I Watch Films: William Tell (2024)
William Tell (2024)
William Tell came back from the crusades the deadliest crossbowman in Switzerland, now he lives peacefully with his family. Unfortunately Switzerland is under the rule of Austria, specifically the Hapsburgs. After a Hapsburg official raped and murdered Baugarten’s wife, he killed him in revenge and went on the run. With a storm coming down only Tell is brave and skillful enough to get him across the lake.
This murder leads to a crackdown by the Hapsburgs who appoint Gessler as governor. He puts a hat on a pole to represent the Hapsburg power and makes everyone bow to it as they pass. While wandering around plotting and trying to figure out how to resist with a whole bunch of other characters, Tell and his son Walter fail to bow. A rather complex scene leads to the best known William Tell legend in which Tell shoots an apple of his son’s head. Tell is imprisoned, is taken across the lake where a storm rises up. Tell is released by Bertha, half-Swiss, half-Hapsburg noblewoman and they escape into the woods.
All the characters who we’ve been talking to finally make up their minds and the canton leaders get together and declare Swiss independence. The Hapsburgs send in their troops (from onscreen captions it’s three days from the Baugarten killings to the apple incident, which suggests the Hapsburg castle is about five miles down the road and has fully mobilised their army already) and fights break out, also the Austrian king is assassinated.
Do we need a historical epic about Swiss independence in the grim men in leather, plotting violence mode of medieval action films? It hardly matters as we have one. The archery is fine, the fights complex and too long, time and space impossible to work out and a lot of characters are all trying to betraying each other. The central setpiece is fine!
Watch This: Well-made, atmospheric medieval action film
Don’t Watch This: Leaves us, somehow, more ignorant about
the struggle for Swiss Independence than before we watched it
