Review of The Green Knight (2021) by Strumbore — 02 Aug 2021

I was looking forward to this, but much like the protagonist, the closer the date came, the more dread I felt. Some people are saying the movie was hard to understand...it isn't. Remember "Excalibur"? How Arthur *literally* was the land? Well, in this movie, Gawain *figuratively* is mankind. I dare anyone to say that doesn't make sense. The problem for me is where the director sees mankind headed--or rather, his sloppy indecision about whether or not Gawain will be headed.

I like cynical movies, cynical games...big Souls-like fan, here. But what this movie did was take what was arguably a hopeful allegory for humankind's potential for redemption and turn it into a prophecy of humankind's self-annihilation. This isn't exactly a twist in the movie; it's obvious where the film is headed, so you're really just wondering if our hero can turn it around before he reaches the end of his journey. The fact that he doesn't is foreshadowed before he gets there: The book-transcribing wife of the wealthy lord near the end of the movie 'confesses' to our hero that where she sees possible improvements in a book she is duplicating for her collection, she 'makes them'. This is just what the writer/director has attempted to do. And the cynical side of me says this was the only 'modern', 'intellectual' interpretation that makes sense. There is a fitting symmetry between this movie's prophecy and the hopelessness we feel about society. Edgar Allen Poe should be jealous.

That would have been enough to get the film 7 stars, for being smart but predictable. What knocks it down to 6 is that this ending is revealed to be the miserable outlook of our hero torn between honorably meeting his end and running back home. It seems as though a test audience secured an honorable (and abrupt) end for Gawain's journey after all. So, facing his inevitable destruction with no tricks up our hero's sleeve, this miserable movie ends...on a joke. Like an episode of Seinfeld. I'm very sure that in the coming weeks we will hear that there was some indecision about how to end the movie and this ending is basically the equivalent of Harrison Ford mumbling his voice over through Blade Runner.

"Support the arts" and all that **** but you should just see this movie at home, through a streaming service with a diverse production portfolio, and probably not right before bed or bath, in case the ugliness of the 'true ending' moves you to suicide.