The Green Knight (2021)
dir. David Lowery
Rated: R
image: ©2021 A24
The Green Knight is the most visually stunning picture of the year so far. Director David Lowery’s retelling of the famous Arthurian tale is a brilliant mix of fidelity to the original story and inspired tweaks by Lowery, who also wrote the screenplay. As with his 2017 film, A Ghost Story, Lowery showcases his well-honed ability to set an otherworldly mood and to take the viewer on an unexpected trip.
Based on the 14th century Middle English poem by an unknown author, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lowery’s film opens on Gawain after a night of drinking and late for his uncle King Arthur’s year-end feast. During the festivities, King Arthur asks his young nephew to tell a story of his most exciting adventure. Gawain has none to offer, but a mysterious stranger then appears. This Green Knight wants to know if any of Arthur’s knights is brave enough to accept a challenge. Whoever accepts can strike one unanswered blow against the strange creature. This man can keep the Green Knight’s huge ax as a trophy, but in a year and a day, the challenger must find the Green Chapel, where the Green Knight will get a chance to return the exact blow he receives.
Although not yet a knight, Gawain accepts the challenge, and, thinking he’ll have no reason to ever search for the Green Chapel, cleanly beheads the Green Knight with one neat swing. But almost immediately, the Green Knight picks up his head, and reminds Gawain of his promise to find him the following year. And so, when the time draws near, Gawain sets out on a fantastical journey in an effort to keep his promise and uphold his honor.
The power of David Lowery’s storytelling is in his breathtaking aesthetic. He establishes it in the opening seconds of The Green Knight. The film opens with a character seated in a chair, surrounded by darkness. A demonic voice then intones a few lines – possibly from the source poem – that introduces us to the tale we are about to witness as the seated character’s head becomes engulfed in flame. It’s a startling opening that immediately sets the mood for the rest of the film.
It’s become cliché to describe a movie’s every shot as looking like a painting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. It’s certainly the case for The Green Knight. Lowery meticulously crafts each composition for maximum effect. You can see every dollar of the budget on screen, and Lowery’s set design and dressing teams lend the Middle Ages setting a bleak authenticity.
Lowery also edited the film, and he uses techniques, like a series of quick dissolves to link a succession of actions, that call attention to themselves in a delightful way. Musician Daniel Hart – who has scored each of Lowery’s feature films – adds to the The Green Knight’s mesmerizing quality with a haunting, chorus-focused score.
The creature effects, too, are quite stunning. I was delighted to realize that I wasn’t sure if the Green Knight character was created using practical effects, CGI, or a mix of the two. I could see English actor Ralph Ineson – probably best known as Chris Finch in the original version of The Office and Dagmer Cleftjaw in Game of Thrones – in the character, but only barely. The Green Knight is about as close as you can get to a walking, talking tree (minus the branches and leaf cover you might expect on top of the head).
When added to the obvious nature imagery of the Green Knight, the way in which Gawain so easily beheads his foe made me think Lowery was attempting an allegory for the modern-day destruction of our planet. There are also several shots throughout the movie that feature swathes of clear-cut forest. Upon reflection, I don’t think my initial reaction was quite right. Lowery here seems taken with exploring the original poem’s focus on chivalric romance and defending one’s loyalty and honor when confronted with temptation.
There is certainly something exciting about seeing a modern-day adaptation of a text that is over 600 years old and feeling a sense of vitality coming from it.
Much of that vitality comes from the film’s lead, Dev Patel as Gawain. The creative inclusivity that Lin-Manuel Miranda kicked off when he cast people of color as white historical figures in Hamilton has paved the way for POC to bring fresh artistic interpretation to other traditionally white roles. Lowery never goes out of his way to explain why Gawain and his mother, King Arthur’s sister, look different than every other character in the film, but Patel is so good in the role, I never cared. The actor was born in a borough of London, and is of East Indian heritage. His parents lived in Kenya, in Nairobi, where there is a large Indian population, and both emigrated to England before they met.
Gawain and his mother’s lineage – in the middle of possibly the whitest entertainment franchise ever created – is never mentioned directly, but neither is The Green Knight completely unconscious of it. Early in the film, King Arthur intones in a speech about the “Saxon” heritage of his kingdom. It’s a fleeting moment, but one that Patel’s presence in the movie puts into stark relief.
I give Lowery bonus points for trying to give the few women in the film more agency and consequence than they might typically have in an Arthurian legend story, but he never quite overcomes the source material in this regard. In one of the tweaks that Lowery offers up, Gawain is in love with a lady, and he meets her Doppelgänger at a castle where he is a guest before his final meeting with the Green Knight.
This castle is also where Gawain faces the biggest challenge to his honor. In another change, the test he faces is more graphic than the rather chaste version contained within the original poem. The stunning Alicia Vikander does what she can with both roles, but, because of the source material, there’s not much for her to do.
In between the Green Knight’s original mysterious appearance, and Gawain’s final confrontation with him, the young knight-errant encounters many strange things, including another damsel who needs his help, a curious fox, and Goliath-like giants who put me in mind of the oversized Draags in the experimental animated French 1973 film Fantastic Planet.
It’s hard to overstate – and even harder to describe – the ethereal tone and aesthetic that Lowery is able to conjure for The Green Knight. As with A Ghost Story, Lowery lets his imagination wander, like when the camera pans 360° to show Gawain tied up by roadside villains. The camera pans around and when we see Gawain again, he’s nothing more than a clothed skeleton, as if he’s been rotting for decades. After another slow arc, we come back to our hero alive again, as if no time has passed at all. It’s a confounding sequence, one which I can’t even hazard a guess as to it’s meaning, but nevertheless, it’s at the same time magical and captivating.
The final tweak that Lowery offers in his telling of the Arthurian fable is an ending sequence that echoes the finale to Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece The Last Temptation of Christ. Both filmmakers take familiar tales and put their own intensely personal signatures on them. In the case of The Green Knight, Lowery’s signature style conjures a world that delighted and mesmerized me for every second it appeared on screen.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Lowery is a low-key master at mood and aesthetic in his films. He brought a centuries-old story to vibrant life with The Green Knight.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- There is one bravura long take, and it comes as Gawain is riding his horse through one of those clear-cut fields I mentioned above. The scene features actor Barry Keoghan at his creepiest. Keoghan first captured my attention in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He only appears on screen in The Green Knight for maybe ten minutes, but every one of them is memorable.
- I’m sorry to say, I didn’t quite buy the CGI fox that accompanies Gawain in the latter part of his journey. They still haven’t figured out the uncanny valley problem.
- Lowery sends a love note to cinema (at least that’s what I think he’s doing; I’d love to ask him about it) when the lady of the manor where Gawain is staying asks him to sit for a portrait. The portrait doesn’t involve a painter. Instead, the lady uses light to project Gawain’s image onto the canvas, where his likeness is etched. She’s basically making a still image from a movie.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I saw The Green Knight at a press screening with a few dozen other critics. The film will be available exclusively in theaters on July 30th. With the COVID Delta variant currently raging in much of the country, you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the risk.