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Brit
or Amazon? Knightley in King Arthur.
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Damaged
and Murky
By
Laura Leon
The
Clearing
Directed
by Pieter Jan Brugge
When I was about 10, and making a truly lousy attempt at skiing,
I ran right smack into Robert Redford, who was basking in
the bleak Berkshire sunlight with his family. As I remember,
he was quite cordial about the whole thing, flashing his megawatt
smile at the tongue-tied, apparently brain-damaged girl who
was blathering out an incoherent apology mixed with professions
of undying love. His eyes were bluer than anything I had ever
imagined.
Redford’s eyes are still dazzlingly blue, but the rest of
him, I’m afraid, has frozen into some wretched, horrifying
warning against sun exposure. What, possibly, does this have
to do with his performance in The Clearing, a tepid
thriller from director Pieter Jan Brugge, and why on earth
am I prattling on about his physical appearance, rather than
reserving my space to examine his acting? To be perfectly
blunt, seeing this once-beautiful man on screen, whose traces
of facial resurfacing barely register above the prunishly
puckered lips, the overall roughness (the effect of a man
terribly burned), is disconcerting to the point of distraction.
Redford plays Wayne Hayes, a self-made man whose successful
rent-a-car empire has allowed him and wife Eileen (Helen Mirren)
the privileges of a stately, secluded manor, luxury vehicles
and the sense of unscheduled freedom with which to pass time.
Granted, Wayne continues to work as a consultant, but his
leisurely mornings, eating poolside, while Eileen outlines
the social agenda of the evening, bear none of the burdens
of say, having to be at the office by 10.
This easy pace is jarringly cut short, quite early in the
film, when Wayne is taken prisoner by disgruntled, out-of-work
Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), who proceeds to lead him, by foot,
through the mountains en route to a cabin where “the others”
will take over. The movie bounces back and forth between Wayne’s
and Arnold’s lengthy conversations and scenes in which Eileen
and grown children struggle to cope with a father’s abrupt
disappearance. The former scenes are seemingly meant to portray
the ways in which kidnapper and hostage, poor schmuck and
rich guy, are similar, e.g., they both had tough childhoods,
both have loving and loyal wives, etc. The good news is that
Wayne shows flickers of real guts and righteous indignation,
that he should be somehow penalized for success that resulted
from his own struggling and initiative. Redford is still a
completely natural actor, much like Spencer Tracy, in that
he doesn’t make you see the “performance” as much as understand
the character. The bad news, aside from the fact that Redford’s
craggy countenance consistently unnerves, is that nothing
really much comes from these encounters. No matter what face
Arnold puts on his misery, we still like Wayne a whole lot
better, and can’t feel that he’s responsible for Arnold’s
woes.
The
Clearing works much better in scenes in which Eileen struggles
to maintain some semblance of dignity and control, even after
FBI agents inform her that, contrary to her belief, Wayne
had continued to see an old mistress. Despite some hokey flashbacks,
meant to depict just how very happy this family was, there
is some tight writing and a deft evocation of the fleeting
memories and time-filtered flashbacks that survivors are left
with, and the subtle acknowledgement that humans needs to
place some sort of order on those memories, especially in
such excruciatingly difficult times. This is really Mirren’s
film, as she alone seems willing to play the delicate nuances
that fuel her character’s lifestyle; and she doesn’t back
away from moments in which Eileen comes across as icy, imperious
and fiercely protective of her choices. In the end, there’s
a saccharine moment that would be perfect for one of those
DeBeers commercials, extolling the importance of showing the
little woman how much she’s meant to you by offering her a
diamond as big as the Ritz, which nearly sinks the good thing
that Mirren has made of half the movie. Ultimately, it’s an
OK movie marred by too much caution and not enough tension.
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Dismal
and Dirty
King
Arthur
Directed
by Antoine Fuqua
King Arthur, the new action spectacular, er, heroic epic from
Jerry Bruckheimer, purports to be the true story of the legendary
leader, and as such recasts the star of many a lyric epic
from the Middle Ages to the sixth century. Apparently basing
the character on one Ambrosius, a Romano-British general who
gave the invading Saxons such a whupping that they steered
clear of Britannia for the next half-century, the script by
David Franzoni (Gladiator) makes Arthur (Clive Owen)
a Roman soldier and calls him Artorius. As a way of including
fragmentary evidence indicating that he may have hailed from
Samartia, Arthur’s knights of the round table consist of bawdy,
brawny conscripts from the Russian steppes. When the film
opens, the magnificently unshaven seven—grim men already famed
for their grim deeds—have just finished their 15 years of
combat duty. They start out weary and become wearier still,
especially Arthur, who is disillusioned by the Roman retreat
from Britain.
Scrupulously avoiding almost everything associated with Arthurian
legend (Excalibur is mentioned only once), the film replaces
mythos with the usual Kurosawa-inspired battle sequences and
silly pop sensibilities (“Is that your happy face?” asks one
braggartly knight of his dejected comrade.) Cliché-ridden
pronouncements on faith (the knights are pagans), equality,
and freedom (many of them recycled from Gladiator)
slow the furious pace to a standstill. Instead of freedom,
the men are given one last—and probably fatal—mission: to
rescue an important Roman family in the path of Saxon marauders.
Ever the stoic, Arthur rallies the knights from their revelry,
and delayed only by a scolding from Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd),
they ride off to their destiny.
First, they must survive a forest ambush by the Woads (Celts?
Picts? Britons? Your guess is as good as the filmmakers’),
during which Merlin (Stephen Dillane) inexplicably spares
their lives. And that’s about all he does. Merlin is given
disappointingly scant screen time, and for a Druid priest,
he’s strangely devoid of mysticism. In place of culture and
ritual, the natives are distinguished by blue face paint (or
in Merlin’s case, Manic Panic blue lipstick). Stripped of
Christian allegory and chivalric romance, King Arthur desperately
needs some exaltation, or at least a heroic trajectory of
some sort. But the plot is just a device to lumber from one
battle to the next. Guinevere (Keira Knightley), a fearsome
Woad, is sprung from the villa’s dungeon, but no sooner do
she and Arthur disappear into the woods for a tryst than it’s
time to flee the Saxons. Poor Lancelot can only cast longing
(or more often, voyeuristic) glances—no cuckolding allowed
in Bruckheimer’s Brawn Age. And no enchanted forests or heather-covered
meadows, either. In this Britain, usually referred to as “this
wretched island,” it’s always raining, or snowing, or fogged
over. Kind of makes you wonder why anyone would want to conquer
it.
Apparently, the Saxon warlord Cedric (Stellan Skarsgard) is
ravaging the countryside in search of a worthy opponent, and
he finds it in Owen’s Arthur. “Artorius” is about as authentic
as Robert Goulet, yet Owen imbues him with convincing strength
and stature. And Skarsgard’s growling warlord is the most
entertaining thing in the movie. When he orders his troops
to “kill every man, woman and child who can hold a sword,”
you get a pretty good idea of why everyone wants to get out
his way—fast. Cedric’s power struggle with his itching-to-command
son (Til Schweiger) is more understandable than any of the
relationships between the knights, who give way too often
to their boorish comic relief, Bors (Ray Winstone). In fact,
the knights are so covered in tangles of hair (apparently,
they all go to Aragorn’s barber), that it’s hard to tell them
apart.
It’s easy to distinguish Guinevere, however. She’s the one
strapped into a breast thong. Seemingly an Olympic archer,
she cuts a swath through the Saxons with greater brute strength
than an Amazon. Her ridiculous feats almost undo the lyrical
cinematography of Slawomir Idziak, who occasionally supplies
an image worthy of Sir Mallory. And this is not so much the
stirring long view of Arthur as a solitary centurion upon
a hilltop—although Owen could do for helmets what Russell
Crowe did for sandals—as a few moments later, when the camera
moves in close to catch something wildly melancholic in his
eyes.
Idziak is also responsible for a terrific set piece set on
a frozen river that cracks under the combatants, during which
the Saxons’ armor-piercing crossbow is up against the Britons’
longbow (never mind that neither weapon had been invented
yet). Even so, this is a tediously angst- ridden revision.
At every throw of the lance, there are regrets and lamentations.
After a hard-won victory, Arthur wails to his knights, “I
have failed you.” He might as well be speaking to the audience.
—Ann
Morrow
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