LANCELOT DU
LAC B+
aka: Lancelot of the Lake
France Italy (85 mi) 1974 d:
Robert Bresson
One of the unique works of Robert Bresson, bringing to life
the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, where the film
opens with the staggering failure of the Knights to find the Holy Grail,
returning empty handed after a two year search, demoralized by their leaders
killed or missing and their troops decimated. This defeatist
Shakespearean gloom has a Macbethian fatalistic tone, where much of the film is
shot in barely seen darkness, where the predominate sounds lingering in the air
are Knights clanking around in their armor along with the everpresent sound of
horse’s hooves, while the sound of an offsceen whinny is probably used about a
hundred times, like a train whistle in A
Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956). Lancelot (Luc
Simon), the Queen’s Knight, blames himself, thinking his illicit romance with
the young Queen (Laura Duke Condominas, looking about age 15) may have aroused
the wrath of God and damnation to his beloved Knights, vowing to end their
unholy alliance upon his return, a vow he has difficulty keeping. Making
matters worse, the King is anguished about what to do, keeping the men
languishing in a state of limbo where resentments fester, specifically Lancelot
at Mordred (Patrick Bernhard) for refusing to join the quest for the Grail,
thinking him cowardly, while Mordred spreads rumors of Lancelot’s dalliance
with the Queen, rallying many of the others against Lancelot, putting the King
in an awkward position. In the spirit of brotherhood, Lancelot offers his
hand of friendship to Mordred, but he refuses, which sets the stage for the
rest of the picture, as the atmosphere is poisoned.
After the powerful opening of death lurking everywhere in
the forest, Bresson returns to his minimalist style, using massive doses of
understatement, detachment from non-professional actors using non-expressive
dialog, a rhythm of repetitive images, like the constant presence of Knights in
their armor, Lancelot secretly meeting with the Queen, horses being led back
and forth behind the scenes while Knights continually arrive by horseback,
often with news to report, where Bresson often chooses to shoot only the feet,
showing only the bare minimum while still expressing the essence of the
story. This is perfectly expressed at a tournament, a display of the
Knight’s bravery, including a jousting tournament where Knights on horseback
use a long spear to knock a fellow Knight off his horse. Backed by Gauvain
(Humbert Balsan), Lancelot is urged to retaliate against Mordred, as his honor
has been challenged, but Lancelot thinks otherwise, thinking courage is
displayed at the appropriate moments, not needlessly, and actually backs out of
the tournament. But when an unknown, helmeted Knight with his visor down
continually displays valor in the jousting tournament, knocking off one man
after another, word is spread that this could only be Lancelot. The
tournament itself is almost completely shown offscreen, where only the thud of
a Knight landing on the ground is heard followed by the roar of the
crowd. In this manner, Bresson’s comment on heroicism is not the act
itself, but the reverberations spreading throughout the community of the noble
hero, where the resulting mythology is larger than life. Bresson also
amusingly chooses to focus on the hooves of the horses, where often the rider
can’t even be seen, instead the suspense is elevated from the relentless
montage of repetition, the dropping of the spear after each round, the
replacement of a new spear, the turning of the horse in ready position, the
acceleration of the horse, the rumbling of the hooves, and the violent sound of
the impact of the spear on the shield, resulting in a man falling off his horse
as a flag is raised and the sound of bagpipes announces the next round.
While there are continual hints of Mordred secretly
waylaying Lancelot by hiding behind doors or curtains, the themes of honor and
bravery are continually disgraced with the threat of resurrection in the
air. When Lancelot disappears following the tournament, Mordred spreads
the rumor that he is dead, and that the Queen needs to choose a new protective
Knight, which only leads to more bickering and backstabbing. Bresson
turns the era of chivalry on its ear, where the peace abiding brotherhood
offered by Lancelot is seen as a weakness to be used against him, where there’s
a continual jostling behind the scenes for more favoritism by the King and
Queen along with a ruthless hunt for power. This contrasts beautifully
with the young age of the Queen, whose purity and innocence is under question,
tainted and soiled by the vicious rumors spreading throughout the castle, where
to dishonor her is to render her protector and savior powerless in the eyes of
others, as it dispels the notion of mythological heroicism. By failing to
take decisive action, Lancelot allows the poison to fester, weakening his
status in the eyes of others, even after the heroic display of valor in the
jousting tournament. Love of the King and the Queen and for his fellow
Knights, rather than the transcendent source of power, is ultimately his
weakness and his undoing. He may be the mightiest and the strongest, but
he is not immortal, like the mythological gods. This humanness is what
interests Bresson, as the flaws and imperfection of men have a way of
overshadowing their strength and valor, undermining the essence of what
constitutes courage and bravery. In Bresson’s eyes, this lofty idea of
chivalry is dead, suggesting it dies with the death of every man. Not
only does the man die, but so do all the noble ideas and values he stands for,
dying out generation by generation, where only the myth of gallantry
remains. Bresson interestingly chooses to use the percussive roll of the
drumbeat, as he did in The
Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc) (1962), which punctuates the
military ritual along with the devastating impact of finality, not to mention
rampant killing in the name of God.
