Having recently watched Black Death and Season of the Witch, Arn – The Knight Templar seemed like a nice way to round out the knight trifecta. Arn is considerably different from those two films. Where Black Death is about the rejection of paganism in light of a terrible plague and Season of the Witch is about biases against women (and Cage's accent), Arn is more like a historical reenactment.
Things start out promising: Cecilia (Sofia Helin) gives birth in a convent. The child is proclaimed a bastard and taken away to a chorus of Cecilia's wracking sobs. What will become of the child? Who is the father? Why is this nun (she's not a nun) giving birth? We'll have to wait an hour to find out.
The other plotline is about Arn (Joakim Natterqvist) who is raised by a former Templar in a monastery. When he returns to his family, Arn has the opportunity to defend his father's honor. He is instructed to never take a life except in self-defense, so instead of slaying the rival clan leader he just cuts off his arm. This will have repercussions later. Much later.
Arn falls in love with Cecilia, who is betrothed to the rival clan. He ends up bedding Cecilia and is accused by Cecilia's scheming sister of seducing her as well. These accusations lead to them both being banished for twenty years to their respective convent/monastery. Arn's simply back where he started of course, so it's not long before he's sent off to fight in the Crusades. Twenty years is, as the judge states, "half a lifetime." It's a long time for Cecilia to wait until Arn returns for her. Fortunately for Cecilia, she won't age a year. Unfortunately for us, it takes us over a half hour to get to this point.
Arn is a Swedish film far more interested in presenting a historically accurate narrative than telling a good story. The summary I gave above is more compelling than the way the movie lays it out. This is because it's actually a hacked up version of a much longer miniseries. It shows.
At times the movie drags. When Arn has a sit down with Saladin (yes, THE Saladin) we can guess what's going to happen. When Cecilia pines for Arn, we can guess what's going to happen. When Cecilia gives a cheesy cross to Arn, we can guess it will be given back in his bloodied hand at the very end of the story. All these obvious plot points would be excusable if the editor made any effort to provide suspense, or drama, or anything besides a beat-by-beat retelling of two different tales that only intermingle occasionally.
There's also the complete lack of acting makeup. Arn grows a beard, which helps make him look a little more grizzled, but Cecilia doesn't age a day. You get the impression director Peter Flinth is proud of the fact that this movie is without artifice, but that doesn't make it any less distracting.
Beautifully shot with real locations and a dizzying array of languages, accents, and ethnicities, Arn feels like an epic…in dire need of an epic editor.
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