The Green Knight (5/5 Stars)

 

“The Green Knight” is an adaptation of a medieval poem popularly known as “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” I read part of it in my high school English class and in anticipation of seeing this movie, reread the entirety of it. The poem’s origins are obscure, its language long forgotten. The version we have with us today comes from the skillful translation from that great professor of languages, J.R.R. Tolkein. The fact that something written in English in England would need to be translated grants the subject matter an ancient solemnity. After all, if this is the only thing that still survives from a time when the earth was understood through magic and religion, it feels like it should hold profound and time honored wisdom.

Mystical wonder and ancient solemnity is the mood and atmosphere that screenwriter and director David Lowery has set out to achieve here and I would argue, succeeds admirably at establishing. More than anything, “The Green Knight” is an achievement in mood and atmosphere. The colors are lush, the soundtrack evocative, the language profound and poetical. David Lowery has set out to tell a mysterious tale and succeeds perhaps too much. I doubt anyone will completely understand what is happening the first time around (what with the giants and spell sashes and talking foxes). I have seen the movie twice. The second time I saw it with subtitles which helped quite a bit. When the language has that Olde Worlde feel to it, it can be easy to miss words and phrases. Does the movie actually have a point? Yes, I believe it does. The original poem had a definite moral to it made explicit by a verbal explanation of it at the end. This movie inverts the ending and through the magic of movie montage expresses the same moral, but without an explicit explanation. Its actually an ingenious adaptation of the poem in that respect.

Sir Gawain is not a knight. He is called a “sir” because of his noble blood, being nephew to the great King Arthur, the legend that pulled sword from stone. Besides his title though, Gawain is a bit of a letdown. He spends his time in brothels and taverns and does not appear to have any particular ambition. When King Arthur, at a Christmas Party, asks Sir Gawain to tell a tale of himself so that he may know him better, Gawain thinks about it and then relates that he does not have a story to tell. Fortuitously (but perhaps not coincidentally) a tale presents itself at the Christmas Party. The Party is interrupted by an unearthly knight made of green bark. He asks for a challenger to his game. He will let whomever takes up his challenge to strike him if they promise to meet him at the Green Chapel one year hence so that the Green Knight may give back the blow. Gawain takes up this challenge and, rashly bowing to peer pressure, summarily strikes off the Green Knight’s head. Gawain perhaps thought that by beheading and thereby killing the Green Knight he would not have to make good on his end of the bargain. Not so, the Green Knight picks up his severed head, tells Gawain he will meet him in a year, and leaves. It is a great scene, both an effective and faithful adaptation of the same scene in the poem.

The rest of the movie concerns Gawain’s deliberations in whether he should go to the Green Chapel at all (he does not have to) and the quest itself whereupon many strange and dangerous happenings occur. What is the Green Knight? Well, the most apparent metaphor of the Green Knight is death. Less apparent, and equally important, the Green Knight symbolizes the inevitable reactions to a person’s actions (death being the ultimate reaction to a person’s life). By living up to his end of the bargain and facing the Green Knight on the terms he has already accepted, Gawain is taking responsibility for his actions. The word used in this movie for why Gawain does or does not take responsibility is “honor”. Honor, explains Gawain at one point in the movie (and perhaps still not understanding what he is saying), is the reasons why a knight does what he does. Under this interpretation, the movie can mean almost anything from keeping one’s promises, to being faithful to romantic partners, to man’s stewardship of the natural environment. All of this is tied into the concept of honor presented here as the simple act of showing up to face one’s fate without excuses, without spells, without flinching.

Sir Gawain is played by Dev Patel that ambassador of color-blind casting. Dev is British born but of entirely Indian heritage. Here he is in England at the time when only Anglos and Saxons were on the island. It is kind of illuminating as to how little of an issue this is. As I brought up before in the “Personal Life of David Copperfield” (which also stars Dev Patel as a distinctly not-Indian character) since the movie takes place in a time of homogeneous racial identity, the race of the particular actors matters less to how the characters interact with each other. Everyone has the same Olde World accent and none of the characters’ choices take race into account. Secondly, is the otherwordly cinematography of the movie. David Lowery leans into the natural in this movie and presents everything in a lush verdant tone. The greens are dark green. The sky at dusk has an orange hue. The movie’s locations do not quite look like England. Actually, they look sort of like India (a country known for Green and Orange, take a look at its flag) and the color palette of Dev’s skin fits in quite well with the color palette of the cinematography. Third, Dev Patel is a very good actor and performs the role admirably. He just has the right look while wearing chain mail, sporting a kingly beard, and wielding a longsword.

Filling out the cast is Sean Harris as King Arthur. He performs the role like Marlon Brandon in the Godfather, with no need to speak louder than a whisper to get all the people in the room to listen. From a very good movie called “The Witch” produced by A24 which also produced this movie, we have Kate Dickie as Queen Guinivere and Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight. These two actors look right at home in the ancient past. Performing dual roles is Alicia Vikander as Gawain’s romantic interest in his brothel travails as well as The Lady to Joel Edgerton’s The Lord. These two prompt Gawain with another game before his appointment at the Green Chapel. Finally there is Barry Keoghan, his sweatiness, who shows up to do something dastardly in the intervening chapters.

“The Green Knight” is a very good movie that has something to say, albeit in sometimes obscure and round about ways. Like reading an old book with strange language, it may take more than usual effort to glean all of its secrets, but like taking the time to understand Shakespeare, it is worth going to it rather than having it come to you in a more modern updated form. Sometimes the place to see something new is the long forgotten past.

Black Widow (3/5 Stars)

 

QANON Marvel.

What a relief. The last movie I had seen in a theater was the underwhelming Wendy in early 2020. It was good to be back and watching a popcorn blockbuster no less, Marvel’s long delayed “Black Widow” starring Scarlett Johansson as the title hero. Critics deride these movies, but having been deprived of watching them on the big screen in a dark room with a bunch of other people for so long, their pleasures are more apparent. I wanted action, funny quips, ridiculous set pieces, and just enough pathos to be interested in the characters. I got that. “Black Widow” is a mediocre Marvel movie about one of their lesser superheroes. That’s fine. Marvel understands (unlike say D.C. sometimes) that not every movie should have apocalyptic stakes. After the end of the Infinity Saga, it was a good idea to scale back the ambition and start anew. “Black Widow” does just that, ridding itself of aliens and magical superpowers, and focusing on martial arts and relatively plausible special effects. Not that a flying fortress is plausible its just more plausible than an infinity stone.

“Black Widow” holds a strange place in the pantheon of Marvel movies. It has been released after the end of the Infinity Saga but contains the origin story of a character that was first introduced in “Iron Man 2” and that has appeared multiple times, with major roles in the Captain America and Avengers films. In the last Avengers film, Endgame, the character died. The main plot of this story takes place between “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War”. After taking the time to explain all of this, I can now inform you that it doesn’t really matter. Somehow any standalone Marvel movie can exist by itself. There are references to other events in other movies but I don’t think you really need to know what they are to get what is happening immediately on screen.

Black Widow’s story may be summarized as follows. She has no biological family. She was kidnapped by the Soviet government at birth to be a part of a program that trains/brainwashes girls to become deadly assassins called Black Widows. Her first mission occurred when she was ten (give or take?) and placed in a fake family of other spies that acted as a sleeper cell in the USA. After that mission ended, the family was separated, Black Widow did a bunch of stuff, defected to the Avengers, and after betraying the USA in “Captain America: Civil War” (go Team Iron Man) headed back to eastern Europe to lie low for a bit. There she is contacted by her old “family” and pursues revenge against the man and/or organization that indoctrinated her.

Her family is made up of talented actors that make their first appearances in the Marvel universe. First is David Harbour playing Alexie aka The Red Guardian who was Natasha’s fake father. He is the Soviet version of Captain America, except the government got jealous of his abilities and imprisoned him in a gulag. Then there is Florence Pugh (graduating from great movies to blockbusters) who plays Yelena Belova. She is Natasha’s fake sister that has recently taken the antitoxin that reverses the brainwashing. Finally there is Rachel Weisz who plays Melina, Natasha’s fake mother. She is the scientist behind the brainwashing serum. In one scene they have a fake family dinner and engage in fake family fights. It’s interesting to watch.

The evil conspiracy herein deserves to be delved into a little bit. There is this secret Soviet organization that is so powerful that it has outlived the Soviet state. It kidnaps and trains girls from a young age to be martial arts assassins and employs them covertly around the world. Such girls work for shady elites that use their skills at infiltration and coercion to control foreign governments. Does this sound at all like QANON to anybody? There are distinct parallels. QANON says that the world is governed by a secretive elite that worships Satan and runs a global child-trafficking scheme. The only thing really missing here in Black Widow is the pedophilia. The absence of sex doesn’t quite make sense (and I believe Black Widow was introduced way back when with super sexual wiles) because if an evil super secret organization is going to take the time and effort to kidnap and brainwash girls exclusive to boys, why would they use them only for violence. But hey, Marvel is a Disney corporation. Otherwise the sheer ridiculousness of the evil scheme is on the same level as QANON. I wonder sometimes whether a company like Marvel should exert some more thought in how it constructs the reality and philosophical outlook of its blockbusters given just how many people around the world are bound to see its movies. Have you seen the trailer for “The Eternals”. Isn’t Marvel basically creating a new religion? Is it okay for this company to make and market nonsense to hundreds of millions of people? I think it probably is okay, by the way, I’m just asking out of curiosity.

A notable absence from “Black Widow” is any preaching about feminism. This is very welcome. It could have been done in all sorts of places, but instead of the movie “telling” us all about it, it instead just “showed” us and had enough trust that the audience would get it. This is the first time I have seen in which thirty girls in a room perform a martial arts battle royale brawl. I had fun watching it and was grateful that no-one in the movie told me that I should have fun watching it. The movie was directed by Cate Shortland who has proved handily that a woman can make a corporate work of art bereft of individual style as well as any man. She’s got a long and lucrative career ahead of her in this business.

The stupidest thing in the movie is its main set piece. There is plenty of talk in the movie about how the secret organization cannot be found and is not on any map. Turns out, people can’t find it because its a sky fortress that, I don’t know, hides behind clouds or something. It is at least nice to know that our enemies are just as capable of wasting a gigantic amount of taxpayer money on ridiculous bullshit just like the Americans did by building that flying aircraft carrier in “The Avengers”. But I am being unfair here. As it concerns the flying fortress, Marvel follows that sage movie wisdom of “Bridge on the River Kwai”: If you build it, it must be destroyed. The best action in this movie involves Black Widow’s aerial escape from an exploding sky fortress. I must admit, it was pretty cool.

The last thing to mention is Scarlett Johannson’s lawsuit against Marvel. Her deal involved her getting a portion of the box office receipts of “Black Widow”, which would have ran in theaters for many months before being released on DVDs or streaming. However, due to COVID-19 pandemic, Marvel changed the plans for the movie’s release, making it available to stream on Disney+ on the same day of its wide release in theaters. On Disney+, one can rent “Black Widow” for thirty dollars and presumably Scarlett does not get any portion that. It seems to me like she has a case and since the damages may very well be in the millions of dollars, it warranted a lawsuit. I would be very interested to hear how this one turns out.