• Directed by Richard Donner
• Written by Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas, Tom Mankiewicz and David Peoples
• Starring
  • Matthew Broderick
  • Rutger Hauer
  • Michelle Pfeiffer
  • Leo McKern
  • John Wood
• Produced by Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler

It seems that the first thing everyone has to comment on when discussing this movie is the soundtrack, so let’s get that out of the way first.

I absolutely love it.

Granted, I’m a big ’80s music fan, and I’m especially fond of the Alan Parsons Project, so a score produced by Parsons and composed and conducted by frequent Parsons-collaborator Andrew Powell is almost made to order to tickle my fancy. Yes, the electronic keyboard elements mixed with the orchestral sections does sound a bit dated these days, but it’s still rousing and evocative nonetheless, even if it does at times sound like it was meant for a rock opera. After the initial disjointed shock during the opening credits of hearing synths and a drum machine for a medieval adventure-romance, there’s no reason not to be swept along and enjoy it. I even own it on LP. (Okay, maybe that’s a little more than I needed to reveal.)

As for the movie itself, Richard Donner has always been a competent and professional director, if not particularly creative or inspired; his greatest contribution to the wealth of cinema has been to jettison most of the slapstick from Mario Puzo’s original script for Superman: The Movie and instead bring Tom Mankiewicz in (under the credit of “story consultant”) to provide a more respectful screenplay. Aside from that, everything he’s done pretty much falls under the label of “workmanlike.”

“You think this is a tight spot? Let me tell about the time Cameron and I borrowed his Dad’s Ferrari…”

In fact, the movie could easily have slipped into a plodding and unremarkable pseudo-fairy tale if not for the supporting character we meet first: Philippe “The Mouse” Gaston (Matthew Broderick), a young thief who talks incessantly to himself and to God. Philippe carries most of the humor of the movie and gets all of the good lines, and his presence provides the necessary leaven to a story which could otherwise become dense and unenjoyable.

We first meet Philippe as he does what no one has ever done before: escape from the dungeons of the Bishop of Aquila (John Wood) by slithering down an impossibly tight drain and out into the sewer system. This is a big deal, because no one has ever, ever done that before. The Bishop, like most medieval clergy portrayed in film, isn’t known for his doctrinal scholarship and forgiving nature; instead, he’s a cruel and uncompromising hardass, and it simply wouldn’t do for the peasants under his thumb to get the idea that his domination of their lives is less than absolute. So the Bishop’s guards are dispatched into the countryside.

What they find is more than they bargained for, however, for as they trap the loose-lipped Philippe at a country tavern, the run across someone else entirely: Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer), former Captain of the Bishop’s Guard and now persona non grata in the territory. Oddly enough, Hauer was originally cast as the current Captain, Marquet (here played by Ken Hutchison); I don’t know who was originally meant to play Navarre, but I can tell you sight unseen that it was the right decision. Hauer makes Navarre believably tough enough that he can take on a half-dozen of the Bishop’s men (including Marquet) with nothing but the weapons he finds around him, and his presence is, as would be appropriate to his former station, commanding. Hutchison’s Marquet is no match for him; his main strengths lie in being obsequious to the Bishop and meaner than piss to those under him.

The movie’s full of shots like this. I’m not complaining.

Philippe is unwillingly pressed into Navarre’s service after their escape, and he finds that night, as they take shelter in a woodcutter’s barn, that Navarre is not leading the life of an ordinary out-of-favor soldier. Navarre disappears at sundown; in his place is an etherally beautiful woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), and a huge black wolf who protects them when the woodcutter decides in the middle of the night to “up the rent,” so to speak.

The next day, the wolf and the lady are gone, Navarre is back, and Philippe finds out in what way he’s valuable: Navarre has pledged to kill the Bishop, and Philippe, being the only person ever to escape the dungeon, is going to help him get into the city to do it.

The Bishop’s men, though, under orders from His Grace, are now hot for Navarre’s skin, and in the battle following an ambush, the hawk is shot through the wing by a stray crossbow bolt. Navarre, also injured, stays out in the hinterlands as evening draws on and sends Philippe on ahead to a ruined castle, where an old monk named Imperius (Leo McKern) lives. Philippe lingers long enough to find that the hawk is indeed the lady he met, named Isabeau; and as Imperius confirms, the wolf now howling in the night is Navarre. The two had been young lovers in Aquila, but the Bishop had wanted Isabeau for himself, and in a jealous rage had thus turned to the powers of darkness to curse the two of them to the life they now lead on the run, technically together but always separated as man and woman.

The horse looks pretty pissed, too.

After yet another battle with the Bishop’s men (which is niftily concluded at dawn, when both Isabeau and Navarre transform), Imperius proclaims something wonderful to Navarre: God has given the old monk the knowledge to defeat the curse. In three days, there will be a day without a night and a night without a day, and at that time if Isabeau and Navarre can stand before the Bishop as man and woman, the curse will be broken. Of course, it sounds like nothing but gibberish to Navarre, and as Imperius had been their confessor in Aquila who had inadvertantly revealed their affair to the Bishop, Navarre’s not inclined to trust him. But Philippe believes — or at least, he doesn’t rule miracles out — and so he and Imperius follow along to try to dissuade Navarre from his mission, which will keep the curse from ever being lifted: Killing the Bishop.

There’s much to admire in this movie. The scenic locations and preserved European castles expand and add verisimilitude to the tale; if it is not a tale of the real world, it at least seems to be a tale of a real world. And as mentioned before, some of the richest character bits revolve around Philippe, as he uses his professional skill — lying — to pass beautiful and ersatz messages between the lovers, reawakening hope for a future and reminding both of them of the lover which they can now never look upon in human form. (I’m going to assume that both of them are illiterate, or else they would long ago have started leaving notes for each other at dawn and dusk. “Honey, Love you, stay safe, P.S. We’re out of milk.”)

Of course, there are implausibilities beyond those inherent in the central concept. One is the timeframe of the movie — not in terms of its historical setting, but in terms of the season of the year. Philippe escapes through the deep waters of Aquila’s sewers and moats, and shows no ill effects, but in the montage of his escape into the countryside he runs along the edge of an icy pond with snow-capped mountains in the background. Similarly, on the return trip to Aquila, there’s a tense scene in which the wolf falls though the ice of a frozen lake, and Philippe almost drowns helping to fish him out; yet within 24 hours they’re at the gates of Aquila again, and Philippe slinks into the waters of the moat with nary a shiver or a sniffle afterward.

See, ’cause it’s like she’s been pierced through the heart with love, see? It’s all symbolic ‘n’ subtextual ‘n’ stuff.

And it is pretty jarring when Philippe, who has called Isabeau nothing but “Miss” or “Milady,” suddenly addresses her as “Isabeau” — in the single scene in which Cezar (Alfred Molina in a small role), the Bishop’s favorite wolf-trapper, could overhear him and deduce that the wolf the Bishop wants is in the area. (And whatever you do, don’t look at how the moon phases in the background keep changing crazily from night to night.)

There are a few other trifles — the fact that Marquet has apparently got the best quarterback’s arm EVER, and the longest total eclipse in history (whoops, hope that’s not too much of a spoiler) — but they’re certainly not grave offenses against the intelligence of the audience.

(It seems that a lot of people want to bag on Broderick for his inconsistent accent. To tell the truth, I didn’t notice it; given the perfect all-American English that Dutchman Rutger Hauer speaks, it makes good sense to keep everything very low-key, with most actors aside from the Italian bit-parts using only the slightest generic Euro-flavor in their voices. Fortunately, that didn’t end up giving us an entire cast doing their best to sound like Christopher Lambert. And anyway, anyone who wants to complain about inauthentic accents should exhaust their ire on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves before moving on to the peccadillos here.)

“This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

One of the plot elements I appreciate the most can easily be overlooked: The fact that God gives Imperius the knowledge he needs to break the curse. Too many mythically-flavored movies and novels (and honest historical myths, I might add) will posit an active supernatural force for evil, but will neglect to assign commensurate powers to any supernatural force for good. How many times have you seen clergymen confronting demons without any sort of power in their corner (or, as in a previous Donner exercise, a God who can only confront the antichrist with a set of long-buried steak knives)? Positing an active Devil without an active God seems like dirty pool on the part of the storytellers to me, which is why I appreciate the idea of a balancing force here — not a divine clean-up crew to set everything straight, but that added little nudge from above to give the humans the opportunity to counteract that added little nudge from below.

Some Notable Quotables:

“It’s not unlike escaping Mother’s womb — God, what a memory.”

- Philippe

“I believe in miracles, Marquet. It’s part of my job.”

- The Bishop

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 15, plus 1 wolf
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 2
• spring-loaded pigeons: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0