The Green Knight

Negative—It is hard to watch The Green Knight and say that you completely loved it or despised it, as this work fits squarely between excellent and quite poor. Part of the problem lies with the storytelling method, a framed narrative in which one character tells us something she witnessed or heard from another person. The other problem is that we cannot tell whether the narrator is a witch, demon, or unclean spirit. Perhaps this doesn’t matter as the invisible speaker takes Gawain, a king it seems, and uses her power to set his head on fire. And with this ominous denunciation of a loser turned warrior, we begin our tale of a man not worthy to sit on the throne let alone call himself a king’s nephew.

Gawain, played wonderfully by Dev Patel of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Lion, is a degenerate drinker and womanizer, stinking of filth and drink from the brothels he inhabits. The rest of the court of the round table consists of disheveled men and murderers; no one we can compare to the sanitized heroes from the BBC’s Merlin or novels like T. H White’s The Once and Future King. This, too, is a problem: for those of us familiar with Medieval literature and popular films, Arthur, himself, is a broken old man too ashamed of his own failures and unduly proud of his loyal men to merit credibility. There is a real sense that Gawain wants to be a better man, but his womanizing and disregard for the gentility and mercy of a moral knight makes that impossible. Arthur is a Celtic king wearing the medallion of a witch’s pentagram; this fact, combined with the soothsaying of the three witches during their bone-reading ceremony reminds us the world of God the Father is not here. In fact, much of the tale, like the Merlin series, is about a world trying to fill the gap made by Celtic gods and goddesses too terrible to tolerate.

We've seen better Arthurs like Clive Owen or Bradley James; Arthur, as legends tell, was either a Roman tormentor of Celts who regained sympathy for his people and sided with them against his Roman friends, or a Medieval gent of high moral standing, granted after a period of moral looseness, as we see in the BBC series. The Green Knight’s Camelot is simply a brothel of drunken debauchery and dubious claims of heroic deeds. Witchcraft controls the tale, but this isn’t particularly threatening as this world is not the world of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic exorcist Gabriel Amorthe once noted that we need not fear witchcraft so long as it is portrayed in a world where our Lord never existed; The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia are places dominated by sorcery, but encapsulated in worlds where Aslan the Lion subtly reveals his identity as Jesus Christ on Earth and the benevolent elves and sorcerers of Middle Earth act with moral instincts paralleling our own Christian morality; there is much Christ-like sacrifice and genuine love between characters for Satan to draw much influence there. This, argues Amorthe, is why Satan cannot draw influence or benefit from our enjoying Middle Earth and Narnia. A far cry from Harry Potter of which he once wrote, it “Bears the signature of the King of Darkness.”

Gawain is not a moral man. Many tales about Arthur and his men are like bildungsroman, coming of age stories, except Arthurian tales usually need spirits and deities to guide our heroes into becoming better people. A fox spirit plays that role here, but is entirely useless and unhelpful. A young man provides directions for Gawain, then calls him out after refusing to pay him for his assistance. The moral lesson is obvious here: I helped you out of charity, now you must help me. Later, that young man and two women tie Gawain and leave him to die. Good and evil appear to be meaningless throughout much of the story as we only learn why the world is the way it is by the ominous prophecy of the witch portrayed by Alicia Vikander. Green, she says, is both a wonder and a horror because it represents life and health in nature, on one hand, and the rotting of fetid flesh on the other. The Green Knight, whatever he is, is both a menacing and a regal figure. He represents a conveniently forgotten truth in the world of a fallen humanity.

Gawain meets Winifred, a spirit played by Erin Kellyman, who asks him to help retrieve her severed head. This part is troublesome for Christians as the ghost refuses to disclose whether she is of the light or of darkness. When Gawain tries to physically console her, she rightly berates him, saying, “Do not touch me. A Knight would know better.” That this tale is not one for children is made clear, as we are told that a man raped her and severed her head shortly after. Ghosts are not welcome spirits in our world; like witches, they are tolerable only in foreign worlds outside Christian existence and so much the better if they are destroyed or unmade by tale’s end.

If we filter through the rougher patches, we come to see that great moral lesson of the tale torments Gawain, as he comes to see that the challenge of the Green Knight completed his moral failure. This is the true gem of The Green Knight: the gem needing two hours of garbage we needed to sift through. The young hero severed the head of an enemy that surrendered and disarmed himself. Whatever the Green Knight is, his role is to show Camelot how far they’ve fallen. If Gawain cannot be merciful, the GK can. The tears that flow from the GK’s face in the final scene show us that he does not represent evil but a cleansing power of nature seeking to transform Camelot into what it ought to have been: a smaller paradise on earth, a paragon of morality. The GK answers Gawain, “What else ought there be?” A better film. A film that shows us that a better humanity remains in tune with nature and God, never consuming too much nor too narcissistic to empower evil. This film could’ve truly been astonishing in the hands of a better scriptwriter and a better director.

The cinematic qualities are difficult to endure as the camera panning, 360 degree spins, and aggravating musical score are even more insufferable than in the movie Old. The nature scenes and photography are impressive, as is the fetid waste of a battle scene and the drenched, dirty depictions of the ugliest Camelot ever portrayed.

The upside down pan is a particularly nausea-inducing scene and I would advise sensitive viewers to simply close their eyes for a minute or two.

The attempts at moralizing are lost on the filmmakers as it ultimately doesn’t matter whether characters womanize, rape, or slaughter indiscriminately. Attempts for Gawain to mature are lost out on tedious temptation scenes and the kernel of morality demonstrated by the GK himself. The noblest beings appear to be the giants in the great valley, whose only noteworthy performance appears to be their mimicking of the fox-spirit’s howl in a scene utterly bereft of meaning.

Beware the homosexuality scene as Joel Edgerton’s character plants his lips on an unwilling Gawain who simply tells him to move back. For me, this is a deal-breaker, as the Letter to the Romans and the Catholic Catechism teach that Heaven will punish mercilessly those who engage in this particular filth.

Amongst the canon of Medieval literature and the ensuing popular culture, The Green Knight will not rank as high as most. But its does have its moments, however sparse they may be.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Very Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 2½

Negative—I don’t want to give this movie more time than it deserves, but I did anyway. If you are thinking about watching this movie, don’t bother, unless you’re into heraldic literature gone awry. I thought it would be an action movie of epic proportions, though dark, but it was pseudo-intellectual movie offset with overwhelming aural stimuli and disconnected visual phantasms. I tolerated the undesirable attributes of the film in hopes of some worthy denouement, but all it offered at the conclusion was meaninglessness—as far as I could tell.

[Spoiler Alert] I wanted to understand the movie and discovered that it was based on a 14th century poem. Students of classic English literature have studied it as they would Chaucer. Several movies have been produced to capture the vision and dilemmas of the poem: in 1984 “Sword of the Valiant” and in 1973 “Gawain and the Green Knight.” A millennial version is sure to undo the original storyline and from what I gathered it seems to amplify the ironies and contradictions of life. In the poem, Gawain’s humanness makes him likable, but in this movie, his humanness makes him despicable. It begins with “Christ is risen” but is consumed with spiritism and witchcraft. The mother pines for her son to become king, but the Green Knight she summons will take his life. The Green Knight appeals to man’s pride with his “game” but Gawain profits no pride in striking the first and only blow. Gawain thinks his quest is for honor, but he dishonors himself repeatedly. The idea of doing anything charitable for anyone else is overtaken by quid pro quo and self-interest. He presumes to be worthy of knighthood, but fights no battles.

Like apostle Paul said, if our hope in life is not grounded in the reality of the resurrection, we are most miserable. If this movie has anything real to say, it is that mankind is worse than miserable without Christ. In “Sword of the Valiant, ” Gawain admits he was a fool to accept the challenge and emerges a better man, but this was not entirely clear in the current adaptation.
My Ratings: Moral rating: Offensive / Moviemaking quality: 4

…“The Green Knight” is supposed to be a tale about what it means to be human; Lowery’s film is entirely void of that humanity. It’s a dour, bloated experience that not only fundamentally misunderstands the work of art being adapted, but has no interest in exploring or expanding upon what was already there. …

…Had these themes of accepting the consequences of actions, living up to one’s word, the moral weakness of youth been better capitalized on, or had a little fun been had, The Green Knight would have done a better job at earning itself a place in the storybooks. …