Reclaiming the Blade: The History of the Sword directed by Daniel McNicoll

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For decades, and possibly centuries, there has been a myth that Eastern swords were superior to European swords. That Eastern swordsmen were light years ahead of their European brethren in the ability to use their weapons, despite the fact that swordsmanship training in Europe started at the age of seven.  Meaning no disrespect to Eastern swordsman, they weren't the only ones who knew how to fight and had good steel to use.

Enter Reclaiming the Blade:The History of the Sword. It covers the history and traditions of European swords and swordsmanship.It also covers the struggle to rediscover what was taught by our (well, some of us anyway) ancestors. Oriental Martial Arts are of course well known and well thought of. There are two reasons for that:

1.) They're effective. If you don't believe me, step into the ring with a kickboxer. When you wake up a couple of days later, call me and tell me how you're feeling. But it's not just with empty handed techniques. The  art of Kendo, or the katana, AKA the samurai sword is still well remembered, even it if is not currently taught as it was classically per the practitioner, whose name I didn't write down.

2.) They survived. Especially in the case of Kendo, it seems that Eastern Martial Arts were tied even more closely to their culture than those of the west. This was particularly true in Japan, where guns were outlawed for centuries. Why? Because the thought of some unwashed peasant being able to kill a samurai was unthinkable. A commoner with a gun had too much power over his samurai masters. As a result, the sword remained the most popular weapon in Japan until the late 1800s.

This didn't happen in Europe. In Europe, there were external enemies to fight and, although no nobleman want to think about their own peasants shooting them, the thought of a peasant putting a hole in an opposing noble was welcome to them. English archers had already earned a reputation for piercing armor with their arrows. Guns were just a continuation of the same tradition.

And now that the goofy host is going to step down off of his soapbox:

Reclaiming the Blade is well written. Don't make the mistake of telling any of my college professors I said that. It's not "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed." The fact that there are actual primary sources pictured on screen and the techniques demonstrated by actual people seconds later would not matter as much as the fact that there hadn't been 5456465655465465 other scholars who had nodded sagely and given their approval. Then again, what do I know? I've only got a bachelors degree.

The thing is that Reclaiming the Blade is also very entertaining. Part of this is the cast. Jonathan Rhys-Davies narrates. Half the cast of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is featured . Blademaster Bob Anderson is featured, and he's the guy that taught everyone form Errol Flynn to Johnnie Depp how to fight with swords on stage. I'll be honest. The Errol Flynn thing blew my mind. Those are some old movies. I'd have thought that anyone who worked with Mr. Flynn would be retired at best by now...

But I digress.

Actually, I kind of don't digress. All of those guys are my justification for discussing a historical documentary on a Spec Fic blog.

But anyway...

The best part of the thing, at least to me, is the part with all of the people I hadn't heard of. The movie goes into the work being done by members of both the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA) and the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). I really enjoyed this part and for a very simple reason:

It's real. It's really real. These two groups (and probably some others like them) are working with the remaining written records (there are still period manuals of arms in existence. Some have been copied and the copies distributed.) to restore what has gone before. This is important historical work. I makes me very happy to know that someone is doing it. Maybe someday I'll get the chance to help out. I'm guessing it won't be anytime soon though.

Something they mention that I hadn't realized is that movies typically mix Martial Arts styles on screen. So a sword battle might feature the same  combatant using techniques that were originally developed in Italy at one point, in England at another point, and in China at some other time. The people in the film feel that the audience of a film would enjoy it more if the fencing techniques used in movies were kept correct to one style. I'm going to disagree with that for one simple reason: If I don't know the difference, I'm guessing most of the rest of the audience doesn't either. What they don't know might hurt them, but it's not going to effect their enjoyment one way or another.

And that, to me, is the point of the whole documentary. It's all about trying to find something that has been lost and educate the general public about it. The cool thing is that, despite the educational aspect, this is a really fun thing to watch. It killed a couple of hours when I felt like absolute crap and kept me enthralled enough that I stopped worrying about my belly aching and got into the story of something fascinating. I hate it when I feel like that and I needed something like Reclaiming the Blade to help me through it.

The only bad part about this movie is that it's only available on Amazon Prime. Don't get me wrong. I love Prime, but if you don't have Prime you can't watch it. That makes me a little bitter since something like this should be on like DVD or something so that it can be shown to high school level history students, at least in my opinion. It may be Hollywood history, but it comes closer to being right than anything else I've seen from the movie industry.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Bladed Weapons

Some movies that were sampled for Reclaiming the Blade are available at the following links. If you use my links, I get a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.