“The Green Knight” (2021) is American David Lowery’s cinematic adaptation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” a fourteenth century Middle English romance. The film is divided into eight chapters and stars Dev Patel as Sir Gawain, a young man who is not yet a knight.
I had zero interest in watching “The Green Knight” even though I found Lowery’s “The Old Man & the Gun” (2018) entertaining, but peer pressure and availability made it impossible not to watch it unless I actively had a reason to hate the movie unseen, which I did not. Patel usually stars in Oscar nominated films that I enjoy but don’t love so I correctly concluded this movie was similar. This movie is beloved, but I do not understand why.
“The Green Knight” has a magnificent cast and is visually stunning. If it was a silent film, I may have enjoyed it more. The composition of every scene is riveting. One of the early scenes shows a group of animals with a building in the distance and a man asleep nearby. Eventually the building catches fire as the animals go on about their business until a man rushes to retrieve his horse. The camera pulls back to show Gawain also sleeping in the brothel house. The camera work is dynamic, and it imbues a sense that we are building up to something incredible, but for me, it went nowhere, and the story never lived up to the acting and visuals.
Like a mirror image of “The Old Man & the Gun,” “The Green Knight” examines mortality and aging from the beginning of adulthood instead of the end. Gawain is lost in a pleasure purgatory of having a lot of potential based on his lineage, but at an actual loss regarding how he wants to live. Throughout the film, he denies being a knight, which can be a synonym for an honorable man. Considering actual history, this regard for knights requires a considerable suspension of disbelief. Like a Dickens protagonist, Gawain is more acted upon and around than acting of his volition. His family makes his major life decisions, and he goes through the motions in the hopes that it will work out for him as well as it seemingly did for them, but living his life as they see fit only leads to personal disaster and death. Neither pagan nor Christian worship ease the journey, but he clings to elements of both for protection despite their proven failure to guard him on his journey. The evocative, portentous opening scenes are revisited during the denouement as Gawain imagines his future life of failure and despair because of his lack of character versus an early, legendary ending that will only represent a brief flash of acting nobler than he usually does. The ending is ambiguous: death or a second chance to continue living, but making better life decisions on a newfound morality?
I did the assignment, but did I get it? “The Green Knight” theoretically should resonate with me, especially the theme of comparing how one thinks one’s life is supposed to unfold versus the disappointment of the reality. Maybe the lack of familiarity with the original story made it resonate less because I was not invested in Gawain’s journey. Based on the story as it was presented, even if it is an allegory (I hate allegories), made me think the characters were stupid. If some dude called The Green Knight offers a deal for me to have an amazing year, but he gets to do what I did to him to get that deal, I am taking one of two routes. I am not taking the deal because nothing may live up to that year, and I am already rich and famous if I am Gawain. I am taking the deal, but I am not beheading him. I am feeding him the best food, getting The Green Knight his equivalent of a mani pedi so a bunch of landscapers and gardeners so we can party next year when he returns the blow. Me a year later, “Oh no, an hour long deep tissue massage. Well, honor expects me to keep our deal so I guess that I must endure it.” Gawain is a jerk to hack away at The Green Knight’s head when The Green Knight did not put up a fight at all. It may be the point that he keeps acting poorly because of his idea of whom he should be and who he is, but it made me root against him. He put in no preparation for his journey even though he had a year. I don’t care, and I am not rooting for his redemption.
Also I have not been around the Medieval block of a battlefield strewn with dead bodies, but if I see a guy, whether or not he bears a striking resemblance to Barry Keoghan, who terrifies me on sight after seeing him in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017), running dead dudes’ pockets, I am not asking him for directions. No. You are a dumb ass, which is again the point, his lack of actual experience on this journey is apparent in this scene, but then when Gawain gets some street smarts, he applies them at the wrong time by charging a ghost who asks him to retrieve her body. Again two choices: run or just do the favor. She does not have money. Also her story just reinforced the idea that I brought to the movie that knights were not shit. Once Gawain is mean to his animal buddy, who is played by Dallas’ Patrick Duffy (TF), Gawain seals the deal. Fuck this guy.
No shade on Alicia Vikander, who plays two different roles and will be unrecognizable to people unfamiliar with her work, but her characters had less chemistry with Gawain than Joel Edgerton’s Lord. Edgerton injected some life into “The Green Knight” with his unexpected kiss, and if you think that it is platonic, I have a bridge to sell you.
While I applaud the race bending in “The Green Knight,” I do not think that it goes far enough. We get Patel and his mom, whom Sarita Choudhury plays, but that is it. Everyone else is white (or green). I need more diversity otherwise it could inadvertently create a reading of Indian characters as lacking and strange, dealers in magic, untrustworthy. Bear in mind, that the white characters do not seem any better-they range from sickly looking to up to shady shenanigans, but viewers are trained to look at white characters as individuals and generalize about characters of another race. I did enjoy that no one ever explains how they are related to King Arthur (Sean Harris), but I brought a subtext that race was the reason that they were not close, which Arthur mentions at their Christmas feast. The prior generation has given up, but kind of still want to make amends so they extend hospitality to the next generation, who unwittingly are oblivious when entering a dangerous minefield of historical conflict. How much freer would Gawain had been if he did not have to try and live up to a family legacy that did not really benefit anyone who came before.
“The Green Knight” will be back in theaters for Christmas. Everyone loves it except for me so if you see it and feel generous, please feel free to try and explain to me what I missed because it did nothing for me.
