by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

The Mummy (1999) is considered by many to be the awakening of many bisexuals in my generation. And, uh… yeah. That’s 100% true! But, let me also offer you another film that awoke many a bisexual that I know, and which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year: A Knight’s Tale.

When I think about the things that The Mummy and A Knight’s Tale have in common - the things that make them iconic to many bisexuals, it becomes obvious to me. They both have the Three Hs: Hotties, history, and horses.

Okay, that last H is a joke (it’s actually true in both cases, though not a requirement for peak bisexual awakening in cinema). Certainly, though, the first two Hs are a big part of what makes both films so successful to me, and many bisexuals like me. There’s this combination of truly hot people messing about in a historical time period (whilst also being fun and funny). Add in a messy romance, and a life-or-death situation, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Honestly, it doesn’t even need to be historically accurate or even aiming to be (lord knows A Knight’s Tale never dreamed of it). It just needs to be enough that your burgeoning sexuality can be exploited and the chances of you making the historical setting your entire teenager personality are relatively high.

Enter Brian Helgeland’s A Knight’s Tale. A very, and I cannot stress this enough, loose adaptation of one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s stories in The Canterbury Tales. Like… it’s so barely related that if Helgeland hadn’t made Chaucer a character in the story, I’d call you a liar. (It’s called The Knight’s Tale, if that information is of use to you.)

A Knight’s Tale is the story of William Thatcher (Heath Ledger), a squire who’s knight dies in the middle of a jousting tournament. Determined to not lose out on the money that could feed him and his fellow squires, Rolland (Mark Addy) and Wat (Alan Tudyk), William pretends to be Sir Ector and finishes out the competition. With a taste for winning, William convinces his friends to train him so they may continue on the tournament circuit around Europe. 

The rub is that you have to be of noble birth to compete and William simply is not. So… they lie. With help from “the guy you know from high school English,” writer Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettnay), they’re able to enter the competitions without a second look, and they start winning. Then, in the span of one tournament, William meets Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon), his true love, and Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), his nemesis. As their lives all start to entangle, William’s true identity threatens to ruin his future as the tournament season comes to ahead in England. 

Of the film, Roger Ebert said, “The movie has an innocence and charm that grows on you. It's a reminder of the days before films got so cynical and unrelentingly violent.” But despite Ebert getting what a lot of fans see in the flick, A Knight’s Tale was met with generally mixed reviews. The anachronisms were a big sticking point for a lot of people, which I understand… but utterly reject. 

And honestly, part of that might come from the curveball that is writer/director Brian Helgeland’s career. He won an Oscar for his L.A. Confidential script, as well as winning a Razzie for writing The Postman (in the same year, no less). A few years after that, he was nominated for a second screenplay Oscar for writing Mystic River. And, in between those three yo-yos of prestige and… the opposite of prestige, he made A Knight’s Tale. He’s written and directed three films since 2001, all of which are equally baffling in their own ways. You’ve got another Heath Ledger vehicle in The Order, another sports flick in 42, and then (truly the most confusing to me) the crime biopic Legend, which starred Tom Hardy. Twice!

But part of what is so charming about the anachronistic choices in the film (everything from the music, to the costuming, to the hairstyles and color) is that they’re done with such specific early 2000s intent. The music (like The Great Gatsby after it) is used to illustrate a point about the type of film A Knight’s Tale is. Like how Baz Luhrmann used hip-hop and rap (often done with the flare of the 1920s) to make a comparison between the opulence of the past and presence, Helgeland uses classic rock (some of which have been co-opted into arenas during halftime shows) because he’s making a sports movie. 

I think Helgeland makes it pretty clear that that’s what he’s doing (even talking about it openly in interviews), and the music is a big part of why I think it works. By using music that is often associated with sports and sporting games of all kinds, it becomes a short hand when you might not understand the rules of this particular game (although, I think they do a pretty great job of explaining it). 

The music, I’d wager, is a big reason why I kept coming back to this film when I was too young to really understand what was actually going on in the plot. (Well, that and how utterly quotable this film is!) Like, I had no idea who Geoffrey Chaucer was, but I knew Paul Bettany was hot, naked (twice!), and they were gonna play a bangin’ song before he got up to introduce Heath Ledger. I’m pretty sure this soundtrack was my introduction to Queen, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and probably David Bowie (depending on when I can place me seeing Labyrinth for the first time. Not too sure on that one). So, imagine my surprise when I was finally coming out and realized that this weird mideval sports movie, with so many hot people I might die, featured music by a lot of iconically queer bands/musicans. Sure, they’d been used in a sports setting for a long time, which was why they were in the film at all, but I will take what I can get from the early 2000s!

Additionally, between this and Ever After, I refuse medieval period pieces where the women aren’t witty and biting, against even their own better judgement. And maybe all three of the women in this film are woefully underwritten… but I just love them all so much. Honestly, upon rewatching it as an adult, I was kind of impressed that all three of them felt entirely different. Obviously, Jocelyn and Kate (Laura Fraser) both get the brunt of the dialogue and screen time, but even Christiana (Bérénice Bejo), with her few lines, cements who she is as a character, outside of her purpose in the plot. Which is not to give Helgeland too much credit, but it’s a pleasant surprise. 

The other aspect of the film, which I haven’t even touched on, is this idea of “changing your stars.” It’s part of the sports movie narrative that’s been grafted onto this story - the idea that you can be born into poverty and eventually do enough (generally through whatever sport the film is about) that you’ll be lifted into fame and fortune. Or, at least, some semblance of notoriety. And that’s a big sticking point for William. It’s all his father ever wanted for him, and when he’s actually knighted by the Black Prince of Wales (a storyline that consists of three scenes that absolutely rule, not to mention are really economic storytelling) it’s a very emotional moment to hear his actual name said out loud - “Sir” and all. 

It is not lost on me, however, that while most modern sports films pretend like it’s a meritocracy, A Knight’s Tale is honest about how William is able to “change his stars”: someone who is already there has to usher you in. I don’t think that this was a piece of commentary that Helgeland was trying to make, or anything. No, I think it’s a happy accident due to the way jousting tournaments were strictly run, and how that fed into the way the story was broken down. But it’s something I really appreciated as an adult, looking at the film twenty years later.

What I love so much about A Knight’s Tale, and what I’ve probably always loved about this film, is akin to what Roger Ebert wrote in his review. This film is charming and so deeply uncynical in the most refreshing kind of way. I miss a time when weird period pieces were made with a clear amount of love and support from the studio, but that weren’t self-serious. Over that last twenty years, A Knight’s Tale has remained one of my favorite films. It’s fun, romantic, and completely earnest. So, I can’t imagine that will change in the next twenty.