Review: 'The Green Knight' an incoherent dreamy mess, or, a critic's wet dream

A24, 2021.

Never in all my years as a film critic have I been so confident that the general public will despise a film as much as I predict they will despise "The Green Knight."

It's an incoherent mood piece, a jumble of themes and ideas that never coagulates into anything of substance...its repetitive score and desaturated motif is dripping with style but nothing else. In other words, it's the perfect vessel for film critics to laud as "high art," despite a guarantee that 99% of them who fancy themselves able to derive meaning from such sludge will also have no idea in hell as to what they just watched. It is...different...that's for sure, so it's applauded for its non-conformity.

Well I somewhat courageously declare that "The Green Knight" is cinema without soul. The best that it has to offer, I guess, is that it does at least answer that age old question: What does the fox say?  

Grade: C-

Based on a 14th-century poem set in the times of the fictional King Arthur, the movie adapts the tale of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Since it was a poem, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation from it's co-writer and director, David Lowery ("A Ghost Story"). Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) is King Arthur's (Sean Harris) nephew, an unproven young man who we first find recovering from a wild night in the castle. But a mystical creature known as The Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) appears before the Round Table on Christmas Day with a bit of a challenge: Someone gets to strike him, but in return that person in one year's time must seek out The Green Knight at the far-away Green Chapel, where the Green Knight will return whatever blow was dealt. Sir Gawain, an empty vessel himself (much like the film he's in) volunteers and lobs off the creature's head. The Knight's body calmly picks up his head and effectively bids farewell.

Gawain's fate being sealed, we fast-forward a year where it comes time for Gawain to venture out in search of the Green Chapel, leaving his poor but loving girlfriend, Essel (Alicia Vikander) and his witchy mother (Sarita Choudhury) behind. In his travels, he confronts a vagrant thief (Barry Keoghan), a talking fox that follows him around, and some naked giants out for a stroll across the foggy countryside. He ends up meeting a Lord (Joel Edgerton) and his Lady, who also happens to be played by Alicia Vikander.

All the props in the world go to the cast, especially Patel, who give themselves fully to the film. Patel commits to his role as a "green" knight himself, but is mostly tasked with scowling or stumbling around aimlessly. No one except Gawain is even named as a character, but we see the usual Arthurian suspects like Merlin (Emmet O'Brien), King Arthur himself and his wife, Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie). The portrayal of Arthur as sickly and a bit demented is perhaps the most interesting spin Lowery comes up with, but we're stuck with Gawain for this adventure. With no fault awarded to Patel, Gawain is as one-note as the poem his journey is based on.

But the cast is not able to raise "The Green Knight" from the muck and the mire, and while at its core the film follows a familiar trajectory (a man is on a quest to reach something, and he learns about himself along the way), Lowery fills it needlessly and endlessly with abstract imagery that might appeal to religious scholars (or film critics) but that will leave most movie-goers scratching their heads, or at best, utterly bored. Where some are seeing magic, "The Green Knight" for me is all smoke and mirrors, a movie that desperately wants to breathe life into a story that hasn't been adapted for seven centuries, and with reason.

There is an emptiness to it all that the film never quite fills. And to be clear, I'm not asking for this - or any - film to spoon-feed its audience, but there has to at least be something served on the table. "The Green Knight" is a swirl of dullness, a movie that exists as a metaphor for something that the filmmaker appears to be keeping from us. It's not nearly as interesting as it thinks it is, or wants us to believe.

"The Green Knight" feels like it was made with the worst tendencies of a Terrance Malick film, edited by Jean Luc-Godard from a screenplay by Gaspar Noé. And if you understood these references, then you will absolutely love the "The Green Knight."

By the way, there is nothing wrong with Malick, Luc-Godard or Noé if these Avant-Garde auteurs are your precise cups of tea, but let's stop pretending that "The Green Knight" is accessible or should be recommended to most movie-goers. To not "get" the movie doesn't make the viewers stupid...but by the same token it definitely doesn't make "The Green Knight" smart.

So what does the fox say? As it turns out, nothing worthy of repeating.

Grade: C-

Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy.
Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes.
Rated R.

Starring: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Ralph Ineson, Barry Keoghan, Emmet O'Brien.

Adapted for the screen and directed by David Lowery ("The Old Man & The Gun," "A Ghost Story," "Pete's Dragon (2016)," "Ain't Them Bodies Saints").

"The Green Knight" is in theaters on Friday, July 30th, 2021.