I gave my word. I made a covenant.
This is how silly men perish.
Or how brave men become great.
Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough?
I’ve been a fan of David Lowery since I stumbled, quite by chance, into a theater where Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, his second feature film, was playing. That was 2013 and I’ve seen every one of the features films he’s done since in the theater. I’ve liked all of his movies that I’ve seen except for his debut feature, St. Nick, which I swung back around to eventually. This isn’t about that movie, so I won’t get into it, but it’s not very good. Up to now, I would say that A Ghost Story, a melancholy, moody and haunting meditation on grief, sorrow, loss and the unstoppable flow of time, was his best film. With The Green Knight, he’s made a movie worthy of at least standing next to A Ghost Story; it’s hard to say which one I like more honestly, but they’re both really profound and beautiful works of cinematic art, meticulously crafted and as thoughtful as they are emotional.
In The Green Knight, a young would be knight makes a foolish promise to the titular character, a figure of some sort of supernatural origin on Christmas Day and he finds himself bound by his word to journey to a chapel on the following Christmas Day where, you know, let’s cut to the chase here, he will be beheaded by the Green Knight. The bulk of the film concerns his journey to that chapel in the days leading up to the fateful Christmas when he will face the Green Knight again. But this is no swords-and-sorcery action-adventure. It’s a melancholy, resolutely dark meditation on all sorts of things, a slowly-paced character study of a man journeying to what he believes will be his death. Lowery is more interested in under-cutting the heroic tropes of the epic sword-swinging adventure.
Gawain, the main character, is a young man who either has little potential or else is failing mightily to live up to the potential he has. He’s taking on a knight’s quest, but he’s no knight. As we follow him on this journey, we essentially watch him fail again and again to be the heroic ideal we expect him to be. He’s rash, sometimes makes bad decisions, he’s no warrior . . . above all perhaps, he’s just simply immature. He’s a fantastically written character and Dev Patel really gives, in my opinion, his best performance, maybe his first truly great performance, as Gawain. Particularly near the end of the film as we see more and more of the self-doubt and fear behind his attempted bravado, as his nearness to the end of his quest begins to strip him of his certainty of anything, he’s fantastic. There’s a montage near the end that is just quite easily the best acting Patel’s ever done.
He’s got a solid supporting cast too, though this is absolutely Patel’s movie; he’s in almost every scene. Alicia Vikander is better than she’s been in a really long time in a surprising role; she gets one of the film’s most striking monologues. Sean Harris is excellent, as always, as a decrepit, far past his prime King Arthur. Barry Keoghan shows up for essentially a slightly extended cameo as a creepy scavenger. And while Joel Edgerton isn’t the first guy I’d think of when casting the Lord of a medieval manor house, well, he's actually very good, especially in his final scene, a quiet moment of intimacy between the Lord and Gawain. And the fox is pretty cool too.
This film though . . . man, I feel like I could talk about it for an hour. It’s just an incredibly rich movie, rich in its characters, rich in themes, rich in symbolism and meaning. It’s really, as I kind of said above, a movie about a young man with a lot of flaws being given an opportunity to prove himself or rather many opportunities, failing at most of them. The biggest test though is waiting at the end of the journey and as the film progressed, I really had no idea where the movie was going to end up and Gawain is so well written and so well acted that there simply wasn’t an obvious foregone conclusion in terms of whether his character would face his fate with courage or not. There’s a certain point where Gawain realizes that all he has to do really is turn around and go back. He doesn’t even have to tell anyone anything. When he returns, the friends he’s left behind will simply think that he took the trip and bested the Green Knight in one way or another. No one will ever know that he didn’t have the strength to keep his word; except, and here’s the rub, Gawain will know. And ultimately I think that is the question the film is asking, especially in those last few minutes: what is worth a life haunted by shame and controlled by fear? If Gawain fails at the most important point of this journey, it will be because he was controlled by fear and it will be to him a secret shame for the rest of his life. All shame, even, or perhaps especially, secret shame is a poison once a person fully accepts and internalizes it. And fear, well, Gawain knows his Bible I’m sure; “Fear has torments.” The film, I think, is saying that really nothing is worth that kind of life, not even life itself. You always have to live with yourself, you know. It’s a thing I’ve always said is one of the most important things in life; you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. Whatever anyone else knows or doesn’t know, Gawain, and all of us, will always know the truth about ourselves, whether we failed at the moment of crisis or did the right thing. This movie is really powerful in both the emotional experience of Gawain’s struggle and the way his struggle reflects our own struggles and in the thoughts that it provokes. It’s a movie I’ve continued to think about ever since I first saw it.
That ending is really something special as well. I’m not going to spoil it, but I have to mention it. Everything in the movie has really built to that moment and to the decision Gawain has to make when he finally meets the Green Knight again. And the film manages to be ambiguous in all the right ways with a final shot and a final line that really is the best ending to a movie in . . . God, in years. It’s a movie that sticks the landing in every conceivable way.
But I suppose I’ve talked about this movie enough. It’s one of the three or four movies that are kind of in a dead heat for best of 2021 for me and it really is a masterpiece. I haven’t even talked much about the craft of the film which is another area of great richness. The production design, the costumes, the score, the cinematography . . . all of these things contribute to the film’s strange and utterly singular atmosphere. It’s a haunted and a haunting film, cinema as true art, a gripping story with compelling characters, well-written and well-executed (no pun intended), a film I won’t soon forget. I really thought A Ghost Story was so strong and striking that probably Lowery would never equal it, that it would stand as his masterpiece. A mere six years later, The Green Knight is every bit as great in its own way and it’s quite possibly even better. Lowery is a singular voice in film and we’re incredibly blessed to have him making movies like this. The film, as I said, has a really perfect ending; it has a great opening too: a shot of Gawain seated on a throne as a crown slowly descends toward him from high above and then . . . then his head bursts into flame. Once again, Gawain is a reflection of the audience. The Green Knight just about set my head on fire too. 4 stars.
tl;dr – David Lowery creates a true masterpiece with this singular film, an incredibly rich exploration of characters, theme, mysteries and more; Patel is career best & Lowery just might be as well. 4 stars.