Lancelot du lac

Robert Bresson’s almost abstract rendering of the Arthurian legend—the tale of the titular knight’s quest for the Holy Grail and his love affair with Guinevere—approaches the realm of pure cinema, unfolding as a hypnotic study in the movement of bodies, the clanking of armor, the rhythm of galloping horses, and the spurting of blood. A mesmerizing reimagining of myth, LANCELOT DU LAC (“Lancelot of the Lake”) finds the French iconoclast blending the earthy and the spiritual, the elemental and the transcendent, to ecstatic effect.