Psst: Don't say it out loud but the Green Knight is lousy

I love history and movies based on history, so looked forward to watching the new highly praised film The Green Knight.

It was wonderful, the critics raved. 

But within the first five minutes, I started shouting at the screen about the cultural mistakes, not a good sign.

Supposedly the costumes were based on medieval manuscripts, so the costume director saw kings with halos and thought the halo was part of the crown. So we see Arthur with a crown that included a golden circle pasted to the back of the crown making it appear that he has a halo, which if real would result in chronic neck pain from the weight of the gold. 

Uh, the halo is a symbol to imply sainthood, so saints(But NOT Kings per se) had halos as a way to symbolize their holiness: and this symbolism is found in many cultures. 

And seated next to Arthur, the Lovely Guinevier who in legend inspires all the men around her.

 Did I say lovely? She is played by an ugly actress: now, an old or plain actress could exude charm (one if reminded of Katheryn Hepburn in A Lion in Winter), but no charm here either, so the ugliness was deliberate.

And then there is Gwaine, who in Arthurian legend was the greatest knight (until the French poets added Lancelot a French Knight to make it PC for their audience).

Ah but here they casted an actor from India as Gwaine, presumably to inject racism into the movie to make it PC.d

so I wonder: How many of ths enthusiastic reviews were because the writers hesitated to criticize the film's faults for fear of being called a racist by the twitter crowd?

History fact:  racism back then was about the guy from a different ethnicity or maybe just from the next valley, but never mind.

There was a black knight in the Arhurian sagas: so why not insert a side plot about Sir Morien or St. Maurice? 

Lots of Nubians and Moors in the Roman military who stayed behind in England, but never mind. The problem is not the slightly tan complexion of the actor who plays Gwaine, but that he has nothing to work with: he portrays the character as a wimp and not very sympathetic. 

The quest of the poem was rewritten to make it a "coming of age" story. Fair enough. Have the geek grow some and become a man.

But if you want to portray a "coming of age" story, you don't pick a 30 year old actor who looks.... 30 years old.

Well, anyway, here the movie proposes that Gwaine is a young man and his uncle wants him to "man up" by sending him on a quest, so asks his mum to send the Green Knight to start the quest. So enters the Green Knight, who seems to be inspired by Groot. 

compare and contrast.

The reviews tell us Gwaine is a womanizer.

So I was prepared for some scenes of him rolling in the hay with lovely wenches, (not in the original poem, but hey, this is a modern movie). But I was annoyed that there was not a lot of eroticism. Even when the noble (fully dressed) lady tries to seduce him he only manages to "cum" without a sigh or a moan. 

But outside of the lack of sympathetic characters played by miscasted actors/actresses, you have a plodding plot.

And I mean plodding. Long scenes of Gwaine plodding thru the fields, plodding up and down colourless hills, or plodding in a grey pathless forest where all the trees are the same size and without undergrowth. 

This might be acceptable if the scenery was nice, but it wasn't: It was dark, and ugly. To put it bluntly: The cinematography was terrible. Forests that are pale, fields that are bland, skies that are greyish without clouds, and people wearing teal green, a color that was not used until aniline dyes were invented.

 As for the background music, it was forgettable. And I mean this literally. 

and the plot doesn't help.

Early in the film, he is captured by some peasants. Give me a break. He was armed and dangerous, and they captured him? and they tied him up: But let him keep his longsword (which is how he escaped). Sheesh.

And then comes the part about St. Winifred, which is not explained (I had to look it up) and seems to have nothing to do with the plot. Ditto for the fox who becomes his guide and has no personality at all (if they plagerized Groot, one could have hoped they would plagerize Rocket Racoon, but no such luck).

And them they meet spirit giants who have nothing to do with the plot. (and unlike the Giant of Cerne Abbas are naked but G rated).

At which point came the least erotic sex scene in the history of movie, which I alluded to earlier.

At this I turned off the movie: sorry.

The film is over two hours long. If you had taken out the long plodding parts, improved the cinematography, and made Gwaine more sympathetic, (and added some naked wenches) you might just have a decent movie.

Sigh.

 

I give it two out of five stars. 

If you watch it, bring popcorn. And a Pizza. And some beer. You'll need something to do while watching this overlong film.

Where is Monty Python when you need him?  

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update: my son in law corrected me for writing a movie review without watching the entire film. So we watched it all.

I left off after the scene of the least erotic sexual encounter in the history of movies,.

So Gwaine goes on in a canoe and finally meets the green knight.

The cinematography is a combination of gold yellow and teal. This is a variation of Gwainé's costume, which is teal with a yellow cape which they call golden, but actually the Celts used saffron yellow for their tunics and did use gold thread wrapped around the linen thread to make gold garments, although the weight of this would make it a bit hard to wear as an everyday item.

so the sun makes everything golden except the dark teal trees and of course the dull colors of Gwaine and the knight. This colour combination sounds lovely, but it is actually a bit ugly.

and because Gwaine flinches, the knight calls him a coward, and at the third try, Gwaine runs away, becomes king, gets an ugly bride, has two kids (one by wifey one by girlfriend) and then goes to war and his people try to stone him in anger (as if they would: Try that in medieval times and you''d get wacked, literally).

Ah;, but this is a dream of what would happen if he ran away. 

So Gwaine finally mans up, agrees to be beheaded, a voila, the knight congratulates him and doesn't do it. End of story.

so did he ever become king? Did he marry his slave girlfriend (her short hair implies she is a slave, but the critics didn't notice this). Did King Arthur get a laminectormy to correct his neck pain? 

Inquiring minds want to know, but we aren't told. Because hey, this ia an art film: boring and confusing is the rule so that the critics can say it is wonderful.

Now, confusing films with lots of symbolism can be good.  We just watched Mulholland Drive, which is visually beautiful but confusing in plot, until the ending when you realize it is a psychotic retelling of the actual story about Hollywood destroying the hopes and dreams of beautiful young women. 

But the interesting characters keep you intrigued.

In Green Knight, the characters are not interesting. And whereas the fake dialogue of Mulholland drive is a caricature of the 1950s, the dialogues of Green Knight (which are few and far between) are just cliches. And don't get me into comparing the erotic scenes of the two movies. This is a PG rated blog. But let's just say the scene of the protagonist being screened for a film by kissing the lead actor in Mulholland Drive has more eroticism than the entire Green Knight movie.

So if you want to look smart, yup, go watch a boring two hour movie so you can feel superior to the hoi polloi who prefer Guardians of the Galaxy.

As for me, I'll stick to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 

and here is a BBC discussion of the original story in case you are wondering what really happened: