The Green Knight [2021]
"Indulge me in this game."
Like expensive hors d'oeuvres at a regal party that make you say, "ooo, I'd like more of that," as you pluck another splendidly presented morsel from a beautifully decorated tray, The Green Knight is both a delectable sight to behold, and a wonderful treat to consume… pieces at a time. Viewed as a full meal, however, you'll be left wondering what happened to the 2nd and 3rd courses after you finish delighting yourself on the appetizer.
David Lowery's The Green Knight is the perfect example of why adaptations have to be exactly that: adapted. It's a near perfect telling of the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it does nothing in the way of contextualizing that experience or translating it for modern audiences. In some ways this treatment meaningfully celebrates the charm and storytelling of the original poem, in (most) others it makes the film supremely difficult and overly obtuse… At best.
Viewed entirely out of context, each chapter of this Arthurian epic is both stunning and wonderful — The cinematography is exquisite, the score is masterfully crafted, performances are captivating, and the production design as a whole is exactly what we have come to expect from A24. Watched in this sensory candy shop style, The Green Knight is an absolute sensation. When smashed together though, these same chapters seem to have their heads (pun intended), tails, hands, arms, and legs all cut off; leaving us with a bunch of pieces that don't really fit together… But also don't not really fit together either. It’s an experience that makes you wonder what material was left on the cutting room floor that would have created something contiguous because, what we got seems like a violent attempt to crush together every visually impressive scene that could fit while eschewing any sort of narrative or context in the process. The chapters can be discussed until the knights come home in an attempt to make sense of their continuity but, even then, they're held together by tenuous and metaphorical "this could be it" strings that require handwaving, wildly stretched “possibilities”, and “in my opinion” statements.
There are two things that I commonly talk about when speaking on film and its relation to the audience. Films that I like typically "trust" their audiences — Saying something once and then acting on it, giving us visual information that makes sense to the characters and allowing us to infer the rest through logical on screen actions and dialogue. They "trust" us to follow along without needing to guide us every step of the way. Films that I typically don't like as much don't "trust" us — they’ll mention a character's political position every time they're on screen, or boldly name items and locations as they're pointed to so that we know exactly what they're doing at all times. They hold our hands, make sure we're tucked in, and come running every time we say "I'm scared". Knight does something entirely different, something entirely new, and something entirely frustrating.
David Lowery and crew are no strangers to strangeness. The crew for The Green Knight is almost exactly the same as for 2016's A Ghost Story [one of my favorite movies of all time]. Where Ghost trusted that its audience would follow along its strange and ephemeral pathways of love and loss through time — rooting itself just enough so that we knew where we stood as the audience — The Green Knight does not… But it's not that it doesn’t trust us either. Instead, Knight has managed to create a whole new facet of audience participation in expecting things from us. The way the film presents its story seems to expect that we know the source material being adapted and moves forward as though we’re part of a college mythology course and the prerequisite was reading the 14th century tale over the summer. The whole thing reminds me of one of the most ludicrous video game puzzles of all time where, a game that has absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare, suddenly requires you to know not only the names and plots of a number of his plays, but the order in which they were written. This kind of thing doesn’t make any sense and is very disorienting as as viewer, because you always feel like you’re on the backfoot — you end up seeking for the threads you missed, which then causes you to miss the threads currently being dolled out. For instance, Merlin [I have to assume] is in the film, but is never mentioned by name or title. So, if you didn't already know who he was, he just appears as a strange old man that has [maybe] one line, makes the screen turn red one time, then entirely disappears from the story. It’s a very strange approach and makes it difficult to care about what’s going on presently, what came before, or what might come after, because you have no idea where anything really begins or ends. You may take some stunning visual pieces away, but nothing of any real substance or value manages to survive the constantly clashing plots and ideas. You'll remember how the pieces looked and sounded, but not how they made you feel, how you got there, or what really happened… and certainly not why it mattered. The film leaves so much in shadow, that there's nearly no light by which to see the rest.
While the last 10-or-so minutes of the film are striking, fun, and meaningful, the possibly poignant message is so hidden between its seemingly damaged pages that most viewers will be bored beyond recognition of it… If they even make it that far. I think The Green Knight will receive wildly high reviews from ethereally minded artists, Arthurian poem enthusiasts, and indie film creators, but that its reviews will drop as time goes on. Films [even weird films] are supposed to be entertaining no matter how complex their source material is and, at the end of the day, this one simply isn't. Which is too bad, because it's a mostly faithful visualization of said source material.
I wish it had been a little less faithful and a little more adapted because, as is, The Green Knight is a little bit like reading an outline for a piece of writing. The beginning is solid and well thought out — the stakes set and the stage decorated — and the ending is clearly conceived, meaningful, and complete… but the middle is just a set of sparse notes that never really come to life.
"Is this all there is?
-- What else ought there to be?"
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I encourage you to read the first link before you see the film, it will drastically alter your experience for the better. If you see it as a couple, maybe have one read it and one don't. With a base understanding of the source material, it's really something special. Then, afterwards, read the second link.
Poem Explanation
