Pacing and rhythm

I don't like musicals. Despite my distaste for them, I did sit down and try to watch 2016s "greatest movie evah", La La Land a few months after it had been declared the best movie of the year by a bunch of people in the business only too eager to tell us about how great it was to be in the business. I lasted about 15 minutes before walking out of the room. I was mildly reassured by a friend whose wife LOVES musicals who also couldn't stand it that I wasn't completely biased. I know my bias isn't omnipresent because I actually enjoy classical opera and have seen a few. Certainly, I'm drawn to the productions of composers I already like, such as Mozart, but the aspects that tend to annoy me about musicals don't have the same effect when it comes to the original art form, as it were. And that's what makes my reaction to Annette a little more unusual, since it's essentially a modern opera. Moreso than things like La La Land or West Side Story, there are no dialogue segues between the singing. It's all singing, all the time, just as in opera. Unfortunately, like most musical performances of whatever stripe, part of the entertainment is watching said performers actually singing, which means the storytelling is at a somewhat slower pace than most films. That means that you really need to be interested in the story and the emotional underpinnings that it rides upon... and I simply wasn't.

In the same way that I wasn't impressed by the trauma of life as an actor in La La Land, I wasn't particularly intrigued by the contrast between Henry McHenry (Adam Driver), abrasive stand-up comedian, and Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard), soprano. It seemed obvious that Henry's cynicism and general distaste for society wasn't going to mix well with Ann's prominent joie de vivre. Creating a child between the two was the Frankenstein's monster in the mix and she was smartly displayed as an automaton in that respect for most of the film, who exhibits the voice and innocence of her mother which only further contributes to Henry's discomfort and inability to understand others' desire to embrace life, rather than scorn it. In that way, the titular Annette becomes both the motivating factor and the quandary of the film, which is all very operatic.

But that basic, primal story isn't powerful enough to escape the turgid pace that the performances require. Instead of the reaction that I normally have to something like The Magic Flute, where the orchestral intro to another aria builds up excitement, I found myself frequently sighing in frustration at the fact that Henry was, once again, singing about his worldly disdain for everything that was happening around him. Driver is a capable singer, but not a compelling one, which doesn't help when he's the central figure in the film who has to constantly do that. Similarly, Cotillard, whom I almost always enjoy on screen, isn't generating thrills when she's carrying a tune and, because of the more dynamic role that Driver inhabits, she ends up being kind of a sideshow in the larger picture. The "pure" characters are Ann and Annette. But they're almost never the interesting ones, since the tragedy (and the crimes associated with that) center around Henry, who's played by the largely-less-interesting-to-watch-onscreen Driver.

Perhaps I was setting myself up to fail when it comes to appreciating the picture, because I did almost no research on it before we saw it. The trailer involves the most amusing bits and doesn't really indicate that this is a musical of any sort, other than Ann being a singer of some kind and their daughter following in her footsteps. So when the film opened and the cast did a Greek chorus thing, by immediately breaking into song and giving a meta look at the story as a whole, I was intrigued. That quickly changed to frustration when the next scene made clear that it was going to be this way throughout and I began to lose patience with the film's pace. I think the visuals were smart in that every scene was lit and staged in such a way that it was clear that they were all studio sets; presenting the "all of life's a stage" idea by demonstrating how this might be possible in the theater that was home to both main characters. In the end, I don't think there was any particular failing that stood out to me. It's just really not my song to sing.

The verdigris of choices

There's a genre of late Medieval literature known as the "chivalric romance." It was a way to tell what in modern times we would refer to as "fantasy"; colored with the transition from the legends of ancient times that once carried the weight of the word of god(s) while still emphasizing the mystery of the wilderness and the unknown, even as Western society lurched toward a greater understanding of the world around us with the advent of the Enlightenment and so forth. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is one of those chivalric romances, as it incorporates a member of King Arthur's coterie of knights (understood to be myths even then) and plays on the idea that if you ride far enough into the hinterlands, there's no telling whom you'll meet and what might happen to you, even if it means meeting the person (headless or not) that you were intending to find in the first place. It's a pretty simple plot about honor, chivalry, and especially chastity, since even in medieval poetry, there's an acknowledgment that sex sells and always has.

The Green Knight is a modern retelling of the poem that veers away from that simple tale and expands it into an even broader examination of what it means to be honorable and to keep one's obligations and to know thyself, to paraphrase a certain writer. It's clear that writer/director David Lowery wanted to keep that air of the unknown, as most of the lighting (moody, shadowed), visual effects (mists, close-ups that leave the rest of the screen in a haze), and the pacing of the film lean heavily in that direction. If you've ever seen the last third of the film, Excalibur, where the land is in dire straits and the knights struggle against the darkness and the evil sorcery and fog of Morgan le Fay are extant in every corner, you'll know what I mean.

But there's a lot more going on here on a personal level than there was in Excalibur, which attempted to condense the Arthurian legends as a whole into a two hour film. We meet Gawain (Dev Patel) early on and are given the impression that he's kind of a wastrel who spends a lot of his time in a brothel, but one who knows that he should be aiming higher in life. His mother (Sarita Choudhury; credited only as Mother) is of the same mind and starts casting spells to guide her son, King Arthur's nephew, to that greater destiny. In this respect, I think they were making reference to Margause, Gawain's mother from the legends, who was Arthur's sister, but whom is often mixed up with Morgan (as in Excalibur) as a more menacing figure in the story. There are a couple tales that say that Gawain was the product of accidental incest between king and sister, so more son than nephew, but the film stops at basically identifying him as Arthur's favorite. Said favorite is the first to stand up and accept the challenge of the titular Green Knight, who takes his own beheading by Gawain with aplomb and saunters out, reminding him that the same blow will be returned in a year and a day.

From there we see that Gawain largely returns to wastrel mode before finally deciding that he better stand up and take his beheading like an honorable knight if he wants anyone to look him in the eye again. From there, we roughly follow the path of the poem, albeit with several side jaunts along the way, involving restoring a dead woman's body to her bed at the behest of her ghost, a talking fox, and a parade of female giants. We do eventually get to the strange castle with the test of honesty between Gawain, the hunting lord, and the horny wife, but it ends up having little to do with the Green Knight or the future that Gawain sees for himself if he fails his test of bravery.

In one respect, it's true that Lowery's story is more elaborate and, to some degree, more interesting than the original romance, which is a pretty simple lesson about the qualities that knights are supposed to value most. But the downside of that increased elaboration is that it kind of loses the thread of Gawain's famous green sash along the way. The story feels like it's being mysterious for the sake of being so. Certainly, the lesson carried by keeping one's word to the ghost of a woman whose house and bed you take advantage of is obvious. But also obvious is the suggestion to not trust anyone on the road when Gawain is ambushed by common thieves and loses the Green Knight's axe and the sash until they're mysteriously returned to him later. If Lowery's intent was to play up the "Lord works in mysterious ways" theme that inhabits the original poem and similar examples of the time, OK. But it might've been better served by excluding things like the giant parade and the animal Gawain has selflessly protected to that point suddenly reminding us of a very different film altogether. I don't mind ambiguity in the stories that I'm told. Having people develop their own perspectives on the story can be a really appealing thing, rather than having it spoon fed to you. But the best examples of that approach are those stories that draw into question what our hero should be doing at any given moment, rather than either presenting the obvious choice and simply making it strange or leaving the audience in the dark as to what the choice is in the first place.

In the end, the primary choice facing Gawain remains with him to the end: he is himself, whether he's trying to be a knight or imagining himself as king. There's a certain level of required honesty in that which gives the film its central appeal and makes Patel's character worthy of following the whole way through. (In other words, it's worth watching.) I just thought that some of the fantastical elements actually clouded that central lesson and a leaner, less-mystical story might have been the better way to approach it.