Against our backdrop of revenge porn, dick pic-strewn online dating and embittered incel manifestos, the notion of courtly love couldn’t seem more remote. Cilla Black and Blind Date now seem like something from medieval times – so where does that leave an actual medieval sentimental convention? A goodly knight inspired to perform virtuous deeds and compose the sublimest verse in honour of an idealised lady-love – it’s enough to make a 21st-century onanist yawn and reach for their Fleshlight.
But romance and chivalry aren’t quite dead yet. Cyrano de Bergerac is back in a new musical version this month, as Peter Dinklage lends his alexandrines to help a mate woo the beautiful Roxanne. Married off to no-nonsense bruiser Matt Damon in Ridley Scott’s 14th-century drama The Last Duel, Jodie Comer’s sequestered damsel becomes subject to the attentions of courtly smooth operator Adam Driver. And a silky-voiced consort, played by Alicia Vikander, gave Sir Dev of Patel’s mettle the stiffest of examinations in the penultimate trial of last year’s The Green Knight.
All these films may seem like diverting excursions into cobblestoned fantasias, but modern social anxieties beat beneath their plate-iron breasts. Our online lives are just as caught up with appearances and reality as ringletted paramours and knights-errant once were in the “game” of courtly love (at least if you believe the literature).
Chivalric romances were filled with a tension between idealised image and inner feeling. This gulf between what was socially valued and desired and how you approach that as an individual is strangely relevant to social media. Medieval lays (no sniggering) were as much about the act of self-presentation – how the lance gleamed, whether deeds were noble, the words well-spoken – as about the love object herself. Monty Python satirised the pretensions of courtly love brilliantly in the Castle Anthrax segment of their Holy Grail film.
So when, in the new Cyrano, Peter Dinklage gives pretty-but-dumb musketeer Christian a silver-tongued upgrade to be the suave loverboy Roxane wants, there’s an analogy with the flattering personas and sassy internet-ese we adopt in our digital lives. “I will make you eloquent while you make me handsome,” says Cyrano – who effectively uses Christian as a kind of balcony-vaulting avatar.
Or, in Gawain’s anxiety that in failing the lady’s test “he is no knight”, there is a hint of the ultimate online sin: that our real selves will be exposed and found wanting. Poring over our tweets, dallying over our Instagram filters, we’re still vying to be deemed worthy in the court of social media. Or perhaps exposing our real selves is actually what the updated version of the game demands. That’s the positive spin put on the online masquerade by Mamoru Hosoda’s new animation Belle – which draws on another quasi-courtly story, Beauty and the Beast, in which a savage warrior’s noble self is revealed by love.
It’s a shame Joe Wright’s blandly tasteful new Cyrano didn’t opt for a contemporary setting – where it could have really played with the dramatic potential of smartphones and dating apps. Courtly love has arguably persisted most strongly in modern times in the romcom, with its yearned-for hotties, eager suitors and codified pageantry; as meet-cutes go, divorced maths teacher Owen Wilson getting hauled on stage to wed jilted megastar J-Lo in this month’s Marry Me is a pretty good one. Maybe the medieval convention keyed in to a timeless human truth that will never lose relevance: that desire operates first through idealised images. Jacques Audiard’s new anthology film Paris, 13th District touches on this with its plotline about a mature student being mistaken for a webcam girl, and its swirling sense that its four lovers are all navigating earthly illusions in search of The One.
But it’s interesting to see courtly love return to cinema in unadulterated form at a time when other forms of medieval culture have been making a comeback. During a pandemic that naturally set us thinking back to past pestilences, trendologists noted the likes of #MedievalTikTok (videos often sending up incongruous modern-day formality against tapestry-style backdrops) and bardcore (lute and cornamuse-heavy pop covers). These atavistic throwbacks seemed almost comforting during the disorientating first months of isolation – cultural models harking back to other times marked by malady and social inequality. Ironically, courtly love was originally a kind of response to this rigid hierarchy: often addressed to a ruling lord’s lady, it was a safe outlet for courtiers to express erotic feelings and social-climbing aspirations without threatening the established order. Letting any old keyboard warrior mingle with the once-remote celebrity class, isn’t social media doing a similar job these days?
Straining for the three-hanky tragic blow-out, down to packing Christian off to an even more stupid death than in the 1990 Gérard Depardieu version, Cyrano is a bit unimaginative in how it tackles the courtly love tradition. But The Last Duel and The Green Knight retailor it in startling ways that illuminate our times. In the Ridley Scott film, courtly love is revealed as a facade and a brutal form of social currency. Jacques le Gris (Driver) sweet-talking Marguerite de Carrouges (Comer) is the prelude to raping her; in her timeline, when husband Jean (Damon) defends her honour, it is patently more about maintaining his own social standing. It’s a cynical parable fit for own tooth’n’claw era of sexual politics, as #MeToo jousts the patriarchy online and further afield.
Meanwhile, in The Green Knight, the issue of his performance in the trial with the lady and the whole courtly ideal turn out to be human vanity – amounting to no more than a glob of semen – when he finally meets his arboreal adversary. As dusk falls on the foliage of the Green Chapel, in his long wait for the Green Knight to stir, we’re meant to feel all the immensity of nature, which renders our daily affairs trivial. Again, we should take heed: the climate apocalypse is coming, and you’re worried about your follower count? As King Arthur wheezes into Gawain’s ear about this whole circus: “Remember: it’s only a game!”
Belle is out now; Cyrano is out on 25 February; Paris, 13th District is out on 18 March
