BEFORE: Alicia Vikander carries over again from "Blue Bayou" and according to the IMDB, she plays two roles in this film. OK, add that to the list, for the end of the year, along with "The Devil's Double", "The Flash", "Glass Onion", "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent", and then there were all the Peter Parkers and Miles Moraleses seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse". It's kind of a running theme, I suppose. Were there any others? Does "Mr. Nobody" count? Oh yeah, and "Everything Everywhere All at Once", which I watched in January. I think that's all so far this year.
THE PLOT: A fantasy retelling of the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
AFTER: What a strange little movie, I'll admit I don't know that much about the famous story of Gawain and the Green Knight, but I'll have to look it up now to see how much this film varies from the original tale. I read "The Once and Future King" when I was in college, and I think maybe also "La Morte d'Arthur", but then at some point I noticed a lot of inconsistencies between the books, and then when you pile on "Camelot" the musical, "Excalibur" the movie, "Camelot 3000" the comic book and so on, you might begin to realize that everybody tells Arthur's story a little bit differently, why it's almost as if there's no consensus because there are no true facts, and maybe Arthur never existed in the first place. But it becomes a canvas that each artist can paint differently over the years, and then of course each re-telling represents the time it was told more than the time it takes place.
(I've also apparently been mis-pronouncing the name of the knight all this time - I've always said "ga-WANE", as if it rhymes with insane". But the characters in this film say "GAH-wan", so maybe they're right and I'm wrong?)
In the original poem, The Green Knight visits King Arthur's Court on Christmas Eve and invites everyone to play a friendly game with him, he'll allow one knight to attack him and strike a blow, on the condition that, should he survive, the Green Knight be allowed to return the blow one year later. No knight steps forward (perhaps they know it's a trap) so Arthur is prepared to dispatch the Green Knight when Gawain steps forward and offers to do it (as the youngest of Arthur's knights and also his nephew, he's looking to beef up his resume...). Gawain chops off the Green Knight's head in one blow, but then the Green Knight picks up his own head, and rides off, reminding Gawain that he has agreed to ride to the Green Chapel one year later and allow the Green Knight to chop off his head.
Gawain intends to keep his promise, because he is an honorable knight, and has a series of adventures and battles on his way to the Green Chapel, including a stay at a castle with a lord and a lady, where the lord offers him a deal during his stay, he'll go out and hunt during the day and bring Gawain back whatever he catches, but Gawain must give the lord in exchange whatever he gained that day. So naturally the lady tries to seduce Gawain while her husband is away, but only manages to kiss him, so when the lord gets back, Gawain has to give him a kiss. The next day he has to give the lord two kisses, then three. (I think if this had gone any further, this would have been the medieval equivalent of gay porn.). The lady ends up giving Gawain a green sash that will protect him from harm, but he agrees not to tell her husband about the sash, because then he'd have to give the sash to him, and then storywise, what's the point?
There's also an old lady at the castle, who in the end turns out to be Morgan le Fay, Arthur's sister/lover, and so it's not clear if Morgan is Gawain's mother, or if Arthur is Gawain's uncle AND father, or is that Mordred I'm thinking of? Anyway, the relationship between Gawain and Morgan Le Fay turns out to be really complex and not worth getting into here. But let me deal with the "Green Knight" movie now and I'll get back to the original tale in just a bit.
The 2021 movie keeps the first part of the story intact, although it does not refer to Arthur and Guinevere by name, just calling them "King" and "Queen". (Morgan Le Fay is not named either, must be a copyright thing...) Just as the King's Christmas celebration seems like a big bust, because Gawain has no adventures yet to tell stories about, in comes the Green Knight, and he wants to play a Christmas game, aka The Beheading Game. Yeah, Christmas parties were a lot different, back in Medieval times. Gawain apparently wants to have an adventure, so he falls into the trap and ends up on the losing side of the Beheading Game. The Green Knight picks up his head and takes off, reminding Gawain that he has to travel to the Green Chapel in one year and allow the Green Knight to cut off his head.
Gawain spends time with his lady friend, Essel and tries not to think about Christmas, but eventually December rolls around again, and for some reason Gawain tries to keep his end of the deal by riding north to look for the Green Chapel. But first he encounters a scavenging man on a battlefield who offers to give him directions, but then asks for some money in return. Once the man realizes Gawain has money, he reveals himself as a thief, and he and his two cohorts rob Gawain, taking his axe, armor and his horse and leaving him tied up. Gawain manages to free himself and pursues the thieves, but stops for the night to sleep in an abandoned cottage. He's awoken by a woman named Winifred who wants him to retrieve something she lost in a spring, which is her head. Apparently she's the ghost of a saint or something, so Gawain dives in, finds her skull and reunites it with her body, and for this, he gets his axe back. But, WTF?
Gawain also makes friends with a fox and together they watch a bunch of giants who are migrating across the land. (Again, WTF?). Here's where "The Green Knight" starts to remind me of a Terry Gilliam film, because Gilliam also loved to put giants in his films, like in "Time Bandits" and "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote". Come to think of it, Gilliam also directed "The Fisher King" which was about a guy who thought he was a knight, and of course there was "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", so yeah, in many ways this movie kind of feels like a lost Terry Gilliam movie.
Eventually Gawain reaches a non-green castle, where the Lord and Lady feed him and let him rest, also they let him know that the Green Chapel is just one day's ride away, so he's got time to hang out, prepare and also play this "exchange game" from the original story, where the Lord offers to hunt for Gawain and in return, he's got to give the Lord whatever he gained during the day. And since the Lady tries to seduce him, he's got to give the Lord a kiss each day. This seems like a modern take on the classic, because you've got two guys kissing, but this was in the original story, it just meant something different back then when two guys kissed. (did it, though?)
The Lady at the castle, as I mentioned, is also played by Alicia Vikander, who played Gawain's girlfriend back at Camelot. What does this mean, that all women look the same, does this imply that all women ARE the same, and which one you kiss doesn't really matter? How medieval and patriarchal... The Lady gives Gawain the green sash (the same one his mother gave him? This is a bit confusing...) and says it will protect him from harm. The Lady also gives him another gift, but one that stains the scarf, if you catch my meaning. Gawain takes off after kissing the Lord on the way out (really, he should have done a bit more, that was the deal...) and the Lord gives him back his fox friend, who for some reason can now talk, and the fox tells Gawain to stop and go back to Camelot, but Gawain refuses to listen.
Finally, he reaches the Green Chapel, where the green woodsy night is as still as a statue, but he might just be hibernating. Gawain waits until the next day, which is Christmas, and the Green Knight comes to life, ready to keep the Beheading Game going and make Gawain fulfill his end of the deal. But when it's time for the Green Knight to swing the ax, Gawain flinches - he's scared, and a true knight should not be scared, not even of death. What happens next is a bit debatable - Gawain either runs away, or perhaps has a vision of what would happen if he DID run away and not lose his head. He finds a horse and returns to Camelot, goes back to his normal life and doesn't tell anyone that he ran away from his fate in cowardly fashion. But HE knows... He gets back with Essel and they have a son, but soon after that he abandons her and marries a noblewoman instead. His son grows up and dies in a battle, and eventually Gawain succeeds Arthur and becomes King, however the people hate him and his family abandons him. Life pretty much sucks, and so the message here is kind of that Gawain should have let the Green Knight chop off his head, which kind of feels like a pro-suicide message, and that just can't be right.
Ultimately we end up back on that Christmas day, and Gawain's fate is left a bit up in the air, but getting his head chopped off shouldn't really be presented as the BETTER scenario, that's all I'm saying... And IMDB has reminded me that what the Knight says at the end is very ambiguous, because by saying, "Now, off with your head..." he could have meant, "Now, off (as in "take off) - with your head." The question then becomes, can Gawain go forward into the future and just be less of a screw-up?
As for the original tale, at some point the Green Knight is revealed to be the Lord from that castle (sorry, SPOILER ALERT) and the whole thing was a set-up and Morgan Le Fay was behind it all. Yeah, it seems to be a bit of a complex relationship between Gawain and Morgan, to say the least, and maybe a mother shouldn't involve her son in her kinky little medieval sex games, that's what I'm thinking. Keep in mind that Gawain lied about the sash, and he fooled around with another man's wife, and then there's all that bad stuff he did in the flash-forward, and yet somehow he's considered to be one the most honorable of Arthur's knights. Go figure.
Also starring Dev Patel (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Joel Edgerton (last seen in "Animal Kingdom"), Sarita Choudhury (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), Sean Harris (last seen in "Spencer"), Ralph Ineson (last seen in "The Northman"), Kate Dickie (ditto), Barry Keoghan (last seen in "Eternals"), Emilie Hetland, Anthony Morris (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Erin Kellyman (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Atheena Frizzell (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Nita Mishra, Tara McDonagh, Helena Browne, Megan Tiernan, Emmet O'Brien, Joe Anderson, Noelle Brown, Donncha Crowley (last seen in "Zoo").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Sitka spruce trees
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