Category: Historical epic

Becket (1964)

Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton make unlikely friends (and then enemies) in Becket

Director: Peter Glenville

Cast: Richard Burton (Thomas Becket), Peter O’Toole (Henry II), John Gielgud (Louis VII of France), Donald Wolfit (Bishop Gilbert Foliot), Martita Hunt (Empress Matilda), Pamela Brown (Eleanor of Aquitaine), David Weston (Brother John), Sian Phillips (Gwendolen), Felix Aylmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Paolo Stoppa (Pope Alexander III), Gino Cervi (Cardinal Zambelli)

Burton and O’Toole in the same movie? There must have been a few late night benders on that shoot… You suspect actually that the backstage fun might have been just a little more sprightly and engaging than the movie itself, a lavish 1960s Hollywood Prestige film of English history. Based on Jean Anouilh’s semi-satirical play, it translates the clash between Church and State under Henry II into a very personal conflict between two men who each feel the other has let them down.

Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) is a Saxon who has risen high in the service of Henry II (Peter O’Toole) at a time when all the top jobs are held by Normans. Becket and Henry do everything together: hunting, hawking, whoring, you name it, the two of them are inseparable. But while both are sharply intelligent men, Henry is basically lazy and principally interested in enjoying life, while Becket always has a slight streak of responsibility for his people and their rights. But despite this, the two men both have England’s interests at heart and a strong friendship. So when Henry makes Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, it should work a treat, right? Well wrong, because Becket quickly begins to feel his loyalty is to the Church and God, not to Henry – and soon a debate over the legal rights of the church has blown up into a full scale clash between the two former friends. Will no one rid Henry of this turbulent priest?

Becket is a fairly sharply written, waspish play about the love/hate relationship between two men, but its themes and ideas are basically secondary to the showcasing opportunities it gives to its two lead actors. That’s pretty much what happens with this film: for all the ups and downs of the plot, the thing that really lifts this film are those two performances. Take that away and you essentially have a stately period pace, flatly and unimaginatively filmed with the look-at-the-scenery-and-costumes steadiness of other films of this genre and time. So it’s just as well that both leads are clearly having a whale of time.

Burton invests Thomas Becket with a quiet authority and a growing sense of something that, if it’s not morality, is at least a sort of moral certitude. Burton’s Becket is not the straightforward good-guy: his stances are always governed at least partly by his own pride and ambition. His defence of the Church is partly motivated by the need to secure his position, and in his career beforehand he constantly shows that he is won’t let doing the right thing damage his position at the court. But there are also touches of genuine faith throughout, and Burton plays the monologues imploring God for guidance with earnest conviction. Alongside this, he plays Becket with a great deal of wry observance and subtle wit that makes this kaleidoscopic character constantly fascinating: you never quite know what he is thinking.

Burton’s restraint also allows O’Toole more room in the more expansive role of Henry II. The powerful king – proud, controlling, intelligent and bombastic – was always a perfect role for O’Toole: indeed he would play it again four years later in another play adaptation, The Lion in Winter (becoming one of the few actors to get two Oscar nominations for the same character). O’Toole roars through the film, bringing immense energy and humour to Henry’s many scenes of intense speechifying. But what O’Toole does so well is balance this with a genuine sense of vulnerability, a genuine pain at losing Becket’s friendship. For all the power and control, O’Toole understands that Henry is essentially a very lonely man with only one man anywhere near his equal. O’Toole’s sharply intelligent, dynamic performance is a real treat.

And it feeds into the underlying theme of the film: this sense of unrequited love between the two men. Henry, for all his egotism, is clearly in love on some level with Becket: a fact that Becket seems aware of, but doesn’t quite return with the same intensity. And in fact, to double Henry’s pain, it feels like the friendship is one partly driven by Henry’s position rather than something genuine between the two men – Becket is always more guarded and more critical as a companion. Though of course that is fair enough: Henry is, however good-naturedly, a supreme ruler who cares little for the welfare of the Saxons under his rule, happy to help himself to attractive women from the peasantry if he wants them. But then perhaps it’s Becket’s very distance, his certain level of speaking truth to power, that makes him so appealing to Henry: when Becket is around, Henry has competition for smartest guy in the room.

There is a lot going on between the two leads, so it’s not surprising that much of the rest of the film doesn’t get a look in. For the other performers, John Gielgud landed an Oscar nomination for his two scenes (barely five minutes) as an arch and manipulative King of France, while Donald Wolfit is all puffed-up pomposity as Becket’s church rival. But the film is only focused on the two men and their political rivalry, so the context is always sketched in quickly, and the energy drops out of the film noticeably when they are apart. The film wants to frame the rivalry so much as a personal one that it doesn’t develop another interest in the political issues – so when scenes are obliged to focus on this, you feel the film starting to drag.

But that might also be because Anouilh’s play is famously historically inaccurate. For starters, Becket wasn’t Saxon, so his early lack of social standing makes no sense. The Constitutions of Clarendon (historically the reason for the falling-out in the first place) don’t merit a mention. Henry’s wife Eleanor of Aquitaine is presented as a shrew rather than one of the most intelligent women of the era, while Henry is also shown to be on poor terms with his mother, again contrary to the truth.

But that stuff all stems from the play, and in the end it hardly matters as the film is positioning itself as the tale of a friendship turned sour between two men. O’Toole and Burton are sublime, and if the direction and film-making around them is pretty pedestrian (although the film looks great and has an impressive score) it doesn’t really matter in an actors’ piece like this. Most of what is good from the play is carried over to the film, and the dialogue and speeches are often very strong. It’s a very stately and rather overlong play that doesn’t really keep the momentum up. But it’s still enjoyable, still has plenty to admire and even if it’s overlong and dry, it gives you performances that really sing.

Robin Hood (2010)

Russell Crowe takes aim as Robin Hood

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Russell Crowe (Robin Longstride), Cate Blanchett (Marian Locksley), William Hurt (William Marshal), Mark Strong (Sir Godfrey), Mark Addy (Friar Tuck), Oscar Isaac (Prince John), Danny Huston (King Richard), Eileen Atkins (Eleanor of Aquitaine), Max von Sydow (Sir Walter Locksley), Kevin Durand (Little John), Scott Grimes (Will Scarlet), Alan Doyle (Allan A’Dale), Matthew Macfadyen (Sheriff of Nottingham), Lea Seydoux (Isabella), Douglas Hodge (Sir Robert Locksley)

When this film was developed, it was a CSI style medieval romp called Nottingham. Russell Crowe was cast as the film’s hero – an ahead-of-his-time Sheriff of Nottingham, busting crimes in Olde England and dealing with rogue thief (with good press) Robin Hood. Yes that really was the original idea. Mind you, it would at least have been more original than what we ended up with after Scott and Crowe had a bit of a rethink.

So here we are: Robin Hood: Origins (as it might as well have been called). Russell Crowe is Robin Longstride, on his way back from the crusades as an archer in the army of King Richard (Danny Huston) army. When Richard is killed at a siege in France (it was one last siege before home – what are the odds!), the messengers carrying the news back to France are ambushed and killed by wicked Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong). Robin finds the bodies and assumes the identity of Sir Robert Locksley, travelling to England to tell Prince John (Oscar Isaac) the news of his succession – then returning to Nottingham with his friends, where Robert’s father Sir Walter (Max von Sydow) asks him to continue pretending to be Robin for dull tax reasons – and soon feelings develop between Robin and Sir Robert’s widow Marian (Cate Blanchett). But John is intent on farming the land for taxes, and Sir Godfrey is in cahoots with the French to conquer England.

Robin Hood is a semi-decent, watchable enough retread of a story so totally and utterly familiar that even the things it rejigs end up feeling familiar. In fact, to be honest you sit watching it and wondering why on earth anyone really wanted to make it. Scott brings nothing original and different to it, and the film looks like a less visually interesting retread of Kingdom of Heaven. Plot wise it’s empty. What’s the point of it all? It slowly shows us all the pieces of the Robin Hood myth coming together, so best guess is that it was intended to be the first of a series (there seems to have been no interest or demand for a sequel of any sort).

And then we’ve got Russell Crowe. Leaving aside everything else, Crowe looks about 10 years too old for the part. He delivers some sort of regional accent that meanders from Ireland to Yorkshire in its broadness, a laughable stumble around the country. Crowe does his slightly intense, sub-Gladiator mumbles and stares at the camera and attempts to suggest a deep rooted nobility, but actually comes across a bit more like a snoozing actor awaiting a pay-cheque.

Cate Blanchett does her best, lending her prestige to the whole thing in an attempt to make it land with some dignity (she of course does the opening and closing narration, which struggles to add some sort of grandeur to the whole flimsy thing). She’s saddled with a Maid Marian who is granted various “action” moments, but still has to be saved by Robin and face possible rape from a leering Frenchman (at least she saves herself from that one).

It also doesn’t help either actor that their romance plays out in the dull middle third of the film, where the plot grinds to a halt as we deal with Sir Walter (Max von Sydow almost literally acting blindfolded) using Robin as some sort of tax dodge scheme. The film is overloaded with characters, all of whom are separated at this point and struggling manfully to make their disconnected plotlines interesting: so we get John dealing with the pressures of office, Sir Godfrey scheming and looting, William Marshal trying to find a middle ground, Robin and Marian falling in love – it’s a mess. On top of this a get a ludicrous reworking of the Magna Carta as some Medieval version of the Communist Manifesto (it’s written by Robin’s executed dad no less, giving him a bizarre “painful backstory” to overcome). None of these plots really come together, and so little time is spent with each of them that they all end up getting quite boring.

The film culminates in a totally ridiculous battle scene on a beach, as Sir Godfrey’s French allies arrive on the shores of medieval England in some sort Saving Private Ryan landing craft. The tactics of this landing and the battle that ensues are complete nonsense. Every single character rocks up at this battle, which should feel like all the plot threads coming together but instead feels like poor script-writing. When Marian turns up, disguised as a man (how very Eowyn), leading a group of warrior children (I’m not joking) who feel yanked from the pages of Lord of the Flies, it’s just the crowning turd on this nonsense.

And all this fuss to defeat Sir Godfrey? Why cast Mark Strong and give him such a nothing part? Sir Godfrey is a deeply unintimidating villain. Everything he does goes wrong. He is bested in combat no less than three times in the film (once by a flipping blind man!). His motivations are never even slightly touched upon. He has less than one scene with John, the man who he is supposed to be manipulating. He runs away at the drop of a hat and Robin gets the drop on him twice on the film. He’s neither interesting, scary or feels like a challenging adversary or worthy opponent.

But then nothing in this film is particularly interesting. The set-up of the merry men around Robin (they seem more like an ageing band of mates on tour by the way than folk looking to rob from the rich and give to the poor) is painfully similar to dozens of other film, particularly in the Little-John-and-Robin-fight-then-become-brothers routine. Crikey even Prince of Thieves shook up the formula by making Will Scarlet Robin’s brother. Scott is going through the motions, like it was one he was committed to so needed to see through to the end despite having long-since lost interest. It’s not a terrible movie really, just a really, really, really average one with a completely miscast lead and nothing you haven’t seen before.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Caine and Connery together at last heading out to the sort of land perfect for The Man Who Would Be King

Director: John Huston

Cast: Sean Connery (Daniel Dravot), Michael Caine (Peachy Carnehan), Christopher Plummer (Rudyard Kipling), Saeed Jaffrey (Billy Fish), Shakira Caine (Roxanne), Doghmi Larbi (Oootah), Jack May (District Commissioner)

A glorious rip-roaring adventure, The Man Who Would Be King is exactly the sort of deeply enjoyable Sunday afternoon viewing you could expect to see playing out on a Bank Holiday weekend on the BBC. Which is enough to make you often overlook that this is quite a dark, even subversive film in amongst all the fun.

Adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s short story, the story follows Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) and “Peachy” Carnahan (Michael Caine): cashiered NCOs from the British Empire, bumming their way round the Raj in the 1880s, picking pockets and scamming everyone from local rajahs to British commissioners. But their dream is to travel to the distant land of Kafiristan, a country almost unknown in the West, where they hope to help a ruler conquer the land, overthrow him, clean the country out and head back to the West. Arriving after a difficult journey, their plan goes well – but is put out of joint when Dravot is mistaken for a god…

Strange to think that John Huston had this project in development for so long that his original intended stars were Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. After the project faltered for so long that those two stars sadly died, Huston shopped it around to most actorly double bills around Hollywood. Finally he settled on his ideal choices for these very British scoundrels: Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Fortunately, Newman took one read of the script and essentially said “John they’ve got to be British”. Connery and Caine were suggested – the rest is history.

And just as well they were suggested, as the film’s principal delight is the gorgeous interplay between the two star actors, happily embracing the film as if they knew they’d never get to bounce off each other together on screen again. This is one of the warmest, most genuine feeling friendships between two characters captured on film, Dravot and Peachy are so clearly heterosexual life partners that they are willing (after much bickering) to forgive each other virtually anything. On top of which, the two actors play around with each other like old-school stage comedians, matching each subtle raise of an eyebrow with a wry half smile.

Connery is of course perfect as the man succumbing to hubris, his Scots burr spot on for Dravot’s slightly pompous “front man”, while Caine excels as the more sly, fast-talking Peachy. The finest moments of the film feature these two interacting, from performing long cons, to hysterical laughter when death feels near on a snowswept mountain, to the final (emotionally stirring) moments of sacrifice and support.

Because yes, with the film opening with a decrepit Peachy recounting his story to Kipling (an engagingly plummy performance from Plummer – no pun intended) you just know this little boys’-own adventure in the East isn’t going to end well for our heroes. Huston, however, still manages to make the whole thing feel like an excellent jaunt, even though the devastation is clearly signposted from the start.

Huston’s film is shot with a sweeping, low-key excellence – Huston was a master at putting the camera in place and then basically not getting in the way of the story. He totally identifies from the start that it’s the relationship between the two leads that is the real emotional and dramatic force of the film and never allows anything to obstruct that. He’s smart enough to also get a bit of social commentary in there, around imperialism and the entitlement that means these lower-class Brits feel that they should have their share of other people’s counties. But these themes never unbalance the picture. Instead they counterbalance it – however much we enjoy the leads cheek and charm, we can’t forget that in many ways they are immoral conmen, who represent some of the worst riches stealing excesses of the British Empire.

The slow spiralling of Dravot into the sort of man who wants to stay behind and build a dynasty in Kafiristan works extraordinarily well. Connery perfectly suggests the ego and love of attention that motivates many of the actions of this natural showman. From the first battle, when an arrow fails to kill him, we see him slowly realise and enjoy the implications of this fame. His rather touchingly childlike pleasure in dispensing justice (even if Peachy has to quietly correct his maths in the middle of one case) and spinning fantasies about sitting on equal terms of Queen Victoria don’t turn him into a monster or an egotist, but more of a kid who is running before he can walk.

It’s the sense of fun that keeps you watching – and also what gives the final few moments their emotional force and power. It works because it never harps on the darker social commentary it contains, about the corruption of British rule, and the greed of these buccaneering adventurers. Superbly acted – as well as the leads, Saeed Jaffrey is very good as a Gurkha soldier who acts as translator for our two con-men – and extremely well filmed, with the sweep and grandeur of India coming across strongly in Huston’s careful camerawork, this is a hugely enjoyable film about friendship that has all the fun and vibrance of a con film wrapped in an epic adventure.

Farewell My Concubine (1993)

Leslie Cheung and Fengyi Zhang are the still centre for decades of Chinese history in Farewell My Concubine

Director: Chen Kaige

Cast: Leslie Cheung (Cheng Dieyi), Fengyi Zhang (Duan Xialou), Gong Li (Juxian), Ge You (Yuan Shquig), Lu Qi (Master Guan), Ying Da (Na Kun), Yidi (Eunuch Zhang), Zhi Yitong (Saburo Aoki), Lei Han (Xiaosi)

Chinese cinema isn’t well-known in the West. Maybe it comes from China so long being behind its own Red Curtain. Farewell My Concubine was pivotal to introducing Chinese cinematic culture to the West, winning a Palme d’Or and nominated for an Oscar. It’s surprising in a way, as Farewell My Concubine is a film that you almost need an intimate knowledge of Chinese history to truly appreciate (which I’m not sure I do!). But not surprising in another, as it is a glorious made, brilliantly acted and directed paean to the warmth of the human spirit.

Told over 52 years, from 1925 to 1977, the film follows two actors in the Peking Opera – Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang). Brought up in a brutally tough actor training school, the two become famous for their performances in the opera, Farewell My Concubine, about the suicide of a king’s concubine. Dieyi plays the concubine, while Xialou plays the king. The two actors are held together with a strong, almost unbreakable bond of brotherhood. But Dieyi also has a romantic longing for Xiaolou. Their relationship is made more complex after Xiaolou’s marriage to former courtesan Juxian (Gong Li) – but the three quickly find a relationship of tolerance, support and understanding that is tense but works. Around them China undergoes the Second World War, Japanese occupation, Mao’s seizure of power and the Cultural Revolution.

Kaige’s film is an epic that places an intimate and personal story at its centre and introduces global and national events which we largely understand from the perspective of our characters. This is a brilliant way of showing the seismic changes in China over this period – from the 1920s, which are so simple and Dickensian in their set-up that they might as well be the fifteenth century, to the increasingly brutal oppression of Mao’s regime. At the centre of all this is the relationship between the three core characters.

This relationship is almost impossible to define, so richly complex and human does it feel. It all rings immediately true – three people who are held very closely together by bonds of family, shared past and mutual dependency, but whose relationships are also rife with jealousies and regrets. Deiyi oscillates between vulnerability and guarded resentment against everyone around him. Xiaolou (brilliantly played by Fengyi Zhang, all warm-hearted charisma but easily led by others) is both annoyed and frustrated by Deiyi, but also goes to extraordinary lengths to protect him. Juxian (an enigmatic intelligent performance from Gong Li) at first seems to be a manipulative presence who wants to split the two of them apart, but comes to an unspoken accommodation with Deiyi that recognises they have a lot of shared interests and love.

All of this is simply beautifully done, subtle, un-obvious and brilliantly restrained, wonderfully acted by the three leads. Deiyi is a fascinating character, struggling with his sense of identity, trained from an early age to look and behave as much like a woman as possible. Is it any wonder that it has had an impact on his sexual identity? (The film’s openness about homosexuality – with Deiyi frequently being used for sex by his patrons – is one of many reasons it was nearly banned in China). Deiyi feels unable to express the feelings he clearly has, frequently falling back on imperiousness and pride. Leslie Cheung is just about perfect in this role: fragile, brittle but also harsh and unforgiving.

Kaige films all this beautifully in this visually striking film, using a host of brilliant images and wonderful lighting. The film’s opening hour covers the characters’ childhoods in the harsh training regime of the opera school, where beatings are common. Every character, by the way, accepts this as totally normal – in a striking later scene, the two adults meet their mentor again and immediately revert back to mutely accepting physical punishment for perceived wasting of their talent. One of the film’s striking commentaries on China in fact is the difference between their deference and the defiance of up-and-comer Xiaosi, who flat out refuses to take part in the harsh regime Deiyi tries to introduce and later becomes a leading light in the Cultural Revolution. It’s one of many ways the film uses the characters to demonstrate the changes in China.

The section covering the childhood of the characters is wonderfully done, a truly Dickensian series of events that will go on to define the lives and impressions of the two characters, skilfully built around the fate of a third friend – a more defiant joker who struggles far more to cope with the discipline of the camp compared to Deiyi’s stoic acceptance and Xiaolou’s matey deference. I truly loved this sequence and would happily have watched it for ever, every moment is so well observed, the child actors are marvellous and the claustrophobic world of the training school is immaculately observed (the outside world is so absent that the appearance of a car is actually a huge surprise as it makes you realise we are in the 20^thcentury).

But then this is a film that is set in a small interior world, which shifts and changes subtly as the wider Chinese world moves around it. The Japanese occupation seems to come from nowhere, a sudden interruption of a world where the two actors struggle to please patrons. The continued re-staging of the opera Farewell My Concubine is striking for how little it changes, a still centre of artistic conventionality (and it is conventional – every moment is handed down from previous generations, with Xiaolou constantly criticised for using five steps at one point where tradition demands seven). The imperious patrons rise and fall around the actors, victims to a China which is shifting quicker than they keep up.

Kaige’s film also sharply criticises the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, that threaten this relationship and pressure the actors to denounce both themselves and each other. The Chinese government of Mao changes constantly in its views and demands, faster than many can keep up – and what is acceptable one year becomes a capital crime the next year. Deiyi is ordered to perform for the Japanese, and later nearly faces death for this. A patron pivotal in saving him is later a man condemned for having that kind of power. Welcome to China.

Farewell My Concubine works because it puts the sprawling history in the background of this personal story of the relationship between three characters who need each other in ways they can hardly understand, increasingly drawn together as fixed points in a changing world. When the rules of yesterday are the crimes of tomorrow, is it any wonder you cling closer to the few people around you who understand and remember what you were like and where you are from?

Deiyi, Xiaolou and Juxian are characters held together by bonds that seem unshakeable, which allow them to frequently anger and attack each other but constantly draw them back to each other to support and save each other. Kaige’s understanding of this – and his brilliant discipline in refusing to add moments of definition to the feelings between these characters, but allowing us to interpret and form our own opinions of how their relationship works – is brilliant, and Farewell My Concubine is a brilliantly made, fascinating and infinitely rewarding film.

Patton (1970)

George C Scott triumphs as Patton in this excellent World War Two biopic

Director: Franklin J Schaffner

Cast: George C Scott (General George S Patton), Karl Malden (General Omar Bradley), Michael Bates (General Bernard Montgomery), Edward Binns (Lt General Walter Bedell Smith), Lawrence Dobkin (Colonel Gaston Bell), John Doucette (General Lucian Truscott), James Edwards (Sgt William Meeks), Frank Latimore (Lt Colonel Henry Davenport), Richard Münch (General Alfred Jodl), Morgan Paull (Captain Richard Jenson), Siegfriend Rauch (Captain Oskar Steiger), Paul Stevens (Lt Colonel Charles Codman), Karl Michael Vogler (Field Marshall Erwin Rommel), Peter Barkworth (Colonel John Welkin)

Patton was garlanded with eight Academy Awards in 1970, but rarely seems to get a mention when people list landmark best pictures. This is unfair, as Patton is a marvellous, intelligent, professional piece of film-making that rewards re-viewing: not least because, in George C Scott, it has one of those performances you simply must see, an extraordinary melding of actor and real man to such a great extent many people can’t believe they are seeing the real thing when watching newsreel footage of the actual Patton.

Patton is nominally a war film, but it’s actually an intriguing character piece. It follows the career of General George S Patton (George C Scott) during the course of the Second World War. Patton was a soldier’s soldier, a dyed-in-the-wool military man with a warrior’s instinct and a poet’s soul. The sort of man who berated men for not wearing proper uniform, then astounded them with thoughtful reflections on classical history. The film charts his command in Africa against Rommel, the invasion with Sicily (and feud with British counterpart Bernard Montgomery), his benching after striking a soldier suffering from shellshock in a military hospital, and his command of the Third Army during the Normandy invasion, including his pivotal role in the Battle of the Bulge.

With a script co-written by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund North (later president of the Screenwriter’s Guild), Patton was a warts-and-all portrait of one of America’s most famous generals that came out amidst the country’s growing disillusionment with Vietnam. It was embraced by both sides of the argument because it very skilfully walks a tight-rope: for the hawks, there is enough of the “if we had more like him …” stance. For the doves, the film doesn’t shy away from Patton’s egomania, lack of tact and love of war (he even strongly advocates immediately turning on Russia – ‘cos they’ve already got all the men in Europe anyway – which you can interpret as visionary or insane depending on which side of the fence you are on).

At the centre of everything, George C Scott is quite simply a force of nature as Patton – I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this is surely one of the greatest Best Actor winning performances ever. Patton is in nearly every scene, and even the one’s he’s not in he’s the subject of every conversation, and Scott totally dominates the movie. You can’t put your finger on it, but he quite simply becomes Patton. It’s extraordinary, but the actor totally disappears and you feel you are watching some remarkable act of resurrection (fitting since Patton had a profound belief in reincarnation).

Scott’s Patton rages, he shouts, he goes into fits of childish egomania – but he’s also sensitive, intelligent and poetic. He can write a touching letter to the bereaved mother of his adjutant, expressing his sorrow, but also write how tragic it is that he will miss the wars to come. Scott is ramrod in his posture, and more than embraces the theatricality of Patton himself – when an adjutant tells the General sometimes his soldiers don’t know if he’s joking or not, the General softly replies “It’s not important for them to know. It’s important for me to know”.

It’s easy to eulogise over Scott at the expense of all else – but the film is so focused on Patton that he is intrinsically linked with the film’s success. The film is episodic, but every scene tells us something different about the man. Although since the film starts with one of the greatest opening scenes in movie history, we feel like we pretty much know him from the start.

It opens with an enormous American flag, in front of which Patton emerges in full dress uniform to encourage new soldiers to do their duty and, most of all, to “remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” Scott famously refused to do this scene when told it would open the picture, as he felt nothing else in his performance could emerge from its shadow (they eventually told him it would go later in the film – no word on how he responded when he first saw the film!).

In a nut shell you get the whole movie. Is the giant American flag ironic or does the film really mean it? Patton is both strangely terrifying and also awe-inspiring, charisma, determination and force seeping from every pore of his body. Scott nails every detail of this speech, just as he nails every other part of the performance, while the camera work reinforces his mythic status (or his hubris depending on where you stand) as a symbol of Americana.

Schaffner’s direction of the film is easy to overlook, largely because it is refreshingly unflashy. It’s superbly professional –not a single scene falls flat. He marshals each scene with extraordinary effect, and manages the film’s difficult balancing act of sly satire and hagiography brilliantly. He also, within an epic canvas, works very well with actors – there are a host of great cameos in here, not least from Michael Bates as a preening Montgomery and Edward Binns as an exasperated Bedell Smith. Karl Malden is the only other really major character as Patton’s junior (later commanding) officer and he is perfect as the honest professionalism in contrast to Patton’s flash.

And the film gives us plenty of Patton’s flash. The man who loved war and combat, also loved performing – and does so with abundant skill. But the film isn’t afraid to show his warts: in Sicily he threatens to sack a general who refuses to risk his men’s lives on a risky operation, primarily motivated by Patton wanting to reach Messina before Montgomery. Later, when striking the scared soldier, his actions are tough to watch even as part of you sees his point about other men having been wounded in the line of duty (the playing of the soldier as a teary whiner probably doesn’t help). The film never fails to show that Patton’s worst enemy is his own arrogant lack of thought – he constantly shoots his mouth off with no thought for the impact.

The film is brilliantly constructed. The photography is excellent, the editing superbly marshals a long film of many individual scenes into a story that seems a lot tighter and forward moving than it probably is. Schaffner makes us feel we go on a clear journey with this character – helped as well by Jerry Goldsmith’s excellent score that conveys a great deal with ancient mythic weight, playing off Patton’s own belief in resurrection.

Patton is often forgotten a bit – but it is a great film, well made, brilliantly balanced, wonderfully written and directed. And at its centre: what a performance. George C Scott is simply astoundingly brilliant, completely transformed into the old general. His Oscar (which Scott declined, thinking awards phony) was as well-deserved as these things get. A wonderful film, a true epic, and a marvellous character study of an enigma – it deserves to sit near Lawrence of Arabia in the personal epic stakes (to which it has more than a few similarities).

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson are the feuding queens in Mary, Queen of Scots

Director: Charles Jarrott

Cast: Vanessa Redgrave (Mary, Queen of Scots), Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth I), Patrick McGoohan (James Stuart, Earl of Moray), Timothy Dalton (Lord Henry Darnley), Nigel Davenport (Earl of Bothwell), Trevor Howard (Sir William Cecil), Daniel Massey (Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester), Ian Holm (David Rizzio), Andrew Keir (Ruthven), Robert James (John Knox), Katherine Kath (Catherine d’Medici), Frances White (Mary Fleming), Vernon Dobtcheff (Duke of Guise)

So here we are, back in the Tudor history craze of late 1960s Hollywood. Charles Jarrott directed, following up his efforts in Anne of the Thousand Days with this professionally mounted, handsome and rather personality-free film adaptation. It occasionally falls a bit too much in love with its luscious romanticism – and it falls hard for Mary herself, surely one of the worst queens ever – but despite all that, it has an entertaining quality that never lets you down.

The film picks up with the recently widowed Mary (Vanessa Redgrave) essentially being chucked out of France after the death of her husband the King, and swiftly being sent back to Scotland to take up the throne there. Problem is: the very Catholic Mary isn’t exactly the choice of the lords of Scotland – led by her bastard brother James Stuart (Patrick McGoohan). Mary’s Catholicism also threatens to destabilise the relationship with Protestant England – particularly because she is the nearest successor to Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson). But Mary lacks Elizabeth’s tactical understanding of ruling and is guided by her heart – leading her into a disastrous marriage with feckless alcoholic Henry Darnley (Timothy Dalton).

Mary Queen of Scots is a stately picture, which uses its location shots, costumes and production design to tell its familiar story with a sweep and relish that effectively hides the lack of inspiration in its film-making. Just as in Anne of the Thousand Days, Charles Jarrott shows he’s a fine producer of middle-brow entertainment, safe costume dramas that aren’t going to challenge anyone’s perceptions or give you any real wow moments of filming. He’s happy to set the camera up and let the actors do their thing, with the script ticking off the great events.

That’s what you get here. It’s a film that could have been a lot more of an exploration of the rivalries and different life philosophies of its feuding queens. But it doesn’t quite connect with that. This is partly because it can’t quite bring itself to engage with the reality of Mary herself, preferring the popular romantic image. The film doesn’t want to admit that many of Mary’s decisions were, to put it bluntly, completely misguided bordering on wrong. It is in love with her romantic image – and not as enamoured with Elizabeth’s wiser, more pragmatic, manipulative rule. It’s this rule by heart rather than head the film finally holds up for praise.

It doesn’t help that Vanessa Redgrave feels miscast in the lead role. Redgrave is too sharp an actor to convince as someone as easily led and foolish as Mary. She looks too shrewd, she feels too smart. Redgrave compensates by speaking softly and giving a lot of love-struck eyes to various male actors (principally Nigel Davenport’s bluff, masculine Bothwell), but it doesn’t quite work. It’s like she’s struggling to find the character – and to find the balance in a film that doesn’t want her to be seen as too stupid, while the viewer is left slapping their foreheads at every action she carries out.

This feeling stands out all the more with Glenda Jackson’s casting as Elizabeth. Having just finished playing the same role in a landmark six-part TV series, Elizabeth R(which covered a lot of the same ground), Jackson here confirms that she was the definitive Elizabeth. As smart and shrewd an actress as Redgrave, Jackson’s natural firmness marries up very well with these qualities to make the perfect Virgin Queen. There have been so many others who have taken on the role, but Jackson is simply perfect in this role – she becomes Elizabeth. Her Elizabeth is clever, manipulative, cunning but also quick tempered, capable of great wisdom but prone to moments of passionate lashing out.

The rest of the cast is a familiar parade of character actors – British actors of this generation made a living from films like this! Timothy Dalton stands out as a foppish, clearly useless Darnley (here reimagined as a syphilitic bisexual with anger management issues), as does Ian Holm as a cool-headed, would-be power behind the throne David Riccio, who meets a tragic end. Daniel Massey does a decent job as Leicester (though I can’t shake memories of Robert Hardy in the same role in Elizabeth R – was he busy at the time?), Trevor Howard gets saddled with a lot of plot as Burghley. Up in Scotland, Patrick McGoohan has a lot of fun as a scheming Earl of Moray.

All of these actors fit comfortably into the slightly browned, grainy photography style of films of this type, and the screenwriters hammer together plenty of incident alongside dramatic invention. The focus on the soap opera of Mary’s three marriages (she’s widowed in the opening moments of the film) leaves plenty of scope for invention, from Darnley and Riccio’s affair to the inevitable non-historical meeting between Mary and Elizabeth – it seems like every drama going from Schiller onwards has invented a meeting between these two as a dramatic highpoint.

This final scene captures the lack of thematic depth to the film. In a film that had focused more on really comparing the differences between the two, this could have been the culmination of a debate running through the film (can you rule with a brain but not a heart?). Instead it misses the trick, and becomes a final game of one-up-man-ship, which the film allows Mary to win because she is the more romantic figure.

It’s well mounted and assembled like many other films like this – but it’s not the best of its genre, and you do sometimes wish for something that had a little more meat on its bones.

Excalibur (1981)

Nigel Terry gets a special gift in John Boorman’s crazily OTT Arthurian epic Excalibur

Director: John Boorman

Cast: Nigel Terry (King Arthur), Nicol Williamson (Merlin), Helen Mirren (Morgana Le Fay), Nicholas Clay (Sir Lancelot), Cherie Lunghi (Guenevere), Paul Geoffrey (Sir Perceval), Gabriel Byrne (King Uther Pendragon), Corin Redgrave (Duke of Cornwall), Patrick Stewart (King Leondegrance), Keith Buckley (Sir Uryens), Clive Swift (Sir Ector), Liam Neeson (Sir Gawain), Robert Addie (Mordred), Niall O’Brien (Sir Kay), Ciarán Hinds (King Lot), Charley Boorman (Young Mordred), Katrine Boorman (Igrayne)

John Boorman had wanted to make a film about King Arthur for over a decade, but it only came into being after his plans for an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings fell through (the suits were convinced the film couldn’t be a hit – good call). So, with a lot of prep work for Tolkien in place, Boorman moved a lot of his ideas for LOTR over to Excalibur. In doing so he created something probably truly unique – a bonkers version of the Arthurian legend, so consistently Wagnerian (often literally), high-falutin’ and overblown that it has a strange integrity in its operatic silliness.

The film begins with Arthur’s conception, a result of King Uther’s (Gabriel Byrne) lust for his ally’s wife, Igrayne (the director’s daughter Katrine). Merlin (Nicol Williamson) agrees to magically disguise Uther as Igrayne’s husband for one night, and in return spirits away the resulting child to be reared ignorant of his heritage. Years later, with a leaderless kingdom in chaos, Arthur (Nigel Terry) draws the magical sword Excalibur from the stone, and proves himself as king. He marries Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi) and brings Sir Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) to Camelot – oblivious of their love for each other. Slowly this love destroys the peace of the land – encouraged by the schemes of Arthur’s vengeful half-sister Morgana (Helen Mirren).

Excalibur is a film set in a completely heightened middle-ages dreamworld, as if it’s a series of drawings from an illustrated edition of King Arthur brought to life. The design of the film is dialled up to eleven: the armour the characters wear is ridiculously elaborate, shiny and eye catching. The characters never seem to take it off: Uther even has sex wearing it (poor Igrayne is completely naked – that can’t have been comfortable for her). Full armour is worn at meals, wedding, social events, everything: at the same time it’s brilliantly ineffective, punctured with ease by axes and spears.

The rest of the design of the film is equally overblown. Camelot seems to have been literally made from silver and gold. Lancelot kips in the forest and sleeps in the nude. Battle scenes are filmed on moody, misty nights, with horses and knights riding with insane riskiness at each other. Excalibur itself is almost impossibly shiny and unblemished and occasionally glows green. Everything has a high-artistic feel to it, like a Romantic painting. Nothing looks real – it uses a “rule of cool” aesthetic, anything that looks good from anything approaching medievalism is used.

The acting itself follows this operatic style. Half the dialogue is delivered shouting: Patrick Stewart in particular must have lost his voice while filming this one. Filmed in Ireland (it practically kickstarted the Irish film industry), many Irish actors got their first film break here, not least Gabriel Byrne (a furiously lusty Uther), Liam Neeson (a drunken oafish Gawain) and Ciarán Hinds (growling in the background). Each roars through their dialogue, perhaps none more so than Corin Redgrave who screams his with such flemmy passion it’s often hard to work out what exactly he’s saying.

There are quieter moments from the three leads, even if all three of them don’t really have the charisma to impose themselves on sketchily drawn characters. Cherie Lunghi adopts an odd, part-time Irish accent as a bland Guenevere. Nicholas Clay is an upright Lancelot who simmers with guilt but is just a wee bit dull. Nigel Terry’s performance as Arthur (from young yokel to tortured king) gets better the more times I see it, but it lacks a certain star quality. But then in Boorman’s design, these three characters are just tools of fate rather than real characters – and the film has so much story to cover it often has very little time for character development.

The real stars of this film are Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren. The two actors had a long-standing animosity – Boorman deliberately cast them to get an extra spark out of their scenes. But both actors seize their colourful characters – and have the time to add some depth to their bombastic, larger-than-life moments. Mirren gets to express bitterness and fury under simmering sexuality, as well as a genuine love for her son. Williamson is fantastic: playful, half nutty professor, half vengeful force of mystic power, he turns Merlin into an eccentric but somehow sinister old man. Williamson finds bizarro and unique line readings of even the simplest lines, stretching the material in the way only a really great actor can. He’s such an electric and interesting character, that he makes a performance that’s basically well over the top, hugely enjoyable and also even rather sweet.

As such, Williamson is perfect for Boorman’s overblown, crazy film. The score uses Wagner and Carmina Burana to great effect, and the closing moments are shot before a giant blood red sky. Boorman’s shiny, colourful world effectively melts down in the second half of the film into musty, moody greys: his concept of Arthur losing his way and the kingdom disintegrating works extremely well, and means we get a real sense of things falling apart. The Grail Quest is like a creepy fever dream – with knights we have known dying in gruesome ways, freezing in chapels or hanging in a tree with their corpses picked clean by crows (of course one crow eats an eye!).

In many ways Excalibur is a very silly film: it’s hard to believe it was made six years after Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as much of its design and action is more than a little reminiscent of that film (it’s probably the only parody you could argue was made before the film it best sends-up). You probably need to see it at a certain age or enter into it with the right mindset for something that walks a difficult line between fairy tale and earthy campness. But I still love it.

Because Boorman really goes for it here. You know from the early sequence of Uther and Igrayne having sex against a background of actual fire, in full plate armour, intercut with a lingering death of Cornwall impaled on a series of spears in Uther’s camp (his death and Uther’s climax are of course cut together) what sort of film you are going to get. Everything is OTT. The drama leaves nothing behind, and Boorman wisely removes any sense of restraint from this telling of the legend. It looks gorgeous – even if dated moments like the Lady of the Lake are more likely to raise sniggers than not – and it really, really goes for it. Not many other films could get away with something so over-the-top and bizarre: but this sort of does.

Silence (2016)

Andrew Garfield struggles with questions of faith in Martin Scorsese’s Silence

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Andrew Garfield (Father Sebastião Rodrigues), Adam Driver (Father Francisco Garupe), Shinya Tsukamoto (Mokichi), Liam Neeson (Father Cristóvão Ferreira), Tadanobu Asano (The Interpreter), Ciarán Hinds (Father Alessandro Valignano), Issey Ogata (Inoue Masashige), Yoshi Oida (Ichizo), Yōsuke Kubozuka (Kichijuri), Nana Komatsu (Monica/Haru), Ryo Kase (João/Chokichi)

Martin Scorsese is well known as the director of the finest gangster and crime films ever made. But interestingly, he also has quite the sideline in searching religious epics – and in fact many of his films, not least Mean Streets and The Departed, dwell on feelings of Catholic duty and guilt, questions of doubt and faith. Silence, a book published in 1971, zeroes in on these questions by placing priests in impossible situations and seeing how their faith is tested.

In the 1630s, Japan begins a campaign of persecution against Christian converts. Jesuit priest Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) witnesses his flock undergoing torture for their faith. Word reaches the Catholic church that Ferreira has committed apostasy. A few years later, Fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) volunteer to head to Japan to continue the mission of spreading the world, and to find out the truth about Ferreira, who had been their mentor. In Japan, they find a dangerous and violent world where Christians face gruelling persecution. Both men find their faith tested – and God’s silence deafening.

Silence is a film that received a slightly sniffy review on release – but what were people expecting? This is a quiet, meditative, beautifully made film that raises profound questions around faith, identity and Christianity – and is brave enough to let people develop their own answers. It’s a slow-paced, thoughtful and (for such a dynamic film-maker) very calmly filmed work, that feels like it carries a great deal of personal investment – Scorsese’s interests in the effort and struggle required by faith, and about how few clear-cut answers there are in our understanding of religion.

On those terms, I found myself both engrossed by it – much more than I was anticipating. Scorsese combines astounding visuals and use of sound (and silence) to create a hypnotic film. The mists of Japan have rarely looked so beautiful, and the film’s astounding cinematography uses it to maximum effect to create a series of stunning images. One marvellous shot of a crucified man removed from his cross and carried to his funeral pyre is very moving in its simplicity and echoes Caravaggio’s Deposition from the Cross. At other times, silence is skilfully introduced, just as moments of seeming quiet are never truly silent. It’s a marvellously made film.

Within this beautiful framework, Scorsese explores ideas of faith and apostasy. How does faith work? How much is our communication with God private and how much does it need to be made public? Would you renounce your calling to save others – even if it meant turning your back on God? How much of all this is God listening into? How much is the act of conversion a selfish one, spreading your own glory? How many sacrifices are worth the celebration of faith – and what is the ultimate aim and reward of martyrdom? How can we even define martyrdom – and does it always revolve around death, or a can it be a private death of the spirit?

These are fascinating ideas, and the film presents a series of viewpoints on each of these, while never offering a definitive answer. While this is a film about men who question their faith, it is not a film asking the viewer to question theirs. If you hold faith, different solutions and answers will present themselves, and your own personal beliefs will guide what you feel is right and what is not. Some people you may find unforgiveable – others you may find foolish or even conceited in their faith, while others will find the same men brave and principled.

Scorsese directs all this with an astonishing sense of control and quiet reflection, letting the film breathe and never allowing melodrama to overwhelm reflection, or the character story. The film is unflinching in watching the matter-of-fact drowning, crucifiying and other killings of Christians, but it never feels like its making cheap points, strange as it is to see such visual beauty given to horror. It’s asking us how much of this we could sit and watch without agreeing to abandon something we believe passionately in as the ultimate truth.

Andrew Garfield performs with a passionate earnestness and absolute commitment. In many ways, as the reactive centre of the film, he has the least interesting part (and therefore fewer opportunities to shine than the rest of the cast) but he is very good in a difficult internalised role, and makes us invest in every step of Rodrigues’ tortured journey of increasing doubts and fears.

Driver has a flashier part, but does very well as a priest who wears his heart on his sleeve – and voices doubts, but also flashes of anger. He provides a lot of the initial energy, and demonstrates again what an intelligent and instinctive actor he is. Neeson as the fallen priest is able to invert his own reputation for mentors, while leaving the question open of how much his placidity and co-operation with the authorities is brain-washing or hiding far different feelings.

Scorsese recruits some of the cream of Japanese acting, and they deliver uniformly strong performances. Shinya Tsukamoto is excellent as Rodrigues’ mirror image, a man quick to denounce to save his own skin, but carries a kernel of faith at his centre. Tadanobo Asano is wonderfully controlling as Rodrigues’ interpreter, while Issey Ogata is outstanding as the leading prosecutor of the Japanese government, a man who seems a harmless, wizened old man, but whose eyes (and chamelonic body) are able to rearrange itself swiftly into looks of contempt and loathing.

Silence is a serenely made film, one that really wants to speak to those with Christian faith. Like the works of Carl Dreyer, it engages intelligently with themes around faith. I’d be fascinated to see what those who hold a stronger faith than mine make of it. But I thought this posed a series of compelling, and searching, questions about the unknowability of God – of his silence, but that silence not necessarily being indifference. It charts how hope can be found from despair – and how sacrifices we sometimes make for the greater good can also lead to new ways we can understand ourselves. It’s a very mature, brave and compelling piece of film making.

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Kevin Costner finds his inner peace in Dances with Wolves

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner (John Dunbar/Dances With Wolves), Mary McDonnell (Stands With A Fist), Graham Greene (Kicking Bird), Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair), Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Chief Ten Bears), Tantoo Cardinal (Black Shawl), Jimmy Herman (Stone Calf), Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse (Smiles A Lot), Michael Spears (Otter), Charles Rocket (Lt Elgin), Robert Pastorelli (Timmins), Tom Everett (Sgt Pepper), Wes Studi (Toughest Pawnee), Maury Chaykin (Major Fambrough)

At the end of the 1980s, Kevin Costner was the biggest film star in the world, with a string of hits behind him. So he did what Hollywood stars before and since have done: cashed in all his chips and made the film he had to make. It would be long, it would be mostly in a foreign language, it would have no stars (other than himself) and – most poisonous of all at the time – it would be a Western. When the funding started to dry up, Costner even paid for the overtime out of his own pocket. Not for no reason was the project dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” by the sceptical media, eagerly expecting Hollywood’s golden boy to land on his face.

How wrong they were. Dances with Wolves not only made almost 20 times its budget at the box office, it changed many Americans’ perceptions of Native Americans – oh yes and it also won seven Oscars, including Best Director for Costner and Best Picture. Costner plays Lt. John Dunbar, a civil war veteran who (after an act of suicidal death-seeking foolishness to avoid having his leg amputated) chooses a posting to an abandoned fort in the middle of Sioux country. Forgotten by the army, Dunbar forages alone and comes to the attention of the Sioux. At first cautious around each other, Dunbar eventually befriends healing man Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) and finds himself cautiously welcomed into the Sioux tribe as a guest, finding love with Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman raised by the Sioux. He begins to find the Sioux as kindred spirits.

Costner’s film is an expansive, heartfelt poem, a film in love with sweeping vistas and with an endearing, humanitarian view of the world, beautifully shot by Dean Semler and helped immensely by a wonderful, swelling lyrical score by John Barry – one of the best scores you are likely to hear. Costner dispels any doubts about his abilities to direct by throwing himself into a truly epic canvas – and some of the ideas here are reminiscent of Lean, in their beautiful use of the American plains. Within this large canvas, Costner tells an actually fairly simple, but also sweetly touching, story of the disillusioned man who finds himself in the wilderness.

If there is a flaw with Dances with Wolves it is that its story is so traditional and (in many ways) predictable. It’s understandable that the story introduces a white man to be our surrogate when encountering the Sioux. But it’s hard to shake the feeling of all that all-too familiar trope, the White Saviour. The primary good the Sioux serve in the film is to help Dunbar discover himself, to come to peace with himself. In turn, it’s Dunbar who increasingly becomes the tribe’s protector – helping them to find the buffalo, giving them guns and leading the defence against a Pawnee tribe attack, increasingly recognised as a “celebrity” in the tribe.

On top of that, Dunbar’s love interest becomes the only other prominent white character in the film. Again I understand that the film needed someone who was able to serve as a cultural and language bridge between Dunbar and the Sioux. But could there not have been some sort of narrative invention to make this female character a Sioux who had learned some English? It seems as if the film can only go so far – and showing a multi-racial relationship was probably that. Saying that, McDonnell is very good as the gentle Stands With A Fist, but it feels like a cop-out.

Costner’s own central performance gives everything the film requires. It’s a fairly simple role: the disillusioned soldier finding inner peace. The film plays very much into the attraction of the “noble savage” – the simplicity and honesty of the Sioux lifestyle being so much purer than the corruption of the “modern” world (needless to say, nearly all the white men in the film are truly awful people). But Costner brings his considerable charm to bear, delivering many of his lines with that slightly cocksure, shy grin he uses so well. The film suffers from its narration being delivered by Costner’s flat and unmodulated voice, but he’s perfectly fine in the role.

He plays it with an entirely straight honesty – and, for all its faults, this honesty makes the film work. The film goes overboard to humanise and provide empathy for the Sioux, as if wanting to correct generations of films that have cast Native Americans as dangerous savages. The Sioux are humane, generous, welcoming and dignified. Graham Greene has to carry much of this as medicine man Kicking Bird, and he gives a stirring, sympathetic performance, with equally fine performances from Rodney A. Grant and Tantoo Cardinal in particular.

The film delivers all its tropes and traditional structure with a straightforward, heart-warming simplicity – it really means that you go with the picture, and find yourself as drawn to the Sioux lifestyle as Dunbar is. Also, for all the criticism of the film’s narrative, it shouldn’t be forgotten what a warm reception it had from Native American groups, delighted to see their ancestors presented in such an empathetic light (the Sioux Nation later adopted Costner). And the film sensitively and brilliantly stages this way of life, with a series of beautifully done vignettes ranging from marriage to simple cooking and spending time around the fire.

The most stunningly filmed of these is the buffalo hunt, a soaring marvel of camera work, editing and horseback adventure. The film doesn’t let you forget the sequence before either, where the Sioux come across a series of buffalo killed for their hides by white hunters – in comparison to the complete use of the carcass (and limited numbers killed) by the Sioux. The buffalo hunt sequence is an exciting triumph – it’s probably responsible for several of the technical Oscars the film received – and it’s a tribute to Costner’s mastery of the visuals of the American West (even if, rumour has it, chunks of it were actually filmed by Kevin Reynolds).

Dances with Wolves is a very heartfelt and honest film – and its sincerity means it kind of gets away with its obvious flaws (and its great length). Costner wanted to make an important film and he does to a certain extent – but one which wears its importance fairly lightly, and makes a series of enriching humanitarian arguments that carry real weight. It’s in many ways an extremely accomplished retelling of a familiar story. But I found myself genuinely moved by the story it wanted to tell, and the questions it asks of its audiences. Is it a great film? Probably not, but it is a good one.

Apocalypto (2006)

Rudy Youngblood is on the run in Mel Gibson’s Mayan experience epic

Director: Mel Gibson

Cast: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernández (Seven), Jonathan Brewer (Blunted), Morris Birdyellowhead (Flint Sky), Gerardo Taracena (Middle Eye), Raoul Trujiilo (Zero Wolf)

In the early 1500s, the Mayan civilisation is at its final peak before its collapse. However, it is a civilisation built on human sacrifice and exploitation. A peaceful village is brutally attacked by Mayan soldiers, who take the women to be sold into slavery and the men to be sacrificed to the sun. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) manages to save his wife and child, but is captured and taken to the Mayan capital where he struggles to survive, escape and find his family.

Setting a film in the long gone Mayan civilisation, in an entirely dead language, with no stars is a brave choice for any film-maker. So you have to tip your hat to Mel Gibson, for all his undoubted unpleasantness, that he was brave enough (or powerful enough) to put the project together. It could have been a grand folly but, thanks largely to Gibson’s undoubted prowess as a film-maker, it’s a relentless experience movie, with moments of horror expertly mixed with terrifying edge-of-the-seat tension. It’s a clear sign that, for all his personal issues, Gibson is a very fine director.

The chase, when it comes in the final third is unrelenting, and brilliantly shot and edited. Gibson uses a range of different cameras, from those mounted on Youngblood, to tracking shots, to aerial shots to throw us into the middle of the action. Trees blur by, the soundtrack pounds, the camera doesn’t let up. Gibson also knows to throw in quieter moments – pause points, moments to take breath for both the pursuers and the pursued. Jaguar Paw carries a dreadful wound – and runs on the same level of adrenalin as the film provokes in its audience.

Of course, it’s also, as per a Gibson film, very bloody stuff. Faces are bludgeoned. Bodies are cut to pieces. A jaguar literally rips a man’s head apart. The film wants us to experience this bloody world first hand. As a piece of film-making, it’s addictive in its unremitting violence and tension. It’s also compelling how the odds slowly change throughout the chase – like a Die Hard in the jungle, the further the pursuit heads into the jungle, the greater confidence Jaguar Paw possesses, and the more he is able to turn the tables on his pursuers. This also highlights the savage danger of nature itself – the jungle is full of potential dangers, from jaguars to hornets to poisonous animals.

It’s far from perfect of course. The script is dire – the subtitled content we read if often terrible clunky. The opening sequence is a long series of jokes about eating a wild pig’s bollocks. There are strange anachronistic turns of phrase – at one point a collapsing tree nearly takes out the convey of slaves, leading Zero Wolf to shout “I’m walking here!”. If you were in any doubt about the essential crudeness and simplicity of Gibson’s sense of humour, you only really need to read the subtitles.

But because the film is subtitled and feels like a brave piece of film-making, it’s very easy to assign a depth to it that the film doesn’t really have. It is, to all intents and purposes, an 80s action film transposed to an ancient civilisation. It would like to think it has some profound message about the nature of man. But it’s largely an experience movie that throws you into an old civilisation and wants you to vicariously feel the suffering of its central character. It’s Gibson at his most visceral, throwing us into worlds of violence, tapping into elemental feelings of pity and horror.

I guess there are themes in there about the universal corruption and cruelty of great civilisations, with their violence, greed and cruelty – and we know the conquistadors are just round the corner. But other than presenting this as is, the film doesn’t make too much of an effort to draw real contrasts with our world. It is what it is. The audience is there to feel the fear and the horror of the innocent villagers being fed to the Mayan human sacrifice machine. Any pretence to this being a profound movie on top of that is just that: a pretence.

But Gibson can shoot the hell out of a film, and this is tense, engrossing viewing – largely because you’ve not really seen anything else really like this. The scenes at the Mayan sacrifice temple are horrifyingly hypnotic in their orgy of death. Our villagers have a chilling powerlessness in the face of this death machine that awakens all our feelings of vulnerability and sympathy. Violence and murder is shown to be central to Mayan civilisation – and it might not carry that thematic idea forward too much, but at least it’s an interesting suggestion.

But Gibson’s primary purpose here is to make a high-octane chase movie – an actioner, set in a primitive civilisation, where human beings on foot carry all the energy of the chases, and the stakes feel impossibly high. You have to admire Gibson’s power as an immersive film-maker, and the unique vision he presents, difficult as it can be to watch. It’s something truly unique, often shockingly so. And if it is, at heart, part chase part slasher with slightly more depth, it’s also something you can’t imagine many other directors having the chutzpah to put together.