Last night, I saw 2 films on cable, I, Robot and King Arthur: Director’s Cut. I’d really like to read the book that the first one was based on; Will Smith as a paranoid detective didn’t really cut for me (don’t worry dude, we all loved you in Fresh Prince…).
The King Arthur film was…dreadful. No character development. No explanation of the various indigenous races of Britain. Some sort of weird disclaimer at the beginning insisting that the film had some sort of historical credibility. What? According to my ex, who studied some Arthurian stuff at uni, Arthur & co. are completely fictional. I’m not about to go and dismiss his opinion either. There didn’t seem to be any chemistry between Guinevere and Arthur either. Guinevere, played by Keira Knightley, was very good though. How the hell her (very small) bust didn’t pop out of her battle costume is beyond me. Unless the costume itself was duct tape.
Years ago, I struggled with Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur which was fabulous, but because of the language, not easy to read. A friend in my joint 5th/6th year French class had told me that the film First Knight was a load of bollocks and that I should try giving Malory a spin. It came to be useful once I started studying lit at uni: came up in James Joyce’s Ulysses (of all places!), and in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. It was also good fuel for my own half-arsed attempts at writing.
After all this appalling mish-mash of Arthurian myth and legend, I decided to start reading T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Only 4 or so chapters into it, but hooked. I feel like a kid, wanting to know what happens next, desperately reading on in excitement. Yes, I do believe there is some Disney abomination of the first part ‘The Sword in the Stone’.
Damn: wonder where I have to go to find out more about the whole Arthur phenomenon. Wikipedia wasn’t much help; will just have to keep watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it’s a good deal better than the other Arthurian films mentioned above.
I don’t recommend reading Malory unless you’re really nerdy, bookish and…ready for a few shocks. I attempted it when far too young and learnt some horrible facts about Arthur that are generally not mentioned. Guess it isn’t just Yeats who has shades of noon US melodrama. Hee hee.
