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ARTICLE
Movie Review: Tristan & Isolde
by Ted Porter Published: January 22, 2006
Rating: Country: Germany/UK/USA Release Date: January 13, 2006 Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Director: · Kevin Reynolds Cast: · James Franco as Tristan · Sophia Myles as Isolde · Rufus Sewell as Lord Marke Related Sites: ·IMDb
Grade: B
In a way this movie would have been more aptly called "Isolde & Tristan," because the luminous Sophia Myles, as Isolde, steals the show. This true English rose, playing an Irish princess who falls into a doomed romance with a young English warrior, has the emotional intensity and genuine screen presence to carry this film, and she does. From the first time she appears onscreen, you're essentially waiting for the next time. There are some fairly interesting battle scenes, and the sweeping shots of the spectacular Irish and English terrain are often breathtaking, but it's the natural beauty of Myles-both her physical gorgeousness and the affecting naturalness of her acting-that really holds the movie together.
But first, some background: The time is the Dark Ages, not long after the fall of the Roman Empire; the place, of course, is the British Isles, before they were the British Isles. In England, various warring tribes scattered across the land have no king and are the worse for it, because they're essentially helpless before the King of Ireland and his powerful army. Just as the tribes are about to sign a treaty to unite under one lord and stand up to their common enemy across the sea, that nasty Irish army arrives on the scene and slaughters a good portion of them. Two survivors are Lord Marke (the very effective Rufus Sewell), the strongest lord, and the boy Tristan, whose parents are both killed. Lord Marke takes Tristan in and raises him like a son. Nine years later, things are a little more settled: Lord Marke and his people have rebuilt and recovered, and Tristan (James Franco) has grown into a great warrior. But the conflict with both Ireland and the other English tribes rages on. During a battle with Irish soldiers, Tristan is felled by a poison sword and presumed dead. His compatriots set him adrift on the sea in a funeral bier, and Isolde finds him washed up and unconscious on the coast of Ireland. She's immediately smitten and secretly nurses him back to health in a beachside cave. You can pretty much guess where things go from there.
Isolde is a dreamer and a romantic, unsatisfied with her lot as a princess and looking for something greater than herself, and she has the film's best lines about love. (Unfortunately the lines of poetry she reads him, which become a symbolic refrain through the rest of the film, had yet to be written, by John Donne in the 17th century; the filmmakers are off by a millennium or so, but the words do capture something of the story's spirit.) You can certainly see why someone would fall in love with her, but this is where Franco's fairly limited acting range keeps the impact of the movie's message from being as powerful as it could have been. For all his brooding expressions and soulful eyes, he conveys remarkably little real feeling for his beloved. This is a story about a legendary, epic love, yet as Franco plays it you might think it wasn't much more than a summer fling. When the Irish eventually find out that Tristan is alive and on their shores, he must make a quick getaway by boat; his impulsive request that Isolde come with him feels less than genuine, as if he just knows it's what she wants to hear. Bound by duty to her people, she stays behind. Going off this Tristan's manner, I probably would have too in her shoes.
The plot is really set in motion when Isolde's father, King Donnchadh (David O'Hara), invites the English lords to fight each other for the hand of his daughter, as a phony attempt at a peace offering. Tristan, newly returned from the dead and reunited with his people, comes to the contest and wins, but he's fighting on behalf of Lord Marke. It's not until the fight is over that he realizes who Isolde is, and by then it's too late. The fragile truce between England and Ireland is riding on her successful marriage to Lord Marke. She goes through with it and for a while fights her feelings for Tristan, but soon enough love overpowers duty and the two pick up their affair again. It's doomed, of course, and they both know it-they're the precursors of Romeo and Juliet-but as the great love stories of both life and literature will attest, that never stopped anyone.
Those familiar with the myth of Tristan and Isolde will probably notice that this version of the story is not quite the one they remember. The film has altered many of the details, but since there have been numerous and varied retellings of the tale through the centuries, that's no great crime. All the essential elements are here: the grand passion, the conflict between love and duty, the private drama of two people set against the larger, more public drama of two lands at war. Literary purists may be disappointed, but it must be said that the movie is really fairly entertaining. The political intrigues are for the most part integral to the plot and so never feel superfluous to the love story. The film's look is also an understated but central element, surely due, in part, to executive producers Ridley and Tony Scott; many shots and set pieces are visually beautiful, but they never distract from the focus of the story. The balance between the private and public dramas, between tearful romance and engaging fight scenes, is carried off well, and there are few, if any, slow or lackluster scenes. No mean feat for a movie that clocks in at just over two hours and maintains a somber faithfulness to tragedy.
The only real flaw here is in the casting of Franco. He tends to throw off the film's generally authentic look and tone. When we first see him as Tristan, he's sporting just about the only clean-shaven face around-all the better to show off his movie-star features-and a head of bouncy, slightly awkward-looking curls. Maybe that's how Franco's hair naturally is when it grows out, I don't know, but for some reason it often distracted me; at times I wondered if maybe he'd been all set to play Jim Morrison or some other rock star and then got mistakenly thrown into this movie instead. You'll probably recognize Franco as Harry from the "Spider-Man" movies, or as James Dean in the 2001 TV movie. And this may be significant: there's something curiously anachronistic about Franco in this film. He was the only actor in it I was never quite convinced was really a figure living in the Dark Ages. Maybe he just needed a few days' worth of whiskers and a hairdo that didn't seem quite so much like he'd just shampooed and conditioned. But there's also something about his muted line delivery, a modern internalization and underplayed cool made into a popular (and successful) acting style by the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean, that doesn't quite work here. At one point Tristan is called a man of passion, but watching Franco I found myself wanting someone who would more openly and forcefully express that passion. Part of it is the character's situation, in that he must hide his feelings for Isolde once she's the wife of his adoptive uncle, but even in his scenes alone with Myles, Franco plays things almost too cool. This romance of the ages comes off as all but one-sided.
A major asset of the picture is Rufus Sewell, who lends both his role and the film a weight and a solidity that center the story and make you care about what happens to him and his people. He carries the force of passion that Franco should have. On the one hand his character is an adversary who stands in the way of Tristan and Isolde's love, but you can't help liking him and almost wishing that Isolde wouldn't be unfaithful to him. But the real revelation here is Sophia Myles. She is the heart and soul of the movie, anchoring it in a reality born of true, honest emotion. Time and again her character espouses love as the most important thing in life, something that transcends time and is stronger than death. Myles makes Isolde's love feel real, like it really could be and do all those things and more. Any ability of this film's tragic romance to move the audience is due entirely to her presence. She's one to watch. If it weren't for her radiant, passionate performance, we would probably feel a great deal less for these two star-crossed lovers.
