When the teaser for The Green Knight was first released in February 2020, it garnered a good deal of buzz from audiences which seemed to build with the release of subsequent trailers. Once it was released in theaters, it did well in the box office for a production of its size, raking in $18 million against a $15 million budget. After its release, though, it was surprising to find that its reception on a mass scale was lackluster. The film currently holds down an 89% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, yet sports only a 50% audience approval rating. While the critic score is nothing to sneeze at, it seems almost unjust that such a beautifully crafted film be cast aside by viewers with the changing of the year.
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Starring Dev Patel, the film is produced by A24, a production company that has been developing an increasingly hefty reputation in recent years; they make all variety of movies, but have come to be known particularly for their striking, unsettling, and often ambiguous creations. The Green Knight, in particular, is based on the Arthurian story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written by Gawain Poet nearly seven hundred years ago, and is ultimately retold with the full force of modern philosophy and filmmaking. It is spectacularly filmed, wonderfully acted, and masterfully designed to deliver thought-provoking and emotional punches throughout this sobering coming of age adventure. It has topped many “Top Movies of 2021” lists and, more recently, has been on lists of movies that should have gotten a 2022 Best Picture Oscar nomination. And yet, The Green Knight has seemingly flown under the general public’s radar. Here’s what makes The Green Knight one of 2021’s most underrated movies.
It Uses Experimental Storytelling Techniques
A24 / Lionsgate
The story follows Gawain (Patel), a young and misguided knight eager to make an impact and proliferate his name. To do so, he embarks on a mission of certain death, not fully understanding the consequences. The film delves deeply into the psyche of this main character and thus is often told non-linearly. Cinemative decides such as flash forwards, flashbacks, extreme lapses in time, hallucinations, and dreams are all utilized to provide the audience with a peek inside the new knight’s mind. These types of techniques are essential and very effective because, for much of the film, Gawain is traveling alone. The audience gains an understanding of his sense of self and his place in the world through these elements. An additional result of this solo exposition is that the audience relies greatly on the mannerisms and facial acting of Patel, which are delivered spectacularly. The dialogue, when present, is also excellent. It serves to highlight the film’s central themes, character development, and progression of plot. The film nails the necessary traditional storytelling techniques and takes many of them an experimental step further to create something new and exciting.
It Features Striking Cinematography and Design
A24
This captivating story is set in a breathtakingly vast landscape that features a variety of impressive terrain in addition to well-designed civilized areas. Immense and jagged mountains sprout from colossal grass plains to create far-reaching peaks and valleys. Deserted battlefields and deep, foreboding forests, along with homes and villages of varying degradation are also represented with painstaking detail. Some may say that this alone is no great feat, but as Gawain’s journey through this wilderness progresses, it is captured using all variety of eye-catching techniques including sweeping wide shots, experimental rotations, slow zooms, vertical zooms, and lengthy pans. Each shot is expertly arranged and often incredibly symmetrical.
The cinematography is further improved by the dynamic lighting and color used throughout the film. The period piece looks dark and dreary yet crisp and bold, almost an oxymoron but true nonetheless. Commonly, vibrant green, red, yellow, and blue lights are utilized as highlights to bring about a further surrealistic tone. The film also boasts a chill educing soundtrack that is packed with ghastly choral vocalizations, deep lows and distant highs of medieval strings, and synths that all congeal to rise and fall dramatically with the intensity of the film. Text is also utilized a great deal, a component that is not often prominent in most pictures. Varied but always beautiful calligraphic title cards intercut scenes and structure the film in the vein of its source material. The combination of these captivating cinematic elements makes each shot of the film stunning and makes it difficult to lose attention.
It Uses These Elements to Display Poignant Themes
The film uses its excellent storytelling, cinematography, and design to drive home presently relevant and emotional themes. After seeing the stories of those that came before him, Gawain wants desperately to have his own story to tell, his own legend, in the footsteps of the Knights of the Roundtable. The Green Knight, a masterfully designed supernatural tree-man, challenges the young man to a duel of sorts. The proposition is this: whatever damage Gawain inflicts on the Green Knight, the Green Knight will inflict upon him in one year at the Green Chapel. Gawain chops the knight’s head off, but to his horror, the creature’s body rises, picks up its head, and rides from the castle. Months later, Gawain embarks on his journey for honor and greatness, setting in motion most of the film’s prominent thematic elements. On his journey, Gawain contends with finding direction and meaning in life, the legitimacy of free will, his fear of death, confronting his own illusions, and also the power of time and nature.
In his great journey, Gawain quickly discovers that being a knight is not what he anticipated, and that he is tragically under prepared. Throughout the film, he loses his physical battles, has difficult surviving in the wilderness, and performs poorly with the woman he meets. These are the opposite of what was expected of him, especially based on the stories he was familiar with. His solitude in the wilderness makes him question what it is all for. At one point in the film a man asks him why he’s doing what he is. Gawain replies, “For honor?” This signifies that he never truly knew why he embarked on this mission in the first place and that his will was clouded by expectations and desires created by others. He sees his direction is false and predicated on illusions. Gawain, like most, is terrified to die, after all, he embarked on this journey in order to be remembered past his death. In the final moments of the film, in a whirlwind of a flash forward, we see a possible future for Gawain in which he rises to power yet faces great suffering, only still to die in the end. The point seems to be that it matters not how great your empire or your name. No matter what, eventually, the green will beat you and every memory of you. You can fight it, but you will never win, it just isn’t possible. Gawain seems to grasp this in his final moments and steadfastly accepts his own death. It should be further mentioned that this is not a bad thing, in fact it can be an excellent motivator to live an honestly fulfilled life. The questions and ideas posed in these themes are faced by many every day in the modern world. Overall, The Green Knight takes great elemental risks in terms of story, production, and thematic representation with mind-blowing and entertaining success; something rare even in films nominated for Academy Awards – which makes The Green Knight one of the year’s most underrated movies.
