Despite its slow pacing and esoteric storytelling, The Green Knight is doing surprisingly well at the box office because it reimagines the way audiences explore the legends of King Arthur. Though the movie doesn't follow Arthur's exploits himself, it explores his legacy and the impact that his adventures have on the people who witnessed them secondhand, specifically Sir Gaiwan, Arthur's young nephew. Sir Gaiwan is young and brash, with a desire for glory; the same ionate drive that his uncle had in his youth.
By accepting a dangerous game offered to him by a mysterious Green Knight, Gaiwan is sent on a quest that takes him well past the gates of Camelot and into the danger posed by the uncharted world. The original epic poem alludes to several battles that Gaiwan experiences, but for the most part, it's a singular journey, and David Lowrey's film focuses on the introspective nature of his quest. Sir Gaiwan's conflict doesn't come at the hands of an evil witch or bastard son; the Green Knight's test exposes his flaws and questions whether or not he's truly an honest and good man.
While The Green Knight is slowly paced like many of A24's arthouse films, it's also stunningly shot and makes some minor changes to the source material. These deviations and flourishes give the movie a surrealist quality and subtly provides an opportunity for filmmaking to change the way stories are told about King Arthur.
The Green Knight Uses An Earlier Time Period
Despite the fact that there is no "one true canon" in regards to Arthurian legend, many of the earliest texts depict Arthur as a powerful king during the 5th and 6th centuries, staving off a Saxon invasion of Britain. These events make up the Matter of Britain; an almost holy nationalistic interpretation of British history supplemented by Welsh and general European mythology and folklore. Many adaptations of King Arthur's legend update the mythos to bring his adventures closer to the middle/end of the Medieval Era - sometimes this is to avoid the intersection of pagan and Christian conflict, other times it's done because general audiences are more familiar with fantasy tropes that are presented in a version of the world stuck in the 12th century.
However, not only is setting The Green Knight during the late 5th century more accurate to the original stories, but it actually allows filmmakers to dig into the historical context of the battle between paganism and Christianity as well. Arthur is an interesting character within literature; despite his conflict with his witch sister Morgan le Fay (Sir Gaiwan's mother), his victories are aided by Merlin's pagan witchcraft, but he's frequently deified and exalted in the same way as a Christian saint. This clash of cultural ideas makes up a huge part of the cultural atmosphere surrounding Arthurian legend and to shy away from that is to willingly shun a massive part of what makes the mythos so compelling.
The Green Knight Focuses On A Proper Hero's Journey
Another creative decision made by many filmed adaptations of Arthurian legend is an emphasis on action and large-scale battles. Audiences have seen many times that the fantasy genre can be an untapped canvas for creative action sequences, such as the Battle of the Bastards in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which combines Guy Ritchie's inventive sensibilities as an action director with a fast-and-loose retelling of the mythos.
David Lowrey chose to take a different route with The Green Knight, with Gaiwan's story being a mostly inward exploration of the hero's journey. Many stories use the idea of the hero's journey as a guideline to move a character from one action sequence to the next, with minimal character growth in between. But what does it mean to seek out a quest for the promise of glory? Sir Gaiwan wants to be a hero of legendary status like his uncle, without actually forging a moral fiber to get there. Is it the quest that makes the man, or the man that makes the quest? By the end of the movie, Sir Gaiwan becomes a hero, but not because he fights the Green Knight in glorious combat - but because he sticks by his moral convictions and chooses to honor his word. In the world crafted by Lowrey and inhabited by Dev Patel, what makes a hero isn't the number of battles he's won or the number of enemies he's slain, but courage and honor.
The Green Knight Sticks To The Original Poem
If there's anything that links together the reasons why The Green Knight feels so unique as an adaptation, it can be summed up in one simple concept: it sticks closely to the source material. Because of the disconnected nature of original Arthurian legend, many storytellers decide to bring their own spin on King Arthur's adventures in order to etch their name on a legacy that has lasted for centuries. And many times it works - in literature (The Once and Future King), in television (BBC's Merlin), and even in King Arthur-inspired comic books (the cyberpunk-inspired Camelot 3000 and the meta-textual Once and Future). Because of this kind of personalized storytelling, Arthur's influence as a character extend far beyond the original historical era in which he was "birthed."
But after decades of reimaginings and retellings, it's certainly refreshing to see a filmmaker craft such a bold cinematic experience based off of the barebones structure of the original story. While there are certain differences between The Green Knight and the poem, for the most part, the film is a 1-to-1 adaptation of Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight, and because so much of the heavy lifting has already been done by the poem's anonymous writer, Lowrey was able to focus on crafting a larger-than-life atmosphere, supplemented by an incredible score and some truly breathtaking cinematography. Sometimes you can't get any better than the original, and The Green Knight wouldn't be as universal of a story as it is if it didn't pay homage to what came before.
