VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

MacAindrais Lancelot du Lac (1974) It is my contention that Robert Bresson's films are not so much films as they are philosophical essays stroked out on celluloid. They are often contemplations on the soul, usually of its destruction. His films are highly stylised in that they are without any style at all. Many of the actors he used acted in the film in which he cast them. He left out what would usually be considered key moments in a plot, making them difficult, but always fascinating. He never failed in what he tried to achieve, though that doesn't mean they were all always really that enjoyable, especially If you approach them as you would any other movie anyway. They are an acquired taste, and frankly require a certain degree of intelligence. I don't say that to sound pretentious, but to merely point out the observation that to have to think about something requires a certain amount of intelligence.In 1974 Bresson applied his philosophic sensibilities to a legendary tale. He took the famous Arthurian story of Lancelot's affair with Arthur's Queen, Guinevere. Of course, everyone knows the story, so I will not bother describing the plot so much as examine how it's executed. Bresson stripped all the lustre and romanticism from the story. Instead, he chose to emphasize the grime and cold-bloodedness. In the opening shot, he has Knights battle each other, hammering their swords against their armour until they strike flesh. Blood pours out like water from a faucet. It is a poignant gesture that Bresson begins (and ends) his film with inexplicable and horrific violence.Bresson turns ups the sounds of metal scraping on metal as the knights move around. He makes them look almost silly in their shuffling motions. Their pride is a foolish one. Instead of noblemen, Bresson shows them as petty and manipulative. They conspire to kill Lancelot, not by challenging him to a duel, but by waiting for him to exit the Queen's room where, armed or not, they declare he'll be too caught off guard to put up a fight before he is run through. Even Lancelot is ashamed, for he has returned from his quest to find the Holy Grail a failure. His trespasses with the Queen, even if it is true love, are doomed to tragedy because of foolhardy nobility.Though parts of the film take place in a castle, Bresson wastes no time with an establishing or grandiose shots. Even in battle, most scenes are reactionary. He makes it a point to show the knights lifting and closing their face masks as they speak with one another or prepare for war. The repetition somehow acts almost as satire. I think Bresson recognized the asinine behind the legendry.Lancelot du Lac was one of Bresson's most abstract films. It was in many ways an exercise in deconstruction that would have done Derrida proud. It obviously must has been quite influential. When I first saw Terrence Malick's The New World, I instantly thought that it must have been influenced in some way by Lancelot du Lac. That film stripped the story of Pocahontas and John Smith to its bare essentials - albeit not to the extent that Bresson goes, but still. There is one scene in The New World which reminded me very much of Lancelot du Lac, the one in which Smith wades through a swampy forest in his clunky armour only to be bested by the nearly nude naturals. He looks foolish trying to navigate and murky forest in such clunky attire. Now whether or not the film was an inspiration or if Malick has even seen it, I cannot confirm (though I suspect he has - his knowledge of cinema is extensive) Bresson often shows his knights gallivanting in the forest, wearing armour as a formal attire in situations that do not require it, other than to shout, "look at me, I am a Knight of King Arthur's Court!." Sure they offer some added protection, but they are still no match for death - as Bresson points out by showing us at the beginning and at the end (purposefully placed no doubt) how blood finds ways to spray from the openings and holes in plates of armour. Their armour is simply a token of their supremacy over the common man.Lancelot du Lac is Bresson's way of showing us the grandiose self-importance the Knights of King Arthur's Court presented upon themselves, and continues to be placed upon them by fairytale romanticism. When Lancelot asks for help to overcome his temptations from God, it is not for holiness or piety, but his own mortal self-preservation. Their quest for the Grail and their military victories have granted them fame and reputation. They squander what gifts they have been given to defeat one another. On one side, for the sake of Arthur against Lancelot; on the other for the sake of the Queen and Lancelot against everyone else. In the end when Lancelot concedes and returns the Queen to Arthur in exchange for her pardon, a group of Knights turn against the King at his moment of weakness. Now then Lancelot and his men return to fight for Arthur against the usurpers. It is a cycle of battle, or to be more to the point, competition. Throughout the film the Knights are preoccupied with competition in some form - jousting, declaring duels, chess, the love of the queen. They feast on an appetite of destruction.All is done in the name of Christianity in Arthur's court, but Bresson leaves much of that to subtlety. One shot of Lancelot is framed in the foreground by a crucifix, out of focus on purpose. Guinevere responds that the Knights were looking for God as a trophy - yet God is not a trophy. The Knights have simply taken Christianity as their flag in a battle for self-supremacy, not any theological quest.

jontreliving I watched this film as part of a degree module on Arthurian legend in my final year of university. Looking back, I now know this is the sort of film made only to torture students of literature and film.Seven years on, I still remember with clarity the iron force of will I had to bring to bear to sit through the full length.Having studied Brecht, I know that entertainment need not always be entertaining. Sometimes, Brecht told us, theatre must and can be used as an instrument of social commentary, and employed his famous 'alienation effect' to remove the popcorn munching bourgeois from their comfort zones. Even so, with Brechtian theatre one is moved by emotions other than pleasure, such as anger or a desire to correct a perceived injustice.What did I take away from this movie, other than a sense of soul-deadening boredom, and a sense of valuable time forever lost? At first, nothing. Nothing at all. It was not only a bad film, it was my first ever experience of anti-cinema, an exercise of such profound arrogance and pomposity as to numb the senses. I felt utterly unmoved in every way. Emotionally. Intellectually. Spiritually.The anger came later. I was angry that more than a single frame of celluloid had been wasted in the creation of the unpolished lincoln log that is "Lancelot du Lac".Bresson has done for cinema what L Ron Hubbard's earlier pulp novels did for science fiction (which were at best, embarrassingly amateurish nonsense), yet like Hubbard, he has inexplicably been deified by a small but influential group of people who are under the bizarre impression that he actually had something valuable to contribute to the 'zeitgeist'.But nonetheless, I still think it should be shown in film schools. Why? I paraphrase a very useful piece of pop wisdom. "Nothing is completely useless. It can always serve as a bad example."

dbdumonteil In Robert Bresson's short filmography, "Lancelot Du Lac" is probably his most dismissed piece of work for evident reasons. The author of such pearls like "Journal d'Un Curé De Campagne" (1951) and "au Hasard Balthazar" (1966) chose to adapt his minimal, inimitable style to the fabled tale of the Knights of the Round Table with Lancelot's adulterous love for the Queen Guenièvre. Was it an appropriated choice for a topic whose treatment inevitably required greatness, heroism, violence pertaining to a chivalrous tale?Well, viewers who aren't familiar with Bresson's genuine cinematographic approach won't approve of it with a basically epic story and the filmmaker seemed aware of it given his cinema is everything but spectacular. But the auteur pushed his ideas to the extreme. So, we have here an austere view of a story usually full of greatness with very little action. The film opens and ends after a fight with bodies falling down, horses running and a desolate battle ground in the heart of a deep green forest. In the middle of the film, the audience will be allowed to watch a tournament which Bresson will reduce to its simplest elements with flags waving, Gauvain and Arthur's looks, shots on some of the horsemen's characteristics like their horses' legs or their armors. Once again as in many Bresson's works, ellipses are given priority. When the two adversaries collide, one can't properly see the action but just the before and after.Between these rare, fragmented action sequences, the rest is devoted to an aging Lancelot and his relationships with Queen Guenièvre, King Arthur, Gauvain and the other knights. Proud characters have given way to weary ones. The Quest for the Holy Grail was lost and Lancelot attributes this defeat to the guilty love he has for Guenièvre. And he is torn between this serious mistake and the chivalrous demeanor he should adopt for Arthur. Gauvain is stuck in a similar situation between his respect for Lancelot and Arthur with whom he wants to remain faithful. Like in other Bresson works, redemption has a sizable role. Towards the end of the film, Lancelot wants to redeem himself by fighting with Arthur against Mordred. Animals also seem to play a small but vital role. A magpie is often on the branch of a tree facing the Queen's bedroom.It's no wonder this dry overhaul of the Knights of the Round Table baffled many viewers, especially the ones who have never heard of Bresson. Lines full of bitterness, regret or suspicion are recited by models with a monotonous voice and a stone-cold acting lead a film mostly deprived of action and violence. That's why I would only recommend it to Bresson's die-hard aficionados and not for newcomers who will be better served with John Boorman's "Excalibur" (1981).

flasuss You know that everything is possible and cinema has no limits when the most austere, minimalist and anti-conventional director of all-time shoots his version of the story of Camelot... and makes a masterpiece. In the first shot we see two unknown knights having a typical medieval fight; one of them eventually is hit and fall dead, and some blood runs through the ground. The winner goes away. But the difference is that it is shown in the most raw way possible, without any kind of beauty or visual show to please the audience. That's the essence of Bresson's cinema: "only the necessary", said the master. Then, after the credits, we see that is not the Holy Grail story, the traditional story, but what happens next, it begins were the legend ends. The knights return demoralized to the kingdom. Their leader, Percival, is lost, and Lancelot blames himself and his adultery with Guinevere as the reason that the Grail was not found- the search for it was, for him, also the search for God. The Queen is not convinced, and ask his love with words which have nothing extraordinary alone; however, the emotionless way she asks makes it unusual, and somewhat disturbing. The knights are completely demystified and shown not as legend, but men, and men which lack something: is it love, God, a reason to live now that their search is over (and was unsuccessful)? Maybe all that, maybe more, but the fact is that eventually it will explode, and Camelot's decadence will be inevitable. Bresson's ultra-naturalistic and anti-conventional style makes it's images very powerful. The best are a tournament when he applies one of his principles "to give something for the ears and then for the eyes, never both", increasing the effect of the combats, which would have seem even foolish otherwise, and the ending, which is a very shocking one. Because of all that, Lancelot of the Lake is one of the finest films of one of cinema's greatest masters. Mainstream audiences will probably hate it, but one who's eager to see another side of a very known story should see it.PS: I'm quoting out of memory, so it maybe not be the exacts Bresson's words