Remembering destiny is too much a chore, knighthood is offered as reward; or consequence at that. “The Green Knight” has chivalry as the burdensome voyage, and humility might be the better route to glory. Legendary amplitude imbues with intimacy since personal victory must encompass a kingdom towards meaning undefined, undiscovered, and even untrue, but with unwavering wonderment overpowers the futility that heralds an indefinite fate awaiting Gawain. Perennial indie powerhouse Dev Patel takes on the role of the legendary almost-knight. Patel is lonesome in his mirrorless stares yet has valor in the remainder of his wishful, ravenous veneer. Gawain, nephew of the endlessly fabled King Arthur, is seen curiously by his own at the corner from the Round Table. Sean Harris is the eons-famous king — a raspy performance with a graze of exhausted adventures engraved in his faltering declamations and staggered stature.
During the sequence on a wintry Christmas day, the king hails over Gawain as one of his own, although Patel offers reluctance in the would-be (or could-be) knight’s finesse. Gawain is shy or perhaps too inquisitive for himself. King Arthur proclaims the honor of the Knights of the Round Table, that he elates with their mere attendance and invites them to present entertainment for the royal albeit gloomy get-together. The oration by Harris is intersposed with poetic images such as the twin leaf rising from the embers of burnt letter — harbinger of instantaneousness from dread, the eponymous Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). His entrance is wicked, crackling from the wood of his gigantic physique as the strides of the nebulous horse drums with the sputtering pitfall this figure brings in the king’s hall. The Green Knight proposes a quaint game: a knight who shall behead him will, in a year at Christmas day anew, have his head also cut off in exchange. Realizing the spur of forging his own legend, Gawain stands to the challenge and is handed the Excalibur by King Arthur for his bravery to ultimately show his young might. The Green Knight suspiciously, willingly kneels at Gawain’s feet, so he slashes through the neck...the knight’s wooden noggin rolls from the swivel of blood. Predictably, the headless body picks up the severed part, and the spectral threat brims with imminence, “In a year’s time...”
Writer-director David Lowery unrolls his scroll: the script devised with ominous medieval language. The diction and dialogues are not pretentious as other Middle Ages productions whose vernacular is modern rather than the rightful Anglo-Saxon English repurposed for 21st century cinematic comprehension. Lowery has clearly researched and analyzed the source material “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” though in the film the gothic header says it is adapted from the “The Chivalric Romance.” Meticulous Lowery is, because not only is the diction appropriate, the costumes and production design is decidedly a certified glimpse into the Middle Ages. Accented by the Andrew Drow Palermo’s cinematography, the energy is classically grand, using the environs to unravel sentences in the captures. The visuals talk along the hoverings into verbs and angular conjunctions. In the first 30 minutes, a wide shot of a medieval castle (constructed with stone-esque detailing, convincing and surreal) is a looming speculation structured in a fortress formidable but unable to sight its wholeness that it could be destroyed from within. Though from the certain vantage could only yield to its gigantic approach. Or it is already present, motionless, yet the gaze engines towards the overhang to venture into its entire capacity — towering as much as it is diminutive within full spectation.
An hour into “The Green Knight,” Gawain scours the valley with the phantom knight’s axe, another wide capture as Gawain is beneath the engulfing mountain. Lowery and Palermo designs the shot with an immense anticipation over Gawain’s far approach; the unknown is either watching upon or it is surrounding, or the farness does not guarantee anything for the young hopeful...just a bigger spectre destines him anyway. To underscore Middle Age royal fashion, King Arthur is furbished with a crown laden with golden rays. It’s a huge headdress resembling a Christ image for the king may be a messiah doomed to the throne. Gawain later dons the big crown, having fulfilled his prophetic rise to downfall. Makeup also verifies the archaic presentness of “The Green Knight.” Sarita Choudhury as Gawain’s mother is touched with kindled amber, the wrinkles on her face be the witch chant as ominous as she is stone cold. Counterbalancing Choudhury’s grimness and care for Gawain is Alicia Vikander in a double-performance as Essel and the Lady whom he meets at a shadowy mansion on a meadow during his journey. Essel appears at the opening of “The Green Knight,” rousing Gawain from his doze in a whorehouse. Vikander as the commoner Essel has a syrupy glean on her smudged, pleading impulse whereas the Lady is a straight temptress, so Vikander emotes shelled evil that instead cracks Gawain into seminals. The actress does a two-faced, one woman role — any of herself is all of the bewilderment that spirals “The Green Knight” from elysium to anywhere but.
Find harbor in Palermo’s photographic smog; the cold burns a smokescreen as the freezing howl screeches. Since Gawain’s search for the Green Chapel — the site where he is to complete the head-for-a-head bargain with the Green Knight — spans days, the film melds emerald for heyday, rustic yellow for warm noons, and a grey-blue for freezing evenings. Occasionally, “The Green Knight” is visually dark enough for a peek, sufficiently lighted for intrigue. Desperation is almost nowhere, but it casts a spur that discovery counters with restrained revelation. And because resisted, there sires an earnestness to inquire further into the blaze of "The Green Knight." Shivery, blinding blueness swallows the desperate Gawain after being harassed by a scavenger trio led by Barry Keoghan who carries over his vexingly creepy relentlessness from “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018). Gawain takes shelter in a forsaken, nightlit cabin. He is waken at bed by folklore ghost, Wilfred (in the chapter titled “A Meeting with St. Wilfred”), the supposed resident. Erin Kellyman is the ghostly saint with frisk urgency. According to tale, she was beheaded by a traveller, thus the ghost requests Gawain to retrieve her head in the puddle upfront. Diving in the bleak pool describes the spatial interrelation of the haul and the journey itself. Plunging into vacuity, armed only with insight and duty, Gawain gapes in that endless open for what could be rewarding or otherwise. But the foray in the trench is worthy, breaking apart and through the somber breadth and taking it as a trophy — the will to forge on.
Lowery’s eye is a prismic hourglass. Lens to lens he deconstructs “The Green Knight” chapter by chapter in medieval text — from ‘Sir Gawain and...’ to ‘A Beheading at the Green Chapel’ — beckoning a whim of next-ness, the journey brandished apart to revel not its length but the calculating sweep, torrentially within framed sceneries and flesh-crawling desperation. “The Green Knight” is a reflective graphite. Often iridescent frames reverberates dreary, gloomy finishes as much as destiny is ungraspable despite traversing for its sake. From “A Ghost Story” (2017), Lowery creates a variant of epicness for “The Green Knight.” The previous, about a lovesick spirit penetrating history until reemerging in his timeline, and the latter is history itself piercing through its spirit to tap into chivalry and the true fulfilment of Gawain. Airy, though the pace sometimes outstays the spright. The drag might be symptomatic of a stalling creative process because Lowery is overly sovereign in the art-making that vigor is tousled with wallowing. To dispel languor, Daniel Hart’s transitory soundscape merges eerie and ambient immersiveness. And the snow-blurred, sun-wiped clarity of the scenic frames blows the creepiness away with the brisk fog; the green and gold unconceal solacing awe from the rumoring dread. The film’s greatest achievement is heralded by the screenplay intricate with study of medieval traditions and dramatizations. And what achievement the Excalibur of a script deploys? A new legend, Gawain's, and the chivalrous sharpness shaping the precise grandness of "The Green Knight,” a tale of meaning against doom because to know fulfilment, there must be unknowing that makes innocence as rewarding as it is meaningless.
Director: David Lowery
Images and trailer ©️ A24; YouTube.com
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