Camelot

Annotation for KRRR! 2023 by Filip Šula

Arthurian legends are among the most rewarding subjects for film treatment. Like the legend of Robin Hood, they have a basis in real historical events about which we know very little, and so the framework theme of a chosen king-unifier who builds a civilised state out of a savage England, overcomes insidious magic, searches for the Holy Grail and finds himself in a painful love triangle is open to many interpretations and insights. We've seen Arthur's story as a dark fantasy, a fairy tale fantasy, a historical action thriller, a heavy art film, a children's film, a gangster comedy, a Monty Python comedy, a teen series, or a musical, each type of treatment focusing on a different aspect of the colorful Arthurian legends.

King Arthur and His Company, based on the play Camelot, is just that, a musical that tones down some of the horrific aspects of the original legends and focuses on the personal story of a king with big dreams, his attention-seeking wife, and a knight with considerable ambition. The main conflict of the story is the clash between passion and ideal, ambition to achieve great things and instinct. Within this clash, the personal level of the characters and the events of great history thus come into contrast, with which the staging of the musical numbers is entirely consistent. Although the scenes are set in large, not very crowded backdrops such as castle halls or vast forests, we often see only individual characters singing. Yet more than larger wholes and half-lives, the film uses the details of faces to focus on the inner movements of the characters, caught up in the gears of a grand history.

At the same time, the outlined cinematography is used effectively to underscore Arthur's tragedy. In line with the above, the characters are ultimately destroyed by their efforts to maintain the ideal, thereby suppressing their own desires, but at the same time the same ideal is demolished as they eventually succumb to their own instincts anyway. In the end, the film shows that both paths are destructive, but the ideal has a chance to survive.