Movies For Breakfast THE GREEN KNIGHT Review

Dev Patel shines in David Lowery’s acid trip reimagining of the great 14th-century poem.

Synopsis

King Arthur’s headstrong nephew embarks on a daring quest to confront the Green Knight, a mysterious giant who appears at Camelot. Risking his head, he sets off on an epic adventure to prove himself before his family and court.

Review
Are we supporting characters in our story or is the supporting character’s story (or destiny) just as important or vital as everyone else’s? This is just one of the questions that is posed through Gawain, the main character in David Lowery’s “The Green Knight,” a contemporary reimagining of the 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Our would-be knight has “no stories to tell” as he would tell his great uncle King Arthur (Sean Harris, very solid) once propositioned to tell any interesting tales at the knights table. To this answer, his aunt Guinevere says “yet…you’ve no stories yet”. This springboards the age-old theme at hand in “Knight”, a boy turning into a knight, or universally, a boy turning into a man.

The story begins once the Green Knight himself (Ralph Ineson, terrific voice acting), a treelike mythical being steps into the Christmas ceremony, challenging anyone to strike him with one blow. The only hook being that this one brave knight will have to receive the same blow in return, “one year hence”. Ever so eager to have a “story to tell”, young Gawain steps up and takes the challenge. “Do you understand this game?”, his weary-eyed uncle asks him. “Yeah…I think so”, Gawain responds. Gawain proceeds to cut the knight’s head off (it’s worth noting that he needed to borrow someone’s sword in order to do the deed – something that will signify a running theme throughout where everything is “given” to our protagonist and rarely “earned”). The green knight picks up his head and proceeds to give Gawain the menacing promise of “one year hence”.

From here, the bulk of Act I deals with Gawain lollygagging as the “legend who cut the Green Knight’s head off” and not really deciding if he will go to meet the titular knight at the “Green Chapel”. Gawain has an interesting home life – his mother is a witch (who may or may not be responsible for foretelling – or creating – the ambiguously fatal predicament our protagonist finds him in) which labels him a little bit of an outcast in relation to his legendary revered uncle. He also has a love interest in Essel (Alicia Vikander, terrific; even more terrific in the other half of her duel roles), a commoner who works in a brothel. As much as Gawain dreams of becoming a knight, Essel matches her dreams with his, giving loving monologues of one day becoming his “lady”. She wishes to be the Guinevere to his Arthur. While all of the chess pieces of this exposition is well placed, the first act is admittedly slow. The film suffers from spinning its wheels a little too much, including director Lowery biding his time with weary Arthur monologues and a not-so-brief back and forth between Gawain and his uncle. By the time these are done, it would have been (or felt) like a full thirty minutes has passed before the Green Knight arrives to deliver his challenge.

The plodding of Act I may seem like a deterrent at first but once Act II arrives, the film finally comes into its own as an engaging, enigmatic deconstruction of a folktale legend. On his way to fulfilling his potentially fatal end of the bargain, Gawain goes through a series of three adventures. He encounters a scavenging robber, the ghost of a woman who needs help retrieving her severed head and the hospitality of an oddly befriending King (Joel Edgerton, great) and his enigmatic seductive Lady (Vikander in her other terrific role). Bravery, chivalry, temptation. These encounters serve as more than filler for Gawain’s journey to fulfilled destiny. They serve their purpose as tests or parables – or maybe even illusions – for our main character to discover what it means – or what it is – to become a knight. Along the way, he is also accompanied by an adorable fox that may or may not also have purpose in Gawain’s mission.

Once we reach our conclusion, the brilliance of Dev Patel’s performance has transitioned itself from slacker would-be knight to apprehensive knight-in-the-making to now dignified knight. The brilliant showdown between Gawain and the titular knight poses the question “How important is honor? What does it mean to be a knight? To be a man?” Aside from a well-positioned, fake-out montage, the answer is left up to us. The greatest takeaway from Lowery’s latest film is that it serves a project that is two rewatches away from being hailed as a masterpiece. Everything is ambiguous and yet everything is made clear. There is no wrong answer as to what the deeper meaning to all of this is nor to what happens to our dynamic protagonist once the credits roll. Experiencing a film with this much transformative depth gives it a mysterious, moral-spinning stature that is as on par – or even surpasses – its source material.

Closing Thoughts
David Lowery’s “The Green Knight” is another solid home-run in David Lowery’s filmography (following up after the charming “The Old Man and the Gun” and the challenging “A Ghost Story”). With the exception of its slow first act, the Green Knight is a surreal, enigmatic, nicely-filmed story of knighthood. Dev Patel’s terrific lead performance goes hand-in-hand with the film’s great special effects, its visuals as well as its great use of tension and thrills. To anyone wanting to soothe their mythical, “Lord of the Rings”/“King Arthur” fix, they cannot go wrong with this folktale drama.

Trailer