What makes it different from others?

What a waste of my time!!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

I guess I was expecting Truffaut or Godard. Back in the late 60s and early 70s the "old Hollywood" was still churning out movies that I did not like and didn't want to see. "Foreign" films were like a breath of fresh air and originality at that time.Well--this film--"LANCELOT" was a real let-down.--It really sucked--boring, clumsy, low-production values, a director's self-centered ego trip--maybe. His "vision" is so inaccessible and uninteresting to most film-goers that it just seems to be a clumsy waste of our time. Perhaps it is supposed to be some kind of allegory about the way the people in Bresson's own life are relating to him--the "knights" and the queen--but who cares? It is not true that all people in France have BORING boring lives!! Or make boring movies. Or want to watch them. Other reviewers of this film on the IMDb seem to like this movie--but I don't think I'd want to watch anything they like."I mean no harm or put fault on anyone who lives in a vault".....

Being introduced by a friend earlier this year to the myth and legend of King Arthur with Joshua Logan's under rated 1967 musical Camelot,I began to search round for any,more unknown takes on the Camelot story,that he could hopefully enjoy over the Christmas Period.To my complete surprise,I found out that director Robert Bresson had done an adaptation on the Camelot story,which led me to decided to once again enter King Arthur's court,in order to meet Bresson for the first ever time.The plot:Disheartend over Not finding the Holy Grail and also the high number of the Knights of the Round Table who died during the 2 year search for the object,Lancelot Du Lac returns with the still surviving members of the Round Table to Camelot.Having last been in Camelot over 2 years ago,Lancelot is sad to find that the city is in decline,with only King Arthur's wife Guinevere being the person left to bring the light into the city which has faded away long ago.Agreing to a tournament that King Arthur is holding,Lancelot begins to struggle in keeping his feelings for Arthur's wife hidden,as other members of The Knights of the Round Table start to plan on how to use Lancelot and Guinevere's secret relationship as a way to burn Camelot to the ground.View on the film: For the directing style of the movie,writer/director Robert Bresson daringly stays away from the wide-birds eye point of view epic shots that every other director would instantly go for,to instead present a terrific fragmented view of Camelot.Opening with a gory scene which would later be "remade" for laughs in Monty Python's terrific Holy Grail movie,Bresson focuses on the sections of scenes that viewers would most likely ignore, (such as the way that the horses legs move,and also the way that half of Guinevere's face is seen in a mirror) that along with smartly showing the fragmented relationship's that the character's find themselves in, (emplifired by a somber performance from Luc Simon as Lancelot) is also used cleverly by Bresson so that the audience can gather up the bits and pieces that he gives the viewer,in order for them to build their own "full" image of the crumbling Camelot.

This film is amazing. At first I was wondering why aren't these people expressing themselves, why is it so hard feel for these people. Then it hit me! It is about handshakes! When Lancelot puts his hand out and it is not returned with a shake, I felt it in the depths of my stomach! This is not really a period piece at all, it is just about how hard we try to keep ourselves inside. The colors on the stockings and the tips of hats. The jousting scene is incredible, Bresson focuses on stuff that makes you feel and see things that you would never see. I can not believe that Bresson was able to make this normal trite subject a complete and utter masterpiece! He has a remarkable skill for transforming people and scenes into his own vision. Bresson is a true master of cinema and we should all learn form these close-ups and editing and sound. Thanks Bresson!

I watched this film as part of a degree module on Arthurian legend in my final year of university. Looking back, I now know this is the sort of film made only to torture students of literature and film.Seven years on, I still remember with clarity the iron force of will I had to bring to bear to sit through the full length.Having studied Brecht, I know that entertainment need not always be entertaining. Sometimes, Brecht told us, theatre must and can be used as an instrument of social commentary, and employed his famous 'alienation effect' to remove the popcorn munching bourgeois from their comfort zones. Even so, with Brechtian theatre one is moved by emotions other than pleasure, such as anger or a desire to correct a perceived injustice.What did I take away from this movie, other than a sense of soul-deadening boredom, and a sense of valuable time forever lost? At first, nothing. Nothing at all. It was not only a bad film, it was my first ever experience of anti-cinema, an exercise of such profound arrogance and pomposity as to numb the senses. I felt utterly unmoved in every way. Emotionally. Intellectually. Spiritually.The anger came later. I was angry that more than a single frame of celluloid had been wasted in the creation of the unpolished lincoln log that is "Lancelot du Lac".Bresson has done for cinema what L Ron Hubbard's earlier pulp novels did for science fiction (which were at best, embarrassingly amateurish nonsense), yet like Hubbard, he has inexplicably been deified by a small but influential group of people who are under the bizarre impression that he actually had something valuable to contribute to the 'zeitgeist'.But nonetheless, I still think it should be shown in film schools. Why? I paraphrase a very useful piece of pop wisdom. "Nothing is completely useless. It can always serve as a bad example."