Tristan & Isolde (2006) is surprisingly good. I think it is interesting to ask why a movie which is a traditional, oft-told love story and a traditional war and fighting story is engaging and moving rather than boring and predictable. The love story is of Tristan of England and Isolde of Ireland who, sometime between 400 and 600 A.D. fall madly in love but are “fated,” somewhat in the Romeo and Juliet style, to never be true lovers. This is in part because, after the departure of the Romans, “England” is a mess of feuding tribes under the fear of the stronger Irish.
The movie is so good largely because, when it was a lost little script, the famous director and producer Ridley Scott latched onto it as a movie he’d wanted to make ever since he started making movies. His name and production company was able to bring a lot of highly talented people to a rather marginal and low-budget project. Scott, himself, for example, made two major changes to the script which greatly improved it. First, he insisted that the dark ages be dirty and dark—no glittering palaces, no perfectly flowing robes. The sense of atmosphere in Ireland and Czechoslovakia is wonderful and consistently believable. Second, he asked the script writer to change from Isolde, as an old lady, narrating the tale to a priest, to direct action beginning with Isolde and Tristan as children.
The script writer, Dean Georgaris, thinks like a writer—not like a hack, not like a professional screen writer who knows what studios want, not like a postmodern scatterbrain, but as a writer concerned with character motivation, with foreshadowing of plot events, of building suspense, of when to let the audience know more than the characters and when to keep the audience in the dark. When I finished watching the movie, I rewatched it with Georgaris’s commentary. It is the best I’ve heard on what it is like to be a screen writer, and it the best I’ve heard on how a good writer thinks. Not incidentally, he has both praise and criticism for the changes the producer and director made to the nth draft of his script. His only significant regret is that they changed three scenes between the two young lovers where they actually get angry with each other. Showing the anger would have provided more depth to the characters, but may have detracted from Director Kevin Reynolds’ overriding goal to make this a sweeping romance.
Reynolds is a top quality, veteran Hollywood director (Fandango; The Count of Monte Cristo; Waterworld; Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; etc.) He simultaneously managed to organize the many actors and make it look like there were a lot more in the battlefield than their really were. It is impossible to know whether Reynolds had much to do with the acting quality or whether the actors simply did their thing.
But the acting is good. Sophia Myles, as Isolde, is radiant and, as the director said, put her heart and soul into the role. James Franco, as Tristan, is a hunk. Here some viewers might object, so I’m going to defend him. Yes, his hair cut and his tan and his ripped abs are all Californian, but the over-arching question is whether his acting is good, or at least good enough. First, as a lover in this story, he has to be physically attractive, and he sure is. The modern edge does not grate, for Sophia, although more traditional looking, still has some modern girl in her is a few of her moves and in her independent spirit. Second, as a fighter, he has to convince us that he can beat heftier opponents. Apparently Franco started training with stunt pals several months before shooting, and spent the four weeks, seven days a week, before shooting started learning all the fight sequences. The fight choreographer, apparently one of the best in the business, did a superb job. It’s the first movie I remember seeing where actors (not stunt men) swing real swords (although dull) at each other as hard as they can. The third member of the love triangle, King Marke, does not fight, for he lost his right hand saving Tristan’s life. But the actor, Rufus Sewell, is one of those talented actors who can convey volumes with a slight movement of his eyes. The danger in a sweeping romance is that the intense passions turn into overblown acting, but in this movie they are realistically contained.
This movie has an underlying theme which is substantial and mature. There is, for many of us, a time in our lives when we think, at least subconsciously, that we can have everything. Tristan has this moment when he hears about the tournament sponsored by the King of Ireland. Whoever among the English clans wins the tournament will win the hand of the Irish princess for his lord and will secure peace between Ireland and the mess of England. Tristan persuades the justly suspicious lords to enter the tournament because he knows that if he wins he will have everything he wants: peace in his time and a chance to marry his true love who has (falsely) told him is an attendant in the Irish King’s court. But when Tristan wins, he gains neither lasting peace nor his true love. In fact, by his own doing, he inadvertently puts himself in a very adult dilemma—should he be loyal to his best friend or should he follow his passion, should he do his duty or have his love? Jim Bell
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