Film Review: "The Green Knight" ****
The Green Knight ****
If you are looking for a Lord of the Rings style fantasy or a more character driven medieval epic like Game of Thrones, you need not attend. The Green Knight, choosing to forgo the full title upon which it is based, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, attempts something much more difficult and interesting. As for the story, well, there isn’t much of one. Gawain, a young man who despite royal blood, being a bastard of King Arthur, is an outsider, longs to be accepted not only by his father, King Arthur, but society as a whole. Despite his noble bloodline, Gawain spends his times in brothels, where a young prostitute he is in love with fantasizes about the day that he might be King. In an ingenious, subtle use of race, David Lowery casts Indian actor, Dev Patel. Dev’s distinguished look is never specifically addressed as racial, but his racial differences with almost all of the characters in the story symbolize his ostracization. His mother, also an Indian actress, is further on the outskirts of society not only because of race, but because she practices magic. Only characters who are not Caucasian use magic within the film, setting up the separation of these characters from a Christian society while their race separates them from a Caucasian society.
It is because of these differences that Gawain feels driven to be accepted. His chance comes on Christmas day. King Arthur asks him to sit by his side while his legitimate heir is gone. Arthur then asks Gawain to tell him a story of his deeds, but alas, he has no stories to tell. His failure seems to destroy his dream of acceptance by his father. Then comes the introduction of the titular character: The Green Knight. The Knight offers a Christmas Game to anyone who will challenge. Gawain accepts to earn the respect of his father, Arthur. That this act causes Gawain to embark on a quest that makes him symbolically a knight, even if he has not become one yet, all the better to win his father’s respect. This quest takes him from his home to the Green Chapel where the Knight awaits.
In style, the film acts less a narrative and more as a medieval psychedelic trip. It is in this vein that the humor in the film is located, where suddenly characters who seem to belong in the mild ages, speak with modern directness. It comes out of nowhere and is shocking. When asking a ghost why she needs her head, her direct response is “it’s my head.” But, sudden changes in language are only one of the tricks up Lowery’s preverbal sleeve. Once the journey commences, David Lowery is less interested in a quest, but rather, in creating a series of psychedelic events, each representing a stage in life. At one point, Gawain eats a mushroom and hallucinates that his hand is growing moss. Figuring out what each stage of the journey represents is part of the enjoyment of the film.
In theme, the movie owes much to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. The Seventh Seal was made following the creation of the atomic bomb. It imagines a knight of the crusades returning home, disillusioned and lost, who then confronts Death, a robed, ghostly figure. The Knight begs for more time because he cannot leave this world believing life is meaningless. His journey is our journey, a search for meaning. The Green Knight is a similar story for our time. Gawain is not literally accompanied by Death the way that knight in The Seventh Seal is, but Gawain marches towards literal death. See, the Christmas Game Gawain engages in is not the traditional combat challenge he thought. Instead, the Green Knight offers a different challenge. Whoever should take him up on this challenge, will be allowed to strike him wherever he wishes, but come one year later, must allow the Green Knight to return the same blow. Not understanding the challenge, his head too filled with glory and desire to please his father, Gawain takes off the Knight’s head. Now, he ventures forth to meet the Green Knight again and allow the Knight to return the head severing blow. Gawain knows his death is coming, but does everything he can to try and put his mind at ease.
It is here that the film takes shape into the subtly meaningful tale it promises with its opening lines. In order to understand this film, you must take it as a metaphorical journey of life. Paul Valery, the famous French philosopher and poet, hypothesized that the West’s (western culture) fear of death drives itself to do acts of cruelty and blood. It is the fear of death that drives much of what we do in life. From procreation (our family continuing after death) to legacy (doing something that will last or be remembered), death drives us. In this movie, the Green Knight represents death. He is green not only because of his plant-like figure, but because he is natural. He is the natural end to all things. At first, the Green Knight at the Christmas Game appears fearsome and devilish, but in the end, he becomes a friend. David Lowery does an amazing job using the eyes of the Green Knight to convey how Gawain changes his point of view of the Knight from a monster to an ally.
Following the Christmas Game, for a short while, Gawain gets what he wants. There are puppet shows of his bravery. Everyone in the land now speaks his name. His father even comes to visit him in his home. But, death will not wait. Knowing when his death is means that Gawain must face it. He does so in different ways as he journeys to the Green Chapel.
In the this encounter, he discovers that trust is not something to be given away, but rather to be earned. His failure makes the fear of death real where it had been distant. It is in this moment that film uses a shot that will be reused throughout. The camera starts on a fixed subject and rotates 360 degrees, as it does, the scenery alters in time. Gawain is tied and left for dead as the camera begins on him. It returns to his skeleton decaying from time. Indeed, this is the fear that drives him. Gawain’s second encounter brings him face to face with faith. Is there an afterlife or not? Is faith nothing more than an attempt to make not deal with death? But the most important encounter comes at a respite. Gawain running through life, trampled, finds himself at the door to a castle. He awakes in a bed. He is in the house of a friend and his mistress. The woman delivers the most important monologue on the colors of red and green. No surprising that they are also the colors of Christmas and that the film as it moves towards it climax becomes devoid of red. Here is temptation. The comforts of life to forget the journey or what awaits you. Eventually, Gawain overcomes this and ventures forth to meet his fate.
Before Gawain’s final decision, there is a concept taken from The Last Temptation of Christ. I won’t divulge what that connection is, but there is another Biblical connection I can talk about. Although this is not the direct scene talked about above, it is similar to the passage of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is in this moment that Jesus is most human. He knows that the soldiers are coming for him. He could choose to run. We know he is contemplating it. He asks God to take this cup from him. But instead of running, he chooses to stay and face his death. It is in this moment that Christ is most human and also a model for all of us. Certainly, he is for Gawain.
