Lancelot of the Lake

Starring:Luc Simon, Laura Duke Condominas, Humbert Balsan, Vladimir Antolek-Oresek, Patrick Bernhard, Arthur De Montalembert, Charles Balsan, Christian Schlumberger, Joseph-Patrick Le Quidre, Jean-Paul Leperlier, Marie-Louise Buffet, Marie-Gabrielle Cartron, Antoine Rabaud, Jean-Marie Becar, Guy de Bernis, Philippe Chleq
Director: Robert Bresson
Studio: New Yorker Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

This 1974 masterpiece by the late Robert Bresson (Mouchette) is a remarkable act of mythic revisionism. Stripped bare of its enduring romance, the Arthurian legend in Bresson's hands becomes an ugly and uncomfortably familiar vision of powerful men capable of cruelty, rivalry, disillusionment, and self-destruction. Lancelot (Luc Simon) is portrayed as a ruthless and ignoble opportunist who returns from his impossibly futile mission to locate the Holy Grail, only to callously rekindle his affair with Guinevere (Laura Duke Condominas). The emotional impact of the film is that of pure shock: the Arthurian ideal turns out to have little chance in the real world, and as there may be nothing worse than a hollow dream, the Knights of the Round Table descend into selfishness. Known as the great minimalist of French cinema, Bresson uses his trademark repression of energy--editing action sequences so that the visual emphasis is on tiny details--to create a tension that finally snaps with the mucky dissipation of the dream on unhallowed ground: Camelot ending not with a bang or a whimper but with the last clank of armor in a deluded cause. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

An intriguing, pessimistic tale by Robert Bresson, though not entirely successful.......2006-09-17

What to make of this movie? Blood squirts and drips from severed heads and sliced groins like thick cherry juice. Lancelot says "J'taime' to Guinevere with all the passion of a piece of cheese. As in most of Bresson's films, the acting is expressionless, but here it is emotionless. "You are alone in your pride," says Guinevere to Lancelot, while she stares at him without a trace of feeling. "Pride in what is not yours is a falsehood." "I was to bring back the Grail," he tells her. "It was not the Grail," she says, "it was God you all wanted. God is no trophy to bring home. You were all implacable. You killed, pillaged, burned. Then you turned blindly on each other. Now you blame our love for this disaster...I do not ask to love you. Is it my fault I cannot live without you? I do not live for Arthur." Guinevere is austere and relentless. And Lancelot? "Poor Lancelot," one character says, "trying to stand his ground in a shrinking world."

It's been two years since Arthur sent his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail. Now, exhausted, defeated, at odds with each other, their numbers severely reduced by disease and fighting, the remnants have returned. Lancelot saw in a dream that he must renounce his love for Arthur's queen, but Guinevere will have none of that. Mordred lurks in the shadows, hinting and insinuating. Before long, the knights have chosen sides. A few will stand with Lancelot in defense of Guinevere. The rest will stand...not with Arthur, but with Mordred.

Bresson has taken the Arthurian legend and turned it into a tale of hopeless pessimism. If you don't care for spoilers, read no further. How hopeless? Nearly everyone dies except Guinevere. There is no Robert Goulet in paper mache armor singing "If Ever I Should Leave You," no Nicol Williamson urging Arthur to do the right thing. It's difficult to say who is the more pig-headed...Guinevere for adamantly refusing to release Lancelot from his vows of love, or Lancelot later deciding that love is all. By the time they realize that Guinevere must return to Arthur, it's far too late.

The legend of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, and of Mordred and Gawain, is emotional and powerful. Bresson takes it and squeezes it down until it is nearly wrung dry. Loyalties are as much based on self-interest and delusion as on true fealty. Love is as selfish as it is consuming. There's no room for hope, or even noble tragedy, in Bresson's version of the myth. Making the movie even more difficult to access is the Bresson style. Even in the most charged moments, the characters speak in a monotone. Bresson's penchant for amateurs and a flat style of delivery can work wonders in some of his movies (just look at Au Hasard Balthazar), but here everything is just flat. The photography is fascinating -- particularly the tournament sequence; all close-ups of the sides of galloping horses, just the legs of the knights, the sound of lances crashing into armor -- but it also is self-conscious. More than once I caught myself thinking, "Wow, this shot is sure pure Bresson." That may do much for cineastes appreciating an auteur director; I'm not sure it does much, in this case, to advance the emotions of the story. And yet, the film picks up a lot of steam. The last half hour is a beautiful, powerful picture of pointlessness. Mordred and his followers are going to usurp Arthur. Lancelot and his followers will ride for Arthur. And we see a shot of a riderless horse galloping through the forest, then a cut to a knight on the ground bleeding to death, then yeoman in trees firing arrows, then the sequence again, and again, and again. No music, just the twang of arrows, the sound of hooves, the muted clanking of armor. And then we see a pile of dead and dying knights. There's no winsome little boy to carry the tale of Camelot this time.

On balance, I enjoyed the pessimism, the rhythm of the movie and some of the sequences. The film is worth seeing, but I just don't think this is one of Bresson's successes. The DVD has a fairly good film transfer. There are no extras.

Pretentious Rubbish.......2006-06-07

I'm not sure what to make of the reviews in praise of this film. They reviewers are clearly not fans of Arthurian mythos or historical films either. Where they talk about understatement, minimalist approach or stripping the storyline down... I see only poor plotting, poor writing, bad direction and cynicism. There's room in Arthurian Mythos for chivalry to sit quite comfortably alongside anti-war, new age and early feminist messages but the Director fails to take advantage of this.

The action is atrocious. We have monty pythonesque blood spurting scenes and zero fight choreography - we might as well have been watching Ator the Fighting Eagle for all its authenticity. The armour clanks around uncomfortably on their gaunt frames - cuisses worn directly over tights (I pity the poor actors) and helmets worn without straps, padding or gorgets.

The acting is not so much restrained as wooden. On occassion we get a glimpse of emotion out of Guinevere but she seems emotionally worn out. The writing for Lancelot indicates that his character is self-involved and arrogant, but the actor appears simply bored with the role and never shows anything resembling the frustration and anger that Lancelot must be feeling. Gawain is the only decent character in this mess and contrary to legend, he manages to get killed by Lancelot whilst avenging his brother.

Then there's the endless shots of people arming and disarming - shooting sequentially what should have been simultaneous. Not to mention the raucus bird cries, the incessant horse neighing, the truly awful musette (and I love bagpipes...), the local peasant actors (they look like Bretons), the gaudy pink and orange saddles, the castles without gates, the lack of characterisation and the linear plot.

It all combines to make this the greatest waste of money I've ever spent. I'd rather have picked up a copy of Dungeons and Dragons the movie. If I could give it zero stars I would.

French rubbish.......2006-01-01

Anyone who can call this piece of Fench rubbish a 'masterpiece' is obviously caught up in that delusional mindset of Art moives having to be stripped of everything to make them powerful; therefore it must be a masterpiece is a myth; so much so there's nothing left but a depressing mess. The actors say or do nothing more than clump around in their shiny armour which they never seem to take off, all the time brooding woodenly, and talking to each other like robots, stripped of emotion. The soundtrack is appalling; all through the movie the sound intrudes with the nonstop clancking of armour and a single horse neighing over and over and over again in the background, the same horse, the same neighs. The jousting scene is so boring and repetitious you fall into a mind-numbed trance and you wonder how any director could make such a scene so DULL - and like the neighing horse in the background, it's played over and over again until you feel like screaming, "Get on with it!" like that brilliant scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a far better movie; buy that one instead).
How this film can be seen as a masterpiece can only be described as self-delusion; or is it just because it's French and therefore must be a masterpiece? Lancelot of the Lake is a borish waste of a story that is in essense powerful and passionate and full of human struggles; there's no passion in this - Let's not go to this Camelot; tis a silly place...

A masterpiece, though not for everyone.......2005-07-29

This is a sombre version of the Arthurian legend, and in my view very much in tone with Thomas Malory's 15th century version. The latter is dark and foreboding, and so is this film. The deeds of arms of the knights are represented in terms that undermine the ideals of chivalry. There is only death, blood and severed body parts everywhere. The heap of bodies on which the last shot of the film focuses is the climax of this violence.

At the centre of this film stands the love between Guinevere and Lancelot, sublimely represented in the film: Guinevere waits for Lancelot's return in silence, and suffers for her love of him. Lancelot has come to the point where he tries to resist this love, for the sake of chivalry, but it is interesting to see the way in which he fails in his attempt to relinquish Guinevere.

I dare say this film is essential for anyone seriously interested in the Arthurian legend, and for anyone who has a clear understanding that the latter is not romance Hollywood style, but much darker. This is definitely not a film for everyone. There is a lot of blood and violence in the film, its atmosphere is dark, the dialogue is designedly monotonous, to match the sombre mood of the film, and there is no musical score throughout, except a very little in the beginning and end. It is exquisite in that it tells the story of a great love, accompanied by great suffering, and in that it demystifies any romantic notions we might have had about Arthur and his knights, as seen in other films of the genre. The austerity of the interiors also does away with our romantic illusions.

The acting is amazing, and I identified with the actor playing Guinevere in particular. The last scene of the movie, in which Lancelot, dying, says only one word: "Guinevre" (French version of Guinevere), stays with the viewer forever.

a very purposeful film.......2005-04-13

Robert Bresson is one of the most methodic directors of French cinema. In a way like Godard, you will either love his movies or find them a bit too intellectual - sometimes lacking the qualities that make us just sit back and enjoy. I found that I both love and hate his version of the Arthurian legend. At times the claustrophobia of the camera work is very effective - at other times it makes it very absurd. One thing is for sure, there are shades of genius in this film, the shots in the forest, in particular, bring some very relieving shades of green in the film. You also do get a sense of what the characters are wrestling with inside - and it is a very disturbing portrait, to be sure. Though I rate most of Bresson's previous work 5 stars - I think for now I will rate this 4 - but I still would like to watch it again to see what other impressions I get from it.

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