The original story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a morality tale about a knight who fails a test of honor, but is redeemed in the end. This film is not that story. It starts out well enough, but both Gawain (not a knight in this version) and his story get lost along the way.
The opportunities for character development throughout Gawain's quest are set aside in exchange for visual spectacle and dead-end subplots and the original ending was far more satisfying than this non-ending.
It is beautifully filmed, the acting is superb, and David Lowery deserves a lot of credit for his excellent direction, but the writing falls flat. Storylines are set up and then never concluded, there are a few deus ex machina moments for no particular reason, some of the best parts of the original story were changed (like the Green Knight's insulting challenge to Arthur), and the whole movie suffers as a result.
If you've never read the original story and you just want pretty pictures, a dark and foreboding atmosphere, and closeup shots of Dev Patel (who acted the heck out of this film) looking serious, then this movie will scratch that itch. If, on the other hand, you're expecting to see the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or care at all about plot holes or coherent character arcs, then you might want to give this one a miss.
Maybe this film will inspire someone to make a faithful adaptation of the original story someday.
The opportunities for character development throughout Gawain's quest are set aside in exchange for visual spectacle and dead-end subplots and the original ending was far more satisfying than this non-ending.
It is beautifully filmed, the acting is superb, and David Lowery deserves a lot of credit for his excellent direction, but the writing falls flat. Storylines are set up and then never concluded, there are a few deus ex machina moments for no particular reason, some of the best parts of the original story were changed (like the Green Knight's insulting challenge to Arthur), and the whole movie suffers as a result.
If you've never read the original story and you just want pretty pictures, a dark and foreboding atmosphere, and closeup shots of Dev Patel (who acted the heck out of this film) looking serious, then this movie will scratch that itch. If, on the other hand, you're expecting to see the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or care at all about plot holes or coherent character arcs, then you might want to give this one a miss.
Maybe this film will inspire someone to make a faithful adaptation of the original story someday.