The Green Knight review
Dev Patel ascends to greatness and secures an unassailable lead atop the Skins alumni power rankings
As the first clutch of title cards tell us, this is the tale of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’… ‘A chivalric romance’… ‘by Anonymous’. And while the exact identity of the so called ‘Gawain poet’ has long been a mystery, their Arthurian tale, lesser known in cinema at least, receives a rich and visually stunning retelling courtesy of American writer-director David Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Old Man and the Gun).
In the opening scenes we find the hard-drinking Gawain to be a rather confident young man about town (the town being Camelot, of course) but not yet a storied knight. And although he’s granted a place at court by virtue of being King Arthur’s nephew, he’s yet to prove himself worthy of a spot alongside his uncle’s legendary knights.
The weak and weary state in which we find Arthur (Sean Harris) and Guinevere (Kate Dickie), is the first clear sign of Lowery’s subtly modern take on this medieval tale. Gaunt and wispy, with their glory years long behind them, the iconic power couple persuade an apathetic Gawain that he must seek honour and glory in his own right, and not be content to simply bask in the residual glow (and riches) of previous generations.
Incidentally, Sean Harris is on predictably scene-stealing form here. Returning to full-blown Jamaica Inn mode, whispering and straining every syllable like he’s just had his tonsils out. In the pantheon (and it truly is a pantheon) of cinematic King Arthurs, Harris’s brief but memorable portrayal could easily become one of the most enduring — whilst also being the least capable of pulling a sword from a stone.
Just as Arthur’s words of encouragement begin to stir Gawain’s courage, the lights dim and the doors swing open to reveal the titular Green Knight — an unrecognisable Ralph Ineson, resplendent in superb tree-man prosthetics. He proposes a mysterious ‘Christmas Game’. If any man is able to land a blow on him they may take his gigantic axe, provided that precisely one year later they seek him out so that he might return the favour.
Seeing an opportunity to earn his place at that table, Gawain takes up the challenge and, with a single swing, lops off The Green Knight’s head. Even those not already familiar with the tale can probably guess what happens next. The Green Knight’s headless corpse slowly rises from the floor, retrieves his head and proclaims: “One. Year. Hence.” Before riding off with a resonant cackle, sounding an awful lot like Finchy from The Office.
As the months pass and Christmas once again draws near, Gawain sets out on his quest to meet his end of the bargain — and boy oh boy, does he do a lot of questing. This middle third is where the film truly works its magic. Taking the episodic, tall-tale traditions of medieval, aural storytelling, upon which so many of our myths are built, and blending it with the sumptuous visuals that only a 21st century digital film camera can offer.
Each segment of the story — always preceded by a beautiful title card in old-timey lettering — throws a different gauntlet down for Gawain to overcome. From the physical (captured and taunted by grave-robbing bandits) to the spiritual (St Winifred’s ghost charging him with retrieving her severed head from a lake), all the way through to a stirring final showdown at the Green Knight’s overgrown chapel.
Much of your emotional journey through the film is guided by Patel’s really quite wonderful face. Arguably one of the most engaging faces in film right now. Lowery clearly knows this better than anyone, carefully balancing the obligatory sprawling vistas and effects shots with some very tight close-ups of Patel’s magnetic features. None more so than in the film’s wonderfully wordless epilogue. And while perhaps not quite on a level with Di Caprio’s liver-munching performance in The Revenant, there are several terrific sequences in which Patel is clearly pushing his physical limits in what look like some very uncomfortable location shoots.
Whilst always feeling like a truly modern adaptation, The Green Knight still feels very medieval. Or, at least, movie medieval. Its misty bogs, mossy forests and muddied fields are very familiar locales in Arthurian cinema — with Gawain often seemingly only a wrong turn away from bumping into the Knights Who Say “Ni!” The film even shares the studio at which its interiors were shot with Clive Owen’s brooding but boring King Arthur (2004), and John Boorman’s bonkers but brilliant Excalibur (1981).
As you might expect from a director who makes both micro-budget indies and mega-budget Disneys, Lowery is highly cine-literate and well aware of what genre his film belongs in. But still pulls off a crucial intervention by stripping away the need for overly wrought dialogue through much of the questing and resisting the temptation to add any expositional narration. This is particularly impressive given the nature of the source material.
It may be one of the oldest and wordiest stories we have but, by letting its visuals and sound do the storytelling, this Green Knight is a truly cinematic tale.
