{"id":9838,"date":"2024-12-10T18:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T23:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9838"},"modified":"2024-12-10T18:00:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T23:00:39","slug":"the-green-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/the-green-knight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Knight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Green Knight <\/strong>(2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Fantasy-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 130 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, some sexuality, graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Lowery\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Lowery\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Daniel Hart\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Droz Palermo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 30, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Barry Keoghan, Emilie Hetland, Anthony Morris, Erin Kellyman, Helena Browne, Ralph Ineson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $17.1M (US)\/$18.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0How shall I put this? It takes over 11 hours to watch all three extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Green Knight<\/strong> runs only two hours and ten minutes, yet still feels longer than the LOTR trilogy. Written and directed by David Lowery (A Ghost Story), it\u2019s a dull slog of a medieval adventure that\u2019s never as compelling as it should be. My own struggle to stay awake felt more urgent than any challenge faced by the hero on his journey towards fate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on the 14th<\/sup> century poem \u201cSir Gawain and the Green Knight\u201d, it\u2019s fourth time a film adaptation has been attempted. One of them, the 1984 Golan-Globus production Sword of the Valiant, I watched the day before I saw The Green Knight<\/strong>. Bad as it is, I like it better than the latest version. At least it\u2019s entertainingly bad. It has to be with Miles O\u2019Keefe in the lead. I could say The Green Knight <\/strong>is just plain bad, but it wouldn\u2019t be fair or accurate. It\u2019s not all bad. At times, one can see traces of the fascinating film it could have been. Lowery\u2019s visual sense, especially his use of nature and natural surroundings, is tremendous. The rest is a bore.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) stars as Gawain, an irresponsible youth about to face the greatest challenge of his life. It\u2019s Christmas and he\u2019s been invited to sit next to his uncle, King Arthur (Harris, Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation), at the holiday feast. Suddenly, an imposing figure on horseback bursts through the doors. It\u2019s the Green Knight (Ineson, The Witch) and he wants to play a \u201cgame\u201d. He invites any one of the king\u2019s knights to come forward and try to land a blow with his own axe. There\u2019s a catch. The knight will have to travel to the Green Chapel in a year\u2019s time so the Green Knight can deliver an identical blow with the axe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gawain, in an attempt to prove his mettle to his uncle, accepts the challenge and lops off The Green Knight\u2019s head. The headless figure grabs his head and rides off laughing. A year later, a still immature Gawain rides out of Camelot to uphold his end of the deal after some urging from his uncle. He has encounters with thieves, giants and a ghostly woman before arriving at the castle of a lord (Edgerton, Midnight Special) and lady (Vikander, The Danish Girl) who give him a place to rest before his date with the Green Knight.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t consider myself a shallow person. I pride myself in (usually) understanding the intentions of filmmakers. I love it when they go deep and play with viewers\u2019 perceptions. I enjoy weird movies as evidenced by my appreciation of David Lynch (Eraserhead) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo). I hate to say it, but The Green Knight <\/strong>is too weird for even me. It has this hallucinogenic quality that gradually feels more like a drug-induced stupor. I sat there thinking I was missing something. It finally dawned on me that Lowery is the one that missed. He seems to know what he wants to do with his interpretation of the poem, but fails to connect with the audience. It\u2019s so boring that it just feels pointless after a while. I let my mind wander a few times and never felt like I missed anything important.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s too bad The Green Knight<\/strong> is such a crushing disappointment; it has a few good points that only end up serving as a reminder of the film\u2019s wasted potential. The visuals, brought to brilliant life by Andrew Droz Palermo (A Ghost Story), are stunning. The woods never looked so beautiful and threatening at the same time. Patel does a fine job as Gawain who can\u2019t really be described as heroic. He\u2019s one of those young, entitled sorts ill-prepared for the real world. Not only that, it\u2019s suggested at the end his future self is no prize either. Sarita Choudhury (Mississippi Masala) is also good as Gawain\u2019s mother, Arthur\u2019s half-sister Morgan Le Fay, a witch who summons the Green Knight in order to force her son finally grow up. The rest of the acting is fine albeit unremarkable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It isn\u2019t just the pacing that kills The Green Knight<\/strong>, it\u2019s also all the talking. When the characters stop to talk to each other, it stops the film dead. Not only that, it\u2019s hard to understand what they\u2019re saying. I don\u2019t know if it was filmed this way or it\u2019s the theater\u2019s sound system, but it was muffled. What I did hear didn\u2019t make a lot of sense either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, I just didn\u2019t like The Green Knight<\/strong>. I did admire it though. It\u2019s more unusual than it is interesting. I also respect Lowery for consciously not making a mainstream Hollywood movie. It just didn\u2019t connect with me. I\u2019m willing to give it another chance at some point.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Green Knight (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Fantasy-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 130 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, some sexuality, graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Lowery\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Lowery\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Daniel Hart\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Droz Palermo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 30, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Barry Keoghan, Emilie Hetland, Anthony Morris, Erin Kellyman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Green-Knight-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10103,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions\/10103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}