1
Wags enjoy razzing the 13th-century Scottish epic Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson in the role of freedom fighter William Wallace, as Die Hard in a kilt. Wait till they get to the knobby question of how Gibson's knees stack up against Liam Neeson's in Rob Roy. No matter. Gibson gets the last laugh. Braveheart resists glib categorization. This rousing, romantic adventure is laced with sorrow and savagery. The audacity Gibson shows as the film's director extends to the running time, which is nearly three hours. Hamlet, with Gibson playing the melancholy Dane, was shorter, and Braveheart isn't Shakespeare. Don't panic. Though the film dawdles a bit with the shimmery, dappled love stuff involving Wallace with a Scottish peasant and a French princess, the action will pin you to your seat. With breathtaking skill, Gibson captures the exhilaration and horror of combat in some of the most vivid battle scenes ever filmed.
Wallace was knighted for leading his people in the fight against domination by England. Few facts are known about his personal life, which frees Gibson and screenwriter Randall Wallace (no relation) to run with the legend passed down mostly from the rhyming verse of a poet known as Blind Harry. It's a shame that Harry predates Hollywood by five centuries -- he could have made a killing cranking out kick-ass crowd pleasers.
Gibson's Wallace is a potent blend of Robin Hood, Attila the Hun and, yes, the wags were right, Detective John McClane in Die Hard. Wallace could relate to any story that pits one pissed-off fighter against the system. He faced an English army led by bad-to-the-bone King Edward the Longshanks, played by Patrick McGooban in a classic portrait of slithering sadism. Wallace also had to inspire Scottish peasants and nobles to follow his lead against daunting odds.
It's a ripping yarn, and Gibson could have slid by with the usual hack heroics. Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves did just that and still earned a pile. Gibson does it the hard way with attention to detail. He has retained the keen eye for character he showed in The Man Without a Face, his promising 1993 directing debut. Wallace doesn't spring to life as a full-blown legend, though he does speak Latin and French when he returns to his village in Scotland to settle down as a farmer and marry Murron (the meltingly lovely Catherine McCormack), his childhood sweetheart. It's the brutal fate dished out to Murron by the English that makes the farmer an outlaw.
That's when Wallace organizes the villagers into a ragtag militia. Brendon Gleeson's Hamish, James Cosmo's Campbell and Alun Armstrong's Mornay register strongly, as does David O'Hara's Stephen, the Irish warrior who joins the Scottish cause. The teasing camaraderie botched in Robin Hood is expertly handled here. Gibson's impassioned performance as the hero who would not trade his freedom for English gold doesn't shrink from showing the barbarian who emerges at a call to arms.
"Are you ready for war?" Wallace shouts to his outnumbered troops at Stirling. It's the film's first major battle scene and a triumph for Gibson. Trying to stir hundreds of fatigued soldiers to action, Wallace rides his horse back and forth in a frantic effort to be heard. In most historical films, the stationary star manages to move multitudes with a throaty whisper. Gibson jettisons the Hollywood fakery. Riding among the men, his face streaked with woad (a blue dye used to terrify the enemy) and his voice hoarse from yelling. Wallace is a demon warrior crying out for vengeance.
Cinematographer John Toll, an Oscar winner for Legends of the Fall, thrusts the audience into the brutal frays at Stirling, York and Falkirk. Superbly edited by Steven Rosenblum (Glory), these sequences recall the blood poetry of Welles' Chimes at Midnight and Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Sophisticated weaponry was centuries away. The Scots used hammers, axes, picks, swords, chains and even farm tools to crack skulls as they battered the English in the mud. They also set oil traps on the ground to burn their enemies, though shields and chain mail offered scant protection against the rain of English arrows. "Quite the lovely gathering." says Longshanks, surveying the carnage and dispatching his officers to send in Irish volunteers instead of expert English archers. "Arrows cost money," he sneers.
Gibson's handling of Wallace at war is so thrillingly done that one regrets the subplots that distract from the action. Wallace's flirtation with the king's French daughter-in-law, Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau), is fanciful fluff that undercuts his undying love for Murron, and the king's homophobic revenge on his preening son, Prince Edward (Peter Hanly), and the son's boy toy, Phillip (Stephen Billington), comes off as inexplicable gay baiting. Judicious cutting might have sharpened the film's focus and impact.
Still, don't get your kilt in a bunch over a spectacle that provokes such lively debate about the method and madness of war. Filmed with furious energy and surprising gravity, Braveheart takes the measure of a hero with a taste for blood to match his taste for honor. Wallace is an inspiring, unsettling role, and Gibson plays him, aptly, like a gathering storm.
2
Braveheart is an action/drama movie about William Wallace (Mel Gibson). The film is no less than amazing in any way. Though the movie sports us with a 177 minute run time, it is amazing to see the interesting way in which, Mel Gibson behind the camera, works his magic. As the acting is magnificent, and the war sequences are brutal and violent, the film works out as a movie which will always be remembered as a classic.
The film focuses on William Wallace, growing up as a kid, his father was a fighter. After his death, his uncle took him in to watch over him, and teach him how to fight. When he is older though, he meets Murron MacClannough(Catherine McCormack). After he weds with her, she is murdered. Now avenging her death, William sets out ot fight for his freedom, his justice and the right to live.
Mel Gibson did really an amazing job on capturing the character of William Wallace. Putting on the Irish accent, he shows us that he is a great actor and can do some things which we never thought he could do. Behind the camrea though, Mel is a completely different kind of person. He captures the fight scenes perfectly and beautifully. The one thing that was done well though, was the greatly realistic violence and brutal warfare of the film. The violence is spilled nicely, and realistically.
3
Braveheart is another film directed by its star, Mel Gibson. Close on the heels of Rob Roy, this is the second tribute to a legendary Scottish hero, this time round William Wallace, the great medieval warrior leader. Though less clever than its predecessor, it is much grander in its nearly three-hour epic sweep.
The obvious comparison is with Henry V (the Olivier, not the Branagh), and even though Randall Wallace may not be quite so good a screenwriter as Shakespeare, the movie can hold its own. Randall Wallace calls himself the spiritual descendant of William Wallace, and he has deftly incorporated the not many known facts about his namesake, and addressed the legend with gusto and eloquence. The result is an epic that, a few excessively romantic touches notwithstanding, is more realistic than most. These medieval Scots live in ferocious-looking hovels, seem (at least the men) heroically unwashed, and have coiffures in which a kestrel could nest. The friendly punches with which they communicate could easily kill a lesser fellow -- an Englishman, say. Braveheart aims to be a thinking man's epic. ``It's our wits that make us men,'' young William's da tells him, and, after da and big brother are killed by the English, Uncle Argyll continues the boy's education along similar lines. Pretty soon William has turned into Mel Gibson, a young man who wants to settle down and live in peace. But the English are making things hard, what with such things as ius primae noctis (in the film, more tersely but less correctly, the prima nocte) giving the English magistrate the right to deflower each lassie on her wedding night. Braveheartrending business, that. Finally William secretly marries the bonniest of lasses, Murron -- played by the breathtakingly beautiful and talented Catherine McCormack -- but the English get wind of it, and when she won't put out for them, slit her throat in a shattering scene irradiated by Miss McCormack's performance. So William turns avenger and, by one small further step, leader of the Scottish populace (as opposed to the nobles, suborned by Edward Longshanks, the Machiavellian English king). There are plots and counterplots as the nobles sabotage William's efforts, and Robert the Bruce, who wants to help him, is prevented by his leprous father (well played by Ian Bannen), who expects the nobles to crown his son king. And much, much more. The love scenes are so-so, the political scenes ho-hum, but the fighting -- both individual contests and mass battle scenes -- is first-rate, barbaric, and sublime. You might think that so much battle stuff would pall after a while: how much slashing, chopping, stabbing, and skewering -- not to mention mangling and incinerating -- can there be without diminishing returns? Quite a bit; Gibson, to give him his due, comes up with new forms of warfare, better ways to turn charging men and horses into shishkebabs, new modes of battering down castle gates in a rain of boiling pitch from the battlements, fresh tricks to outsmart the enemy. And whereas this much violence with modern weapons would be unbearable, with medieval arms it becomes heroic and exhilarating. There is something appealing about Mel Gibson -- the ruggedly masculine countenance, the quick half-smile, the knack of conveying blue-eyed hurt (as when he discovers the Bruce under an enemy helmet), and a squarer-jawed determination than Dick Tracy's -- that sustains Braveheart even through the unlikely scenes with Isabelle, the Princess of Wales (indifferently played by Sophie Marceau), and through the Wallace's -- or the Gibson's -- unconvincing displays of polyglotism. Add to this the beauties of Scotland, searchingly chronicled by John Toll's inexhaustible camera, the solid supporting performances among which Patrick McGoohan's sardonic-sadistic Edward I is especially noteworthy (never before have terminal consonants been drawn out to such ironic length), and the intelligently deployed music by James Horner. A Scottish acquaintance, George Campbell, questions the use of the sweeter uilleann (Irish) bagpipes rather than the fiercer Highland ones during the battle scenes, but these scenes are so exciting Horner could have used marimbas and I wouldn't have noticed. The film put me in mind of a four-line poem by Scotland's greatest modern poet, Hugh MacDiarmid: The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part Only the little white rose of Scotland that smells sharp and sweet -- And breaks the heart. And that is high praise.
4
What is there that can be said about Braveheart that hasn’t been said before? It’s an epic movie that ought to be in the conversation about the best films of the past thirty years. And actually, “epic” might be too small of a word. Braveheart is as much about the inner drama of William Wallace as it is about the life-and-death drama of the war for Scotland’s independence in the late 13th, early 14th centuries. It’s a story told on a grand scale with a great deal craft – and flair (and humor). This is a movie that offers both style and substance. It’s a direct precursor to the success of the Lord of the Rings movies – indeed, one can argue that the success of Braveheart set the stage for those films. True, Braveheart may not have universal appeal in terms of genre, story, or its brutal portrayal of war. But there can be little doubt of the value of a film that is, simply, one of the best I have ever seen.
The success of the film rests on the balance with which the story unfolds. Put simply, there’s something here for everyone: romance, action, character, philosophy, conflict, cinematography, great lines, music, and so on … and it all fits together almost flawlessly. I’m sure if you looked hard enough you could find fault with some parts of the movie, but considering its nearly three-hour run time it manages to avoid pitfalls remarkably well.
This is William Wallace’s story. And through him, the audience is allowed a mirror with which to view itself. This is the true measure of a great story: its ability to not only provide commentary, but also to provoke introspection. And that happens here quite often. One of the film’s most quoted lines is “Every man dies, not every man really lives.” Within just those seven words there is a great deal of thought and sentiment. It encapsulates a philosophy, a raison d’être, that anyone can immediately identify with. And it’s a beautiful philosophy – like carpe diem. And it encourages us to find the purpose and meaning within our lives on a daily basis.
This is also a love story, between William Wallace and Murron – a childhood friend. Theirs is a story that flows effortlessly from childhood tragedy and bonding, to adulthood romance and marriage. Indeed, it is Murron’s murder that proves to be Wallace’s motivation to launch his personal war against England whose king, Edward ‘the Longshanks’ is portrayed with a powerfully brutality in the film, making him a very compelling villain.
Wallace’s quest is joined by a cast that is quite adept in their roles. There are hardly any weak links in the acting of this movie, which means that the underlying themes and conflicts are portrayed to maximum effect from start to finish. Mel Gibson’s directing certainly has to be credited for some of that success.
This is, without question, Gibson’s film. And it’s not without a certain part of vanity from the lead actor and director. If you were looking for a critique, this would be the most fertile ground for it. But for the most part, whatever vanity Gibson may have been displaying is overshadowed by the craft of everything else. The action is riveting, the dialogue is crisp (and profound) and the music is deeply, deeply moving.
James Horner’s score successfully taps into the heritage of Scotland while displaying a full orchestral presentation. The instrumentation and arrangements are all very well done, from wavering flute to the bagpipes to the thunderous percussion during battle sequences.
5
I used to think that the history of Scotland around the end of the thirteenth century was one of those really complicated and messy affairs that could send any historian into a fit of sobbing. So imagine my surprise as I discovered it's really all about a bunch of rowdy guys mooning each other across a battlefield and then playing dodgeball.
"Braveheart" is one of those audacious films that implies that war is "bad" by putting the violence at the forefront, slowing it down and tossing in lots of extra blood, piercings, stabbings, castrations, amputations and assorted mutilations with random insertions of Mel's butt -- just to make sure that the women get into it too. This is all topped off by a really long and protracted moment where the camera lovingly dotes on Mel Gibson as he is taken to a platform to be tortured. It's the kind of moment that makes preschoolers point to the screen and say, "Christ figure! Christ figure!" Either that or: "Look! He's shamelessly grooming himself for the Oscars!" (Oscar committees love Christ figures.)
After three delirious hours the message is clear: Buy an ax, kill a lot of people, wear a kilt, show your butt, screw a princess and (if you have some time left over) repeat this over and over and over and over and over... until you get caught. If ever a movie cried out for a halftime break, this was it.
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