A young man sets off on a quest to get his head cut off in 2021's The Green Knight. It's based on the 14th century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem I really like, so I was excited for this film. Sadly, I very much doubt the filmmakers actually read more than the Wikipedia synopsis because their work bears little resemblance to the source material. Instead, it's an embarrassingly ill-conceived feminist deconstruction of some version of the poem that exists in the filmmakers' imagination featuring that now infamous copper and blue colour correction cinematography.
Except when it's yellow, which the cinematographer seems to have confused for green, a colour you'd think would turn up more often in this film.
Especially since Alicia Vikander, who plays the temptress in the castle, has a long, boring speech about how green symbolises nature taking over things. Of all things I might have imagined the Lady temptress to be, a windbag wasn't one of them. But from the way Gawain listens enthralled, I think she's meant to come off as profound rather than like a half-assed term paper.
Gawain is played by Dev Patel and, in this day and age, we can't expect any explanation for the fact that he and his mother are of Indian decent. But he does look pretty knightly, I must say, and his performance is good. Too bad he's not actually playing a knight because, unlike in the poem, this Gawain hasn't been knighted yet and his quest to meet the Green Knight's challenge is a task he needs to fulfill on the path to knighthood. This version of Gawain pays regular visits to a brothel, because that's the only way these filmmakers can consider it a movie for adults I guess. His favourite prostitute is Essel, also played by Alicia Vikander, a casting choice that doesn't seem to say much except that Vikander's face is the symbol of Gawain's failure to maintain his chastity. Guinevere is played by the markedly less attractive Kate Dickie and there is the not-subtle argument at play that pagans are better because they're sexier and healthier.
Not that Arthur (Sean Harris) or Guinevere are ever called Arthur or Guinevere. The only thing that suggests the Arthurian characters maintain their identities is a brief reference to the sword in the stone.
Erin Kellyman makes an appearance as the ghost of Saint Winifred who asks Gawain to dive to the bottom of a lake in the middle of the night to retrieve her skull. When he asks what she'd give him in exchange, she replies in a righteous tone with a question, "Why would you ever ask me that?" Oh, they'd have skewered the original poem good if the original poem had included a scene remotely resembling this!
The poem is about a test of a knight's integrity and could be interpreted as either a mockery of chivalry or a celebration of it. The film, which adds in a talking fox, a scene where Gawain trips on mushrooms to have visions of giant naked women striding solemnly through the mists, has nothing particular to say except that it thinks women are better than men and nature is better than Christianity (no mention is made of Winifred wanting to be a nun). This shallow set of motives is delivered with overly mannered editing and a score almost invariably at odds with what's being depicted. It would be nice to see someone make a proper movie from the great poem.
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