The Green Knight
Nov. 17th, 2021 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraWelp, I've had this tab open for three months, which, let's be clear, is not very old at all on the scale of tabs I have open, but is very old for time taken to review something. The particular challenge here was that I loved it and J (big J - very not for little J) wasn't so into it, and so I was going to try to explain why I was so into it, when it wasn't 1 am and I was more coherent. And I guess coherency never arrived? But if I started letting that stop me I'd never get anything written up. :)
So, The Green Knight! I loved it! Mostly under a spoiler cut but let me just mention out here how well it worked getting to watch it in my living room with the subtitles on so I could understand all the dialogue. If we ever go back to theaters it's going to be such a shock to be back in the land of just struggling through unfriendly sound mixing.
So, okay. I loved it because I mostly don't do horror, but I appreciate a good extended metaphor for existential horror and grappling with the inescapability of death and that sort of thing. So I loved Green Knight the way I love the graphic novel House by Josh Simmons, or that Abby Howard comic about procrastination and complacency (here), although in fact my initial feeling that it (the movie) was going to stick with me like those comics and I was going to think of it at random intervals forever was maybe a bit overstated, in that I am now just a few months later sort of like "wait, what image in particular gave me that feeling". But, anyways, I thought it was powerful in that way.
I loved it in the way that it dealt with the part of the story that's maybe about "pagan" traditions and rituals sort of echoing into folklore and the mythology of the Matter of Britain. Like, the Green Knight, is he a Green Man, some kind of forest deity, something older. I loved the way Arthur's court is Christian ("Christ is born!") but there's also this Tim-the-Enchanter court magician (Merlin?? I love that nobody ever gets named, like I don't think they ever even said "Arthur") who seems like he might be into non-Christian rituals, and the witches doing their witch magic. And, like, St. Winifred's head in a bog, the whole Green Knight beheading game, this is about human sacrifice, right? And trying to make sense of it with some sort of back-formation about knights and martyrs? Or a Britain that isn't quite solidly converted yet, where being a Knight (a Christian role) means confrontation with the wild powers out in the wilderness. Susan Cooper does this in the Dark Is Rising books, evoking that Older Britain the original meanings of have maybe been lost but the rituals persist - the hunting of the wren, and the mari lwyd, but then also Christmas. And I love it.
(Also that the movie did both of these things at once, the universal-and-personal and the specific-and-historical.)
And also I love that the end (the almost end) was a Green Ribbon joke. (reference, reference) Hahahaha. And the whole visual of pulling the girdle out like intestines, damn.
While I'm linking things, by the way, this comic is possibly where I first read the story, and what's sort of in my head as the "canonical version"? I'm not sure about that because I was at least somewhat into Arthuriana as a kid and youth (starting from "A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court", my favorite movie at about the age of 6, I believe) and so it seems quite possible I crossed paths with it in some kid-friendly (or contemporary-revisionist) form. Did I read Boy's King Arthur? Is Gawain in Mists of Avalon? Is he in Connecticut Yankee? Did I ever read the Mary Stewart series? I have basically no useful memories of any of this.
So, The Green Knight! I loved it! Mostly under a spoiler cut but let me just mention out here how well it worked getting to watch it in my living room with the subtitles on so I could understand all the dialogue. If we ever go back to theaters it's going to be such a shock to be back in the land of just struggling through unfriendly sound mixing.
So, okay. I loved it because I mostly don't do horror, but I appreciate a good extended metaphor for existential horror and grappling with the inescapability of death and that sort of thing. So I loved Green Knight the way I love the graphic novel House by Josh Simmons, or that Abby Howard comic about procrastination and complacency (here), although in fact my initial feeling that it (the movie) was going to stick with me like those comics and I was going to think of it at random intervals forever was maybe a bit overstated, in that I am now just a few months later sort of like "wait, what image in particular gave me that feeling". But, anyways, I thought it was powerful in that way.
I loved it in the way that it dealt with the part of the story that's maybe about "pagan" traditions and rituals sort of echoing into folklore and the mythology of the Matter of Britain. Like, the Green Knight, is he a Green Man, some kind of forest deity, something older. I loved the way Arthur's court is Christian ("Christ is born!") but there's also this Tim-the-Enchanter court magician (Merlin?? I love that nobody ever gets named, like I don't think they ever even said "Arthur") who seems like he might be into non-Christian rituals, and the witches doing their witch magic. And, like, St. Winifred's head in a bog, the whole Green Knight beheading game, this is about human sacrifice, right? And trying to make sense of it with some sort of back-formation about knights and martyrs? Or a Britain that isn't quite solidly converted yet, where being a Knight (a Christian role) means confrontation with the wild powers out in the wilderness. Susan Cooper does this in the Dark Is Rising books, evoking that Older Britain the original meanings of have maybe been lost but the rituals persist - the hunting of the wren, and the mari lwyd, but then also Christmas. And I love it.
(Also that the movie did both of these things at once, the universal-and-personal and the specific-and-historical.)
And also I love that the end (the almost end) was a Green Ribbon joke. (reference, reference) Hahahaha. And the whole visual of pulling the girdle out like intestines, damn.
While I'm linking things, by the way, this comic is possibly where I first read the story, and what's sort of in my head as the "canonical version"? I'm not sure about that because I was at least somewhat into Arthuriana as a kid and youth (starting from "A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court", my favorite movie at about the age of 6, I believe) and so it seems quite possible I crossed paths with it in some kid-friendly (or contemporary-revisionist) form. Did I read Boy's King Arthur? Is Gawain in Mists of Avalon? Is he in Connecticut Yankee? Did I ever read the Mary Stewart series? I have basically no useful memories of any of this.
