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.

Loving (5/5 Stars)

Jeff Nichols wrote and directed “Loving” a movie about the couple behind the 1968 United States Supreme Court case “Loving v. Virginia” that declared unconstitutional bans on interracial marriage. Joel Edgerton plays Richard Loving and Ruth Negga plays Mildred Loving.

“Loving” is a perfect movie about a couple of very boring people. The fact that they are boring, that Richard Loving fixes cars and lays brick and that Mildred raises her children and wants to live a simple life close to her family home seems to be best reason the American Civil Liberties Union took on their case pro bono and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. You could not come up with another less threatening pair of persons and the fact that the government is spending time and energy trying separate them is the greatest evidence of the absurdity of the government’s position.

The story goes that Richard loved Mildred and felt that the right thing to do would be to marry her. The State of Virginia believed that Richard Loving officially marrying Mildred Loving, a colored woman, was a threat to society. It would be noted that Richard and Mildred simply living together would not have provoked the arrest. Richard and Mildred Loving are arrested because they took a day trip to Washington D.C. and got a marriage certificate. Sometime after, the local police burst through their bedroom door in the middle of the night and put them both to jail. Mildred happens to be pregnant at the time. They are dragged in front of a judge that lectures them on who they should sleep with in their own bedroom in their own home. (I must admit a certain disgust, particularly as a lawyer, when I saw the Virginia courtroom scenes in this movie.)

And yet, the director, Jeff Nichols, does the story a great service by not over dramatizing the interactions between the law and the couple in such a way that makes them unbelievable for their time and place. Normal people generally act like the characters in this story act. You don’t talk back to cops and judges and here Richard and Mildred Loving are nothing but consistently polite. It only makes them that much more validated in their continual decision to challenge the law. “Loving” is a particularly engaging and effective movie not only in its argument for civil rights but simply (and probably because) as a fully developed character portrait. Surely you can watch this movie and go, “I know this person. I know that person. The government really should them alone.”

I especially liked the scenes where Mildred and Richard talk to their lawyer, here played by the comedian Nick Kroll, an inspired choice for a Jewish ACLU lawyer. All the enthusiasm for the case is on Nick Kroll’s side. Richard looks nothing but uncomfortable and wary the entire time. His decision to be in the room seems to be based entirely on his loving deference to his wife’s wishes to be there. After all, Richard doesn’t particular care about making history. All he wants to do is lay brick, work on cars, and take care of his family. These two things aren’t necessarily the same thing, and the latter is way more important to him.

Richard and Mildred Loving don’t even bother to show up to the Supreme Court to listen to the arguments. Nick Kroll asks Richard if he wants to say anything to the Judges. Richard says that Kroll should tell judges that he loves his wife. To him, that is all that matters. Nobody is hurting anybody and this whole thing is a stupid absurdity that he doesn’t feel like he should waste anymore time on. This movie goes a long way in presenting that argument in the most forceful way imaginable. “Loving” is one of the best movies of the year.

The Great Gatsby (5/5 Stars)

Those familiar with the art of director Baz Luhrman have generally had to meet him halfway. For many artists the old ‘meet halfway” is usually not worth the trip. Greatness or the lack thereof though not entirely causal is highly correlated with accessibility. But Baz is one of those exceptions; the shortcomings of his movies (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge) in terms of believable human emotion and orderly plot rhythm are oftentimes successfully offset by the larger than life ambition of his musical numbers and the overall gorgeousness of the production (costumes, sets, cast, and etc.) One cannot say that his approach makes perfect movies. Moulin Rouge, being a very good example, has as many awkward transitions and stilted drama as incredible moments of inspired grandeur. The silly and great existed not only in the same movie but also sometimes within the same scene for instance when two middle-aged men sing and dance Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” surely one of the more unforgettable scenes I have ever seen.

It is my pleasure then to announce that The Great Gatsby largely avoids Baz’s regular pitfalls and it does so by strictly adhering to the superior writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose book this movie very faithfully adapts. It is not much to say that F. Scott Fitzgerald is a better writer than Baz Luhrman. Most everybody is. It means far more to say that Fitzgerald’s words can complement the visual ambitions of Baz because like Moulin Rouge and his previous movies, The Great Gatsby is something of an orgiastic delight of colorful sensations, including an extended look at one of the more incredible parties I have ever witnessed in a movie. (For those that thought the Miami sleaze-fest in this year’s Spring Breakers looked like fun, they need to take a gander at what a real party looks like. Sure the version of Jay Gatsby’s continual party at his long island mansion is probably unapproachable in real life, but it still contains several nostalgic elements we seem to have completely lost in the 21^st century i.e. parties where people dress up and not way-way down and actually know how to dance.) There is an especially inspired moment in The Great Gatsby that introduces the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) after much hype to the climatic swell of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while a multitude of fireworks explode in the distance. As far as first impressions a la Baz go, I would rate it just as high as when Romeo first spies Juliet through a fish aquarium in Romeo +Juliet.

The best of Fitzgerald’s writing is preserved through the narration of Nick Caraway (played by Tobey Maguire) and seamlessly interweaves itself with the extremely restless camera of Baz as it does such 3D contortions as starting at the top of the Empire State Building and descending till it ends with a close up on Nick Caraway’s upward looking gaze on the street. At another time the camera will travel unbrokenly between Jay Gatsby’s nouveu riche mansion to across the bay where his romantic obsession Daisy Buchanan lives with her aristocratic husband (played by Joel Edgerton) in her own mansion. This may seem a bit much, but on the other hand it is not like Baz is adapting Ernest Hemingway here. If you want to see a Hemingway-esque movie, go see Jeff Nichol’s Mud. Here we are adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose books unapologetically overflow with the kind of flowery vocabulary that makes it a perfect fit for what Baz likes to do.

I suppose now it is the point of the review where I rewrite my high school book report. I will try to do a better job of it this time. I cannot recall saying anything that insightful back then.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by a young man named Nick Caraway who moves to New York City during the roaring twenties and takes a Wall Street job. Right next door to Nick is the Gatsby estate where endless parties go on almost every night though no one quite sure knows why. Gatsby is a ghost at his parties. Most partiers never see him. One day, Nick gets an invitation. Weirdly when he shows up, he finds he is the only person to get an invitation. What’s more is that the reclusive Gatsby wants to meet him. Gatsby puts on quite a show and story for Nick. Gatsby is from a highly respectable family who are all dead now that sent him to the best schools and such. Then he went to war in WWI and became a war hero. Nick, who unbeknownst to Gatsby is a down to earth guy, is surprised even more to find out the reason he is being treated to such a display. Jay Gatsby is in love with his cousin Daisy Buchanan, a woman who rejected him once because he was too poor. He wants Nick to ask Daisy to meet him for tea, nothing else. That is what all the parties were for. He was throwing them just to entice Daisy to show up. And when she never did, he invited Nick. There is a great scene where an especially nervous Jay finally asks Nick to ask Daisy to tea and thinks it is necessary to sweeten the deal by offering Nick connections to all his Wall Street buddies. But Nick declines the offer. He will do it as a favor. Imagine Jay’s surprise. Nobody in the “respectable society” he is so desperately trying to shoehorn into never once did anything for free or as a friend.

What are we to think of Gatsby? This is a question that the whole country wants each and every young citizen to contemplate. Here is a man that embodies so many of the contradictory values of America. He comes from a poor family and worked hard to make his fortune, but he lies about his past and presents a consumerist façade of aristocracy and easy living. His great ambition and individuality have led to success, but it is accomplished by being a bootlegger with shady acquaintances. He is driven by love, hope, and idealism, but his dreams are unrealistic and ultimately illusory.  He is rich. He is kind. He is handsome. He is a criminal. He is a home wrecker. He is a phony. But importantly, F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to write of Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Caraway, a character whose realness is undeterred by the sound and fury of the Roaring Twenties. We see Gatsby clearly through Nick the way no other person in the story does. Gatsby does much that is corrupt but his ultimate purpose is incorruptible. Everything he does, he does for love, and this he proves beyond a doubt when he is prepared to take a manslaughter charge for an undeserving woman right after she rejects him. There is much about Gatsby that we may sneer at but Nick Caraway remembers his father’s advice once passed down to him a long time ago, to always look for the good in people. And that special type of good Nick sees in Gatsby stands tall amidst all the fucking shit he imposed on his life and all that life imposed on him. That is what made the man Great.