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There’s a nice little moment in A Knight’s Tale that I’d like to think speaks directly to how it became one of my favorite movies. After riling up the crowd before Heath Ledger’s self-styled knight William rides into the race, Paul Bettany’s boisterous Geoffrey Chaucer tells him, “I’ve got their attention. You go and win their hearts.”
Brian Helgeland’s 2001 film. is on paper absurd. It’s a medieval shootout sports film shot on cheap sets in post-Velvet Revolution Prague to an arena-rock soundtrack that opens with villagers banging wooden stands to Queen’s We Will Rock You. Peter Bradshaw writes in his review at the time: “Is the movie based on a dream he had after eating too much cheese?” His leading lady, Shanin Sossamon, with spiked hair, was cast from the birthday party of Gwyneth Paltrow as DJ. Ledger always wears clothes. Is it authentic? Probably not! But A Knight’s Tale is such a heart-filled film that it’s the only thing that will help me when I need to watch something uncomplicatedly wonderful.
The film follows William Thatcher, a knight’s squire who is found dead in a ditch minutes before he is to enter the arena for a jousting tournament. It’s the 1370s and only those of noble birth can compete – but William convinces his fellow squires, the sensible Roland (Mark Addy) and the fickle Watt (Alan Tudyk) that he must take their dead master’s place.
William wins the race and convinces Watt and Roland to continue the ruse, secure in his belief that “a man can change his stars.” With the help of Bethany’s Chaucer, who sneaks around the countryside naked, gambling all his clothes, William becomes the fake knight Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein and makes his way to the World Cup. A dream and a deception provide the impetus for the narrative, but there is also a maiden, in the form of Jocelyn (Sossamont), a noblewoman in papal white felt, whom William woos in the cathedral. But Count Ademar, played with unsurpassed villainy by Rufus Sewell, whose black curls are a counterpoint to William’s gold, also wants Jocelyn – and he’s the knight to beat in the ring.
Sunny Ledger as the underdog in hideous armor is of course the star of the film, but much of my affection for him stems from the cast: an almost motherly Roland who makes a tunic out of a tent; Watt, explosively threatening to “kill” anyone who crosses him; Bethany’s High-Low “Jeff” Chaucer; and Kate, the triple-threat blacksmith who makes new Nike-branded armor for William, teaches him farandole, and knocks the other three out of the park in a post-credits farting contest. In one of the film’s sweetest scenes, the four string together the pieces of their broken hearts to write a love letter to Jocelyn on William’s (or rather Ulrich’s) behalf.
For me, watching a good movie is a highly nostalgic exercise. That’s because whenever a movie is special or timely enough to settle into your heart, re-watching it is also an act of remembering an old version of yourself. A Knight’s Tale is overshadowed by the real sadness of Ledger’s death just seven years after its release, but when I watch it, I also remember the way it made me feel, as a girl who loved jousting because her older brother did it, all while secretly loving an action movie because it was so much blatantly sentimental.
For half of A Knight’s Tale, the stakes of the race are rewritten as William’s mission to the top is turned upside down by Jocelyn. She insists that if he loves her, he will lose the tournament on her behalf. He sets about doing just that, in a montage of falling splinters as he is hit with spear after spear. Jocelyn then decides that actually William shouldn’t lose, he should win. She forces him to remove his obsession, status, and ego from his pursuit of athletic victory and replace them with romance.
And I haven’t even mentioned the dance scene! This warm sunbeam of a scene is the best in the film – perhaps of any other film. At a post-tournament ball, William is asked to demonstrate a “typical” dance from his fictional home of Gelderland. Denim lutes begin to weave into the notes of David Bowie’s Golden Years, and the calm palace dance dissolves into a hedonic disco whirlwind. William and Jocelyn twirl, bounce and punch the air, young and beautiful, as they perform perhaps the silliest dance moves ever. It’s silly and sexy and completely joyful and I just love it. Or to paraphrase “Jeff” Chaucer: grabs my attention and wins my heart
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