1066: The Battle for Middle Earth

A lot of effort went into this production. Just as I think there was too much estrogen in "The Devil's Whore", another UK tail about the English Civil War, so too do I think that this suffers from a bit too much testosterone. Ton's of what veteran period aficionados call hack- n-slash, there's little in the way for much anything else.

We see the grim realities of warfare in the purported "dark ages", and some of the pillaging that was characteristic of the period, but little else. The idea here being that since this show is aimed at men, and men like to see violence (and some sex), this film will therefore show lots of sword play violence, and some sex.

The truth about the battle of Hastings is that both sides slugged it out on the lower grade of the hill, broke for lunch, then had at it again. The Norman forces feinted back, the English charged, and were defeated. The battle depicted in the film shows the tactics being somewhat more complex.

The one thing I really like about this TV mini series are the explanations of Tolkien's inspiration for his own "Middle Earth" saga. The explanation of terms is interesting and adds something to the piece.

The acting is what it is, good and passable. No one gives a bad performance. But the material the actors have to work with is a bit spartan. We essentially see a kill or be killed plot line, with little else operating as a story mechanism. That's too bad.

The props are okay. The armor worn by the actors looks like the stuff you can buy off any medieval website, and I'm sure that's not too far off the mark. The cloths seem authentic, but don't feel authentic. This is, after-all, the dark ages, and the machine clean linens and overall look to the film seems a bit out of place.

Most of the money seems to have gone into staging the battle sequences, and putting sword fighting onto the screen. Again, perhaps there could have been a bit more as to how and why the battle of Hastings was fought. But perhaps that's a job for another production.

An interesting miniseries. I'm glad I took a chance on it, but I think it could've have been more than what it ultimately became.

This is a very interesting and very well made reenactment of the famous Battle of Hastings and the events around it. It takes its time to bring the whole medieval period closer to the viewer, introduces various characters that may or may not have necessarily existed but are here very useful in conducing the sentiment and the point of view of a common man of the ages.

Acting and cinematography are very good. Directing not so good. Obviously great effort was undertaken to conceal the low budget, which is a good thing, but it also gives a pretty claustrophobic viewing experience (for instance, there are too many close-ups) and at times unconvincing and static battle scenes.

What is really annoying, however, is the bias the story of William's conquest is told with. It paints pictures of poor "true Englishmen", Saxon Englishmen, suffering horrors of defeat at hands of merciless, almost inhumane, Norman invaders who came uninvited to harass peaceful sedentary civilization. As if Saxons themselves, a couple of centuries prior, didn't do exactly the same thing to Romano-Celtic population on the Island. Should we pity them? I'm not quite sure.

But the series wants us to do just that - to identify with one side. And while it makes for some really poignant scenes worth watching, it also makes for a poor history show. The dialog is also sometimes abhorrently naive or inane, completely devoid of humor at that. It would have been so much better show if they didn't turn it into a litany of a loser.

1066: THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE EARTH is a two-part Channel 4 miniseries that unwisely likens the situation of that year to Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS, undoubtedly in a bid to draw in more viewers. My question is: why? There are, I suppose, superficial similarities between the stories, in that rural shires are invaded by enemies, but the effect in whole is to lessen the experience. Why does the film bang on about elves in the wood and orcs when it should really be getting on with telling the story of the three battles of that year?

There are some good aspects to be found here. The costumes are authentic and the locales are good too, even if it does look like the whole miniseries was shot in the same forest. The (brief) glimpses we get of Saxon life are intriguing and the recreation of a Saxon village at the opening is promising. Sadly, the film then descends into a load of blokes larking around in the woods, complete with dodgy shaky-cam choreography that really DOESN'T work and a script aimed at the level of soap fans rather than a historical epic.

The main problem is the lack of budget, which makes any attempt at depicting the battles of Stamford Bridge or Hastings hopeless; there's no way they can get across the scale and violence of these battles when they're reduced to a few chaps fighting on the edge of a field. Take a classic scene in point: the sole Viking holding the bridge and slaughtering any enemy who approaches him. This is the stuff of legends, yet it's reduced to a fat bloke standing on some wooden planks getting speared by a bad actor. Not good! The frequent quotes and captions that are used to authenticate the story are good, as is Ian Holm's narration. But when they start using maps at the climax to show how the battle at Hastings fared, you wonder whether they'd have been better off making a documentary with staged inserts instead. Certainly the acting is poor, and the use of TV actors explains this. There's no characterisation and no real depth or feeling to what's going on.

The tone seems to go all over the place. The Vikings attack, rape and pillage loads of people in the North and are defeated, then one leading Saxon warrior has a crisis of conscience and almost cries when an enemy he's fighting gets impaled. Would he really have acted like this, or would he have hacked his enemy's head off in revenge for the barbarity he's inflicted? I know which one would have really happened. The same goes for the surviving Viking unexplainably joining the Saxons to fight at Hastings.

Attempts at humour are lamentable and the efforts to show the battle from all sides only serve to lessen the experience. Sure, the idea of showing epic stuff like this from the 'soldier's eye' view is a good one, but almost everything is done wrongly. The worst bit, for me, is when one group of soldiers form into a 'wedge' to attack the other's shield wall – before the shield wall has even been created! This so-called 'attack' then consists of a group of blokes charging into the others, who instantly break their defensive wall to fight individually. It all turns into a messy scrum, and you wonder if anyone involved had any idea of what they were trying to depict. For a truly authentic account of Saxon warfare, try reading Bernard Cornwell's excellent Saxon stories, beginning with The Last Kingdom. They're set a couple of hundred years before this, but the depiction of Saxon vs. Viking combat far exceeds anything on display here.

As a reasonably educated Englishman of the 80's, (I scored the highest boy's total in the London Borough of Sutton's 11+ exams in 1978... and then went on to attend the Grammar School with the highest 'O' Level Pass Rates in the UK), I recall a trip to view the tapestry and writing our thoughts on it... scene by scene. We also enjoyed standard, compulsory, Latin and French lessons, alas, subjects now relegated to 'Higher Edukashun'... Consequently I have watched this several times. Most recently I, again, had tears in my eyes for most of the first 2 hours; until, I, too, like Leofric, became hardened to a life that could be considered, back then, 'customary'.

I've visited the Battle site twice before... and will be doing so again shortly... as a direct result of this film.

What abuses?... What cowardice?...What hardships?... and what joys ALL of our shared ancestors duly orchestrated, enjoyed and suffered to enable eacvh and every one of us to be here now? My mitochondrial DNA shows 'Viknigr' links, whilst my Best Friend has a proved lineage back to a specific '1066' Norman Chevalier... Whilst my Wife has a proved lineage back to Alfred the Great.

My Step-daughter asked me..."What's the point of this film"?... and I explained that within a generation of the Norman Invasion no land was owned by an 'Anglo_Saxon' Englishmen and that withiin the same time-frame the 'Top 5' names for boys changed from the traditional Anglo-Saxon ones to 'William' and 'Henry' and 'John' etc... and those 'new' "Top 5" boys' names hardly changed for over 1000yrs!! Just look at how many with Norman names drafted the American declaration of Independence!?! The most poignant point is right at the end: That in 1066 just 190 people were given a 5th of England as bounty... and that now, over 1000yrs later, one fifth of England is still owned by descendants of those very same people. Research a bit more and you'll find they are our bankers, ours politicians, our Town Mayors and our 'Celebs'... The rest of us are, and always will be, just "the little people of the Shire" Alas.. That's why History is now so poorly taught! A subservient, "X-factor" voting, plebeian is SOOO much easier to manipulate :(

For me, this film was a success because it captured that horrified sense of loss not only of a battle, or of lives, but of a whole culture and the 650-year history that had produced it. The decision to focus only on the ordinary foot-soldiers (to the extent that none of the three leaders had a single line to speak, and William did not even appear on screen) was a good one, since it allowed the story to represent the fate of peoples instead of just the fate of kings. The narration, in a good imitation of the style of Anglo-Saxon epic poetry, was mournful and measured, and the revelation of the narrator's identity at the end nicely rounded out one thread of the story. Despite the constant bloodletting, the characters were attractive: Leofric the happy-go-lucky coward who does the right thing in the end; Hrothgar the weary general always trying to rally his weary men for one more fight; and Snorri the captured Viking who becomes a mainstay of the English at Hastings. The final stages at Hastings reminded me of the poem commemorating another English defeat, 75 years before:

"Thought shall be harder, heart shall be keener / Spirit shall be greater, as our might lessens." (The Battle of Maldon, 991)