Based on the 14th century poem of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, filmmaker David Lowery (“A Ghost Story”) has decided to, misguidingly, succumb to an abundant amount of visual fetishes in “The Green Knight” while forgetting what matters most in a movie: character development.
This A24-produced movie seems to just be an excuse for Lowery to indulge in these aforementioned dreamy visuals, completely omitting the fact that there is a clearcut lack of substance in his screenplay.
In “The Green Knight,” Gawain (Dev Patel), a man supposedly driven by a sense of “honor,” gets his integrity tested. While at a Christmas party, the Green Knight, a hybrid monster of tree and human, invites anyone in attendance to behead him, but only on the condition that, in a year’s time, he’ll repay the favor at the mystical Green Chapel. Gawain ignorantly takes the offer, beheading the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) and signing off on his own death certificate.
And so, for the rest of the movie, Gawain is absolutely terrified of meeting his fate in the hands of the imposing monster. One year later, being a man of his word, he does go on that long and arduous trek to the Green Chapel. Along the way, much like Homer in the Odyssey, he encounters a variety of characters including Alicia Vikander’s Lady Essel, Barry Keoghan’s violent scavenger, a headless spirit and a herd of naked giants.
Lowery and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo engage in deep and uber-visual framing here. If there is any excuse to stop the narrative and engage in a useless shot of beautiful scenery then you can bet these two guys will do just that. Lowery’s camera always seems to be placed in a way that tells the viewer “look here!” The reviews will gush at how weird, seductive and visually sumptuous the whole thing is, but never can we truly be invested in Gaiwan’s journey with the detachment that we feel here.
Lowery and his team can’t bridge the gap between the movie’s images and the supposed emotional context behind them. Clocking in at an overlong 130 minutes, the resulting film purports to be a slow-moving and existential affair, but can’t seem to face the inevitable fact that it isn’t as deep or sorrowful as it deems itself to be. For a film so consumed with sorcery, the whole thing nary casts a spell on us - there’s no magic in it [C]
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