The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

“The Irish Are Inside the Castle!” Kerplunk.

May 11th, 2006

The above line was our favorite moment in the laughably earnest Tristan + Isolde (2006). One of the Cornish warriors utters it, and then is immediately silenced by an arrow to the neck. We began giggling uncontrollably. It was like something out of Monty Python, only it didn’t know it.

We didn’t have high expectations from Tristan + Isolde. First of all, it’s kind of a dumb story, though it seems to have been the only story popular in medieval northern Europe (Tristan, Arthur, the Niebelungenlied—it’s all pretty much the same). T + I is obviously trying to cash in on the popularity of the doomed-adulterous-lovers myth (Did you notice that clever little “+” sign in the title? Did you notice how it’s copied from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet logo? Sophisticated movies like us don’t use ampersands.) 

I knew to lower my expectations even further when the blurb on the back of the DVD claimed that the film was “in the spirit of Braveheart and A Knight’s Tale.” Now I know it’s just a blurb, and that people who write the blurbs haven’t necessarily seen the movie, but I was concerned that the blurber seemed to think Braveheart and A Knight’s Tale share the same spirit. Anyone who thinks that has the discernment of an Irish setter. “Yay, medieval clothes! And axes! Yay, axes! Pant, pant.”

Actually, Tristan + Isolde seems to be following most faithfully in the spirit of 2004’s King Arthur, which took all the myth out of the legend and replaced it with gritty, though absolutely historically inaccurate, “realism.” T + I is set in some mysterious period called the “Dark Ages,” which has the distinct advantage of being anywhere between 472 and 1400 A.D. Given that the Normans haven’t arrived in England yet, that narrows things down a bit, and since they give the Irish king the name Donnchadh, I’m guessing they were shooting for a vaguely 8^th-century setting.

And yet Isolde has access to a volume of John Donne. Never mind that books were so rare at this time that wars were waged over copying them. Never mind that Donne wouldn’t be alive for another 900 years. “The Good Morrow” is a nice poem about love—let’s stick it in! Repeatedly!

I really don’t mind the historical inaccuracies all that much. I mean, it does allow me to feel superior and knowledgeable. And, after all, Braveheart played pretty fast and loose with history. But Braveheart did so to create a compelling story, an element noticeably absent from Tristan + Isolde.

Now I think adultery plots are stupid to begin with, but if you’re going to make a movie about one, you’d better make it apparent why the two protagonists are in love. No hints in T + I, other that they’re both young and pretty. Maybe Tristan really just wants Isolde’s books, which possess the magical property of letting you read texts that haven’t been written yet. Anyhow, as a reviewer quoted on Rotten Tomatoes said, “This couple has endured for over 900 years; the least Tristan + Isolde can do is show us a reason why.”

The movie tries to make up for the lack of depth in the romantic plot by feeding us all sorts of stuff about how all the “tribes” (Cornish, Saxons, Angles, etc.) need to unite to defeat the common enemy of Ireland. The lines in the political segments are just plain corny, though, as they were in King Arthur.

Why do I keep watching these mediocre medieval movies? I have to admit that they’re fun to laugh at, if you watch them with other people. Plus, they keep putting actors I like in them. NOT the interchangeable pretty boys Heath Ledger and James Franco. I am referring to Clive Owen and Rufus Sewell (who was in both A Knight’s Tale and Tristan + Isolde). If the filmmakers only gave these men some good lines, they could chew the scenery.

Entry Filed under: Movies