One sign of a very good movie is the way that it can sometimes transcend our ability to talk about what we liked and didn’t like about it in a conventional sense. The imagery, structure, or themes can work on us in a way that doesn’t jibe with conversation over dinner or even a well thought-out Twitter thread. David Lowery’s The Green Knight is a very good movie indeed, because in thinking about it I am forced to reckon with unusual feelings regarding how the movie feels like it emerged from the earth as opposed to being shot and how it puts what we think we know about Arthurian legend against what it feels like to be inside of one. The Green Knight, made by Lowery and his collaborators with considerable craft and confidence, is a great, trippy, double album of a movie that deserves far better than to get lost in a flood of content. David Lowery, a director I’ve always liked, outdoes himself here and reveals a control of tone and style that makes him one of the most compelling current filmmakers.
Gawain (Dev Patel, more charismatic with each role) isn’t a knight at the beginning of The Green Knight. He’s the nephew of the King and he enjoys a somewhat carefree existence, with plenty of time to spend with his lover Essel (Alicia Vikander) while avoiding the judgement of his mother (Sarita Choudhury). On Christmas Day, Gawain attends festivities at the castle where the King (Sean Harris, who is excellent and whose character is never called Arthur) puts him at his side and expresses regret that he hasn’t known Gawain better over the years. It is worth stopping here to note how much of the success of The Green Knight is due to this early scene. Sean Harris’s performance evokes another time with marvelous specificity, from his accent to the way he gestures with his hands. Harris actually plays the King as slightly frail, but he never even hints at releasing the King’s hold on high status. David Lowery and his cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo aren’t interested in calling attention to unnatural light sources, and the richness and texture of the lighting early on set a tone that carries throughout the entire movie. When the Green Knight himself (Ralph Ineson) interrupts Christmas with a challenge to one of the King’s knights – a challenge Gawain takes up – the way that the character very much does not look like a special effect is of a piece with Lowery’s other choices. All of this skill in performance and technique immerses us in the world that Lowery has created, a world in which a quest for “honor” feels more like slow walk towards a confrontation with elemental forces.
A year after the meeting at Christmas – where Gawain strikes a blow against The Green Knight that must be repaid – Gawain leaves to complete the challenge. Gawain’s legend has spread against his wishes, but after the King’s intervention he feels that he cannot duck the challenge despite his fear. The journey is a riot of experience, from an encounter with an initially unassuming scavenger (Barry Keoghan, an unnerving actor) to a glimpse of giants – the movie’s most overtly fantastical sequence and maybe the one that wasn’t strictly necessary. Gawain is brought low by the time he arrives at the house of a kindly Lord (Joel Edgerton) whose Lady (Vikander again, in a great stroke of double casting) takes a particular interest in putting Gawain’s sense of himself to the test. These scenes with Edgerton and Vikander contain a real sense of a pre-Modern menace, a world where witchcraft feels as close at hand as one’s sword. (There are also a couple of surreal touches too good to spoil.) Alicia Vikander has worked very hard to create two characters in different stations with different desires, and her skill only adds to the case Lowery builds that this world contains wonders and temptations we cannot anticipate.
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