SCREEN SHOT - The Green Knight - the brief film review

 

At a Winter celebration a Green Knight turns up on a horse and asks for a knight to come forth to fight him. Gawain steps forward to engage. King Arthur gives him his sword, and in a brief encounter decapitates The Green Knight. The knight picks up his head and swears that in a years time Gawain must fight him again and bear whatever the consequences of that combat will be.

Based on the original medieval romance The Green Knight is a richly detailed fantasy tale. It contains all the classic mythic and folk tale elements you would expect. As you follow Gawain on the journey a year later to find the knight and meet whatever his ultimate fate is to be. On the way he has to deal with ordeals that mature him into the noble knight of Arthurian legend. Gawain at the start is naive, a bit gauche, out of his depth and clumsily incompetent. He's not that heroic at all. Set against a wild, barren and desolate landscape.

The Green Knight is a brilliantly executed film, full of imaginative curiosities and elements that feel like an accurate representation of the mediaeval world view. Its fears and reasonings being far more bizzarely weird and adult, than anything cooked up in more contemporary literary and comic book fantasies. The Green Knight is an entrancing film, that allows you to become completely absorbed into it. 

In Dev Patel as Gawain, means The Green Knight it is blessed with an actor whose abilities just appear to be becoming ever greater with every film. The estimable Kate Dickie, Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton provide equally charismatic and finely judged support.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8