William Tell (Hamm, 2024)
I spent the first ninety minutes of WIlliam Tell muttering, “Okay, this is better than I expected.” I spent the last forty minutes ready for it to be over. The film ends with a tease for a sequel I have no desire to see. Two days later, I still don’t know whether to rate it “Fresh” or “Rotten.”
The cast is so good and the story so familiar that it doesn’t really matter whether you know European history. The Austrians were the fasscist superpowers that taxed and raped and raped and taxed? The Swiss were the peace-loving, principled warriors that did not want to fight but would not be pushed too far? Okay.
If you have seen Braveheart you have seen this movie. If you have seen The Patriot, you have seen this movie. And from the moment the opening scene flashes back to “three days earlier,” you can predict each beat. Tell helps a Swiss man escape his pursuers only to draw the wrath of the vindictive Austrians who want to break him as a lesson to any of his countrymen who will not kneel to a helmet on the pole. There’s a lot of talk about “bending the knee” (who will and who won’t) just to lull people stumbling across the film on cable into thinking they might be watching Game of Thrones.
All snark aside, the production values are surprisingly good, and the dialogue, perhaps inspired by Schiller’s play is polished in the way that never lets you forget you are watching actors deliver professional dialogue, not characters talking. Even that, I didn’t mind so much.
I guess the reason William Tell couldn’t quite get over the hump for me is that it never really solves the dramatic problem of its foundational scene. The guy will participate in the sick game but won’t openly rebel because….why? The film actually does a decent job of showing just how sick this exercise is, mostly through the reactions of those around the Tell family. But unlike in Braveheart or The Patriot, it is the hero’s success rather than his defiance that ultimately rallies his kinsmen. And once the psychological torture is over, Tell trusts his adversary enough to speak the truth about the second arrow. What did he think the response was going to be?
It is evident that writer/director Nick Hamm wants this to be a franchise, but I think the film would have worked better with a leaner run time, a tighter focus on Tell, and letting the apple shooting be the climax. Is there an expectation that we will care much about these characters and the politics of their era beyond the mythic centerpiece?
