Boorman's masterpiece

[fpb]

I have acquired John Boorman's EXCALIBUR, which I remembered as an extraordinary experience - and it is. (However, infuriatingly, I ended up with one CD with the first half of the movie in Spanish, and the second in Italian. So much for file-swapping.) One thing that struck me, however, was a peculiarity of the cast: all the protagonists - Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere - are played by good, even excellent actors, but actors, except for Helen Mirren (Morgana), who for some reason do not seem to have had the most towering movie careers. Except for Mirren, you could not unfairly say that as far as the silver screen is concerned, EXCALIBUR was their finest hour. Among the second-rank actors, however, we find Gabriel Byrne (Uther Pendragon), Liam Neeson (Sir Gawain), Corin Redgrave (the Duke of Cornwall), Patrick Stewart (King Leodegrance). That's a pretty fantastic supporting cast. I wonder how many other cases there are where so many of the backing actors are more famous than the principals?

Comments

[kikei.livejournal.com]

sounds like an excellent supporting cast. I'm rather surprised myself by the choice - perhaps it's because I actually like Neeson far too much (come on, he's an excellent actor even if the roles he plays sometimes stupefy me. Darkman, anyone?) and I would love to have seen him get more screen presence in certain films.

what I find, though, and I'm actually speaking about a lot of Bollywood films here, is that when the main cast of a film is populated by virtual unknowns, or else actors that have only just made a jump from television to cinema, having a big name in the mix (even if the mentioned actor appears oin screen for, what, five minutes in total) is usually a marketing tactic. I haven't seen the movie and even from here it doesn't strike me as the kind of movie that would necessarily have to employ such a means to draw in the target audience, but that is usually the case.

-Kiks