Synopsis:
Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, embarks on a quest for honour, but in doing so he must contend with the mysterious Green Knight and come to terms with questions of shame, courage and greatness.

Cast: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Ralph Ineson

Directed by: David Lowery
Screenplay by: David Lowery
Based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by: Anonymous

The Green Knight is, without a doubt, kind of a weird film. While perhaps unsurprising given the director (David Lowery), the distributor (A24) and the source material (a 14th-century Arthurian poem), there’s a strange cinematic dissonance in watching a movie about a knight that moves incredibly slowly. However, if you can dismiss the expectations you’ve been socialised to have when you hear that word—knight—that apprehension slips away and you get to experience the movie for what it is, a wonderfully surreal contemplation of honour, purpose, and masculinity.

The film—and I have to stress the word film with all the potentially pretentious connotations it brings—opens by reminding us of two things: that this is a story, and that while King Arthur is the most famous and renowned knight, this story is not about him.

The emphasis on it being a story becomes important as the plot progresses and the surreal nature of the tale that’s unfolding becomes more apparent. All manner of strange and mystical things occur throughout Gawain’s journey and very, very little is done to explain them. Characters can appear in other forms, the landscapes our protagonist traverses often feel otherworldly, it’s never quite clear how much time is or isn’t passing, and there are no cuts or overt visual distinctions between dreams, visions and reality—a blurred line that the film eagerly questions.

The positive effect is that what unfolds on screen feels magical, both vivid and subdued at the same time. The story’s world and the plot engine that drives it succeed in feeling truly fairy-tale-like in their reasoning. For some viewers this is a likely turn-off, the whys and hows of the world are opaque, and the motivations behind essentially every character but Gawain are rarely elaborated on.

Some films, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy comes to mind, struggle with the balance of plot, people, and purpose. A criticism of Nolan’s Batman movies is that they sacrifice characters feeling like people in order to make clear their purpose—Bruce Wayne represents his own idea of justice, that is almost the entirety of who he is. In some ways The Green Knight sidesteps this by committing completely. The story’s eggs are entirely in the purpose basket. Gawain wants to be a great and honourable man, and that is the entirety of who he is. And it’s only by believing in, and relating to his struggle is the only way we can connect to the story.

So, he’s no King Arthur, but who is he? Gawain (Dev Patel) is a sort of medieval failson who is coasting on the belief that he will eventually become a knight, eventually become honourable and eventually become a great man. The opening of the movie sees him waking up in a brothel on Christmas Eve with his partner Essel (Alicia Vikander). And as he leaves to get ready for church he’s asked whether he’s become a knight yet, to which he responds, “not yet, I’ve got time, I’ve got lots of time.” The end of the scene sees Gawain falling to the floor of the brothel again hungover and panting, “I’m not ready.”

The question of readiness hangs over the film in the same way it might in a contemporary coming of age story—there’s much to be said of the way Gawain’s slight frame measures up against the “legends” he sees sitting around Arthur’s table, not to mention the titular knight. But Dev Patel’s acting, charged with a sense of real desperation and uncertainty, lends Gawain’s tensions a truly heavy existential weight. We wonder: by the end of it all, what story will Gawain have to tell? And what makes a story worth telling?

I’d argue this one is. There are lulls in the story and Gawain’s journey is anything but straightforward, but the film remains captivating even after the viewing is done. Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematography paints the world in fantastical hues of green that somehow appear both verdant and sinister—a duality which only gains resonance and meaning thanks to an enchanting monologue from Alicia Vikander at the midpoint of the film.

While the story is simple enough, The Green Knight is not easy watching, but if viewers can connect themselves with David Lowery’s poetic direction then they’ll find a film both peculiar and mesmerising, spell-like in its telling and its effect.

The Green Knight is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from the 28th of October 2021