Oh, the silly games we play . . . the things we do for what we think we need . . .
So, what do you play for? More stuff? More money? Or do you yearn for those intangibles like love, or recognition?
Young Gawain usually plays for pleasure. As King Arthur’s nephew, he’s able to take advantage of all the bounty that medieval times can possibly offer. Drink and women seem to be high on the list.
But he wants more—honor, to be exact. Inadequacy gnaws at his brain as he sits among legends like the King and his knights. Connected he is, but proven he is not. As luck (or something else?) would have it, a special challenge might solve Gawain’s problem.
On Christmas, when gifts are exchanged, the Green Knight visits the King’s court. And our world is changed forevermore.
This knight is something wild. Unnaturally natural. When he offers a test that not even Arthurian legends will take, Gawain licks his puppy lips and bites.
What follows is a dark, mystical, and fantastical journey. The moviemakers—and without a doubt, the writer and director David Lowery—have reveled in the fact that the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight is centuries old and has many different versions: They’ve taken a cue from this and flooded their own telling with symbolism, double entendres, camera tricks, actor re-use, stunning sound and visuals and other tools that, quite simply, confuse us to high heaven. This is not a bad thing.
Legends exist for a reason, regardless of whether we can decipher it. They make us feel a certain way about the nature of the world and how we make our place in it. The Green Knight’s moviemakers understand this, play with it, and bask in it. Give this movie a watch with that in mind, and you just might awe in the confusion, too.