Lancelot of the Lake

A French film set in the Middle Ages. The film opens on a battle. Armoured men kill each other, heads come off, blood spurts. Then a title comes. The quest for the grail has failed. The knights are returning. There are fewer of them and they found nothing. Arthur's court is ruined. The hall is empty, the people tired, and nobody has a purpose left. Lancelot returns too. There is a relationship between him and Guenièvre. Both want to continue it and Lancelot has sworn an oath. By that oath he must give her up. From there the film is a story of dissolution. The knights suspect each other. Mordred knows about the affair. He uses it as leverage. A tournament is held. Lancelot enters with his identity hidden. The tournament is the centre and is built entirely on repetition. The same tent, the same banner, the same sound of a lance and the same hooves. The camera never shows the men. Only legs, shields, horses and falling bodies. What the narrative is interested in is not legend but an ending: its idea is that the end of the myth has arrived and that only armour and habit are left. Robert Bresson's method is the same here. The actors are not professionals, the speech is read flat, and no emotion is played. The sound design is the real instrument. Armour, hooves, doors, wind; all of it loud and constant. The framing is mostly tight. People stay outside the frame and the event is understood by sound. The last scene is in a wood. Armour is piled on armour. Bresson wanted to make this film for years and could not find the money. Luc Simon, Laura Duke Condominas, Humbert Balsan and Vladimir Antolek-Oresek are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Bresson's cinema and formal strictness. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an epic; the narrative offers no heroism and the playing is deliberately flat.