"The Green Knight" Doesn’t Do Full Justice

Release Date：July/30/2021

Genre：Adventure/Drama/Fantasy

Director：David Lowery

Cast：Dev Patel、Alicia Vikander、Joel Edgerton、Ralph Ineson、Sarita Choudhury、Sean Harris

Viola's Rating：7.8

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival with “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”, director David Lowery’s latest feature film was the R-rated medieval epic “The Green Knight”, which was scheduled to be released last year, but postponed due to COVID-19, and was finally released in the U.S. on July 30, 2021.

Based on the 14-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, this adventurous, dramatic fantasy retells the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In the original text, Sir Gawain makes every decision and goes on the expedition based on honor, and in medieval era, a hero’s honor is determined by his vows and whether he keeps his promises and words or not. In order to finish the Christmas game played with the Green Knight, Sir Gawain faces his own potential death in a year, and later during his journey, he signs a contract with a lord on the way. However, the classic poem isn’t a story merely sings Sir Gawain’s praise, but emphasizes on the importance of recognizing the fact that Sir Gawain is after all a human being.

“The Green Knight” depicts the Pilgrimage’s Progress of Sir Gawain, and this is the coming of age process for a hero, during which he passes the Beheading Game and the Temptation to Adultery test. In “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, the unknown author didn’t describe what kind of person Sir Gawain is, but in the film, the audience can see the clear change Sir Gawain makes before and after the expedition.

Unlike the original text, “The Green Knight” highlights the fantasy creatures and experiences Sir Gawain encounters during his journey, which enlightens the flick because moviegoers get to feel how it is like to go on an adventure. However, the most critical part in the classic poem, the lady’s test, was altered in “The Green Knight”. It gives the motion picture a whole new image, but at the same time, might influence how new audience or new readers look at Sir Gawain.

On the other hand, “The Green Knight” uses a bunch of symbols to tell a medieval fable. There might be more than ten million different interpretations to each token in the movie, but instead of reading between lines, moviegoers need to experience between frames because “The Green Knight” doesn’t contain too many dialogues. This provides perfect space for imagination and director David Lowery even left an open ending for discussion.

Overall, literature aficionados might not be fond of the alteration, but “The Green Knight” is still a better-than-average picture, but it’s somehow very different from the poem, and thus doesn’t do Sir Gawain full justice, so it’s just not a top dog.

Picture Credit: Cai Chang International Inc.