The Green Knight 2021
C
This movie got very good reviews from critics with a quite high 85 at Metacritic, but was generally trashed by audiences, getting a C+ at CinemaScore via their interviews of audiences who have just seen the movie. Often that means the ending is ambiguous and audiences hate the lack of an ending while critics love it. In this case nearly the whole movie is ambiguous. After watching I had to read up on the plot to see what had happened (mostly I understood things correctly). There is a lot of story that is not told and that you are expected to just understand. But even after reading up on it and having that information, the movie is pretty lacking. It is a very pretty movie to look at, but the hero, Gawain, is a weak character, like almost Shakiest Gun in the West weak, only nothing is really played for laughs, though it is hard to know for sure since there were only two other people in the theater. I was able to enjoy the movie as it played out, hoping it might lead somewhere and intrigued by the odd directions it kept going in, but ultimately for nothing. Much of the movie seems to happen in a dream without much reason and you are always wondering if this is a dream or if this new person is a spirit. Some of the confusion comes from kind of similar looking female characters and later on I realized that two of the parts are played by the same actress (so was any of that real?). It was so odd I thought maybe the weirdness came from the original poem written in the 14th century. Nope. It makes substantial revisions and makes me wish that it hadn’t. It is kind of a nice effort, but the weak lead and weird story are the downfall of the movie, except that some people will still love it.
spoilers
The director says the ending is happy because Gawain decides his vision of the future isn’t worth living and he is better off getting beheaded. So the happy ending is the guy decides to commit suicide by Green Knight? That is a problem for me that suicide is ever a good solution, especially for someone as young as Gawain. In the poem, the Green Knight just taps his neck with the axe instead of beheading him and says his journey has made him worthy of living. But the movie sure makes it seem like the end of Gawain and apparently a beheading was filmed, but left out of the movie. The problem is Gawain doesn’t really prove himself in his journey in the movie. He starts out beheading an unarmed person, which is flat out immoral. Then he gets overpowered by a boy and two girls, losing his horse and axe (but they leave his sword?). He succumbs to the advances of his host’s wife (in the poem the host is the Green Knight and the old woman is Gawain’s mother). The only good thing he does in the entire movie is to get the ghost’s head out of the spring. So there is no redemption, no real journey other than overcoming a few obstacles and maybe at the last second realizing he has made mistakes, but then compounding his mistakes by deciding he is better off dead.
In the post credits there is a scene of a female toddler who tries on the crown. No idea what that is about. The whole movie is frustrating. One thing I missed was in the flash forward he goes into battle and goes into the tent where a guy is dying. I didn’t realize that was his son, though it was part of a sequence showing the son growing up. Because he had a crown I thought he was a rival king. There is just so much bad storytelling in the movie. In several scenes characters talk in a raspy voice and I couldn’t understand all of what they were saying. This was in ideal conditions in the dead center of a theater with no other noise. To me that’s just bad directing. And what was the point of the giants? Why does Alicia Vikander play his prostitute girlfriend as well as the host’s wife? I didn’t realize it was the same actress, thankfully, or else it would have been even more frustrating. Why does Gawain’s mother summon the Green Knight? Did she think her son would make a better choice and become great? Honestly the choices in the game (not much of a game if it is life or death) are to tap the Green Knight so that you get a tap in return or kill him thinking that will end the game. Killing him didn’t work out, and tapping him would be inconsequential. So what was the point? In the poem (which I haven’t read, just read about) all of this makes more sense because Gawain is able to redeem himself and the Green Knight is more of a test.
Written: 16 Aug 2021