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Movies
‘Medieval’ Highlights An Interesting Subject, But Does So Poorly
Vince Mancini
VINCE MANCINI FACEBOOK TWITTER
SENIOR FILM & CULTURE WRITER
OCTOBER 25, 2022
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I’m a sucker for medieval history, so when I heard that Ben Foster and
Michael Caine were starring in a film about the Czech national hero Jan
Žižka, set in the immediate aftermath of the Bubonic Plague and covering
some of the Hussite revolts, I thought I’d been defenestrated and gone
to heaven.

This is a complex period in history, mostly without the tidy little
nation-states we’re used to being the players in geopolitical conflicts
— complete with rival popes, a burgeoning proto-reformation, peasant
revolts, and multiple small-time kings all vying for the title of “Holy
Roman Emperor” (whatever that would even mean). It’s an interesting
period that’s nice to see on film, even if Medieval proves early on that
it’s not especially capable of doing it well.

Writer/director Peter Jákl (who among other things once played Gunter in
Eurotrip) tries to cover it all, and even worse, does so with a
directorial style that prizes “production values” in the most generic
sense over conveying the basics of story like characters, motivation,
who is doing what to whom, and so forth. When the players in the drama
are numerous and their motives murky, the last thing we need is to have
to wonder who’s in the scene, what are they doing, and where it’s taking
place. As Bill Murray’s character in The French Dispatch tells his
writers, “whatever you do, just try to make it seem like you did it on
purpose.”

Jákl, by contrast, depicts chaotic times in a chaotic style, leaving you
constantly to wonder, “Wait, am I supposed to know what’s going on here?”

Medieval opens with some scene setting, set to a voiceover by Michael
Caine (who oddly sounds like he’s doing a Ray Winstone impression here)
— explaining something about how we’re in a period of upheaval. There
are two feuding Popes and a continent in general turmoil, all desperate
for some leader to unite them; a leader in the form of King Wenceslas of
Bohemia (pictured here with a bra on his head, which was the style at
the time). Wenceslas needs to travel to Rome to get the Rome Pope’s
blessing in order to become the Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile,
supporters of the rival France Pope are trying to stop him. Obviously.

While Caine’s voiceover sets the scene, Peter Jákl seems to get
distracted filming a hawk. As the hawk screeches, with obvious yet vague
symbolic value, we’re left trying to work out the allusion before we’ve
even begun to comprehend the grounding action. So there are rival popes,
an aspirant king, and some kind of dormant empire… and who is this guy
talking again?

Caine’s character turns out to be a guy called Lord Boresh, and
immediately after his voiceover we meet our star and protagonist, Ben
Foster as Jan Žižka, who in the first act leads a band of mercenaries
protecting Lord Boresh’s procession from a gang of assassins. Žižka
watches the action from up on a ridge, counting down the knights
protecting Lord Boresh, and not intervening until they’re almost all
dead. Finally, Žižka and his boys spring into action, killing all the
assassins except for the last, who they give the choice to join their
mercenary gang or die (which, according to the movie, was sort of
Žižka’s “thing”). Lord Boresh gasps, “Why did you wait until the last
knight to intervene?”

Žižka just sort of smiles and the scene ends. Answer the question, Žižka!

We go the entire movie without really ever learning who Lord Boresh is
or why, exactly, he’s important. He’s meant to facilitate King Wenceslas
getting to Rome, somehow. The assassins, we do learn, were apparently
sent by Lord Rosenberg (Til Schweiger), whose function, again, is fairly
opaque. Rosenberg seems to be a sometime rival, sometime ally of King
Wenceslas’s half-brother and rival, King Sigisimund Of Hungary (Matthew
Goode). Medieval clearly positions Sigismund, through tone and affect,
as the villain, though what exactly he wants and why often isn’t clear
(something sinister, I’m sure!). Mostly what we learn in the fight
scenes is that Peter Jákl wants this to be a manly action movie and that
he really likes the image of people bleeding underwater (a motif he will
repeat over and over, often without conveying who is doing the bleeding
or what side of the battle they were on).

At some point, Žižka’s band of mercenaries kidnaps Rosenberg’s wife,
Katherine (Sophie Lowe). She also happens to be the niece of the king of
France. This is important, somehow. Team Žižka plans to ransom her, but
they fight over to whom. Jákl constantly elides key story details in
order to get to the broad movie stuff, like “this guy is heroic!” “These
characters are in love!” And “this is the redemptive arc!” The movie
shouts things that should be subtext so loudly that what’s actually
happening tends to get drowned out.

The most compelling thing about Medieval, other than the setting of a
post-pandemic power vacuum (the timeliness wasn’t intentional, most of
it was shot in 2018) is wondering whether it’s actually going to make
any sense by the time it’s over. Not only does the ending not explain
all the plots and intrigue it covers, we come to realize that none of
these interludes were really why Žižka is considered a Czech national
hero in the first place. Nope, this was all largely prologue, just like
in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur movie that ends on a shot of the Round
Table just being built.

Medieval is a bit like if an American filmmaker made a movie about Tom
Brady for foreign audiences, and it was about all the things that led up
to his decision to play quarterback. Then at the end some text told us
how he won six Super Bowls. I don’t know, man, I think maybe you
should’ve led with the six Super Bowls?

‘Medieval’ is available on digital platforms on October 25th and Blu-Ray
on December 6th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his
reviews here.

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TOPICS: #FILMDRUNK REVIEWS
TAGS: BEN FOSTER, CZECH, FILMDRUNK REVIEWS, JAN ZIZKA, MEDIEVAL, MICHAEL
CAINE, PETER JAKL