The Green Knight
With The Green Knight, that rascal David Lowery has finally made a great film.
A talented technician with an unquestionable eye for beauty, the creator of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story, and The Old Man & the Gun has nevertheless struggled on the writing front, plagued by a consistent lack of character development and a penchant for meandering narratives in dire need of editing.
Each of these films and his wildly overrated Pete’s Dragon start off in fine fashion before the same old weaknesses grind things to a halt, and the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) likewise temporarily appears destined for such an end. But within this heightened fantasy milieu, Lowery’s distinct style blossoms as he sheds the shackles of realism and wholly embraces the imaginative potential of myth and magic, resulting in by far his richest work to date.
A powerful sense of wonder pervades The Green Knight from the start as the quasi-directionless knight-to-be Gawain (apparently pronounced “gar-win”) is essentially given a wake-up call by his witch mother (Sarita Choudhury, A Hologram for the King) in the form of a first-hand adventure, with which he can then regale his uncle and aunt, the King (Sean Harris, Mission:Impossible — Fallout) and Queen (Kate Dickie, Game of Thrones).
Featuring telling cameos by a legendary sword, warriors congregated in a circular fashion, and an ancient mage, the compelling Christmas morning revelry is further enhanced by Gawain’s mother and other mystical women pulling the party’s strings from a nearby castle. Their doings bring forth the titular forest warrior (a heavily made-up Ralph Ineson, The Witch) with a puzzling challenge of combat — one where the damage against him will be equally repaid at his Green Chapel one year hence.
But when the knight lays down his weapon, Gawain, spurred by internal and external expectations of heroism — despite the King’s advice to remember the showdown is only a game — beheads the visitor, who eerily picks up his severed noggin, reminds the young man of the duel’s terms, and rides off like an especially demented Washington Irving creation.
In the subsequent calendar cycle, brilliantly expressed via the turning of a seasonal wheel within a traveling puppet show, a shell-shocked Gawain drinks, brawls, and half-heartedly entertains a future with his favorite prostitute, Essel (Alicia Vikander), all the while pondering if he truly must fulfill his end of the bargain.
Eventually committing to his quest, he sets off into the gorgeous yet dangerous wilds beyond the city’s walls and comes in contact with forest bandits, a dog-like fox, a headless ghost, and majestic sights that hint at ancient forces at play. Our constant in this strange land, Patel digs deep to unearth previously unseen range, conveying young Gawain’s gamut of emotions as he strives to make his appointment without losing his sanity or his life.
After this steady string of enchantment, The Green Knight threatens to grind to a halt at a mysterious castle where the Lord (Joel Edgerton) somehow knows all about Gawain, and the flirtatious Lady (Vikander) resembles the peak version of Essel, as if a projection of our hero’s desires.
Rounded out by another resident, who seems straight out of David Lynch central casting, the circumstances raise a host of queries regarding sorcery and/or devilry, temptation, reality and fantasy, and whether the castle is a form of purgatory, meant to keep Gawain from his quest and disrupt some unspoken grand design.
These intriguing questions are enough to hold one’s interest in the absence of physical forward motion, and, before long, our man finds himself at his true destination, whereupon he more fully wrestles with the very concepts that launched him on his journey — dubious motivations that inspire meditations on nothing less than the meaning of life — via a sequence reminiscent of the penultimate stretch in The Last Temptation of Christ.
Capped by a line of dialogue that will have invested viewers grinning like a cartoon version of Gawain’s vulpine companion, The Green Knight isn’t just the ideal showcase for Lowery’s skills — it’s probably the best narrative feature of 2021 thus far.
Grade: A-minus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: A24)
