Did you love or loathe ‘The Green Knight’? Either way, you’re not alone
“The Green Knight,” David Lowery’s beautiful, sometimes baffling medieval epic starring Dev Patel, has inspired equally passionate acclaim and dissent from critics and audiences. Los Angeles Times film writers Mark Olsen, Justin Chang and Jen Yamato sat down to discuss their lingering reactions to the film; how it echoes and deviates from its source material, the 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”; and what it all means, if it means anything at all.
(Spoiler alert: This conversation discusses major plot details from the movie, including the ending.)
MARK OLSEN: “The Green Knight” opens on titles announcing that the film is an adaptation of the chivalric romance by Anonymous. From the start there’s something unknowable, handed down through the centuries. More titles announce the name of the lead character “Sir Gawain” in different lettering, pointing to the idea there is more than one way to tell a story. Then the film truly begins, having set the stage for all the beguiling, mystical, perplexing business to follow.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying I kind of didn’t get it. I am not an Arthurian scholar and not particularly familiar with the original story, but I don’t think that’s it. Writer-director David Lowery and star Dev Patel present a young man attempting to find his way, fearful that he has nothing to offer the world: Gawain, wastrel nephew of King Arthur and not yet a knight, impulsively accepts a challenge from the Green Knight and perhaps assigns himself to death. Traveling to a remote location to uphold his end of the bargain, he finds inner resolve, purpose and grace he did not know
