Blogical Conclusion

THE MOON AND THE LITTLE CLOUD

NOV 14, 2009 – THE BACKDROP FOR THIS PARTICULAR TELLING of the story – a segment of the story, rather – of the Knights of the Round Table is painted at the picture’s beginning. “After marvellous adventures in which Lancelot of the Lake played a heroic part, the Knights of the Round Table set off in search of the Grail. The Grail was a vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea had gathered the blood of Christ. It was to bestow supernatural power. It was believed hidden in Brittany. Merlin, before his death, pledged the knights to the quest. Merlin had indicated that the quest should be led by Perceval (Parsifal), not by Lancelot. After leaving the castle, the knights were dispersed. Perceval was not seen again. Two years have passed. Decimated, the knights return to King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. They have not found the Grail.”

Why did Merlin want Perceval to lead the quest? Why not Lancelot, that most famous, most fabled of warriors? There are no direct answers in the film (though to those who know of the Grail legends, the answer is obvious: Perceval was pure, Lancelot was tainted by his illicit love for his Queen), which chooses to address these questions tangentially, in a morbidly romantic scene that plays out between Lancelot (Luc Simon) and Guinevere (Laura Duke Condominas). “Consent,” pleads Lancelot. “Free me from my vow.” But Guinevere will not consent. “You have changed, but I am the same.” He repeats, “Consent. I beg you, for the salvation of us all.” She stubbornly refuses. “No. I’ll save no one at that price. God does not ask us to forswear love.” Pacing about the hay-strewn loft that’s their secret meeting place, he declares, “That which was must be no more.”

But Guinevere knows better. “Can we make it be no more?” Lancelot declares, “We can forestall fate, deflect the menace.” And a pattern begins to emerge. She is only all too human, and she realises the futility of fighting an attraction as powerful as theirs. But he sees himself as more than human. There’s hubris in his rants about forestalling fate. There’s hubris even in his entreaty to his beloved, “Yield, Guinevere. I yield. I humble myself.” She observes, rightly, “To think yourself responsible for everything is not humility.” He sits beside her. Looking right ahead, he wonders, “Are you, then, the enemy?” She replies, “I am the one created to help you, who will go with you through the void, the darkness. I am your strength.” She wants to snatch him from his realms of lofty perfection and return him to where he belongs, the folds of humbled humanity.

To that end, Guinevere attempts a womanly wile. She clasps his hand and remembers, “You said: Without Guinevere, there would be no Lancelot.” He pulls away. He states, “I wish to be alone.” She remarks, “You are alone in your pride. Pride in what is not yours is a falsehood.” He says, “I was to bring back the Grail.” It’s not the collective “we” (the Knights) that he refers to, but the singular “I” (Lancelot), as if he and only he were to retrieve the Grail. She fumes, “It was not the Grail. It was God you all wanted. God is no trophy to bear home. You were all implacable. You killed, pillaged, burned. Then you turned blindly on each other like maniacs. Now you blame our love for this disaster. And I am to destroy this love which cost us so much to preserve? I will not.”

In her own way, her tiny human way, Guinevere sees – as Merlin did – Lancelot for who he really is. And she isn’t about to throw away her love for the sake of his newfound divine aspirations. But Lancelot says, “It is not what you want that matters… Neither is it this happiness you seek that matters.” Considering that these two, right there, are the farthest thing from happy, she asks wryly, “Is it happiness that devours my soul? I do not ask to love you. Is it my fault I cannot live without you? That I need you? I do not live for Arthur. Just say: For you, I prefer death to life. Then I shall consent. All becomes easy.” Dying is her only condition in order to deliver the favourable reply that Lancelot sought at the beginning of the scene, but he expectedly says, “That is impossible.”

She replies, “God cannot separate us. If I surrender, it is to you alone.” She lets the shawl slip off her shoulders. “You do not want that?” He kneels and takes not her hand but the hem of her robe, which he presses to his lips, the act of a loyal subject as opposed to a lover. At least for now, he’s staved off his human instincts. After she leaves, he runs into a group of Knights gazing at the moon. One of them says, “Carmaduc says the little cloud drowns the moon. I say it strangles it.” Lancelot asks, “Meaning?” The Knight replies, “We’ll stifle here if we do not strike free.” He, of course, refers to their inactivity, now that the quest has been abandoned, but given the preceding scene, it isn’t a stretch to see Lancelot as the moon and Guinevere as the little cloud that drowns him, strangles him, keeps him from shining as purely as Perceval.

Lancelot du Lac (1974, French; aka Lancelot of the Lake ). Directed by Robert Bresson. Starring Luc Simon, Laura Duke Condominas, Humbert Balsan.

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