Summer of Blood

The Disneyfication of the Middle Ages

Idling around on the Internet, I came across this academic article from 1998 discussing ‘The Ahistoricism of Medieval Film’. It’s more than a decade old and it’s rather long, but quite a good read if you’re interested in the relationship between the history of the Middle Ages and the way the period is depicted in the recent cinema.

There’s a good deal of harrumphing in it about what the author, Arthur Lindley, calls the ‘Disneyfication of the Middle Ages’. But there is also a thoughtful discussion of the ways in which filmmakers map the cultural and political concerns and debates of the present onto the malleable material of the past. The Middle Ages are particularly ripe for this, suggests Lindley, since they are essentially divorced from the present in terms of our contextual awareness of events and environment, but are also familiar in a variety of important imaginative modes, many of which are specifically attractive to filmmakers.

Worth reading. Especially so in anticipation of Ridley Scott’s forthcoming Robin Hood film. Russell Crowe is touted to be a dark Robin: the greenwood freedom fighter now painted as amoral and violent, rather than the heroic socialist of the late twentieth century. There are few other legends which work quite so effectively as historical palimpsests.

I admit, I’m late on this.

But.

Last week The Sun reported that Dame Helen Mirren has been tapped up by Quentin Tarantino to play - in showbiz reporter Gordon Smart’s words - “a foul-mouthed medieval monarch”. According to a ’source’ (hmm), “Helen has never worked with Tarantino and is interested.”

So many ifs, buts and probably nots here, but as a rumour it is rather pleasing. And there’s a nice parlour game, too. Which medieval queen?

Given that Hollywood would probably relax the boundaries of the term ‘medieval’ to include anything between the conquest of Britain in 43AD and the seventeenth century, my top three predictions are:

1. Boudicca
2. Eleanor of Aquitaine
3. Mary I
4. Catherine Parr
5. Hang on, that’s more than three
6.= Empress Matilda
6.= Matilda of Boulogne
8. The Lady in the Lake

I’ve discounted Joan of Arc on grounds of age. This is Helen Mirren.

Update: According to my ’source’ (actually a real sentient existing human person who knows about this sort of thing, so possibly a step up from your usual tabloid ’source’), “My gut instinct is that this is bollocks. But you never know.” Bah!

The year is barely upon us, and there’s another medieval movie thundering over the horizon. It’s called ‘Black Death’. No prizes for guessing which fourteenth-century plague it concerns. Christopher Smith directs. Sean Bean stars as Ulric, a hardbitten knight who encounters a necromancer in a swamp. Tim McInnerny gets a credit as a character called ‘Hob’. For some reason everyone else has Anglo-Saxon names. I can’t find a trailer at present, but you can check out an image gallery here.

My suspicion, alas, is that it will be pestilential cack. But hope springs eternal. The press screening is coming up in about 10 days, so I will be able to post a full review in due course.

Update: It’s released on 26 February. Sorry, should have mentioned that