“King Arthur”

By David DiCerto
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- In the 1967 film version of "Camelot," Richard Harris' melancholy monarch tries to sell Guinevere on his idyllic realm by informing her, "The rain may never fall 'til after sundown. By 8, the morning fog must disappear." Boy, what a difference 37 years makes!

In the muscular but murky "King Arthur" (Touchstone), it seems like the rain never stops and the fog refuses to disappear. Gone is the Lerner and Loewe floridness and storybook romance; in its place is gritty, mud-soaked realism.

Director Antoine Fuqua has stripped Arthurian legend of its mythic mantle and courtly conventions, re-envisioning the once and future king (Clive Owen) as a half-Roman, half-British commander of an elite cavalry unit during the closing days of the Empire.

Succinct opening narration explains that Arthur's inner circle is composed of conscripts from distant conquered nations pressed into military service. But don't expect any shining armor here; Fuqua's brave but brutish knights are a far cry from the cultivated courtiers of medieval romances.

The film is set in 452 A.D., as the Romans are calling it quits after four centuries in Britain. Wearied by war, Arthur and his men are eager to return to their respective homelands. But before they get their walking papers, a papal legate charges them with one last mission: They must rescue an aristocratic Roman family from hostile territory crawling with savage invading Saxons, led by braided chieftain Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgard).

The noble Arthur accomplishes the assignment but not before witnessing injustices committed in the name of church and state, prompting him to cast his lot with the indigenous tribes and take up their cause against the Saxon onslaught. To do so he must forge an alliance with Guinevere (Keira Knightly), re-imagined here as a feisty proto-feminist warrior, and the druid Merlin (Stephen Dillane).

Owen fills Arthur's armor with ample virility and virtue, and invests the title character with emotional texturing generally not found among action heroes.

Rounding out the Round Table are Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Galahad (Hugh Dancy), Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) and the burly Bors (Ray Winstone).

The dank and dismal atmospherics lend the film an appropriate Dark-Age dreariness. But by divesting the tale of its fairy tale trappings, Fuqua has also emptied it of its romance -- and, ultimately, its timeless allure. The film retains only the slightest hint of the tragic love triangle immortalized in Western literature, compressing the entire affair to one lustful gaze.

Full of chest-thumping soliloquies about freedom, the "Gladiator"-like battle sequences -- including a centerpiece sequence on a frozen lake -- are impressive, but are much too intense for children and push the boundaries of the picture's PG-13 rating.

More troubling however is the film's paganizing of what has traditionally been a quintessentially Christian myth. Arthur has always been held up as the ideal Christian king; his chivalrous brothers-in-arms aspired to be paragons of Christian virtue, epitomized by their quest for the Holy Grail.

In Fuqua's version, the knights are unabashedly pagan and Arthur is nominally Christian at best, aligning himself theologically with Pelagius, a fifth-century monk whose writings were condemned as heresy for denying original sin and the necessity of grace in attaining salvation. Throughout, church authority figures are depicted as conniving and cruel, while the egalitarian pagans are cast in far more flattering hues.

Still, if you're on a quest for clanging chain mail and howling hordes of barbarians, you may want to hack your way to see "King Arthur."

Due to intense battlefield violence, a shadowy sexual encounter, negative representation of church figures and some crude humor, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

* DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.