basically, it's a 10-day trip through British history in early August. Before that, I've got a couple leftover Nicolas Cage films, and after, a couple Kevin Spaceys and two or three Matthew Modines. A chain of John C. Reilly (who's been VERY prolific lately) will get me closer to the end of August, and I think I've got slots for a couple of animated films like "How to Train Your Dragon 3" and even one that I worked on. A few crime films like "Baby Driver", "Widows", "The Highwaymen" and "The Old Man & The Gun", that should just about do it, and then we can take a look at September, with a couple more documentaries, some back-to-school films, and special focuses on Adam Driver, Melissa McCarthy and Dwayne Johnson, which should lead me into October's horror films.
Tonight, I'm being very crafty with my linking - Franco Nero carries over from "The Lost City of Z". He also appeared this year in "John Wick: Chapter 2" and I don't think I've seen him in many films, but man, he's had a LONG career. I almost couldn't believe when I saw him in "John Wick 2" that this was the SAME guy who was in "Camelot". And for him to turn up THREE times this year, it seems very unlikely, but I'm going to take advantage of it. Too bad I couldn't get all three films in a row, but some concessions had to be made in order to make a year-long chain. Sometimes the problem isn't having enough links to follow, sometimes my problem is having TOO MANY choices for what link to follow, and I can usually only follow one per day. (Though during Documentary Month it often happened that three or four people would carry over from one film to the next, but that's a case where having so many choices really helped me re-structure my programming on the fly.)
THE PLOT: The story of the marriage of Englang's King Arthur to Guenevere - the plot of illegitimate Mordred to gain the throne, and Guenevere's growing attachment to Sir Lancelot, threaten to topple Arthur and destroy his "round table" of knights.
AFTER: This is the 1967 musical version of "Camelot", based on the stage musical by Lerner & Loewe - I think I must have seen parts of this when I was a kid, because my mother was such a fan of the classic musicals and forced most of them on me. (I wonder sometimes how I ended up straight...) The team of Lerner & Loewe is also known for "My Fair Lady", "Paint Your Wagon", and "Brigadoon", among others, but Frederick Loewe semi-retired after "Camelot" and Alan Jay Lerner went on to work with other composers, but damn, after you write "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot", there's really nowhere to go but down, am I right?
My background with the King Arthur story comes mainly from three places - reading the book "The Once and Future King", the futuristic comic/graphic novel "Camelot 3000", and the movie "Excalibur", which was the best movie adaptation of the story during my generation, and perhaps "Camelot" is the best movie version released during my parents' time - I suppose that's debatable. But the classic story has always undergone substantial changes, and each version probably tends to reflect something about the time that produced it, not just the time period in which it takes place. Wikipedia, for example, places this 1967 film in the context of Vietnam and John F. Kennedy - for example, Merlin teaching Arthur that borders are arbitrary and his "might shouldn't make right" speeches could be seen as a condemnation of the Cold War and the Domino theory that justified the Vietnam War, while the musical call to "Not let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot" could easily be a reference to the JFK presidency.
But let me put politics on hold for just a minute, because there are really two stories here, the love story and the political one. At its heart it's a classic love triangle, Arthur and Gwen (called Jenny or Ginny here for some reason) and Lancelot. But is it really that, or just a case of bad timing? As is often the case with royalty, the Arthur/Guenevere marriage is depicted here as an arranged one, and really, who expects an arranged marriage and love to go hand in hand? I suppose some people grow to love each other in these cases, but that's not the movie musical love - so really, it seems that Gwen falls in love with Lance (a lot) after the joust, when he appears to resurrect a dead opponent with the power of his faith. (Or maybe he somehow knew an early version of CPR?). Before that, she sort of appeared to HATE Lancelot, so I wonder if she really changed, or if her hate was a bravado that was covering up for an attraction - it's tough to say, but she had just gone through the "lusty month of May".
Let's say that it's bad timing, then - bad timing to meet the love of your life shortly after getting married. Hey, it happens. A wise friend once told me, "It sucks to be cheated on, but it also sucks to be the one doing the cheating." Clearly he'd been on both sides of that equation - so there are no easy answers, unless you open your mind and realize that maybe love's not supposed to last forever, but two people can work toward making it last longer, or trying to grow together instead of growing apart. So what really went wrong here, was Lancelot just her perfect match, or was Arthur so busy running his Round Table of knights that he forgot to nurture his marriage? Discuss. But it's worth noting that both Lancelot and Guenevere don't recognize King Arthur when they first meet him, they both endure cases of mistaken identity - that's a subtle but clever way of suggesting that they may have a lot in common, that they're more alike than they realize.
Now, for the political stuff - in addition to the so-called references to JFK and Vietnam, this film goes out of its way to depict a king who isn't really acting like a king. He wants to bring representatives together from all the lands and set up some kind of fair, equitable legal system, like some kind of medieval United Nations. Ideally this seems like a good idea on behalf of world peace, a proto-EU if you will, but how the heck is that going to work, within a monarchy? There's just no way a medieval king was considering something akin to democracy, for sure this somehow comes from viewing a medieval government through our modern lens, right? How would having a court system do anything but interfere with the "divine" right and justice dished out by the monarchy?
Like, courts are a good idea, if they're fair, but then who appoints the judges? Who would write the laws that the judges are there to enforce? Who would monitor the judges to insure that they would continue to give fair rulings, and what about the next king, what if he wants different judges on the top court, or disagrees with the whole court system in the first place? It's just not going to work - even the round table idea appears to be fair, because nobody's sitting at the head of the table, but COME ON, we all know that the king's still in charge, right? He's not fooling anybody with the shape of the table.
It's really convenient in the second half of the film, once this supposed fair legal system is in place, that anybody who speaks out against the king is suddenly on the hook for treason. Any rumors of the queen's infidelity then put the burden of proof on the accuser, and if they have no proof, then they've spoken ill of the queen, so that's another treasonous act. (Hmm, is this reminding anybody of something?). The queen, herself, would be committing treason if she were sleeping with Lancelot (which she totally is...) because that in itself is an act against the king, and since the king has divine right, and there's no separation of church and state, it's also heresy. Very convenient.
Meanwhile, there's some Trumpian level of hypocrisy going on, because the king can do anything he wants. His illegitimate son, Mordred, shows up, and OK, maybe that kid was conceived accidentally before he was married, but the principle applies - the king can screw around and have a child out of wedlock, but the queen must remain faithful to the king, no matter what, or be burned at the stake. This later came into play during Henry VIII's reign, since the king was also the head of the Anglican Church, and any act of betrayal or defiance, or not being able to produce a son, was an act against God and warranted execution. Hey, that was medieval times for you.
Again, it's notable that this film was made during the "swinging sixties", not just because the adultery plotline is front and center, it's the idea that maybe Arthur shouldn't get so hung up on it, man. And when you see the Queen working in the stables and grooming a horse (yeah, right, like what British Queen would do stable work like that...) it's easy to think of the Camelot castle like it's one big commune or flea market. Then during that "Lusty Month of May" song, the knights are out of armor and are cavorting with the maidens in the river, and they all look like a bunch of flower children. Or was that just me?
There are a few things about the Arthurian legends that don't seem to make sense to me, not in any version - what was up with the sword in the stone? (Monty Python made fun of this, along with many of the tropes seen in "Camelot" in their "Holy Grail" film, pointing out that if the Lady of the Lake hurled Excalibur at Arthur, that hardly seemed like an effective way to choose a country's leader...). And how do we justify Arthur pulling the sword from the stone (as mentioned in "Camelot") with him being the son of Uther Pendragon? Did he not know he was Uther's son, and then pulling the sword from the stone confirmed it? Is he king by birthright, or was the honor thrust upon him, who was he before he pulled the sword from the stone, because it's just not adding up.
Then we get to Merlin, who according to this film, "ages backwards", and that's how he knows so much about the future - does that mean he's like Benjamin Button, just growing younger as time goes on? Or is everything backwards to him, like time is a river and his boat is going the other way? What's going to happen to him decades later when he's a small child, and then what happens after that? Does that mean that when he left Arthur, he wasn't really leaving Camelot, but arriving? And did his advice to Arthur get worse over time, because there was constantly less and less future for him to predict? Did people sound backwards to him when they talked, like was he THINKING backwards, too? Did he have to talk backwards so that it would sound forwards and other people could understand him? Or did he live through each day forward, but go to bed on Thursday night and somehow wake up on Wednesday morning? Am I over-thinking this, or is there the germ of an idea here that needed to be explained a lot better?
Arthur often CAN'T remember Merlin's advice, which sort of helps to explain why a king taught by a wizard who ages backwards can't seem to take advantage of that fact. Hmm, Merlin said I was supposed to keep an eye out for some knight named Lancelot, what did Merlin say about him, that he was going to bring good luck, or maybe get lucky with the queen, or something... Now, did he say that Lancelot was going to be the strongest of the knights, or bring about Camelot's downfall, I just can't remember....
Also starring Richard Harris (last seen in "The Count of Monte Cristo"), Vanessa Redgrave (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), David Hemmings (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Lionel Jeffries (last seen in "The Revenge of Frankenstein"), Laurence Naismith (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Pierre Olaf, Estelle Winwood (last seen in "The Swan"), Gary Marshal, Anthony Rogers, Peter Bromilow (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie"), Sue Casey, Gary Marsh, Nicolas Beauvy.
RATING: 6 out of 10 words that rhyme with "Camelot"
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