Ryan Coleman

The Green Knight's nightmarish nonsensicality, and why that makes it a movie worth watching; The film-making industry is defined by tropes. Blockbusters are formulaic, TV shows are mimicry. Many went into The Green Knight expecting a hero's journey, a story about a fool coming to grips with concepts like honor, virtue, and eventually learns to uphold a strict and unforgiving responsibility; this is not that movie. Amidst the fever-dream sequence of dazzling scenes (the clarity of the beautiful cinematography is contrasted by baffling fantastic creatures and scenarios, all which are presented to the viewer unapologetically, as if familiar, leaving you barraged by almost aggressive unfamiliarity in every scene) there is a statement about characters, heroes, and humans. Gawain is human, and humans are not legendary. We follow Gawain in a world which seems difficult to understand. Occasionally, amidst the madness, a trope rears its head, and the film leads you on with the bait to believe you're going to find some relief and comfort in 'the usual'—before brutally disabusing you of it. Every step of the way, we cannot help but feel Gawain is mistaken; from his very first scene, he is shown as anything but chaste, honorable, and virtuous. Yet this story is a pursuit of honor, not, as he eventually recognizes himself, for honor's sake, but because it is necessary to be a legendary knight worthy of the mythical contemporaries of the Round Table. The result is a strangely realist take on human aspirations and vulnerability, when paired with the jarring sequence of chaotic scenes and mythological fairy-tale aspects that seem to urge you to dismiss the idea that the film is as nihilistic about honor and ambition as it begins to seem. On his journey, you see a descent, not an ascent; the ethical dilemmas the original story presents Gawain are misshapen here, and are presented as a vulnerable boy succumbing to all sorts of depravities and challenges which he, for the most part, fails. By the end of it, the question of honor was found to be fundamental to his journey. The movie is left on a cliff-hanger—not to leave you in suspense, but to answer the question. Is virtue for purpose virtuous? Gawain did not know whether he'd survive his journey, and the honorable approach left him as vulnerable as any frail mortal, forcing him to face the music and meet his destiny; if they told you what happened at the end, it would defeat the point of the moral question.

Where it thrives on nostalgia, callbacks to the original trilogy and desperate attempts to close the gaping plot holes of the previous film, it falters in providing closure in all but visual and emotional.