Arthurian Film Analysis
Le Morte d’Arthur VS. Monty Python and the Holy Grail In a comparison between the book Le Morte d’Arthur and the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we can see a major difference in the story telling of the legend of King Arthur. In the book Le Morte d’Arthur, the author Sir Thomas Malory tells us the story of King Arthur in a serious manner and in a way that makes us feel that the entire book is real and that the legend of King Arthur did exist. In contrast to Le Morte d’Arthur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail tells the story in a comedic way and it is not realistic.Moreover, unlike Morte d’Arthur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is out of order and the characters in this movie are quite silly.
Sir Thomas Malory tells the legend of King Arthur in a serious way. He describes the story in such a fascinating and appealing way that it seems like he was by King Arthur’s side in every adventure. Unlike the book, the movie tells the story in a very ridiculous way, portraying King Arthur and his noble knights as silly characters. For example, King Arthur and his knight pretend to ride on a horse by skipping around and banging coconuts together to make horse sound.Another example of the novie ridiculousness is that the helmet on the knight’s head looks like a trash can.
On top of that, in this movie Camelot is not even a real place, it is just a model. Le Morte d’Arthur expresses the story of the great king, King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table in a noble and heroic way. In the book, King Arthur is like a Godly figure. He is portrayed as the best king in the world, who everyone knows and respects. In the book he and the Knights of the Round Table in the book are considered the best of the best.For example, we can see that when King Arthur pulls out the sword from the stone that no one could to get, everyone views King Arthur as a God.
However, in contrast, the movie shows that King Arthur does not get as much respect as he should have. For example, when King Arthur passes by Dennis the peasant, the peasant talks to him in a very rude manner. When King Arthur orders him to be quiet, the peasant doesn’t listen; he just keeps on saying bad things about him. Also, the knights in this movie show us that they are not very bright.For example, when they try to go in the French castle they use the “Trojan Horse” plan by building a wooden rabbit. However, they forget to hide some of the knights in the wooden rabbit first before they send it into the castle.
According to Malory, all of the knights should be brave, but in this movie we can see that Sir Robin, one of the Knights of the Round Table, is a coward because he runs away from a fight. Last but not least, we can see that Sir Thomas Malory tells the story of King Arthur in a historical way, while in the movie we can see that everything is out of order and the story is not realistic.One of the things that are out of order is when Dennis talks democracy. For instance, at the beginning of the movie when King Arthur announces himself as King of Briton to the peasants because he holds the sword Excalibur, Dennis the peasant says that a woman giving Arthur the sword is no basis for system of government. Dennis says that “supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the mass not from some farcical aquatic ceremony”.
This scene is not historical as democracy did not exist at that time.In addition, when King Arthur and his knights arrive at the cave of Caerbannog, they have to get past a killer rabbit. This is unrealistic because rabbits in the real world are not harmful. What make this even more unrealistic is that they have to use a grenade to kill that rabbit. During that time gun powder is not even invented. In conclusion, even though both stories are about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, we can see that they are very different in every way.
In Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the story is more realistic and historically based. He tells the story in a way that make the reader feel like this was the actual history, while the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more ridiculous and humorous. Instead of making this movie seem realistic, the producer makes jokes out of everything and makes the timeline of this story out of order. In my opinion, both the book and the movie are pretty good, depending on whether you want to know the real story or just something funny to watch.
