A Knight's Tale
Heath Ledger changes his stars
Directed By: Brian Helgeland
Other Notable Films From Helgeland: Assassins (as writer), L.A. Confidential (as writer), Mystic River (as writer)
Starring: Heath Ledger, Paul Bettany, Shannyn Sossamon
Screenplay By: Brian Helgeland
Movie Synopsis: A peasant pretends to be a knight so he can compete in jousting competitions.
Signature Line: “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
A Knight’s Tale is the movie that announced Heath Ledger’s viability as a leading man.1 As such, much of the essay that follows will be spent espousing his particular brilliance as an actor. This introduction, however, will be spent discussing Shannyn Sossamon, a curio actress of the early 2000s.
I actually met Sossamon one time. It happened in April of 2024. The way it went was: I was attending a collector’s expo in San Antonio where various people from various movies were in attendance signing things, posing for photos, and doing meet and greets. She was one of the people there. I paid $80 to (a) take a photo with her; (b) purchase a print of her from A Knight’s Tale (she played Jocelyn, the love interest to Heath Ledger’s character); and (c) have her autograph the print. And anytime I mention that to someone, one of two things happens. The person I’m talking to either responds with “Who is Shannyn Sossamon?” or they respond with “Holy fucking shit! Shannyn Sossamon! And it was only $80! It should’ve been $8,000!”
Regarding cultural impact and legacy within the broader scope of Hollywood, Sossamon’s imprint is fairly small. She was never nominated for any of the big-ticket acting awards, she never headlined a movie that was a gigantic financial success, and she never escaped the roles she seemed to always be typecasted into. But for a specific period of time, and for a specific subsection of moviegoers—namely, those who were in high school and college during the first half of the 2000s—she was as essential and as influential as any actor on the planet.
From 2001 to 2006, Sossamon was in 10(!!!) separate movies, including A Knight’s Tale (her debut!), 40 Days and 40 Nights (a charming comedy), The Rules of Attraction (a cult classic), Wristcutters: A Love Story (another cult classic), and the box-office smash hit The Holiday (in which she had a small part).
She had a fashionable face, an undeniable wardrobe, a bold haircut, and a perfect smile. More than that, though, she had all of those things to such a degree that the combination of them made her unmistakably and undeniably COOL; the type of performer who was so of-the-moment that she would eventually come to help define it.
But so all of that was in my head when I met her at the collector’s expo. And I planned on saying some version of that to her when I got to the front of the line to meet her. And then I planned on following that up with a story about how A Knight’s Tale was one of the earliest movies Larami and I saw on a date together in college. I was gonna say all of that to her, and I was gonna do it so capably and nonchalantly that she was gonna be like, “Wow. I’m happy that I was able to play even just a tiny part of the courtship between you and your wife. Larami sounds like a great person. Do the two of you wanna go on a double date with me and my husband and we can all be best friends?”
That was my plan.
Instead, what happened was she asked me what my favorite movie of hers was while she was signing a photo for me and I panicked. My brain started vibrating, and, without thinking, I blurted out, “Oh. Um. Wirecutters. I love that movie.” She smiled, handed me the autograph she’d just signed, and then very politely replied, “Yeah, I love WRISTcutters, too.”
I got the fucking movie title wrong.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of A Knight’s Tale
0:48: Let’s…
Fucking…
Go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I am extremely pumped about this. I love A Knight’s Tale so much. I think it is a delightful movie, and an uplifting movie, and an inspirational movie. It’s for sure in my Top 100 Most Rewatched Most Movies list.)
1:21: Heath Ledger is here. He plays William Thatcher, a peasant squire who pretends to be a knight so he can participate in the jousting circuit in 14th century England. It’s easy to forget it now because of how big of a star Ledger would eventually become, but A Knight’s Tale was actually the first movie he was the lead of in America.
1:22: P.S. Ledger was in 10 Things I Hate About You in 1999 and The Patriot in 2000, of course, but he was second billing in both of those. This was his first I’M THE REASON YOU’RE HERE movie. And he fucking DELIVERED.
1:31: Mark Addy is here. He plays Roland, one of Will’s two main friends. I watched A Knight’s Tale several years before I ever saw The Full Monty (the movie that made Addy a momentary star), and so you can imagine my surprise when I put The Full Monty on not that long after watching A Knight’s Tale on and was like, “Hold on a second. Am I about to see Roland dick!?”
1:41: Alan Tudyk is here. He plays Wat, the other of Will’s two main friends. I really like when Tudyk shows up in something. You know how every year in the playoffs a role player will get hot one night and swing an important game in his team’s favor? That’s Tudyk to me. That’s the type of actor he is. He’s a James Posey type.
1:42: P.S. Tudyk’s resume is sneaky strong. You could take A Knight’s Tale off the table and you could take his animated movie voiceover work off the table (Ice Age, Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Encanto), and he still has Patch Adams (I’m a big Robin Williams guy), Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (I miss the Justin Long era of comedies), I, Robot (I had no idea he was the voice of Sonny), Knocked Up (a wonderful comedy), and 3:10 to Yuma (in the conversation for the best western of all time).
2:59: Will, Roland, and Wat all work for an older knight named Ector who is in the middle of competing in a jousting tournament. However, the issue right now is they’ve just found Ector dead (that’s him leaned up against the tree in the background here). Two things to mention here:
The average life expectancy during the 14th century was around 31 years old. That’s fucking nuts to think about. Somebody would die at 33 and people would be like, “He lived a good life. A long life. A blessed life.”
Ector being dead means…
3:06: …Will is stepping in. He’s gonna ride in Ector’s place. This movie moves at such a wonderful speed. We haven’t even made it through the credits yet and we’re already fully into the plot. A Knight’s Tale is over two hours long but it feels closer to 75 minutes long. There’s never a slow moment in it.
6:00: Three things about the moments before Will participates in his first ever jousting competition:
See how Will’s face is fully covered? That’s because you’re only allowed to participate in jousting tournaments if you’re of noble descent. Will is doing it in secret here.
In the lead-up to the joust, “We Will Rock You” by Queen plays. And more still, rather than it just being a needle drop situation (as in: the audience hears it but the people in the movie don’t), it’s a thing that the people in the movie participate in (as in: they beat their feet, stomp their hands, and sing along with the song as the jousters prepare to battle, much like a crowd at a basketball or football game does today). It’s really, really hard to marry modern music into time-period movies, but A Knight’s Tale does it effortlessly.
Roland and Wat give Will a bit of a pep talk as he readies to compete. As Roland talks him through the strategy, Will steadies himself, then says in a completely serious, completely earnest voice, “I have waited my whole life for this moment.” In another actor’s hands, the line would’ve been a nothing moment; just a thing someone said because it was written on a page in a script. With Ledger, though, who has an undeniable gravity about him, the line feels massive. It feels thick with history and context and meaning. It is, I would argue, the exact moment when it became clear that he was going to be an all-caps MOVIE STAR. Let’s watch it together…
