The Green Knight [Blu-ray]

A film version of ye olde tale, from the Arthurian mythos, of Gawain and the Green Knight. A tale which, like many of them, has been told and retold so often down the centuries that many have put their own spin on it. It's how these things go.This is a movie. But it tries at the same time to be like the original version of the tale. Which was a poem from the middle ages.On the offchance you don't know the story, the Green Knight comes to Camelot. Says anyone can hit him. Gawain takes the challenge and does, cutting his head off. But the Knight still lives. Now Gawain has to fulfil the other part of this bargain, which was that one year later, he will go and see the Green Knight and let him do the same to him. Gawain is torn between honour and understandable reluctance.He has various encounters on the way.This is not an action fantasy movie. This is art house cinema. Trying to do it in the style of the poem, getting that onto the screen.So it's the kind of film that will divide opinion.I can see what it was trying to do. I admired it for that. I liked the way it used old style writing on screen as chapter headers, which do make it feel as intended like the poem.However: it really does show the signs of low budget. And I really couldn't suspend my disbelief at a few points because of that. These being studio scenes. Location work is better, thanks to some nice forest shots.But the score. It's olde medieval music. It's monotonous noise. It just goes on. It's too loud as well. If you have a film where some characters mutter and whisper dialogue, loud music is going to drown that out. Which is what you get here. Which was frustrating.Gawain also spends a bit too much time reacting rather than acting when he has encounters on his journey. Which is not how you write a story. They should be character driven.And the pace of all this starts to drag. At a point, I really wanted to yell 'are we there yet?'It does actually reach a conclusion. Although the penultimate scene drags on for so long I was screaming 'end!' at the screen. And then there is an ending.There is a character arc for Gawain. Which works. The Green Knight's visage is really well rendered. And...that's all else I got.I don't regret giving this is a go. I admire it's ambition. But the result just wasn't for me sorry. But if you want to go 'ooh! this is art darling!', then I think you'll enjoy it.Do keep watching to the end of the credits for an extra scene! This [spoiler] reveals that the Green Knight was actually Thanos, and thus the other Knights of the Round Table go on a quest for the Infinity Gauntlet and....just kidding. But there is something at the end of the credits.The dvd has the following language and subtitle options:Languages: English.Subtitles: English.Extras:Three things.Practitioners of magic. A look at the visual effects of the film.Illuminating technique. A look at the fonts used for the words on the screen.Boldest of Blood wildest of Heart. A making of documentary.These are actual proper making of features! Not just short promotional 'everyone was amazing' features. The first is twelve mins. The second eight. And the third goes almost forty. So if you are into seeing how things were done, these are worth it. I haven't seen dvd extras like this in a long time. So that was nice.

The Green Knight is visually gorgeous and offers great performances by it's cast. The film is based on a book (of which I have not read as I type this but certainly will consider doing so) and whilst I am not familiar with the tale, it became very apparent to me that this story was being adapted as it seemed very meticulous with various scenes and details.I have noticed many reviews seem to slate the movie for it's adaptation so I cannot speak of what it may have done wrong and done right, but what I got from the movie from someone who is not familiar with this tale was an entertaining and atmospheric medieval fantasy that explored the themes of 'purpose', 'greatness' and 'Honor'.However it did feel as if there was plenty of room to expand on this story and explore these themes even further which is where I feel it's format being a 2 hour movie prevented this, and it most likely would better fit the format of a TV Show, whether it be over 1 season or several. Although I personally took away some meaning from the film and considering the type of movie this is, where it mostly attempts to tell a story visually, I found it to be more accessible then I was expecting...despite this though I find it difficult to recommend as it may be hard to follow and read what you are seeing for some. It may even some obnoxious at certain points but I find the movie to be well made and relatively well executed (considering how much it tried to cram into 2 hours)Great film making and very enjoyable but its pacing does falter at times. If you enjoy atmospheric and visually driven films (such as 'arrival', 'Enemy' and 'Under The Silver Lake') you may enjoy this very much or at the very least take something away from it.

At last, after the nonsense decision to cancel its release in the UK, Amazon Prime is here to save the day.First things first, I completely agree with all of the criticism for this film. It's tonally all over the place: sometimes a grounded period drama, other times dabbling in silly magical stuff, sometimes a heroic journey of epic proportions, often times a vehicle to show the pathetic side of humanity, and all the time an almost dead silent panorama of nature. It's not that it does these individual tones badly - in many respects each one is done exceedingly well - but be it the editing or the screenplay, they just don't come together cohesively enough. Paired with dialogue that just seems utterly confused in what it's trying to say, this causes The Green Knight to admittedly have exceedingly poor pacing, which sadly makes it hard to enjoy all the many precious things that are just barely shining past the murky exterior.With that said, Dev Patel as Gawain is, of course, superb, his distinct sense of humanity - in all that vulnerability and faux bravery - juxtaposing rather nicely against the more enigmatic performances that dominate the supernatural cast (although I can't get over the fact that they jarringly call him "Gar-when" instead of "Gah-wayne", since that confused me so much). Looking at the rest of the normal cast, I quite enjoyed Barry Keoghan here in a role just as psychopathic - yet even more energetic - as his character in Killing of a Sacred Deer; Alicia Vikander is also pretty good as both Essel and Lady Bertilak, with Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton playing rather amusing mirror images of each other. By no means is this a film with an outstanding ensemble, but its nice to see such weird dialogue being delivered with such assured confidence and competence.But while the film doesn't exactly do the epic justice from a writing point of view, it's presented so beautifully that it does override any lapses in a solid narrative structure. And I'm not even going to gush over the visual style purely because it looks pretty. I mean, it is - it's absolutely gorgeous - but rather because it is so clearly entrenched in art history. Art Historians should have a field day dissecting all the rennaisance-like cinematography that craft this incredible tale, and while I'm no art historian myself, I could definitely distinguish Rembrandt, Vecchio and Goya as key inspirations for many of the mesmerising paintings that chronicle this story. Every frame is quite literally a painting in this film, which thankfully in this case is enough to make me look past its glaring flaws to simply enjoy it for what it is.As a result of being unable to competently tell the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the film is sucked almost completely dry of all thematic and emotional weight for the vast majority of its runtime. But because of such a sophisticated visual style and the anchoring of Dev Patel's fantastic performance, any doubts about the brilliance of the directing fall away in total awe to the ultimate majesty of this film, culminating in a final 30 minute sequence that is simply masterful filmmaking and hands down enough reason to suffer through this very bumpy journey.