THE GREEN KNIGHT

Dev Patel     Alicia Vikander     Joel Edgerton     Ralph Ineson

Sarita Choudhury     Sean Harris     Kate Dickie

 

            Based on a poem written in the 14^th Century by an unknown author, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been an intriguing story ever since.  Writer/director David Lowery in the third retelling of it in film enhances its mysteriousness by making the screen very dark, by accompanying it with choral music rendered in Middle Ages verse (with accents of dissonant modern music) composed by frequent Lowery collaborator Daniel Hart; and by a heavy dose of symbolism.

            It helps in understanding this film if one has read the poem and is familiar with the story.  I had not, so was mystified during many scenes until afterwards, when a colleague referred me to the myth.

            We meet Sir Gawain as a modest, committed knight so unassuming that he has to be ordered by King Arthur to sit by him and the queen.  When King Arthur requests that he tell a tale about himself so the King will know him, Gawain forthrightly demures, saying that he has no tale.  Soon after, the King is visited by a mysterious figure (who looks like a tree dressed up as a man) who presents his challenge to any of King Arthur’s knights.  The knight, the Green Knight (Ineson) dares any of those present to strike the Green Knight with his own axe, with the agreement that one year and one day later, the knight must find the Green Knight and allow him to strike the same blow as he had dealt to the Green Knight the year before.  No one answers but Sir Gawain who takes up the challenge, with plans to revisit the Green Knight on Christmas Day the following year.

            Close to the appointed day, Gawain sets off on the journey to honor his pledge.  Of course, along the way, he will encounter many travails and tests of his strength and commitment.  Among them are bandits who steal his horse, his sword, and a sash his mother gave him to keep him safe, then they tied him up and left him to rot.  He encounters a woman who literally lost her head, which is at the bottom of a spring.  (This is only part of the magic sprinkled in throughout the story; that is, she is talking to him with her head attached, but still wants to retrieve her head).  He also meets a Lord (Edgerton) and his Lady (Vikander plays two roles, this one and the woman he is in love with at home).  The Lord proposes a bargain (a theme in the tale) wherein he will bring Gawain all the spoils of his daily hunts, and Gawain is to give to the Lord what he gained during the day.

            After much of what Gawain lost during his travails is restored, often magically, he finally arrives at the Green Knight’s home, ready to honor his pledge.

            Although well done in many respects, The Green Knight will appeal primarily to those interested in fantasy and in literature of days gone by.  I found the dark screen and often unintelligible dialog and choral words tedious, despite my interest in the story.  A confusing aspect added by Lowery is that Gawain’s mother gives him a sash for protection before he leaves on his journey, and his local love Esse gives him a ring.  On his journey when he meets the Lord’s lady (also played by Vikander) she as well gives him these two items.

Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, and Ralph Ineson are superb in their roles, always a joy to watch.

 

Better read some background on this story so as to derive full benefit of its entertainment value.

 

Grade:   B                                                  By Donna R. Copeland

THE WITCH

Anya Taylor-Joy     Ralph Ineson     Kate Dickie     Harvey Scrimshaw     Ellie Grainger     lucas Dawson

             The Witch is a horror film par excellence.  Beginning with the dirge-like cello music that gradually transitions into dissonant screeching of the violins, the opening scenes are ones of dispute in which a family is essentially driven from a shared plantation sometime in the 1600s in New England.  They go willingly, holding to their principles, and have smugly pleased faces when they come upon what will be their own place, a verdant field next to a forest with a stream.  And suddenly a house and barn, crops, and domestic animals appear, and it seems that all will be well.

      William (Ineson) and Kate (Dickie) have five children, Thomasin (Taylor-Joy), Caleb (Scrimshaw), Mercy (Grainger), Jonas (Dawson), and the baby Sam.  They all seem to pitch in with chores, although Mercy and Jonas (twins) clearly favor playing, dancing, singing, and horseplay to work.  Both Thomasin and Caleb are serious, thoughtful children who take their parents’ religion seriously.  It’s a fundamentalist type of belief, in which they must always be praying to have their sins forgiven.  Guilt is rife in the parents who frequently attribute negative occurrences to God’s testing their faith and punishing them for sins, and the two older children have internalized these lessons all too well.

       The forest has a mystical, ghostly appearance to the family, especially to the mother, but of course it is seductive, and several family members cannot withstand its temptation.  This is especially poignant, since Sam suddenly disappears one day, never to be seen again, and it is assumed that a “wolf” has absconded with him.  This is torture for the parents who believe that he might not have gone to heaven.  Perhaps they thought he ought to have had “last rites” before he died, but I’m not sure.  They don’t even know if he’s dead or not.

       Sam’s disappearance is only the first of many progressively horrible experiences the family will endure.  The film, written and directed by Robert Eggers, depicts so eerily well the gradual disintegration of minds into psychosis.  Accusations of sin and witchery abound, particularly focused upon Thomasin.  After this relatively long (but very good) set-up of family dynamics, really strange and horrifying things transpire, culminating in a truly fantastic scene.  Eggers has done an admirable job in managing the tension between reality and fantasy/metaphor, which keeps the viewer transfixed, wondering how it will all turn out, but—until the very end—it all holds together in the realm of plausibility (the place where most horror films lose me).  The horror and mystery here lies more in psychological phenomena than in material destruction—although that’s also present.  Eggers well deserves his award as Best Director at Sundance in 2015.

       The main actors are gifted (and presumably well directed) in playing their roles, with Ineson as the father looking like a Jesus figure, Dickie as the mother a long-suffering wife, and Taylor-Joy as a young woman whose fertile imagination gets her into trouble and makes her the target of accusations.  Scrimshaw, Grainger and Dawson are naturals in their roles as younger siblings trying to understand the world around them.  Mark Korven’s music is uncanny in leading the viewer into scene after scene,  emotionally.

One of the best in the horror genre.

Grade:  A-           By Donna R. Copeland