Let’s talk for a minute about David Lowery’s fantasy epic, The Green Knight. The 2021 film is an arthouse adaptation of the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and while some may rebuff the “arthouse” label (it was, after all, an A24 film with a wide release), Lowery’s take on the medieval tale has all the classic features of such a film: slow-paced and atmospheric, eschewing formulaic or even propulsive storytelling for contemplation and ambiguity. (A friend of mine suggested a title for this post: “The Green Knight and How Cinematography Can Artificially Inflate Your Runtime.”) Such arthouse qualities are inseparable from the lesson the movie is trying to communicate—to see this, let’s start with a refresher of the plot.
The basic story revolves around a knight in King Arthur’s court, Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), a nephew to the king. On Christmas morning (New Year’s Eve in the poem), Gawain attends a feast at the Round Table with Arthur, Guinevere, and the rest of the knights. Suddenly the Green Knight, a mysterious figure appearing as if emerging from a tree, barges into the festivities. He challenges all in the court to a game: any knight who lands a blow on him will win his green axe, but the following Christmas they must travel to the Green Chapel and receive an equal blow in return. Gawain, eager to prove himself, accepts the challenge. The Green Knight approaches, opening himself up and willingly exposing himself to any attack from Gawain. Thinking he has outwitted the antagonist, Gawain slices at the neck, decapitating his enemy. However, after receiving the blow, the Green Knight simply rises, retrieves his severed head, repeats the requisite date to Gawain, and rides away laughing.
Over the next year, Gawain revels in his famed deed but grows increasingly anxious as the day approaches. He considers not going—it is a game after all—but Arthur reminds him that he must, for that very reason—he must complete the game. And so, as the cold comes, Gawain departs for the Green Chapel.
He has a few minor adventures along the way, but eventually he comes across a castle and in it a Lord (Joel Edgerton) and a Lady (Alicia Vikander). They inform him that the Chapel is nearby and invite Gawain to stay until closer to Christmas. During his visit, the Lord invites his guest to play a game with him: whenever the Lord gains on his hunting trip he will exchange with Gawain for whatever he gains while staying in the castle. Gawain is confused—what could he possibly gain in the Lord’s own home that he could give in exchange—but agrees to the game. The next morning, while the Lord is off hunting, the Lady presents herself to Gawain; she offers him a magical girdle that will protect him from any harm as she seduces him. After this, Gawain flees the castle and encounters the returning Lord. He offers him the spoils of his hunt—a fox he has captured—but Gawain neither tells him of the sexual encounter nor offers the girdle he received.
Gawain goes from the castle, soon finding the Green Chapel, worn away by waters and overrun by foliage. He discovers the Green Knight but must wait until Christmas Day for him to awaken. He says he has come for the return blow and delivers the knight’s axe to him. Still wearing the girdle, he kneels to receive the fatal blow. (Spoilers now and throughout.) But as the knight begins to swing, Gawain flinches. The Green Knight waits for Gawain to compose himself, and we see a vision of Gawain’s—of a life lived into old age, in which he assumes the mantle of king, but without honor. When he returns to reality, he removes the girdle and announces he is ready. The Green Knight leans down to him, “Well done, my brave knight… Now off with your head!” And then credits.
While much of the story of the movie comes directly from the source material, there are a few substantial differences. Among those are the inclusion of a few side characters, particularly Winifred’s ghost and a talking fox—more on them in a second. More important is how Gawain’s character is completely changed. In the poem (famously rendered into modern English by J. R. R. Tolkien), Sir Gawain is the most chivalrous and honorable of King Arthur’s knights. He accepts the Green Knight’s challenge, not to bring himself glory but out of loyalty to his king; he does not need persuading to keep his end of the bargain; he remains a respectful guest while not giving into the Lady’s advances. In contrast, we are introduced to the Gawain of the movie waking up late in a brothel with animals outside the window; he is irresponsible and self-seeking; he gives into lust, and he does not want to maintain his end of the bargain. This leads into the other major difference between movie and poem: the ending. In the poem, Gawain never removes the girdle, and with his final swing, the Green Knight merely nicks the back of Gawain’s neck. He then reveals himself to be the Lord in disguise, testing Gawain’s honor. He is impressed by Gawain’s bravery but cut him nonetheless for his deceit regarding the girdle. When Gawain returns home, he is absolved of his shortcoming and celebrated for his overwhelming virtue. If you were to read the Wikipedia synopsis of the movie, you might say it’s not too different—Gawain submits to his fate, thereby gaining his honor, and is spared for doing so. But this is a dubious interpretation of the movie’s events and even contradicted by the director who, despite the ambiguity, wants us to read the ending as Gawain accepting death.
The unique choices of the movie begin to lend themselves toward some particular understandings of its story. Foremost is the recognition that the way we comport ourselves as human beings is more important than the legacy we leave. Or in Lowery’s own words: what matters is our integrity. This idea is tied up in the film with the transience of our legacies and everything else. All things waste away with time. Such is the force of the Green Knight and the vision of nature he represents. Throughout the movie the decaying effects of nature are shown and discussed; from the very beginning, when the mysterious warrior barges into court and confronts an aging Arthur, we are made to feel that even the king and all of Christian civilization will give way to the earth and the passage of time.
This interpretation is reinforced in the film’s insistence that death is the end. Just before Gawain reaches the Green Chapel, the fox that has been following him chooses to talk—he suggests Gawain doesn’t really know what he’s doing:
Gawain: I know what I face.
Fox: If any man truly knew, he would bear his shame happily and turn away, head held high, to end his song as he saw fit.
The fox, a symbol of craftiness and self-seeking in both the poem and film, speaks on behalf of Gawain’s natural inclinations. (In fact, in the original script, when asked if he speaks by witchcraft, the fox replies: “No witchcraft. Only nature, to which we all bend. He you seek is as wild as I, but knows no measure.”) The creature confirms what the knight already knows, that there is nothing beyond death and that it is worse than any shame. In short, he should protect his neck. Because we know Gawain and the movie ultimately disagree with the fox, that honor is more important, we might be tempted to discount the fox’s words—but the film denies that option as well. In the final scene, the Green Knight confirms the truth when the fearful Gawain asks, “Is this really all there is?” to which the knight responds, “What else ought there be?”
All of this is meant to make the ending a positive thing. Rather than reading the movie’s ending as tragic, Lowery wants us to see Gawain’s accepting death as a good thing. The choice to be honorable, to have integrity, lifts the young knight out of the life of fear and moral squalor we have thus far seen and toward something noble. The fox had the facts right but understood them wrongly—it is not that death is the end, therefore we should cling to life; no, death is the end, therefore we ought to live life well.
This moral of the story is notably different than the one found in the original poem. The medieval poem is, to be sure, also a celebration of virtue, but in its ending, in which Gawain is exposed (and eventually forgiven) for not removing the girdle he thinks will protect him, the poem becomes a recognition of human weakness and temptation—that while we strive to be chivalrous, we ultimately fall short of that goal, and that is understandable.
I don’t really have a strong preference for one version of the story over the other, the arthouse or the ancient. Still, I would reckon, unsurprisingly, the movie the more timely of the two. For an R-rated A24 film to emphasize the development of integrity and honor is, if nothing else, surprising. And such a surprise is surely welcome, for it doesn’t take an old cynic to perceive a lack of virtue in the world. More than we need to be reminded of our human weakness, we need to see the good of integrity.
The Green Knight gently leads us into this world of moral development through the motif of games, particularly Gawain’s game with the Green Knight and with the Lord and his discussions of games with Arthur and with the Lord. Moreover, there are other versions of games played throughout the movie. One involves the ghost of St. Winifred, in which a young girl appears to Gawain in the night and asks him to retrieve her head for her—it has been thrown into a spring and she cannot get at it. Gawain asks, What will you give me in return? And the spirit is offended. Nevertheless, Gawain swims to the bottom of the spring and retrieves her skull, and in the morning something he had lost is returned to him.
The connection between games and virtue is well established, particularly in the writing of the late Alasdair MacIntyre, drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on language. For Wittgenstein, human beings are always participating in “language-games,” and these games provide the framework of sense for our forms of life. Like any game, language depends on rules that are followed by participants. Some rules are spoken, others are implied or understood. Some rules are strictly enforced, others are more like guidelines that can be broken. And still, for other rules, to break them is to leave the game—it is not an infringement but to simply play something else entirely. Such rules are not arbitrary impositions but the very grammar of the game itself: to not kick the ball in soccer is not to break the rules; rather, it is to step outside the game of soccer altogether. To learn a game, then, is to inhabit its grammar: to follow its rules, apply them in new situations, and eventually teach them to others. Cumulatively, these rules sketch a field of intelligibility in which some actions make sense and others appear absurd.
MacIntyre takes this Wittgensteinian insight further. He argues that the standards by which we judge excellence are always internal to a practice and discerned from within the activity itself. To play soccer, to direct a film, or to translate a text well is not defined by external goods—what we might gain from it—but by the internal goods proper to the practice. We don’t play soccer well (kicking the ball with our feet) because we might win a trophy for doing so, we play soccer well because it is fun to do so. We do not greet a friend with a hug because we want to engender them to us, we hug them because we love them. In this way, MacIntyre gives Wittgenstein’s language-games a normative weight: we speak and act in certain ways not merely because it is efficient but because there is something inherently good about speaking and acting in certain ways.
Such a vision of virtue stands in stark contrast to Gawain’s character—“If I go in there and find it, what would you offer me in exchange?” is the equivalent of asking, “What will you give me for playing soccer by kicking that ball with my feet?” Or consider his conversation, sitting by the fire, with the Lord of the castle:
Lord: And what do you hope to gain from facing all of this… this hue?
Gawain: Honor?
Lord: Are you asking me?
Gawain: No. Honor. That is why a knight does what he does.
Lord: And this is what you want most in life?
Gawain: To be a knight?
Lord: No, honor. You are not very good with questions.
Gawain: It is part of the life I want.
Lord: And this is all it takes for that part to be had? You’ll do this one thing, you return home a changed man, an honorable man? Just like that?
Gawain: Yes.
Lord: Oh, I wish I could see the new you. But perhaps we will miss our old friend and our fun and our games.
Gawain fails to see the value in honorable living until the final scene of the movie. Up until that point, virtue and chivalry are means to the end of knighthood, glory, and eventually Arthur’s throne.
MacIntyre loved writing about the codes of conduct of bygone societies for obvious reasons. In previous times, in contexts like medieval chivalry, the rules of life are made abundantly clear. One ought to conduct themselves with honor, keeping to their promises, remaining chaste in the face of temptation, defending their kinsmen, and so on. To do so will often result in external goods, but more importantly, it is a good in itself. We should want to act with integrity for no other reason than integrity is good.
I’ll end with a question that the theme of games raises for me. In games, we worry about cheating and fairness. And I cannot help but feel that Gawain’s opponents do not play fair. In both major games, he is goaded into his sin. The Green Knight not only does not communicate his power to survive any blow but actively invites brutal attack. Likewise, the magic girdle is the test of Gawain’s fortitude, but it is presented as part and parcel of the Lady’s seduction—it is not a neutral offering but pushed on him.
Perhaps this is where the optimism of the poem outshines the ambiguity of the arthouse. The former takes for granted that life is not fair, moreover, that there are forces out to trick us and so displaying virtue in all circumstances is an impossible task. We need that reminder of our finitude and that even the most virtuous among us fail, but when that happens, we acknowledge our weakness, accept the graciousness of our friends, and aim to do better.