Here is the review of one of the best films of the year, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a masterpiece of cinema on the Arthurian cycle.
Maybe from the days of Excalibur by John Boorman from 1981 (loosely based on Arthur’s death by Malory) there was no adaptation that could balance poetic license to fidelity with such mastery with the reference work. Because, it is clear, the differences from the homonymous novel (by an anonymous author and dating back to the late 1300s) are significant. And director David Lowery, former author of the excellent The Old Man and the Gun (2018), makes no secret of it.
For those who had only seen the trailer, already the Indian Dev Patel in the role of the protagonist Gawain sounds like an a priori warning that this choice will be a free adaptation for the cinema of one of the most famous tales about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
On a winter night …
The film begins following the original story: in a dirty, cold, sick Camelot, light years away from the typical romantic representations, Christmas is celebrated. Gawain sits to the right of King Arthur (Sean Harris) certainly not for merits of valor and honor but, in a first significant difference from the original, as the son of the witch Morgana (Sarita Choudury). Gawain is in fact far from the Arthurian hero ideal we are used to: lazy, indolent and vain, he even wakes up on Christmas morning in a brothel with his lover Esser (Alicia Vikander). In short, he sits at the table more for nepotism than for chivalrous qualities, he has no noble deeds to tell. Not yet at least, as Aunt Ginevra (Kate Dickie) insists.
In fact, not even on purpose, here comes the ghostly and arboreal Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) – created by Morgana so that her son can prove his worth – who proposes a Christmas game to Arthur: he will welcome any blow from him it will be given to him on condition that it can be repaid after a year and a half. Knowing the king’s life is too important and wanting to prove himself, Gawain accepts the challenge in place of his uncle and with the sword beheads the Knight, sure that the blow will be fatal to the opponent. But, surprisingly, the ghost gets up and, with his head in his hands, invites the young man to respect his word: after a year and a day he will have to join him in the Green Chapel and suffer the blow of his opponent, even if this will mean certain death for him. A year passes and Gawain, with the blessing of his uncle and mother, leaves for the journey agreed with the Green Knight who will test the strength of his character, his vision of the world and his honor as a knight.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stories from the past …
… Stories of the present. As a poem and exemplary foundation myth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells the importance of accepting one’s own imperfections and weaknesses, but still aspiring to something more from oneself. In the wake of this moral, Lowery builds a film that has the tenor of elevated horror so popular today (it is no coincidence that the film is a production A24) and which explores themes such as masculinity, the real importance of an inheritance and the vanity of knightly principles.
Enchanting production values frame a story that is perpetually in balance between past and present, in which the director exasperates all the elements and symbols of the original novel by making them his own. While the differences from the original are significant, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight never loses sight of his purpose: to tell a story from a distant past that resonates in harmony with the needs and doubts of the present.
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