LANCELOT OF THE LAKE

Director Robert Bresson’s dream project, a film he wanted to make for more than 20 years, LANCELOT OF THE LAKE marked a new distillation in this master’s artistry and imbues fresh power to this oldest of tales. LANCELOT has the breadth of vision and distillation of style that marks the comprehensive late masterpiece of a great artist. The subject of the film is the end of the age of chivalry, the death of a dream. Set in the last days of the quest for the Holy Grail, it describes the spiritual pall that falls over King Arthur’s knights as they are overtaken by the failure of their mission. Bresson’s masterly color photography depicts the bright surfaces of pageantry surrounded by dark, treacherous forests and the twilight tones of a dying age. Horses, armor and pennants take on an almost mystical force. But he director predictably ignores the pageantry, magic and romance of the quest for the Grail, concentrating instead on the demise of the chivalric codes and on the canonic knights’ spiritual anguish as they return “without the Grail, which is to say the absolute, God” (Bresson).

A new 4K restoration courtesy of Film Desk!