The new US epic medieval-fantasy film The Green Knight directed, written and produced by David Lowery (Ghost Story, 2017) is showing in cinemas and is worth a look.
The film stars Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008) as young Sir Gawain, who wants to become a respected knight at his uncle King Arthur’s round table in Camelot and takes up on a challenge proposed by the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson – The Witch, 2016). He may strike the mysterious warrior and will earn his axe and get all the fame he desires but has to visit him in a year in a chapel to receive the same blow he dealt to the Knight. The story follows him on his quest, meeting all sorts of strange folk and ending up in challenging situations.
The Green Knight is not overall amazing in all apsects, starts of rather hectic with some well known storytelling techniques but settles in halfway through the quest, gets quite interesting and lets the viewer sink into it’s fantastic world. Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, 2014) convinces in her supporting double role and Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012) is always a fun presence. The design of the Green Knight is well done and Ralph Ineson who played remarkably as the father of the family in The Witch with his strong deep voice is the right cast for this creature, which reminds a little of the faun in del Torro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Some stations of the quest and the riding around on horseback bring video game The Witcher 3 to mind. Some of the special effects and 3D animation or combination of animated and live footage is not as believable as it should be but in general the films looks nice and uses colour to great effect.
There are similar elements in this film as in Lowery’s 2017 arthouse indie film Ghost Story with use of time manipulation and visions of death and there is also a monologue about the meaning of the whole story somewhere in the middle of the film but it’s much more vague and not as plumb and in some way annoying as in the party scene in Ghost Story. One scene stood out in particular, where the main character has a vision of his future life nearly without use of words, which is told in the most virtuous way of cinematic storytelling, goes on for minutes and is a real pleasure to see.
With all it’s symbols and hidden meanings and missing explanations the film leaves the viewer in a similar fashion as Aronofsky’s mother! and invites viewers to discuss what they have seen and noticed afterwards and maybe want to see it again to look closer.
A fun cinematic experience.
The Soundtrack by Daniel Hart is also nice with memorable motifs for each step of the journey and interesting medieval chants.
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