You go off on a quest, do some brave deed, and you're set for life: That's "honor?" That's it?
Dev Patel as "Gawain," hero of The Green Knight gives his questioner a look that says, "Uh, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty lame." Then he answers, pretty lamely, "Yes."
Although the Dark Ages are very dark in this film, shot on misty moors and rocky paths through gloomy forests, Patel's Gawain is funny, being more in the dark than anyone. When we first see him, he's a playboy splashed awake by his mistress (Alicia Vikander), unable to find his boots, affectionate and careless.
But he gets caught in a kind of medieval Matrix where everyone he meets, even a fox, is part of a plot devised by a controlling intelligence. His mother is the witch Morgan La Fay (Sarita Choudhury), sister to King Arthur. We see the siblings in a tete-a-tete, evidently conspiring to teach Gawain a lesson. At the king's Christmas banquet, Arthur (Sean Harris) primes his nephew to step up for the honor of knighthood. At the same time, Morgan conjures the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) -- half man, half tree -- to deliver a challenge he can't refuse.
The challenge sounds like a fair fight: you win if you strike a blow against the Green Knight. The catch is, you must meet the Green Knight again a year and a day later, on his own turf, for payback. Seeing all the famous knights avert their eyes, Gawain jumps in. Instead of fighting, the Green Knight lays down his axe and bares his neck. Embarrassed, Gawain asks the crowd, "What am I supposed to do?" Gawain decapitates the knight, maybe to head off the anniversary rematch. To Gawain's dismay, the severed head warns him to keep his promise as the Knight rides away dangling the head in one hand.
Playful touches by the director David Lowery remind us all the way through that, despite the darkness and the threat, this is all a game.
- The title cards try a dozen different medieval-ish fonts and sometimes make ironic comments about the story. For example, we jump ahead one "too quick" year later. "An act of kindness" is anything but -- involving a particularly annoying teenage boy (Barry Keoghan).
- Images of Gawain undercut the idea that "honor" is just a matter of PR. Now famous for his encounter with the Green Knight, Gawain's portrayed in an over-blown heroic pose and also depicted as a foolish puppet who loses his head in a children's show.
- When Gawain accepts hospitality at a manor house, there's a comedy of manners reminiscent of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Lord and Lady (Joel Edgerton and Alicia Vikander -- who doubles as Gawain's mistress) drag Gawain unwillingly into games that Albee called "Get the Guest" and "Hump the Hostess."
- More images in the manor house make fun of him: His stupid gape-mouthed expression is captured in a camera obscura; he's woven into a tapestry that depicts his host hunting him like a fox.
- When Gawain meets St. Winifred (Erin Kellyman), it's so awkward in a teen-aged way. First, he discovers that he's sleeping in her bed. Then she tells him to retrieve her head from the bottom of a spring. When he observes that it's right there on her neck talking to him, she all but rolls her eyes. She's exasperated when he asks what she'll do for him if he retrieves the head: "Why would you even ask that?"
The comedy ends when Gawain experiences life without honor. As Dev Patel plays him, Gawain has been drained of his vitality. My friend Susan said, "He's lost his soul." Painful to watch, this part of the movie makes us feel the importance of true honor by its absence.
Happily, the director and writers bring the story to a rounded, satisfying finish. Then they step one line beyond that -- leaving us laughing.
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