Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
It was Julian Epiphany the other day. Our 7th of January is the 25th December for our medieval predecessors, when they celebrated Christmas -- some Orthdox still do -- and between then and now is what I think of as deep winter. Though darkest days have made their descent, and are now climbing back up the heavens like Persephone, we are couched in winter cold on both sides. It feels like it has always been winter. Always winter, never Christmas. Not Christmas, yet winter. A time I've traditionally turned my mind from the early winter thoughts of Bethlehem and magi to holly, ivy, and Yule. I burn a pine-scented candle; I listen to my Scandinavian folk music; and I think about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
I have been in love with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight since I first encountered it as an undergrad. It includes so much of what I find good, true, and beautiful: from its alliterative Middle English style, to its Christian themes, to the Arthurian court steeped in the Matter of Britain. The story itself takes place near my own home, just a county east of me in north Wales. In his journeying, Gawain passes near Saint Winifred's well, to which I have made pilgrimage. It is a meaningful work for me in many ways.
The trailers for David Lowery's new film starring Dev Patel looked promising: stunning set pieces, rich in symbol, beautifully cast. The Green Knight is not only green-colored, he is growth itself. The King and Queen are haloed as Byzantine emperors of old. It's a film that shows a reverence and affection for the source material, even while misunderstanding it from the medieval Catholic perspective.
It befits a mythos from many cultures' traditions that The Green Knight is altered and personalized, made meaningful for the age in which it is being told, and for the one who tells the story. It gets one thing very, very right from the get-go. The tension of man versus nature. Sir Gawain is battered by the elements. Most questing knights encounter distressed damsels, fairy fortresses, and dark foes seeking duels. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain's peril for a large part of the narrative is the changing weather.
Here be spoilers
In The Green Knight film, Gawain is not yet a knight. In fact, he is far from the virtuous English hero of old, and we open to a foolish, irreverent young man in a brothel on Christmas morning. The film synthesizes Morgause and Morgan le Fey into a single woman known as "Mother." While Gawain attends the Christmas festivities, she retreats to a tower with her ladies -- fellow enchantresses -- who summon the Green Knight with a spell. It is unclear whether or not Mother has created the Green Knight or whether she has tapped into a dormant nature-power, because she herself writes the letter that is then proferred by the Green Knight to the King to explain his errand. The Queen takes the letter from the King (neither Arthur nor Guinevere are listed by name in the end credits), who breaks the seal and reads the letter in a possessed voice while her eyes glow green. It is unclear, again, if this is an affect of the letter or if the Queen is also an enchantress. Meanwhile in the tower, Mother wears a blindfold throughout the encounter, as though she is viewing the events through the eyes of the Knight himself. Is she the Knight? Does she control him somehow? This is one of a number of times the symbols take over the story, which I find poignant but failing on a narrative level.
What follows is a version of the beheading game. Gawain, who wishes to be a knight, has something to prove. His uncle the King asks him for a tale about himself, and he has none to tell. So Gawain takes up the challenge, and the King gives him his own sword. The light reflecting off of the blade (Excalibur?) is nothing less than breathtaking. The Green Knight is beautifully presented, bringing to surface aspects of the tradition which in the poem are only hinted at. He is not only green, but the Green Man; a plant-person hybrid, with bark-covered features and the face of an Ent.
Gawain wiles away a year with drinking and revelry, until his King uncle confronts him at his Mother's house where he lives and encourages him to seek out the Green Knight and to finish the game. Gawain is reluctant, but he bids his lover Essel goodbye without making a commitment, and sets out into the wild. The sense of the elements as enemy is portrayed very well here. The first encounter with adventure is a band of thieves in the woods, who rob Gawain and leave him for dead. There is a stunningly shot scene showing the unraveling of the seasons, the dual-face of nature, creeping back with its power of growth and decay. As the woods green in summer, Gawain's carcass is stripped bare by flies. The camera pans back in the other direction, and we see the moment Gawain rejects that outcome and fights back.
Wandering in the woods, he comes to an empty house and an empty bed, where he is woken by a ghostly woman who asks him to jump into the spring to fetch her head. This young woman is Saint Winifred. Before diving into the water, Gawain asks Winifred what she will give him in return. She replies abruptly, "Why would you ask me that?" and Gawain, chastened, does her bidding. He returns her skull to the bones lying at rest in the no-longer-empty bed. In the house waits the Green Knight's ax, stolen by the robbers.
A fox joins Gawain on his journey, and after trying to drive him away, Gawain allows the creature to travel with him. There is an epic scene in which the two come across a caravan of migrating giants. Gawain asks for a ride, and a giantess reaches for him; but whether well-meaning or not, the fox intervenes and warns the giantess away with a bark.
(Throughout, the Christian meditations on the pentagram, knightly virtues, and the Blessed Mother are completely absent. Even the shield bearing Mary's image is smashed and discarded early on.)
At last Gawain reaches a castle, where he is greeted by the Lord and two Ladies: one of them, the wife of the Lord played by the same actress as Gawain's lover, and the other an old, blind-folded woman, suggesting some association with Mother and her enchantresses. The exchange of winnings game happens but once, and the belt gifted by the Lady of the castle is the same as the one given by Mother before the bandits stole it. All of Gawain's necessary items have come back to him. But is it chance or magic? In the poem, we are told that Sir Bertilak's wife was "in on it." We got no such clarity in the film.
The concept of courtly love is absent, and there is no reason for Gawain's honor to be at stake if he turns away the Lady. The fact that he does not is glaring weakness; but it is not inconsistent with Gawain's portrayal in the film. Gawain and the Lady engage in some nonspecific sex act which puts them squarely into the sin of adultery. The Lady provides the green girdle, and Gawain, ashamed, runs out of the castle early to make his appointment at the Green Chapel. He is stopped once by the Lord, who shows him his kill and hints at knowing what has gone on. The Lord gives Gawain a kiss, and the film leans heavily into the homoeroticism. Gawain rejects him sternly and walks on. But not before the Lord throws Gawain's fox companion at him from out of a bag.
The fox speaks out of nowhere, warning Gawain to turn back and go home, but Gawain shouts down the fox and presses on. At the Green Chapel, he waits while the Green Knight wakes from hibernation. He brings the Knight his ax, and the Knight starts the beheading game. As in the poem, Gawain flinches twice. But his cowardice gets the better of him, and before the third blow, Gawain arises, apologizes, and runs away off home.
What follows is a vision of the future that awaits Gawain if he does not go through with the game. He returns to the King, who makes him his heir. Gawain reigns in misery, breaking with Hessel, losing his eldest son to war, becoming estranged from his young queen, and finally witnessing the kingdom decay and collapse around him. Gawain snaps back to the present, and tells the Green Knight to make his blow.
The Green Knight caresses Gawain's face with tenderness, telling him he has done well, and gets ready to chop. The film ends.
Losing its religion
I like the ambiguity of the closing shot, the ax poised to fall on Gawain. He has at last risen to the occasion, after a brutal struggle toward honor. The Green Knight is a psychological story; the coming of age of a young man who learns how to keep his word, and who decides that a life without integrity is worth less than death. The challenge (the entire plot) seems conjured, literally and figuratively, by his mother in order to give him the shove he needs into manhood. I feel the side quests are meant to press Gawain's failings: he is cheap and naive with the bandits, selfish with Saint Winifred, and lazy with the giants. The last failing, of course, is the love of his life over honesty. The Lady tells him after he takes the enchanted belt that he is not the worthy knight she thought him.
Unfortunately, like most psychology-driven films, it leaves large narrative holes. Motivations are undisclosed and indiscernible. The side quests before the Green Chapel are a string of unrelated events. Especially as this film chooses to make the Green Knight and the Lord (Bertilak?) two different people. What is the reason for the remarkable similarity between Gawain's lover and the Lord's wife? Who is the old blindfolded woman, and why is she there? Why does the bandit say he will finish Gawain's quest for him? He runs off with the ax and then it appears again after the St. Winifred incident with no explanation. St. Winifred tells Gawain the Green Knight is someone he knows -- are we meant to surmise that the Green Knight is Gawain's mother? What's up with the random giants? And what about the fox? Are these events even real, or just the fevered dreams of one wandering and starved in the wilderness? In an otherwise polished and extremely thoughtful film, it comes off sloppy.
The theology of the original poem is missing, and for those familiar with it, its lack is glaring. Christianity is rendered an impotent, man-made religion compared to that power which conjures the Green Knight -- highlighted in the juxtaposition of the scenes wherein the King's priests bless Gawain's shield, while Gawain's mother makes the enchanted girdle. The Gawain of the film is irreligious, whereas Sir Gawain is pious, seeking out Mass for Christmas and each day following until his appointment in the Green Chapel. Sir Gawain even avails himself of the sacrament of confession! It's the tired old stereotype of paganism versus Christianity, an idea which would have befuddled a medieval audience. The failure of Arthur's kingdom is par for the course, and, as any medieval historian would tell, a clear indication of infidelity to God. The scar left on Sir Gawain by the Green Knight is a gentle yet permanent reminder of his unworthiness. Sir Gawain wears the girdle as additional penance; it is a damning indication of the court's hubris that they misconstrue the girdle as a fashionable accessory.
The Green Knight is a film that needs watching more than once. It stands better as an art film than a narrative one, and like a poem, its meaning will deepen with repeated viewings. I found the soundtrack evocative and powerful, but the dialogue threw me off. I couldn't tell if it were going for old-timey language or if it was just stilted. There was a clip in the famous bedroom scene that I could have done without (you'll know it when you see it). The mother-son relationship dominates. Men are weak in this film, bandied about by women pulling strings behind the scenes. Is Gawain truly his own man in the end, or has it all unfolded according to the machinations and magic of his mother?
I liked it; I like that Gawain is flawed and that he puts off the belt at the end, even while I disagree with the implications that civilization is corrupt and nature superior. It is a beautiful example of how the old stories shape-shift, renewing themselves with each generation. The Green Knight is a deeply meditative film about virtue, human nature, and that enemy of Ozymandias, time itself.
