Review of A Knight's Tale (2001) by Zetomes — 26 Jun 2012

Let me rephrase - A Tale, a Knight's one.

Yes, as the title says it's a tale, a fictional story told by someone independently from its time and historicity. This tale was told by the bard Brian Helgeland and it's a refreshing, slushy, musical, theatrical, and epic one like Robin Hoood's, also, it has excellent actors a very fluid narrative, magic, utopia and astonishing costumes and scenarios.

It reminds me Moulin Rouge and its recycling past and present style.

I think it's a case of a wrongly rated movie just because of pretentious historical arguments - perhaps those judging didn't understand that this movie is in fact, a tale! Told by someone's imagination living in modern times triggering merged chronological images from past listened tales or a description of our contemporary archetype of a medieval tale merging past and present. Either philosophizing or not this film is clearly and obviously an admitted chronological fusion. It's the trace of this movie.

In my opinion I think there were only a few bad choices which sounded exaggerated to the audience, perhaps the reasons for the low rating and perhaps the director's will to peremptorily justify that indeed this movie is concerning fictional imagination and not historical acuity, overexposing the spectator with the first minutes of it: "We will Rock You" the initial musical score interacting with the medieval contest is exaggeratedly slushy and without convincing extras. It sounds pompous. I was about to quit this one after those first few minutes.

But one should move on (in some cases indeed one shouldn't) and rate a movie not by its pieces but by its whole, continuing to check if the initial impressions were right. In my case they weren't. I was surprised. For the rest I'll take my hat to a very entertaining, humorous and fresh piece of work with very talented acting. It reminded me my imaginary stories dressed with fancy modern clothes wondered from tasty tales read in old books.