The Bruce: Careful What I Wish For

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Bannockburn, Brian Blessed, Edward I, Edward II, Medieval Europe, Medieval Scotland, Needlepointing the Bayeux Tapestry, Robert the Bruce, Sandy Welch, The Bruce

So I recently watched The Bruce (1996, dir. Bob Carruthers and David McWhinnie, with additional scenes by Brian Blessed). It’s available for free on YouTube. As I watched it, I realized why it’s available for free. It’s dreadful. It’s a low-budget labor of love, but it’s the sort of child only a mother could muster affection for. It feels very much like some enthusiastic Scottish history re-enactor wanted to prove that it was possible to make an historically-accurate movie about Scottish history that was still a really good film, and then only managed to get the first half of the job done.

So I’m a bit conflicted about this film. You’ve all read my posts where I lament about how badly most historical movies deviate from the facts, and I insist that the actual events are often more interesting than the nonsense that Hollywood screenwriters churn out. But now I’ve gotten what I wished for. The film tries adhere to the actual events in the life of Robert the Bruce, and it succeeds far more in accomplishing that than, for example, The Scottish Movie does. But it’s just an awful film.

 

So Who’s This Bruce Guy?

For those who don’t know, Robert the Bruce (d.1329) was a claimant to the Scottish throne during the period when Edward I and Edward II of England were trying to conquer Scotland. (And to address any confusion about his name, it’s an Anglicization of the French family name de Brus; the ‘the’ doesn’t really signify anything special.)

He supported William Wallace’s rebellion and after Wallace resigned his office of Guardian of Scotland (after his defeat at the battle of Falkirk), he and a rival claimaint to the throne, John Comyn, were appointed to the post, but they couldn’t agree and eventually Bruce resigned as well. In 1304, Bruce and all of the other major nobles in Scotland surrendered to Edward I.

This is not what Robert the Bruce actually looked like

 

In 1305, Comyn made an agreement with Bruce that if Bruce rebelled, Comyn was exchange his claim to the throne for all of Bruce’s lands in Scotland. Exactly what happened is unclear, but it appears that Comyn then revealed the deal to Edward, prompting Edward to order Bruce’s arrest. But Bruce was warned and fled the English court. A year later, Bruce and Comyn met up in a monastery church in Dumfries; a quarrel ensued and Bruce either stabbed Comyn to death before the altar or gravely wounded him and left him to be finished off by one of his men.

After that, Bruce claimed the throne of Scotland and underwent coronation by Bishop Wishart of Glasgow. The next seven years saw Bruce waging a series of campaigns to secure his control of Scotland (including slaughtered most of the supporters of the Comyn family) as well as to force out the English, who were now ruled by Edward II. In 1306, one of surviving the Comyn supporters seized Bruce’s wife Elizabeth (as well as a female cousin of his) and sent her to Edward, who held her as a capture until 1314.

He didn’t look like this either

 

Eventually in 1314, Bruce’s brother laid siege to the English-held castle at Stirling. The commander of the castle, in a fairly typical maneuver for the period, agreed that if Edward did not relieve the siege by midsummer, he would surrender the castle to Bruce. This forced Edward II to move to relieve the siege. The result was the Battle of Bannockburn.

The Bannock Burn is a tributary of the River Forth, which runs past Stirling Castle. The swampiness of the Burn made it a good defensible position for the Scots, who took up a position on the northwest side of the stream with a forest at their backs, while the English approached from the south and east.

Or this. Basically, we have no idea what he looked like

 

On the first day of battle, the English cavalry crossed the Burn, only to be repulsed by the Scots, who had formed up pikemen in a formation known as a schiltrom. Wallace had successfully employed this formation at the battle of Stirling Bridge, and unsuccessfully at the battle of Falkirk. Here is proved successful; the English cavalry were turned back. One English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, made a lance charge at Bruce, who side-stepped the attack and split de Bohun’s head open with an axe.

One reconstruction of the first day of the battle

 

During the night, the English crossed the Burn and took up a new position closer to Bruce’s forces. The next morning, Bruce took an enormous risk and ordered his pikemen to advance, and was able to start forcing the English back. An attempt by the English longbowmen to break up the schiltroms failed when the Scottish cavalry charged them. Caught between the Burn and the advancing schiltroms, the English forces broke ranks. Edward II’s bodyguard, realizing he was in danger, grabbed the reins of the king’s horse and literally forced the king off the battlefield. But the king’s departure panicked his men and the English army routed.

At this point, Bruce was aided by another group of people who charged into the battle. Traditionally, the sources are read to suggest that this group was the Scottish camp followers, meaning the servants, cooks, laundresses, and other non-combattants who travel with an army, the idea being that they wanted to participate in the rout of the English forces. Recent historians, however, have suggested this group was actually a unit of Highland foot soldiers, too undisciplined to fight in a schiltrom but ideal for a shock attack. Regardless, the arrival of this group was the final straw. The shattered English army was slaughtered trying to get back across the stream. Edward was forced to pull out of Scotland and Bruce established (through his daughter Marjorie) a new dynasty that ruled Scotland down into the 16^th century.

The second day of the battle

 

The Bruce in The Bruce

The Bruce follows the story of Robert the Bruce (Sandy Welch) from about 1305 down to the battle of Bannockburn. It gets the politics and the major events basically correct, although it makes up a battle in 1305 in which John Comyn (Pavel Douglas) lures Bruce into a battle with Edward I (Brian Blessed, being his Brian Blessedest) and knocks him unconscious on the battlefield. Luck for Bruce, his brother Nigel drags him off and hides him in a pigsty, only to get killed himself afterward. This seems to be the film’s way to explaining Bruce’s decision to kill Comyn, perhaps because it doesn’t want to admit that the real Bruce submitted to Edward I. But after the confrontation with Comyn, the film basically adheres to fact.

Brian Blessed, doing a rather apoplectic Edward I

 

The film includes a famous story that early on in his wars, Bruce was on the run from the English and hid in a cave, where he saw a spider trying repeatedly to make a web. After numerous failures, the spider eventually succeeded and Bruce learned a lesson in determination from the spider that helped him continue his struggle for years until he succeeded. The story, however, was not originally told of Bruce, but of Sir James Douglas, one of Bruce’s allies. In 1828, Sir Walter Scott repurposed the story and applied it to Bruce.

The film simplifies the battle of Bannockburn down to one day, and employs the traditional camp followers, who make a most unconvincing attack on the English. And de Bohun gets killed late in the battle, after Edward II has been dragged off the field. (But, to the film’s credit, they correctly pronounce his name as ‘day Boon’ and not ‘day Bow-hun’.)

 

So What’s Wrong with the Film?

I think most of the problems with the film stem from the fact that it was made on an extremely tight budget, reportedly £500,000, and a lot of that money was raised from the historical re-enactors who comprise the extras. The list of ‘Associate Producers’ at the end of the film is almost as long as the rest of the credits put together. I think that the donors must have been contractually promised 3 seconds of screen time each, because that would explain the agonizingly long scenes in which peasant extras wander around leading lives of virtuous simplicity and Scottishness.

Nobody slaughters Scotsmen like Brian Blessed does

 

Apparently the budget didn’t allow for some things we normally get with movies. Among the things the production of The Bruce couldn’t afford:

A film editor. The film easily has half an hour of footage in which no one with a speaking role does anything important.

Stunt men. The fight scenes look like the director told the extras “just go in there and wave your sword around and look like you’re fighting.” It didn’t work.

A fight co-ordinator. The credits say they had one, but I think it was Angus from down at the end of the bar, who spends his time fixing motorcycles and who knows a few things about throwing a punch. But only a few. I’ve seen third grade productions of Little Red Riding Hood with more engaging violence. The climactic Battle of Bannockburn scene is therefore boringly staged, incompetently executed, and not really edited at all. And it NEVER ENDS, because all the extras had to get their 3 seconds of screen time.

A historical consultant. Instead, they just invited re-enactors to show up with their gear. As a result, we get lots of highlanders in kilts three hundred years too early. And guys playing bodhrans, which won’t be invented for about half a millennium. Oh, and brace yourself for gratuitous modern bagpipes. They had a piper, and they were gonna get damn good use out of him.

A hair dresser. No one looks good in this film. I mean No One. Well, ok, Oliver Reed and Brian Blessed look decent. Everyone else looks like they ran out of shampoo about a week ago and just decided to let it air dry.

A decent script. Most of the scenes consist of long-winded conversations during which you can easily get up, go to the bathroom, make some more popcorn, and catch up on your email before the end of the scene.

Charisma. I’m unclear why anyone would want to watch this cast. Except Brian Blessed, who is always a pleasure to watch, because you get to relive the best moments of Flash Gordon. All two of them.

But, in the film’s favor, it did have one heck of a good Spider Wrangler. He was so good, they used that spider twice, just in case you didn’t get the message the first time.

 

Oh, and There’s This Little Gem of a Prop

 

Want to Know More?

You could watch this film on Amazon, but honestly, if you’re really in need of curing your insomnia, do it for free at Youtube.

If you want to know more about Robert the Bruce, a good place to start is Michael Penman’s Robert the Bruce: King of the Scots. It’s a bit long, and some readers find it a little too academic. If you want something more readable, consider Ronald MacNair Scott’s Robert the Bruce. Scott isn’t a scholar, but a novelist, and tells the story well with a minimum of mistakes.

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Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Cheerfully Disregarding the Past

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Alan Rickman, Caesarian Sections, Kevin Costner, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Medieval England, Medieval Europe, Needlepointing the Bayeux Tapestry, Robin Hood, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

I saw Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, dir. Kevin Reynolds) when it first came out. I was a budding young medievalist in grad school, and I hated the movie. Over the years it’s acquired a fairly negative reputation for its many egregious anachronisms (like Robin Hood’s mullet). So I sat down to watch it was some trepidation. But about half way through the film, I realized that I just couldn’t hate it. It’s not that it’s a good movie; it wasn’t when it came out, and it hasn’t aged especially well. It’s just that the movie so obviously doesn’t take itself even remotely seriously. It’s not a comedy, but the movie just gleefully doesn’t give a damn about anything other than the story it wants to tell, even if that story isn’t especially good. Alan Rickman completely dominates the film with his manically villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, who is basically Snidely Whiplash made flesh. This movie is interested in history about the same way that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was interested in talent.

The film is mostly a paint-by-numbers version of the Robin Hood story with a few new touches thrown in. Robin Hood (Kevin Costner) is trying to thwart the evil Sheriff, who is planning to depose the absent King Richard by marrying Richard’s cousin Marion (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), which will somehow allow Nottingham to ignore the fact that there are several closer claimants to Richard’s throne, such as his brother John and his nephew Arthur (at the end of the film, Nottingham is so monomaniacally-focused on this goal that even as Robin is literally battering down the chapel door to kill him, Nottingham just wants to finish forcing Marion to wed him so he can have sex with her. That’s real commitment to villainy). Robin Hood is a former crusader who rescues and brings back to England a black Muslim named Azeem (Morgan Freeman), who repeatedly demonstrates that Islam is more scientifically advanced than late 12^th century England by inventing things that won’t actually be invented for centuries. And Nottingham is working with a witch, Mortianna (Geraldine McEwan), as part of some sort of Satanic cult. Oh, and Will Scarlett (Christian Slater) is actually Robin’s long-lost half-brother.

Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham

 

The Top Ten Biggest Anachronisms in the Film

• Azeem gives Little John’s wife Fanny (Soo Druet) an emergency caesarian section. He knows how to do this because he’s watched horses delivered this way. That in itself is possible, since the earliest-known c-section was performed in 320 BC in India. But what’s more problematic is that Fanny not only survives but is up and running around literally the next day. Prior to the 16^th century, c-sections were generally performed only when it was already accepted that the mother was not going to survive the birth or had actually died; the procedure was a last-ditch effort to rescue the child. Prior to the 19^th century, they were performed without anesthesia or blood transfusions, making them insanely risky for the mother; most women probably died of shock or bloodloss before the process was finished. And even if the mother did somehow survive the procedure itself, in the absence of modern hygiene, there was a very good chance of severe infections setting in. (See Update below)
• Azeem owns a primitive telescope, two glass lenses than he fits into a leather tube. It’s not clear where he got this; since he’s first met in a prison and literally escapes with nothing, the most obvious explanation is that he made it after Robin and he escape. Given that the first known telescope was invented by the Dutchman Hans Lippershey in 1608, and the film is set in 1194, Azeem’s telescope is roughly 400 years too early.
  

  Azeem and his telescope

• Mortianna and the Satanist coven. But that deserves its own post.
• Robin’s father has a framed portrait of Robin hanging on his wall, which is pretty much about 200 years too early for framed portraits.
• Robin and his men all use the so-called Welsh Longbow, like pretty much all other Robin Hoods. Longbows themselves date back to the Neolithic period, the Welsh only began to use them in the late 12^th century (within a decade or so of 1194), and the English only generally acquired them in the late 13^th century, after Edward I’s conquest of Wales. The bow came to play a very important role in English warfare in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, and given that the original tales of Robin Hood seem to originate in exactly that period, it was as natural for Robin to use a longbow as it was for Dirty Harry to use a Smith & Wesson .44 magnum. But in 1194, it’s about a century out of place unless Robin Hood is actually just a Welsh bandit wandering around England.
  

  Robin and his longbow

• Azeem manufactures gunpowder so they can blow stuff up in the climactic confrontation at Nottingham Castle. Black powder certainly existed; it may have been invented in China around 492 AD. The Islamic world acquired knowledge of gunpowder some time between 1240 and 1280, and the earliest European recipe for it dates to around 1300. So Azeem basically has to invent black powder. Apparently he’s a 12^th century Thomas Edison. (See the previous picture for a nice example of a Stuff Blows Up scene.)
• Nottingham decides to hire some “Celtic” mercenaries, and what we get is a bunch of Time-Traveling Killer Picts. They are dressed in ragged furs and kilts and paint their faces, and several of them actually wield Stone Age axes. These guys are even more out of place than the Viking mercanaries King John hires in Ironclad.
• Nottingham’s men pretty much all wear Norman helmets, a simple bullet-shaped metal helmet that left the face and cheeks exposed, but provided a nasal strip to give a little protection to the nose and eyes. This style of helmet was widely used in the 10^th and 11^th century, but in the 12^th century it gave way to the closed helmet (for those who were better equipped) and a helmet that left the face exposed but provided coverage for the cheeks (for those less well-equipped). So I suppose we could say that Nottingham is just a cheapskate who gave his men very old, crappy helmets, but it’s sort of like making a movie about the 21^st century American military and giving all the soldiers doughboy helmets. (See the above photo for a guard in a Norman helmet.)
  

  Christian Slater’s largely useless Will Scarlett

• After Robin Hood begins the whole ‘stealing from the rich to give to the poor’ routine, Nottingham’s men post wanted posters (an anachronism in itself) that are written in modern English and look pretty clearly printed rather than hand-written.
• Friar Tuck is a friar wandering around England in 1194. St Francis didn’t invent the concept of the friar (a wandering monk, basically) until 1209. The Franciscans didn’t come to England until 1224. Tuck seems to be a priest, since he presides over Robin and Marion’s wedding at the end of the film, but the early Franciscans were generally not priests. So everything about Tuck is wrong.
• Bonus Anachronism 1: Marion’s female servants are named Rebecca and Sarah, which means they’re Jewish, since in medieval Europe, most Old Testament names were associated with Jewishness (the major exceptions being David and Adam). Because English Jews were a despised minority, Christian women would not have used Jewish names, and Marion would have been very unlikely to hire Jewish servants.
  

  Gotta love that totally non-medieval neckline on Marion’s dress!

• Bonus Anachronism 2: In one scene, Marion is needlepointing a panel from the Bayeux Tapestry, a now-famous but then fairly obscure embroidery from the late 11^th century. Marion is Richard’s cousin, meaning she must be French, so I suppose we could hypothesize that she paid a visit to the bishop of Bayeux at some point and fell in love with his wall-hanging and did a quick sketch of it, but why bother actually trying to explain the little details? The film sure doesn’t.

Update: A couple of readers have asserted that Azeem doesn’t perform a caesarian section, merely turn the baby. At the start of the scene, he declares that the baby has not turned and so cannot be born. Then he tells Marion to get a needle, thread, and water. Then he says that he has seen some technique used on horses. He never says exactly what he’s going to do, but it’s presented as some exotic Middle Eastern knowledge. So I suppose there’s some room for debate about exactly what the film wants us to think is going on. However, if he’s only planning to turn the baby, asking for a needle and thread makes no sense. That request only makes any sense at all if he’s planning on cutting Fanny open and then sewing her up after the baby is out.

The whole scene is quite silly. There is approximately 0% chance that a Muslim man without specialized medical training would know anything about gynecology and midwifery. Even most trained physicians in the Islamic world knew nothing beyond some vague theories about childbirth, because gender segregation and the practice of women veiling meant that even physicians almost never had physical contact with unrelated women. Honestly, Robin Hood had more chance of knowing something about delivering a baby than a Muslim man did, because Western men had somewhat greater familiarity with women’s bodies (since veiling and segregation were not as rigidly enforced in the West as they were in the Middle East). Childbirth was women’s work and not something men would get involved in.

Furthermore, breeched babies are, if not common, still a recognized phenomenon across the medieval world. Being able to recognize it and address it was not something that required exotic Middle Eastern knowledge. Marion probably would have at least known the concept, even if she hadn’t encountered it before.

 

Want to Know More?

I’m not sure why you’d want to know more about this film, but Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves [Double Sided]is available on Amazon.