Word: williamsons
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...King.") we're thrust into a bloody battle between small armies of knights on horseback. Their armor splattered with blood and mud, they fight against the background of a bright orange sky, the bloodshot sun hanging low. The strange atmosphere of unreality intensifies with the entrance of Merlin (Nicol Williamson) who emerges from the mist covered in black robes, his head adorned with a glistening silver skull cap. Uther (Gabriel Byrne), boldest of the knights--soon-to-be father of Arthur--hacks through the earnage and calls out to Merlin "I must be King! I must have that sword...
...well-known actors, Helen Mirren and Nicol Williamson, pose deeper problems, and offer more radical solutions. Of Morgana, mistress of mandrake and sulfur, Mirren makes an armored, camp enchantress. Swathed in purple veils and seaweed capes, intoning Merlin's dread spells as if they contained the dirtiest and most sacred words in any world, incarcerating the wizard in a cocoon of cotton candy as she proclaims victory over her mentor, Mirren convinces that she could charm a kingdom-or a film- with her perfidy...
...performance seems a model of restraint next to Williamson's Merlin. The voice sweeps from wail to whisper, from adenoidal giggle to basso preposteroso growl - often in the same sentence. It is a daring display, and an exhilarating one. Merlin is, after all, a man out of time: "Our days are numbered," he declaims to Morgana...
...realizes, as she does not, that the Christian epoch will have no room for a necromancer - or an ironic realist. Mer lin's time has come again in the post-Christian 20th century; it is fitting, then, that Williamson expresses both the juicy effluence of hoary ham acting and the quizzical underplaying of the Method. His Merlin is also a perfect avatar of the sorcerer behind the camera. Love Excalibur or hate it, but give Boorman credit for the loopy grandeur of his imagery and imaginings, for the sweet smell of excess, for his heroic gamble that a movie...
...this stark, scalding and implacable drama, John Osborne draws up a balance sheet of a personal hell. His lawyer anti-hero Bill Maitland (Nicol Williamson) is "irredeemably mediocre," and incorrigibly self-destructive. He indulges in lacerating sado-masochistic diatribes, pops pills and suffers interminable hang overs. His joyless office liaisons sate only his lust, and he leaves his wife, mistress and daughter parched for love. In short, he is a mess, but he is the kind of mesmerizing mess that more men see in the shaving mirror in 1981 than did in 1965 when the play opened in New York...