You won't be disappointed!

Truly Dreadful Film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is the movie about the 12th Cenutyr that I've felt is the closest in spirit with what has been written about that time by the people themselves. Far from the ridiculous Hollywood accounts of Robin Hood and Excalibur, this movie is nothing more (and nothing less!) than a filmed chanson de geste. A troop of actors/singers portray the Chrétien de Troyes poem. Half the story is told by speaking, the other half singing. To be able to stick to the text, the characters often talk about themselves in the third person: it is effective in distancing the minstrels from the characters they impersonate. I pity those who see it but can't speak French, as Chrétien's prose has no equal, and the English translation is much more trivial than the other-worldly formulations of the author, faithfully rendered in the film...I'd advise greatly to read Perceval before watching the movie. Only then can one see how faithful to the spirit of the author Rohmer has managed to be. The original poem already takes place in some sort of magical, fantastic land and time, where everything is made of gold and velvet, and where not everything has to make sense. The Middle Ages literature tradition is very, very big on symbolism, and therefore mustn't be taken too literally. That's what Rohmer does here: castles and trees are symbols.The last aspect I shall mention is the resemblance between the movie and medieval paintings. Watching he movie, you often feel like watching an animated medieval fresco. Colors, clothing, positions, everything is taken directly from those depictions of medieval life. The scene of the Passion is made of everything good in that movie: very good music, amazing costumes and colors, symbolism, fresco-like positions... This movie is a masterpiece.

I'm at a loss over what I could say about Eric Rohmer's Perceval. I was so deeply affected by it. I'm guessing that many will be annoyed at the French New Wave style, which I personally love. I'm definitely a French New Wave fan. I'm not really a Rohmer fan, though. This is only the second Rohmer film I've seen, after his 1997 film An Autumn Tale (I think that's what it's called). I was unimpressed with that. Perceval will probably lead me to see more of his films, although, from what I've heard, this film is stylistically different than anything else he has ever made. Heck, I haven't seen anything at all similar in style in the many, many films I've seen. It's as if it takes place within the world of the theater. Naturalism is thrown out the window. The landscape is reduced to a bare minimum. Trees are sculpted out of metal, and are more symbols of trees than trees themselves. Castles are small, like the skenes of ancient Greek theater. The palette is made up of mostly primary colors. White appears frequently, and there are a couple of scenes with some purple. Silver and gold are abundant. This goes for the sets and constumes. The acting is exaggerated, I think, to imitate a Medieval style. Best of all, a lot of the narrative is sung to gorgeous Medieval arrangements. This is perhaps the most hypnotizing aspect of the film.The only thing that has a tendency to disappoint is the narrative. It's choppy, things go unresolved and so forth. It didn't bother me too much. I've actually read some Medieval literature, and it doesn't generally obey Aristotle's rules. The main piece that feels unresolved is the story of Gawain. Only after about one hundred minutes does he become important, the story follows him for a while, and then it goes back to Perceval, never to return again. Still, this didn't bother me too much. There's not an individual scene in the film that lacks beauty. Several are amongst the most beautiful ever captured on film. Perceval even contains the second most powerful version of the Passion of Jesus Christ I've ever seen in a film, slightly behind the one in Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. I know that I will come back to Perceval as soon as I can to study it closer and love it more. It's instantly one of my favorite films. 10/10.

I was quite skeptical during the first few minutes of viewing _Perceval_; I hadn't been aware ahead of time of its unique style. As I made the leap from thinking about this as a cinematic experience to viewing it as more of a theatrical production, I got into it more. I liked the minstrels -- I love that style of medieval music, and they provided both entertainment and a necessary Greek-chorus-like narrator role.I do not speak French; however, by listening to the dialogue (instead of just reading the English subtitles), I was able to appreciate the rhythm and rhyme.I found the level of Perceval's naivete hard to swallow at times. But the most disturbing thing was how the narrative became fragmented and then just petered out at the end -- mixing Gawain's and Perceval's tales, and not resolving either of them.Overall, a stylistic tour-de-force, but a narrative disappointment.

The first time I saw this film, I thought it was terrible; Plan 9 from Outer Space Terrible, but the more I thought about it, the more the film grew on me. Soon, I came to realize Rohmer's vision about this film...Perceval le Gallois is the film adaptation of the medieval epic poem "Perceval" by Chretien de Troyes, and it is the story of Grail seeking Arthurian knight Perceval(Parsifal to Wagner, and Parzival to Wolfram von Eschenbach, who is my favorite) I came to realize that Rohmer was making the film as though medieval Chretien had had access to a camera. The use of the decidedly un-realistic sets is designed to give the viewer an impression of medieval entertainment and style, and the fantastic, magical tone of the work. The use of the minstrels is a great way to let the viewer in on how a medieval audience would have experienced this story, without sets or actors, just the story teller and his accompaniment. This film is pure genius, and is a must see, even though it is extremely difficult to locate.