Do you remember having to read about Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight in your high school English Literature class? Vaguely? It seems
like the makers of this film also vaguely remember the original story.
Be sure to check out the LAMBCast episode on the Green
Knight to hear myself and several other LAMBs attempt to better our
understanding of this film: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/lambcast/episodes/2021-08-02T13_29_30-07_00
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a 14th century
poem written in alliterative verse that uses various symbols and allegories to highlight
the code of chivalry, what it means to be a knight, and passing challenges to prove
one’s worthiness. This movie skips
several of those themes. The poem tells the tale of Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew,
during a celebration, the Green Knight shows up and issues a challenge to the
court: one of the knights can land a blow on him, but then one year from then,
the Green Knight gets to return the blow.
Gawain accepts the challenge and cuts off the knight’s head, thinking he
has beaten the game. However, the knight picks up his head, reminds Gawain of
the year-challenge and takes off. Gawain
then sets off on a journey, encountering many challenges that help prove he is
ready to be a knight of the round table.
This movie starts out the same with the challenge and
beheading but adds scenes to show that Gawain is basically a lazy drunk,
spending his nights in a brothel. His mother seems to cast a spell that conjures
the Green Knight. Gawain attempts to
drink away the year, but Arthur shows up and reminds him that he must seek out the
knight and finish the challenge. Along
the way, he encounters a thief, mushrooms, a fox, giants (that either speak
fox, or the fox speaks giant), a ghost, and a couple in a hunting lodge. You expect him to grow with each of these various
aspects of his journey, showing that he is worthy of becoming of knight (which
is the point of the poem). However, he barely survives most of the encounters,
and certainly does not seem to improve as a person. When he finally
re-encounters the Green Knight, he gets a vision of what his life would be if
he runs away from the challenge and so he recommits to allowing the Knight his
hit, at which point we get an abrupt end.
It feels like writer/director David Lowery wanted to create an epic fantasy movie based on this classic work. In my opinion, he falls short. The movie looks amazing, the sets are stunning, the locations are beautiful, and the costumes are breathtaking. The characters and story are where I think it is lacking.
Dev Patel is usually a capable lead, but here, he is flat
and uninteresting. The movie seems to want
to be about his journey towards knighthood, but none of the challenges he encounters
allow him to grow, become wise, or even adapt.
He ends the movie basically as annoying as he was at the beginning and it is hinted that he is now changed, but the movie ends before we see any proof of that evolution.
Sean Harris plays the creepiest version of King Arthur you have ever seen, realizing he is at the end of his life and regretting not getting to know his nephew earlier. Kate Dickie plays Gwenivere, also very creepy and sickly.
Sarita Choudhury plays Gawain’s mother, Arthur’s sister. In legend, she is Morgan le Fay, here she casts weird spells in a tower and creates a belt or sash that will protect Gawain that he promptly loses and then finds again.
Erin Kellyman plays a mysterious lady Gawain meets in a
cabin who is dead and requests that he retrieve her head from the nearby
pond. It seems like he should learn a
lesson from that encounter as well, but I could not begin to tell you what it
was. He does at first ask what he will get in return if he gets her head, and
she chastises him for that, so perhaps that good deeds are their own reward?
Yes, that sounds good.
Joel Edgerton (who played Gawain in the Fuqua King Arthur)
and Alicia Vikander play the lord and lady of the hunting lodge. In nearly all other versions, the lord is
also the Green Knight, but that is never mentioned here. They enter into some very strange bargains
involving favors, trades, hunting and kisses.
Overall, the movie looks hauntingly beautiful and is sweepingly gorgeous on the big screen. However, the story does not match the visuals and that left me disappointed. This version Gawain is very hard to root for because he feels charmless and unaffected. It is unclear if he learned any of the lessons of his journey, but then – it is very hard to tell what any of those lessons were. I wanted to this feel like the Odyssey, where the point of the story is the journey, not the destination. However, both the journey and destination were so murky in this movie, neither felt like the point. Oh well, at least the giants looked cool and the fox made it through unharmed.
4 out of 10
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