Myth and Heroism in The Green Knight
- Glendon Frank
- Sep 3, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 24, 2021
What’s up everyone, I’m back and about the same as ever. Probably a little worse since I’m rusty. But never fear!
The summer has come and gone and a lot of movies came out/are coming out and I’ve actually had a chance to see a few of them. Have I had the chance to sit down and write about them? Absolutely not. So, these are going to be a little late but bear with me. I’m starting with a movie that’s only still in a few select theatres, but one you should definitely watch regardless.
I’m very deeply fascinated by a current trend in pop-culture filmmaking. In a way, it’s a trend that goes all the way back to the origins of storytelling, which is very fitting for this review. A lot of the big-budget franchises right now are locked into conversation with themselves, delving into their own properties and asking how relevant they are in the modern age. By my sense, this seemed to really kick off with Casino Royale in 2006, but I reckon it goes even beyond that. It was a movie that centrally interrogated the character of James Bond, putting a spotlight on the dark griminess of his character. In particular, the filmmakers adopted a clear feminist lens to approach conversations about Bond’s damaging history of misogyny – a conversation all proceeding installments of Bond all awkwardly try to shy away from. Christopher Nolan followed suit by designing Batman Begins around a similar formula. At the heartbeat of the movie is this question: what would drive someone to become Batman? It’s all about psychology. This focus on psychology, more than any ‘dark edginess,’ is what really grounds these outings and makes them feel comparatively fresh.
Since Batman Begins, nearly every superhero movie has had an obsession with presenting a ‘new’ and ‘fresh’ exploration of their respective characters. The MCU pretty successfully opened with Iron Man in 2008, likewise framing the movie more around character examination than around cool spectacle (though that was also present). It didn’t take long for future attempts to learn the wrong lessons, though. The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 attempted to recapture the plucky Peter Parker as a ‘dark’ and ‘moody’ character with deep secrets in his past. Shortly later, Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013 blatantly tried to tap into Nolan’s success with Batman but failed to really create an interesting exploration of Superman. That isn’t to say that Snyder’s Superman isn’t a noteworthy part of this phenomenon; Snyder is clearly bringing some sense of religious baggage into his depiction of the classic hero, introducing a unique (if misguided) lens to the classic questions of Superman’s identity. In a way, this melding of the personal with old familiar stories is essential to not just the creation of stories, but the edification of myth itself.
Owen Barfield, one of the Inklings (the friend group of writers that also consisted of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien), wrote a lot about the “mythopoeic imagination,” a term I’ve kind of become obsessed with in the past while. It’s a complicated term with a lot of moving parts, but I’ll do my best to break it down. Barfield was interested in a level of creation and imagination beyond just basic creation. In the mythopoeic imagination, the author draws on “primal modes or patterns, at once personal and universal […] without becoming enslaved to them,” effectively welding one’s own personhood into the sort of stories that ripple through time.[1] This is the sort of thing George Lucas was trying to do when creating Star Wars, pulling strongly from the classic Hero’s Journey as identified by Joseph Campbell while breathing his own uniqueness into it (Star Wars, of course, being another franchise currently locked into a discussion about itself and its relevance). Moreover, Barfield believed that in accessing the ‘self,’ the artist “needs to recognize that in the unfathomable depths behind this ‘poor temporal personality,’ stands the Divine Name.”[2] In the sheer act of artistry, of creation, the author realizes that the essence of their own creativity and originality stems from the Original Creator and that any act of artistic creation is actually a form of spiritual co-creation and unity with God. In this, tapping both into universal patterns and stories, and into your own echoes of divinity, something mythical is born.
I’ve spent a long time talking without mentioning The Green Knight, but these are all things that were swirling in my mind when I sat down to watch David Lowery’s latest movie. Now, I haven’t watched any of Lowery’s other work, but that’s apparently something that needs to change because The Green Knight is on another level. It’s an adaption of an old Arthurian myth of Sir Gawain, and every moment in it is drenched in this awareness of its own mythic past. It opens with a poem. Every section is demarcated with bold chapter titles. There is a level where you as the audience are clearly aware that you are watching a fun, light-hearted, episodic epic. Yet, there’s a heaviness that pervades all of that. It’s a weird sensation to put into words, really capturing the bizarre fever-dream nature of a lot of old Arthurian legends. All at once, The Green Knight is wonderous and brooding, fantastical, and entirely grounded. It straddles both sides of the line in a way that perhaps only real myth can do.
Pulling from classic Arthurian faire, The Green Knight is all about the essentials of knighthood and chivalry. In a modern context, it’s perhaps not that jarring to put it side-by-side with a movie like Casino Royale or Batman Begins; instead of asking what makes a depressed super-spy or a broody superhero, it asks what makes a… super-knight? Gawain is on a quest to become “great.” This greatness is symbolized by the five-pointed pendant worn by many in King Arthur’s circle, representing the five chivalric virtues. Gawain’s quest will have him run head-on into events that will test these virtues, that will test his own goodness, never mind greatness. The original Sir Gawain is also interested in these virtues, and in exploring the practicality of virtue as seen in the medieval age. This exploration is part of the inherent myth of the tale, acting as part of a broader conversation with its own canon. But Lowery’s movie does something different than the typical Arthurian story.
While the Gawain of the original story is largely a paragon of virtue, the Gawain of The Green Knight (played to perfection by Dev Patel) kind of sucks. He’s the family shame, he’s a drunkard, spending his nights in the brothels and missing morning mass. His entrance into his great quest comes more out of his own incompetence than from any sense of nobility. But in this recasting of Gawain’s character, Lowery and Patel get at something fundamentally human. There’s a universality to Gawain, this ‘hero’ who’s really just some guy set out to do an impossible quest he’s woefully unprepared for – and isn’t that all of us? In his triumphs and failures, his struggles with dignity and greatness, we become intimately aware of our own successes and shortcomings. Gawain is persuasively relatable, not just in spite of his loveable flaws but largely because of them.
That is, I think, the essence of myth. I can’t speak to Lowery’s individualism or anything, but there is in Gawain a sense of both intimacy and universality. There is a brilliant reinterpretation of a classic story, casting in a light that is both modern but also casts back into antiquity. It’s a take on the Arthurian legend that is both respectful of the material and yet is influenced by the modern age. It’s intimately aware of its own storytelling; right at the start of the movie Arthur asks Gawain to tell him ‘his story.’ Why? Because Arthur wants to get to know this guy better, and the fundamental way we do that is through narrative. That’s the whole reason we go to the movies to begin with. Gawain at the time has no answer for him, and the movie that proceeds is essentially him developing his own narrative, his own sense of self.
Like so many other films right now, The Green Knight is in conversation with itself and its tradition. It examines the medium of storytelling, and it dives deep into questions of heroism and greatness. It enters into debate with classic Arthurian standards of virtue, in a way that falls into the patterns of the story it's based on but doesn’t quite replicate it. I think that might be the mark of a good adaption, though – something that engages with the original while also presenting something genuinely new. That, again, is the essence of myth. The journey that Gawain takes is something practically metaphysical. As per usual, I don’t want to talk too much about specifics but get ready for something that effortlessly melds the spiritual and psychological. I’m falling into a lot of flowery language, but that’s mostly because The Green Knight captures the sort of raw emotion that really must be experienced rather than described. It’s really something else.
This movie is hauntingly beautiful, and it’s packed to the brim. I saw the movie one time, almost a month ago, and I’m still overflowing with thoughts about it. This is all just whetting the appetite, I’m sure the more I return to this movie, the more I will find. The framing is constantly beautiful. The score is ethereal. The entire cast kills it – Alicia Vikander is great, as always. Barry Keoghan, a.k.a. That Kid From Dunkirk shows up and is phenomenal. Apparently, he’s going to be in The Eternals, so colour me extra excited for that one. Honestly, there’s simply too much going on in this movie thematically, my hope is to get to see it at least once more before it’s fully out of theatres. I recommend you all do the same.
[1] Hutchinson, Jamie. “Imagine That: A Barfieldian Reading of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.” Journal of Inklings Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, Oct. 2016, pp. 79–111. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a6h&AN=ATLAi9KZ190325001959&site=ehost-live. [2] Hutchinson, “Imagine That,” 81.
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