Tristan+Isolde

[Luiz]

Prefer Wagner's opera. Long-winded but sexy. Just like me.

[Yovaneth]

I always get hung up on the costumes. If the costuming is the pits, no way am I even going to be able to watch the movie.

 

Me too; I spent 21 years in a historical re-enactment society and it's completely spoiled me for Holywood cock-ups.

 

I'm another one that hasn't seen the film but Bri stirred an almost-dormant grey cell lurking in a dark corner. I remember reading Culhwch ac Olwen in the Mabinogion (1948 translation I think - it's on the bookshelf somewhere but I'm too lazy to go check. Regretably I can't read the original Welsh). I also have a 1923 translation (transliteration?) of the Morte d'Artur which is the version that everyone remembers but surprisingly, my favourite rendering of the legend is by Bernard Cornwell in Enemy of God.

 

-Y-

[BigRob]

Bernard Cornwell's rendering of the legend was one of the better ones I've read, for sure. It's historically realistic, and it sounds like something that might eventually mutate into the legend as we know it today.

[Miloch]

Haven't seen the movie - not sure if it's worth it based on the lukewarm reviews here. I've read the Culwych and Olwen a couple times though. I've had the Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan sitting around a while - might try to pick it up again. It's bound with (and based on to some extent) the fragments of Thomas of Britain's Tristran.

'Ysolt, dear mistress, our lives are very different: our love is so remote that it exists only to delude me. I lose joy and delight for you, but you cannot help but have them night and day. I lead my life in great misery, but you lead yours in amorous sport... I suffer torment for your body, while the King has his pleasure of you.'

A shame more of it didn't survive.