#I mean sort of but really it’s just me going Lowery hold my beer I can do it better

[queer-ragnelle]

Shout out to my lovely coworker who messaged me asking my opinion of The Green Knight (2021) and then apologized if it offended me, but they think Gawain sucks. Out here reducing people’s regard for me by doubling down, “Yeah, he really does!” and liking a movie with what I consider to be a mediocre manuscript, if shot well and with a nice score.

Meh opinions about director/writer David Lowery’s baffling writing choices below.

But for real my coworker was just so confused by it all and honestly Lowery could’ve stood to explain obscure historical nuances a little more. And by that I mean literally at all. The significance of beheadings, codes of honor, superstition about foxes, the legends of giants; these aren’t common knowledge to modern American viewers. My coworker had no idea why Gawain would stand up and behead the Green Knight or how Saint Winifred mattered, or why Gawain would throw a rock at the fox in the cave, or plead with the giants and then cower in fear. How would they? No cultural baseline is ever established. And of course, not every movie is for every viewer. But The Green Knight certainly didn’t resonate with medievalists and enthusiasts as much as it could have while confusing and alienating everyone else.

I dunno, having adapted the poem myself, there’s a balance to be found. Somewhere between insulting your audience’s intelligence with blatant narrative pauses to expound upon details and providing literally zero worldbuilding so that even people who read the poem have to sit back and question what they watched. Because it’s not a one to one adaptation, there’s an expectation the narrative will organically define the rules of the universe, and show us the confines of our hero’s skills, understanding, and limitations within that universe.

Shouldn’t Morgan have warned Gawain about dangers and counsel him on etiquette while giving him the girdle? Why didn’t Gawain converse with someone at the pub about the threats outside the kingdom? Couldn’t Arthur have given him an interesting anecdote that foreshadows what’s to come? Merlin is worse than a macguffin, just a wasted narrative tool that could’ve guided Gawain or even reminisced with Arthur about some history, but instead he has no dialogue at all. He just nods when the Green Knight enters and serves as a paternity test in the flash-forward. I wonder how Essel’s bell motif could’ve been extrapolated on. Maybe she gives it to Gawain with a warning about foxes or the threat of bandits or even doppelgängers! Why not give her a cutesy nursery rhyme to sing about the outside world while the year wheel rotates and rotates?

It would’ve been perfectly in character for Gawain to ignore all of this only to meet his comeuppance while providing the audience with necessary context. There was so much time spent on wide shots of Ireland that could’ve been used more effectively or even in conjunction with voice over flashbacks. The creators went through the trouble to cast children to play Gawain’s future offspring, why not use them in flashbacks as a representation of his past self as he reconsiders his rash skeptic’s stance? Even continue the doppelgänger motif? But alas! I’m critical because I liked it and wanted to like it more and because it’s a recent and accessible Gawain-related media several people have watched and come to me about. They thought we could bond over it. Except so far, nobody has liked it…haha!