The Green Knight [Blu-ray]

One of the worst conceits a director can commit is to deliberately tell an incomplete story, inviting the viewer to interpret the meaning of the narrative. Even Stanley Kubrick caught hell for 2001. David Lowery is not Stanley Kubrick. As the Queen observes at the feast, "not yet."The tale is set near the end of the reign King Arthur, (yes, the sword in the stone guy.). It is Christmas Day, and he is hosting a feast. But there is trouble in Camelot (never explicitly named.) The King's heir is absent, quite possibly missing, and the King is unwell. The King, the Queen and the King's half sister, the witch Morgan le Fay, have conspired to find a replacement, Morgan's son, Gawain, who is completely in the dark.Gawain, interestingly pronounced "Gowwen," is a minor royal who has spent his youth and wealth lounging, drinking and carousing. A quintessential 21st century millennial. The low lifes he has befriended wonder why he isn't a Knight yet. "I've got plenty of time." At the feast, Gawain is surprised when the King, who barely knows him, calls him to sit at his side. At the same moment Gawain's mom is doing some seriously witchy work. She either conjures or summons The Green Knight, who bursts into the feast. Shaped like a man, but seemingly made of wood he issues a challenge to the assembled knights.Abashed by his lack of knightly achievements, Gawain accepts the challenge. He gets uselessly cryptic advice from the King and Queen, and faces The Green Knight. Gawain prevails, but discovers it was a magical trap. He has signed his own death warrant 1 year hence. A classic millennial conundrum. There never was a way to win.Gawain sweats out the year while Christians and Pagans all weave blessings and charms to protect him. His commoner lover gives a tiny bell though he refuses to commit to her. Will any of it do any good?Gawain's 6 day journey north to his fate is a catastrophe. It's hardly surprising. Gawain may not have ever ventured out of the castle before. He faces a series of encounters. The concept of the "side quest" is actually very old. All the encounters are bizarre and confusing.In the end Gawain arrives at his destiny. His courage wavers and an offer of escape proves empty. In the end, exhausted, he just gives up and accepts his fate, whatever it is to be. Is it integrity? Is it honor? Or, like so many millennials has he just seen the futility of it all and decided, what's the point?Those familiar with the original source material will know the old story continues a bit, and explains the meaning of the tale. Why Lowery chose to stop when he did is best understood by himself. There are YouTube videos where he explains his intent.. If you choose to leave the story open for audience interpretation, know they may add the elements and get a different outcome.The film is beautifully produced, staged and filmed, if the shots and lighting were unspeakably bleak. I only remember one sunlit scene, which was strangely indoors, when the exterior was overcast. Go figure. Casting and performances were excellent. Would that they had had more to work with.The Green Knight is a very stylized film.. There are many directors who seem principly focused on style over story. There is no sin in that. But to relegate story to a murky back burner side note is.Note: It will take time and effort, but we are going to have to find a way to work through the jarring effect of seeing GoT alumni in other projects.

First off, some of the trailers of this movie are very misleading, this looks like an action adventure movie. So a lot of people will be expecting like Lord Of The Rings, Willow, or many other movies with a lot of action that are set in medieval times. This is not going to be that movie, so your expectations should not fall into that. This is a lot more akin to "Life Of Pi", with the visuals having allegorical meanings. I will write a non-spoiler part, then a spoiler part where I cover some of the weird choices and why this film will only be for certain people.The beginning of this movie was very interesting, the middle was not quite as good, and the last half was way too convoluted and nonsensical. The story could have gone many different ways, but the direction decided to twist the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", and take a lot of liberties with the story framework.The mother is like two characters combined, the boy who tricks him was not in the original story, and a lot of the stuff seems there just to be there. This is like Japanese styled films, where the visuals tell the story without explanation, but a lot of what happens here has no clear meaning and will leave most people confused. Even if a lesson is to be learned, even the lesson is confusing and could have been done in a different way to make more sense. They decided to change the original story, yet left a lot of unanswered questions.The visuals are outstanding, some complained they were too dark, but it showed up just fine with my PC hooked up to my LG C8 OLED TV. The CGI and such were done very well. The music also tells part of the story, but my wife and I had a hard time understanding a lot of the dialog and had to turn subtitles on. This is with a Denon receiver and surround sound w/ATMOS speakers setup.Dev Patel is good in this, as are most of the cast. The biggest issue with this movie is the twisting of the source material, which is where the seemingly meaningless scenes mostly come from. The point or "lessons" of a lot of the material seems to be lacking explanation or clearness. If done in better ways, this could have been a much more solid, different, and interesting movie.+++++SPOILERS: DO NOT READ IF YOU DID NOT SEE THIS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!+++++Things that made no sense and seemed to serve no purpose, as if there just because they could be.-The talking fox: Because, why not?-The giant people: Why? It was like, "Attack On Titan", without the attack.-The boy and his female helpers: Added characters for no reason, trick him, steal his stuff, and ride off with his horse. They steal his axe and ride off with his horse and "invincible sash", then are never seen or heard from again. Everything they take is returned to him, but they are just gone off the face of the world. The lesson is/was to not trust a kid who loots bodies in a field?-The headless lady: rewards him by returning his axe and "invincible sash", how did she get it when it was taken by the boy and his female companions? Did they stop by and drop it off to her corpse? Where did they go after that?-Joel Edgerton kissing him: Why? One of the biggest WTF moments for no apparent reason. Was that to showcase the fact he is straight?-The whole journey: He goes through all that and more, just to say, "No, don't" to the Green Knight. Basically meaning he went through all that for nothing and just should have stayed home.-The ending, "what if" scenario: So he went through all that in his head, then decided, "to heck with it" and wanted the Green Knight to cut his head off? Why would his mother teach him a lesson, only to have him basically end it? Lessons are meant to be lived through.

Good points: brilliant cinematography and captures the medieval "magical/ religious/ nature-oriented" mind-set with startling veracity.Bad points: s-l-o-w and at times so pretentious you half expect it to disappear up its own... (ahem)ATM I'm leaning toward the "good points" viewpoint, although I'm also waiting for a few more weeks to watch it again to see if the positive viewpoint lasts.

L'article est arrivé avec un choc.

Très déçu, le film n’a pas de version française sur Amazon, et ils n’ont pas jugé bon de le mentionner en description, donc si vous vous demandez s’il y a la vf, c’est non, pas de sous-titres non plus, extrêmement déçu

Mon commentaire ne porte pas sur le film car je n'ai pu le voir étant donné qu'il n'est lisible qu'en Amérique du nord. Il n'est pas compatible avec la zone Europe. De plus, à en croire la pochette, c'est une copie en provenance du Mexique (légale?)

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.