In Kazuo Ishiguro’s new best-selling knights-and-dragons novel, “The Buried Giant,” there are indeed fight scenes. But I was immediately struck by the fact that there’s precious little fighting that goes on in them. It’s all footwork, posture and position, a slow build, a game of mental chess, and then in one or two actual slices of action, it’s all over. Contrast this to just about any fight scene in, say, “Game of Thrones,” and the duels are far more dynamic, with acrobatic swings, spins and slashes that feel more “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” than what I would imagine was actually taking place on European battlefields of the past. So I thought to ask: What were sword-fights really like, and are any television or film fights the least bit realistic, or are Ishiguro’s in-action sequences more true to life?
Source: salon.com