I used to think that the legend of Camelot would never be done full justice until it had been finally set in its proper period of Sixth Century Post-Roman Britain and told as history rather than myth. But over the years I ended up reevaluating that assumption. To strip the legend of Arthur of all its mythic qualities and its philosophy would also strip the story of its meaning, dull it down, reduce it to yet another dreary narrative of tribal warfare and political machination. This was the kind of "historical" Arthurian movie Hollywood finally did deliver in the form of 2003's King Arthur, and it proved to be one of the dullest movies ever made. Whether the story of Arthur can ever be verified as history or not is not the point. The story of Arthur is meant to inspire and belongs in the realm of legend and epic saga the same as Beowulf, Sigurd And The Volsungs, Parzifal, and The Ring Of The Niebelungs; to capture the imagination and slowly reveal its Truths to each generation as they come into this world. And this is why the only "true" Arthurian movie ever made or likely could be made is John Boorman's lush 1981 production, Excalibur.
What has to be remembered is that the historicity of Arthur and Camelot are both quite uncertain. There are no primary sources that can be verified, just Bardic legend and third-hand "histories" that were a mixture of hearsay and stories added on, combined with embellished troubadour romances. It is simultaneously amusing and tragic that this hodge-podge of pseudohistory was, as Monty Python's Terry Jones once pointed out, used as the factual and legal basis for five centuries of warfare between England and France.
John Boorman's object in making Excalibur was not to tell history but to unfold an epic tale populated with larger than life heroes, with philosophical truths woven into its fabric, and set against a fantastical backdrop of a lost Dark Ages world transcending any proper time, much like Wagnerian opera or the fantasy works of Tolkien and Howard. The movie is loaded with symbolism Malory and other writers never even touched upon and yet has always been implicit in all times and all cultures but especially in the legend of Arthur. An entire book could be written about this movie's imagery and its effective usage in advancing the tale. Since space doesn't permit a comprehensive examination in just one blog post, we will suffice with a breakdown of one of the primary visual metaphors employed by Boorman in this film: the armor worn by the knights, used here to depict the steady evolution and corruption of certain ideals and the Fellowship of the Round Table at various stages of their rise and fall.
As the movie opens, the knights of Uther Pendragon and Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall, are fighting for power over the land. It is a brute-force struggle for nothing more than simple dominance in a barbaric world. Here, the armor worn by the knights is dull, dark metal plate, dented in places and caked with mud to symbolize this dark time. The first time we see shining armor is when Arthur first encounters Lancelot, the paragon of honor and Christian ideals, upon the bridge. It is after their fight, when Arthur had wrongly called upon the power of Excalibur to defeat the better knight and subsequently repented after breaking the sword and having it restored to him by the Lady of the Lake, that Arthur adopts the shining armor for himself and all his knights to symbolize their commitment to the same ideals which Lancelot embodies. Arthur and his knights feasting at the Round Table in their full shining armor depicts a Camelot at the height of its power and the Fellowship when it best represented its high ideals. As those ideals are corrupted or found wanting, the armor becomes tarnished even as the land falls to plague and famine, and the moat surrounding Camelot chokes up with algae and mud.
During the Grail quest, when Percival is the last of the knights still searching for the holy relic and is nearly drowned in the river, his shedding of his own armor that was dragging him down frees him to finally achieve the quest after ten years of fruitless searching. Percival finds the Grail only after discarding the trappings of knighthood and approaching it in a state of innocence, with his mind clear. It is an old yet powerful image of all vision quests and searches for wisdom, when the seeker has slipped off the distractions of the world. When Arthur is restored by the Grail and once more assumes the responsibilities of his kingship, the knights of Camelot are again resplendent in shining armor as they ride forth to meet the dark armored army of Mordred (himself clad in golden armor that reflects the false glamor of stolen power) and to fight one last time for everything Camelot represents.
In the end, it does not matter that Excalibur is not "historical". It does not matter that the armor worn by the knights is at least a thousand years out of its proper dating, as is the golden and silver castle of Camelot. It does not matter that the movie's vision of Arthurian Britain comes straight out of the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham and the prose of Tennyson and T.H. White. John Boorman's purpose was to craft a vision of wonder vital to imprinting the movie's story — and its message — into the deepest recesses of the minds of the viewers. And that is the thing that matters most of all.
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