The Green Knight - 2021
This review may contain spoilers.
In The Green Knight, we’re introduced to a world which is at once wholly familiar to us, yet altogether new. We witness its scenes in a kind of growing reverie, beginning to piece together its various thematic strands against its jaw-dropping visuals and sound. New puzzles appear along the way - ancient customs like the beheading game and an exchange of winnings - within the film’s episodic structure. We finish this picture and its emphatic finale, and as the credits roll, I would surmise we come to one of two conclusions. 1 - What in the actual hell was that? (Including thoughts like, “Where were the battles?!” and “Why was this so LONG and slooow?”) 2 - I may have just gotten my hands on a daring masterpiece.
Needless to say, I was in the second camp. I finished The Green Knight and began to think on its meaning. I sat in silence. Then I messaged a friend. Next I popped online and before I knew it, I had fallen down a rabbit hole where I had read more than 2 articles about the original context of the 14th century chivalric romance, the ways the picture collides and diverges with the source text, and what it really all meant. Another hour later I had made up my mind - The Green Knight is a near perfect execution of the vision of its masterful auteur David Lowery.
While the themes of this picture interest me most, it’s probably wise to get down to brass tacks first. I just cannot get over how well captured this film is. It is as though Lowery and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo put their heads together and conceived each and every shot. They are scrupulously detailed and often permitted to linger for longer than expected. The effect is to allow us to luxuriate in this world and its foreign atmosphere.
This, of course, is wedded to one of the better scores I can recall. Old chamber choral pieces and wordless numbers with instruments from the time all mix to form this immersive tapestry which gels so well with the “action” onscreen. Moreover, Lowery captures all of these natural sounds, the wind to go along with all of the film’s fog, the crunching of walking steps, the creaking of a cage on a pole, and, most notably, the kindle cracking-like movements of the Green Knight himself.
There is power in the sights and sounds of The Green Knight to be sure. The real chef’s kiss for me, however, is the way that Lowery chooses to both adopt elements of the original poem and take a fork in new directions as well. In doing the latter, he manages to actually (re)examine the notion of myth-making ITSELF (which actually may come closer to the heart of the 14th century text than could have ever been imagined).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. At this point, it’s important to pivot to some brief details about the original story. There, we find Sir Gawain, a brave, heroic figure, who is already a member of the roundtable. At a banquet around New Year’s, the entire court is approached by a green knight who offers the challenge of the “beheading game.” In short, you strike me, come see me in a year and I’ll return the blow. Gawain, chivalric knight that he is, accepts and lops off the challenger’s head. To everyone’s surprise, the man gets up, grabs his dome and heads out (no pun intended) until another day.
Let’s speed this up a little. Around a year later, Sir Gawain heads off to the Green Chapel to meet the knight. Along the way he meets a series of characters who test his mettle, i.e. whether he has developed the various moral traits that truly denote bravery and chivalry. This culminates in an encounter with the Lord and Lady of a castle. Cue up the exchange of winnings - a handshake agreement whereby the Lord brings Gawain everything he catches out on the hunt so long as the knight returns in kind whatever the Lady gives him in the castle. Three days of sexual temptation later (in which Gawain receives kisses from the Lady each day and a certain sash on the last, but ultimately rebuffs her), our knight is on his way. He returns the kisses to the king but keeps the sash to himself.
Soon he meets the Green Knight, who feigns hitting him twice and delivers a nick on the neck the third time. This is revealed to be a punishment because he’s held back the sash from the Lord. Oh by the way, the Lord reveals..I’m the green knight! The message is clear: You showed bravery throughout the quest but you kinda blew it on the exchange, so you have to go home with the sash around you marking your failure forever. #shame. The end.
English Lit majors will surely see some missteps in my recounting here, but this is the basic gist. Lowery’s tale starts with a hero’s journey as well. Only this time around, Gawain is altogether different. He’s young, foolhardy, and aimless. When we first meet him, he is stumbling out of a brothel. A real lothario. You know, a kind of immature Arthurian F-boy. So the quest this time around takes on a deeper proving ground. Gawain is not yet great, merely living inside his own dreams of grandeur. Lacking foresight, he naturally steps up, cuts off the knight’s head, and watches in abject terror as the green figure rights himself and departs.
At this point, I’d like to take a brief detour to highlight our cast. Dev Patel is incredible in this film. He has to portray a character who is at best a little green (see what I did there), and at worst downright impetuous. The hero’s journey involves a transformation from fear to courage, from balking against destiny to a kind of humble acceptance. It’s all right there in his face and movements. Of course, Alicia Vikander continues to be both a physical and performative knockout here as well. And I love how Sean Young grants us an Arthur who is over the hill, his questing days long behind him, wisdom standing in its place. Yes, the Green Knight’s portrayal is also magnificent, but it is Patel who really anchors the film. Returning to the narrative, Lowery’s tale becomes very episodic in nature. Yet, as it is captured, it’s never less than a very lush, meditative, and eerie picture. We witness several “tests” unique to this film. Amidst the aftermath of a desecrated battlefield, Gawain encounters the scavenger (in a terrific turn by Barry Keoghan) who falls upon him. Then, in a bit of genius, Lowery actually appends the separate story of Saint Winifred (and her own misplaced head) to this tale. This all culminates in a conscious retelling of the Lord and Lady episode when he happens upon their manor.
In each of these episodes Gawain is afforded a chance to show one of his virtues, albeit charity towards the poor or chastity against the temptations of the flesh. The point becomes obvious even in its murky telling - our knight just isn’t getting it. He has not yet arrived. Far from the noted Gawain of legend whose myth and legacy are sure, this young man is vein and self-concerned. Oh sure he revels in the notion of greatness, but he has completely missed the minute details of high character which will get him there.
After a rather sticky situation (if you’ve seen it, you’re with me) involving the lady, where Lowery makes quite explicit the sexual lust only hinted at in the poem, Sir Gawain at last has his protective sash. Convinced no harm could possibly befall him, he at last makes his rendezvous with the Green Knight. What follows are three or four absolutely breathtaking sequences. A masterful kind of forward look at the destiny that would follow should he utilize the sash’s magic to achieve greatness. And, at long last, a knight who begins to “get it.”
Both the original tale and Lowery’s telling wrestle hard with the polarities so prevalent in the 14th century: Christendom vs. paganism (represented here by the Green Knight and his naturalistic, earthbound aspect), order vs. disorder, and, of course, mythic greatness vs. moral goodness. Circling around these bifurcations are themes of self-sacrifice, temptation and desire, and chivalry. The trouble with Gawain is, in leaning heavily on magical protections or his own cowardly attempts to run away, he misses the truth: Life and death (not to mention sex) are all intertwined, and there is an inevitable aspect to each in life’s journey.
In fact, the Lady makes this last bit the most clear in her long soliloquy regarding the connection between both in the color green. (I’ve grown quite fond of Lowery’s insertions of a monologue on the lips of a key character about 2/3 of the way through each picture. Think The Prognosticator from A Ghost Story).
“But green is the color of earth, of living things, of life. And of rot. Yes, we deck our halls with it and dye our linens. But should it come creeping up the cobbles, we scrub it out, fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we bleed it out. And when we, together all, find that our reach has exceeded our grasp, we cut it down, we stamp it out, we spread ourselves atop it and smother it beneath our bellies, but it comes back. It does not dally, nor does it wait to plot or conspire. Pull it out by the roots one day and then next, there it is, creeping in around the edges. Whilst we’re off looking for red, in comes green. Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die, too. When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it. Your skin, your bones. Your virtue.”
This is what the knight at last comes to acknowledge, namely the inescapability of death. It’s as if the director queries: How do we approaching our own date with the Green Chapel? Do we face reality or run from it? As Gawain struggles through these reflections, themes of Christian goodness take center stage. The knight’s three temptations from the lady mirror the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness. He wants to be remembered as great, but loses sight of what virtue and honor really take. In a vision, Gawain sees through to the end of the hero’s journey to greatness and realizes that only chivalry, goodness, and honor are worth pursuing in life. And that ultimately leads to an acceptance of death. Hence Gawain's final decision. To come full circle, it’s in embracing that life comes through death that The Green Knight hews most closely to the Christian tree (and cross).
So in remaking and remixing the myth of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, David Lowery has actually pulled the curtain all the way back. He's put the process of myth creation itself under the microscope. We learn what it takes for Gawain to really be a man of legend, finding a name worthy of being written in the annals. It is far more than a rumor or conquest lauded in the corners of taverns. It's the full-spirited embrace of reality itself.
In the end, The Green Knight is unlike any other Arthurian tale we’ve seen captured on celluloid. To be sure, it is concerned with the notions of honor and the hero’s journey to maturity. But it’s David Lowery’s conscious and meticulous choices in pursuit of these themes which so set it apart. The garb, customs, and dialect may look and sound the same, but gone are the horses and battles waged with steel against steel. In its place, reflection. Meditation. An examination of true greatness. Yes, The Green Knight is unique in the telling of its Arthurian story. And it’s precisely in that rendering that it surpasses them all.
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