Excalibur (1981)
Directed by John Boorman
This trippy telling of Thomas Malory mixes myriad mythologies—Christian fables, English legends and Wagner operas—to create transcultural ur-lore, set at the transition between the times of gods and men: the end of myth and the birth of history, with Arthur as the link, both immortal legend and perishable man. It looks like it was shot through clouds, a haze of disremembering, as though set on some panmythical plane—the shared past, so extradimensional it almost feels like science-fiction, especially with Nicol Williamson’s Merlin: costumed like a space-age Bowie fantasy, he’s a Loki-like queen, one part C3PO and no part Gandalf. Henry Stewart (June 14, 6pm; June 20, 3:30pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “This Is Celluloid: 35mm”)