Tricks of Thrones – Weekend
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The series “The Winter King” is being released on MGM+ – another attempt to film a new “Game of Thrones” using other, more or less suitable material. In this case, the novels of the Englishman Bernard Cornwell about the adventures of King Arthur were used.
In the dark 5th century, discord reigns in Dumnonia (the Roman name for the kingdom of the Britons). The Britons repulse the attacks of the Saxons, and in one of the battles the rightful heir of King Uther Pendragon dies. But his bastard Arthur (Ian De Caestecker), as luck would have it, survives – and immediately falls out of favor with his father. Eddie Marsan plays Uther to the hilt, a true Shakespearean villain, howling and rolling his eyes, although this is not based on Shakespeare or even Thomas Malory, but on the Warlord’s Chronicles trilogy (1995-1997) by the prolific historical novelist Bernard Cornwell.
The story of Arthur’s adventures is told from the perspective of Derfel Cadarn (Stuart Campbell). Such a historical character really existed – at first he was a warrior, then a hermit monk and later called a saint. Cornwell retells Arthurian legends in the genre of “what it really looked like” – for example, Lancelot is not his ideal knight, but a boastful narcissist who paid bards money for songs about his non-existent exploits. A year ago, the successful Cornwell series “The Last Kingdom” ended, where the same technique of a reliable storyteller was used: the main character Uhtred of Bebbanburg, having lived to his gray hairs, for as many as thirteen novels and seven serial seasons, recalled how his youth took him on a military campaign. Even earlier, another successful film adaptation from the history of the Napoleonic wars was made based on Cornwell: “The Adventures of the Royal Fusilier Sharpe” (1993–2008) with the young and irresistible Sean Bean – against the usual, his hero remained alive for an incredibly long time.
The inhumanly efficient Cornwell has written as many as 22 novels about Gunner Sharpe (by the way, he is only four years older than George Martin, from whom fans are unsuccessfully waiting for the completion of the great saga of ice, fire and incest). Against this background, Cornwell’s Arthurian cycle of three novels looks rather modest and not very promising for film adaptation. But, judging by the first episodes, the writers partially “wronged the book,” as purist readers complain, and the scope of the trilogy is not theirs to dictate.
First of all, Merlin (Nathaniel Martello-White) bears the burden of the script’s gag on his shoulders – firstly, he is black, and secondly, his sexual liberation has disappeared somewhere. In Cornwell, he was voluptuous, and on the screen he treats the girl Nimue (Ellie James) like an idol, although in the books they were lovers. (This, however, is a fundamental difference between all costume productions of the current Puritan era from series of previous decades like “Rome”, “The Tudors” or the same “Game of Thrones”, where historical and fantasy characters cheerfully copulated in the frame at least once per episode.)
Avalon from a legendary island has turned into an urban village, where the sorcerer Merlin nurtures sorceresses like Nimue with the abilities of druids. This freckled maiden will save the boy Derfel from a terrible wound: the evil king Gundleus from Siluria (Simon Merrells), having plundered his village, impales the boy on a sword in the “pit of death.” From where he is picked off like a chicken from a spit by the valiant Arthur, expelled from Dumnonia by Uther and laboring somewhere in the background. Subsequently, having grown into a handsome blond (young actors from TV series about Vikings and Saxons always fall into the type of “model from a Calvin Klein ad with a beard from a barbershop”), Derfel wants to marry Nimue, but will be refused, because, having grown up, Druid girls It seems like they are losing their magical abilities. In the novels, Cornwell tried to expose Druid magic – they say, this is all a carefully induced hallucination. The scriptwriters are trying to bring the magic wraith back into the frame, but it doesn’t look scorching like dragon fire, but fake, like circus tricks.
Meanwhile, King Uther dies, turmoil is brewing in Dumnonia, and Merlin calls on Arthur to save his native land from the Saxons. And then everything begins to smoke, like in “Game of Thrones,” only the smoke here is thinner: young maidens are raped off-screen, babies are not cut up in close-ups, blood was brought into the frame as if from Shakespeare, and dramaturgy as from a children’s matinee. The spectacle of an endless serial massacre, when royal archers, Celts and Vikings squabble and divide the same lands century after century, seems to tell us that this story will never end.
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