The first reviews for David Lowery's adaptation of The Green Knight are arriving and hailing it as a jaw-dropping epic worthy of the Arthurian genre. The story is based on the medieval legend of the same name in which Sir Gawain, the headstrong nephew of King Arthur, embarks on a quest to battle the titular gigantic tree-like creature. The film marks the second collaboration between Lowery and indie powerhouse studio A24 after the 2017 Sundance and Fantasia festivals hit A Ghost Story.
The cast for the The Green Knight is led by Dev Patel as Gawain and also stars Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Barry Keoghan, Kate Dickie, Erin Kellyman and Ralph Ineson. Filming for the project occurred in 2019, but as with many other films last year, The Green Knight saw its release delayed multiple times due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, even cancelling its world premiere at the 2020 SXSW festival. But as theaters have begun opening up again and audiences are gearing up for its release, it appears the wait will be well worth it.
With just a few days remaining until the film's release, critics' reviews for The Green Knight have begun hitting the airwaves and they are glowing. Praising everything from Patel's lead performance, some of whom are hailing it as the best of his career, to Lowery's gorgeous direction and faithful adaptation of the source material, it certainly looks to be one of the best outings for the Arthurian genre. Check out what critics are saying below:
David Rooney, THR:
An otherworldly Arthurian legend that owes as much to The Seventh Seal as to Excalibur, David Lowery’s The Green Knight is a dreamy mood piece that retells the classic hero’s journey as a hypnotic tale steeped in dark magic and supernatural horror. Just as the writer-director’s A Ghost Story reshaped the afterlife into an intensely emotional echo chamber of lingering love and loss, his new film slows down the action of a typical Camelot tale to deliver something richer, more thoughtful, yet laced with chivalric exploits and bizarre encounters. Led by Dev Patel at his most magnetic, this is a fantastical adventure in a genre all of its own.
David Ehrlich, IndieWire:
In this movie, as in the legend that inspired it, every interaction hinges on an unequal exchange of some kind. Lowery’s unforgettable adaptation refuses to do the math for us, but it’s all the more thrilling for how it insists that the only true value of a thing in this world is that which we find in it for ourselves. “Are you real, or are you spirit?,” Gawain asks St. Winifred somewhere along his path between spoiled brat and Arthurian legend, “What is the difference?,” she snorts back. “I just need my head.”
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune:
Lowery has an unusual gift for forest-shrouded wonders, as proven by his beguiling live-action Pete’s Dragon for Disney. (His next project is also for Disney: Peter Pan & Wendy) Serving here as his own editor, the director pays close attention to that extra beat or longer-than-usual take, by which we’re pulled into a world and a rhythm not like most movies. The movie’s more ruminative than exuberant. It’s also fully invested in making its own kind of magic, on its own time.
Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com:
Lowery has adapted the 14th century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into one of the most memorable films of the year, a fascinating swirl of masculinity, temptation, heroism, and religion. Arthurian experts may quibble with some of Lowery’s decisions and it is certainly a film that challenges traditional expectations of stories about heroic knights for modern audiences, but fans will be drawn to this mesmerizing journey guided by Lowery’s incredibly poetic eye, career-best work from Dev Patel, and an artistic sensibility that transports audiences to another world. It’s a film that embeds the concept of storytelling and performance into its narrative—whether it’s a King asking for a heroic tale or children watching a puppet show—while also weaving its own enchanting spell on audiences.
Robert Daniels, Polygon:
Lowery more than catches an attentive audience’s attention with this film. His dazzling visuals, brilliant spectacle, and petrifying sequences are enrapturing. Likewise, Patel finally lays claim to the leading-man mantle so often bequeathed to him, yet so rarely earned. His career-defining performance should establish him as an actor made for big, grand epics. Lowery’s The Green Knight is cinema’s best Arthurian adaptation, which may matter only to literary scholars.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:
That this eye-popping visual bounty would be a mere side attraction attests to how much movie Lowery jam-packs into two hours, the untamed gorgeousness easing us through the early-Christian arcana, tangled personal development, and occasional formal experiments with time. To disguise a film so artful and boldly uncommercial as mass-market entertainment for those still hurting from Game of Thrones’ conclusion – there’s your act of heroism.
Pete Hammond, Deadline:
Fans of epic tales like Lord of the Rings will find themselves transfixed with this intelligent and thought-provoking trip back to that time. It is no accident that LOTR author J.R.R. Tolkien was the man who first translated the poem, all written in verse, into the English language in 1925. This movie will prove we are still talking about it in 2021 and still deciphering what truths it holds.
Caitlin Kennedy, Nightmarish Conjurings:
The tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is such a story, weighty with the wisdom that comes from holding centuries of secrets. A24’s epic retelling, The Green Knight, moves confidently under the heft of its source and infuses an earthy sensuality that works simultaneously to preserve the ancient feel of the story and to add biting notes of the contemporary. The result is an intricate and impossibly beautiful cinematic tapestry.
Brandon Katz, Observer:
Despite The Green Knight‘s opaque obscurity and scattered whims, there’s a clear beginning, middle and end structure that crescendos with a scintillating third Act. Nobility, generosity of spirit and gallantry may not hold as much significance in a contemporary world. But Lowery and company force the issue with a deft touch that manages to bridge the gap between the eons of separation. By the end, Sir Gawain has found the tale that will define and drive him so that history may know thee.
Owen Gleiberman, Variety:
But Lowery, in dramatizing this quirky cousin of the other Arthurian legends, is going for the kind of de-melodramatization of the Middle Ages that Robert Bresson was celebrated for bringing off in his 1974 clanking-sword tone poem “Lancelot du Lac.” I’ve never been able to take that Bresson “masterpiece” (it’s about as exciting as watching spilled blood dry), but Lowery, with The Green Knight, has made a solemnly moving Christian parable that uses pagan elements to replay the interior thrust of the Christ story.
Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting:
Writer/Director David Lowery’s adaptation of the anonymously written, 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” makes for one epic feast of a movie. Lowery deconstructs it, creating an intensely robust sword and sorcery feature thematically, visually, and narratively. The Green Knight doesn’t just ensnare you in its captivating spell piecemeal; it consumes you wholly from the opening frames.
Eric Eisenberg, Cinemablend:
Given Lowery’s track record, it’s not surprising in the slightest that his cinematic take on an Arthurian fable is something truly special to behold, but that in no way undercuts the magnitude of the accomplishment. The Green Knight is all at once thrilling, gorgeous, and haunting, featuring its own special take on a classic tale that will have your jaw agape while watching and your mind spinning as you walk away.
Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm:
In The Green Knight, the infinite mysteries of the natural world are reframed in an Arthurian retelling so strange and so seductive that it’s hard to stop the film from taking hold inside your brain and burrowing itself underneath your skin until your veins turn into roots and your blood changes to water. It’s a transportive experience, one that’s informed by Dev Patel‘s infinitely curious and devastatingly sexy performance, and by director David Lowery‘s painterly vision of a medieval time both rooted in history and embedded in magic.
Even when trying his hand at studio filmmaking with Disney's live-action remake of Pete's Dragon, Lowery has consistently proven to be a writer/director with a unique vision and gorgeous eye for direction. The delay of The Green Knight last year was met with disappointment from many because those who have followed the filmmaker to this point knew of the potential his style held to delivering one of the better efforts of the Arthurian genre as a whole. This especially felt true in a time in which Hollywood has dropped the ball multiple times in the genre, namely with Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
Thankfully, the early reviews for The Green Knight confirm that the year-long delay will have been well worth the wait. In addition to praising Patel's powerful and attractive performance as Gawain, Lowery seems to have stayed true to the source poem while delivering just enough twists to surprise fans akin to Peter Jackson's work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Audiences won't have to wait for long to see if it clears this high bar when the film arrives in theaters this week.
Sources: Various [see links above]
