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.