The Old English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is brought to the screen with great imagination by writer-director David Lowery as a dark, visually mesmerizing fantasy that embellishes the work’s concise narrative with episodes expanding on its central themes.
The anonymous fourteenth-century poem is an ostensibly simple chivalric romance in which Gawain, a knight at King Arthur’s court, accepts the challenge of a terrifying horseman to participate in a Christmas game: the two will do battle, and whatever wound one inflicts on the other the victor will agree to endure a year hence at his opponent’s hand. Gawain lops off the green knight’s head, but the strange apparition simply picks it up and rides away.
A year later, Gawain travels to the appointed place—a forest chapel—where the knight waits to deal him a similar blow. Along the way, he reaches a castle where he is welcomed by the lord and refuses the advances of the man’s beautiful wife as courteously as he can, though he does accept a sash she says will protect him from harm. He then rides out to meet the green knight and accept his fate, though the confrontation has a surprising outcome.
Lowery’s adaptation follows this narrative line—Gawain (Dev Patel), at the Christmas celebration of his uncle Arthur (Sean Harris) and his queen (Kate Dickie), accepts the challenge of the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) and then a year later faces temptation at the castle of the Lord (Joel Edgerton) and Lady (Alicia Vikander) before riding out to meet the knight as arranged—but embellishes it substantially. Gawain is not a heroic figure but a callow hedonist cavorting with a peasant girl (Vikander, in a double role).
The entire business has been arranged magically by his own mother (Sarita Choudhury), identified with the sorceress Morgan le Fey. And Gawain’s adventures along the way, skirted over in the poem, are depicted in woozily hallucinatory sequences. One involves an encounter with the spirit of Saint Winifrid (Erin Kellyman), who induces him to retrieve her decapitated skull and rejoin it with her skeleton. Another introduces a Reynard-like fox that becomes his companion. A third is a vision of huge, ethereal giants.
Lowery also adds to the final confrontation a stunning flash-forward montage that prophesies the dismal future-facing Gawain should he fail his test. He respects the original poem while adding his own glosses to it; the result is both an essentially faithful rendition and a personal reflection upon its themes of chivalry, honor, and destiny. The Green Knight is not a typical Hollywood blockbuster, but rather a visually striking and intelligent epic. Highly recommended.