Customer Reviews

Ancient Mysteries - Camelot (A&E DVD Archives)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have used this movie before in my English II class as we are reading Morte de Arthur. It really helps the students develop a sense of how Camelot's legend came about and how much of it could be true. Every year, someone asks, "Is this a folk tale, truth or non-fiction?" Now I pop in the tape and let them make up their own minds.

A good introduction to Arthurian legend. I was hoping the video would spend more time on the historical and archaeological data that supports (or doesn't support) the arguments about whether or not Arthur really existed. The video spent more time tracking the development of the legend in literature. Enjoyable all the same.

A & E's DVD on "Camelot" is one of the better documentaries on the subject of King Arthur's folklore and gives details in several different mindsets on related issues. Leonard Nimoy narrates this video and there are several landscape nature photography shots and sweeping footage on location that helps this movie be the one that adults should prefer over most of the other videos by other narrators or other producing studios. Whereas most documentaries are juvenile and a tad on the amateur side in presentation, this version has enough interesting information that not only will you keep it in your library, you'll gladly watch it more than once. One point of interest was the birthplace of Arthur and how the archaeology discoveries are connecting that location with the right time period, another is the information on the Holy Grail and how it is tied to Joseph of Arimathea, and of course the details surrounding the location and legends of Camelot. There is time given to different ancient authors and what emphasis was given by those authors to specific parts of the Arthurian folklore - including how the burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere helped a city and monastery by tourism. Interviews with scholars round out the scope of this film, making this one superior to the others typically geared to preteen audiences.

There was once a television documentary that actually delved deeply into the possibility that Arthur was historical, but this A&E show is very superficial. For instance, the location where Camelot may have stood is mentioned in this A&E film, but that's about it. The other film went into great detail with archaeologists reconstructing (in animation) what the very extensive fortress would have looked like. We are shown the tower atop Glastonbury Hill, but the other show went into detail demonstrating that in ages past the plain became flooded and people had to be ferried there. And so forth.

I was, in truth, hoping this A&E film was the other film. Oh well.

I'll keep looking.

NJM

Note: Kathleen Turner is not the narrator of the DVD I am looking for.

I bought this to share with my class to preview our King Arthur unit. It almost put me to sleep. Don't waste your money

The advertisements for this DVD suggest that it will give you the true and historical story of Camelot. Alas, it falls far short of that--far, far short. In the end Camelot is a mere fairy tale, not hard history. The disk covers the myths, and they are nothing more. The disk provides some vague commentaries by professors and the like. Leonard Nimoy poses dozens of rhetorical questions in a tone that implies he is actually telling the viewer something of import. But rhetorical questions are used because there just isn't anything else.

There are no reliable documents from the period in which King Arthur lived. Every thing written about him and Camelot came centuries later. There is no documented site of where Camelot stood. Surely no one believes that the Lady of the Lake actually reached up with Excalibur. No one believes in Merlin or Morgan la Fey or that young Arthur pulled the stone out of a rock. No serious person believes in the Easter Bunny either.

The story of Camelot is a pretty story, after all. It is not history. Cinderella wasn't fitted for a glass slipper either, but we suspend our disbelief willingly and enjoy the fiction. Shine too bright a light on it, and the piece dies.