Green Knight
Mar. 20th, 2022 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
palusbuteoBecause I was up in Portsmouth/Dover NH this weekend and stayed at a hotel (motel 6) I got the chance to watch some TV for the first time in a while (since we cancelled our cable a while ago)
and one of the handful of channels was HBO and Showtime (by the way, does anyone else find it ironic that back in the 80s and 90s hotels would advertise about having HBO on their color TVs in their rooms and how that was a BIG DEAL but they'd only have HBO and like 3 other channels, and by the 2000s a lot of hotels had dozens of channels, and now in the past what 5-6 years we're back to having only 4-5 channels? Also funny that it's supposed to be Satellite TV but all of the channel numbers did not match what was listed in the station ID status bar on the screen nor on the directory / show listings channel....)
So anyway, they had the Green Knight.
The handful of stills I had seen I thought it held some promise, as the costuming looked marginally descent, and there were some angles and use of color & shapes I found really interesting from an artistic sense as well as medieval illuminated manuscript work art history it looked like it might have been taking some serious notes. But there were some scenes that were a little...Off....And I figured well Artistic License and maybe they were showing us part of a fantasy or dream sequence or something.
So finally able to sit down and watch the whole thing, I tried to give the movie every GD chance I could with every GD minute of it.
And...WTF. WTF did I just watch.
This isn't the 1970s were subcult fans are like <i>"Duuuude, ya gotta be stoooned as fuuuck broh because then it makes sense man yaaah broh"</i>
it's fucking 2022 godfuckingdammit all of us History, Art History, Medievalists, Western Civ, English Lit Ubernerds who would have been all over this thing and I heard nothing but bashing about it, so as the movie unfolded I understood their deep-seated Ire. Because of course, all I had to go by 48 hours ago was still images and maybe 2 second clips.
I WILL say however that Gowain in actual-riveted-maille-armor was boner-inducing and was probably the only thing as a historical accuracy thing that can be pointed out to, like, At All.
Everything else, as far as I know (and I admit I'm not well-versed in much of material culture etc. between 500 and 1300 AD),
Was Complete Bullshit
I was perfectly willing, again, to give the movie every chance I could, and I was OK with a lot of the comic-book-like and adam-west-batman-angles and the lucious colors and lighting effects and using background and foreground foreshortening to have "faces" and "eyes" illusions and such.
I was OK with most of all that, up until the scene where he's on the hillside and staring at Giant Women In The Fog.
Seriously, WTAF was that about. It made NO SENCE to the storyline nor character development. Was it there JUST for the Director's pervy obsession with a bald headed nekkid woman with a flat chest? Was the director having impure thoughts about Sinead O'Connor or something?
...And then there was "An Interlude" sequence in the middle of the film.
What. The. Fuck.
And it just kept Jumping the Shark every other fucking scene.
Although after about 2 minutes I realized it was a "possible future fantasy/dream/nightmare vision" when the Green Knight was just to lob his head off (when he runs away), the future vision with him marrying the woman of the Interlude castle and being crowned King and all of that shit.
Also, what is up with A24 films now with the last 2 (Green Knight and The Lighthouse) with depictions of men jacking off and spooge?
Well....OK, I guess it's happened before in Major Hollywood Releases (no pun intended....), with "American Pie" and "Something About Mary" which were pretty forgettable and terrible movies, I haven't seen either in over 20 years....
But, I'm not going to fixate on spooge.
I will try to end this on a "positive" note. There were as mentioned a lot of scenes, sequences, and composition i thought was brilliant and the use of vivid color and lighting effects was really great. There's one scene when Gawain finds himself in the Chapel and he's surrounded by pitch black, and the vines and walls that are back-lit "close in" on his shape and there are two windows with light glowing out and it looks like a giant Skull, and it's fucking awesome.
Also as mentioned, Gawain in actually-riveted maille armor was great to see. And in, as far as I can tell, "correct" tunic and with mismatched vivid solid colors for his clothing. The crowns that Arthur (and later Gawain) and wives wear with the "Halo" on the back had to grow on me a little bit.
The Green Knight himself was I thought an interesting take, as it is theorized by some Lit. historians and Arthurian Lit historians that the GK is an analogy for the Green Man and of Nature and humanity's struggle against it and learning to accept it / accept that they cannot defeat the force of Nature.
I also tended to like the floating Text and Script overlays to set the tone for the new "chapters" and build up the next sequences. Those were clearly nodding towards Illuminated manuscripts.
In a related sense, and another element that had to grow on me, was the Puppet Show moments. At first i thought it was stupid and not helping the story along, but then when I saw puppet heads being lopped off with red ribbons, as well as the Wheel of the Passage Of Time with Gawain on his Journey, I eventually felt those were pretty cool and a nice nod to the actual historical counterparts.
In conclusion, I admit I never got to read the actual work, I didn't get to take any Western Civ or Medieval History classes in school. I had read some general summaries and some short excerpts, so i knew the basic idea of the story and how it went down. (come to find out years later there are variations, go figure, as well as various interpretations). Despite having never read the "actual" story, but know the gist, I've always liked the idea of the story and appreciated its multiple-meanings and part in Medieval Pop Culture. So I guess in some ways I had a preset biased against the movie anyway.
So, overall, trying not to get hung up on the far-flung revision of the story arc, and the wrong moves on historical "accuracy" in favor of "artistic vision" or whatever, I admit it wasn't a "Terrible" movie. Despite my rant above. But, it wasn't a very "good" movie either.
Not sure I would watch it again. I dunno, I might pick up on a lot more things and subtleties I may have missed while my brain went into full-scale ADHD over-analaysis on this one prop or moment and lose total focus on what's happening in the movie because it's still going.
I also suppose it could have been "worse", it could have gone the stupid Vikings TV show route and had been made into a TV series. >shudder<
Yeah let's take this One Story from the Sagas you can read in an Hour and stretch that cash-cow out to an 80 episode or whatever how many GD seasons there are now of it.
and one of the handful of channels was HBO and Showtime (by the way, does anyone else find it ironic that back in the 80s and 90s hotels would advertise about having HBO on their color TVs in their rooms and how that was a BIG DEAL but they'd only have HBO and like 3 other channels, and by the 2000s a lot of hotels had dozens of channels, and now in the past what 5-6 years we're back to having only 4-5 channels? Also funny that it's supposed to be Satellite TV but all of the channel numbers did not match what was listed in the station ID status bar on the screen nor on the directory / show listings channel....)
So anyway, they had the Green Knight.
The handful of stills I had seen I thought it held some promise, as the costuming looked marginally descent, and there were some angles and use of color & shapes I found really interesting from an artistic sense as well as medieval illuminated manuscript work art history it looked like it might have been taking some serious notes. But there were some scenes that were a little...Off....And I figured well Artistic License and maybe they were showing us part of a fantasy or dream sequence or something.
So finally able to sit down and watch the whole thing, I tried to give the movie every GD chance I could with every GD minute of it.
And...WTF. WTF did I just watch.
This isn't the 1970s were subcult fans are like <i>"Duuuude, ya gotta be stoooned as fuuuck broh because then it makes sense man yaaah broh"</i>
it's fucking 2022 godfuckingdammit all of us History, Art History, Medievalists, Western Civ, English Lit Ubernerds who would have been all over this thing and I heard nothing but bashing about it, so as the movie unfolded I understood their deep-seated Ire. Because of course, all I had to go by 48 hours ago was still images and maybe 2 second clips.
I WILL say however that Gowain in actual-riveted-maille-armor was boner-inducing and was probably the only thing as a historical accuracy thing that can be pointed out to, like, At All.
Everything else, as far as I know (and I admit I'm not well-versed in much of material culture etc. between 500 and 1300 AD),
Was Complete Bullshit
I was perfectly willing, again, to give the movie every chance I could, and I was OK with a lot of the comic-book-like and adam-west-batman-angles and the lucious colors and lighting effects and using background and foreground foreshortening to have "faces" and "eyes" illusions and such.
I was OK with most of all that, up until the scene where he's on the hillside and staring at Giant Women In The Fog.
Seriously, WTAF was that about. It made NO SENCE to the storyline nor character development. Was it there JUST for the Director's pervy obsession with a bald headed nekkid woman with a flat chest? Was the director having impure thoughts about Sinead O'Connor or something?
...And then there was "An Interlude" sequence in the middle of the film.
What. The. Fuck.
And it just kept Jumping the Shark every other fucking scene.
Although after about 2 minutes I realized it was a "possible future fantasy/dream/nightmare vision" when the Green Knight was just to lob his head off (when he runs away), the future vision with him marrying the woman of the Interlude castle and being crowned King and all of that shit.
Also, what is up with A24 films now with the last 2 (Green Knight and The Lighthouse) with depictions of men jacking off and spooge?
Well....OK, I guess it's happened before in Major Hollywood Releases (no pun intended....), with "American Pie" and "Something About Mary" which were pretty forgettable and terrible movies, I haven't seen either in over 20 years....
But, I'm not going to fixate on spooge.
I will try to end this on a "positive" note. There were as mentioned a lot of scenes, sequences, and composition i thought was brilliant and the use of vivid color and lighting effects was really great. There's one scene when Gawain finds himself in the Chapel and he's surrounded by pitch black, and the vines and walls that are back-lit "close in" on his shape and there are two windows with light glowing out and it looks like a giant Skull, and it's fucking awesome.
Also as mentioned, Gawain in actually-riveted maille armor was great to see. And in, as far as I can tell, "correct" tunic and with mismatched vivid solid colors for his clothing. The crowns that Arthur (and later Gawain) and wives wear with the "Halo" on the back had to grow on me a little bit.
The Green Knight himself was I thought an interesting take, as it is theorized by some Lit. historians and Arthurian Lit historians that the GK is an analogy for the Green Man and of Nature and humanity's struggle against it and learning to accept it / accept that they cannot defeat the force of Nature.
I also tended to like the floating Text and Script overlays to set the tone for the new "chapters" and build up the next sequences. Those were clearly nodding towards Illuminated manuscripts.
In a related sense, and another element that had to grow on me, was the Puppet Show moments. At first i thought it was stupid and not helping the story along, but then when I saw puppet heads being lopped off with red ribbons, as well as the Wheel of the Passage Of Time with Gawain on his Journey, I eventually felt those were pretty cool and a nice nod to the actual historical counterparts.
In conclusion, I admit I never got to read the actual work, I didn't get to take any Western Civ or Medieval History classes in school. I had read some general summaries and some short excerpts, so i knew the basic idea of the story and how it went down. (come to find out years later there are variations, go figure, as well as various interpretations). Despite having never read the "actual" story, but know the gist, I've always liked the idea of the story and appreciated its multiple-meanings and part in Medieval Pop Culture. So I guess in some ways I had a preset biased against the movie anyway.
So, overall, trying not to get hung up on the far-flung revision of the story arc, and the wrong moves on historical "accuracy" in favor of "artistic vision" or whatever, I admit it wasn't a "Terrible" movie. Despite my rant above. But, it wasn't a very "good" movie either.
Not sure I would watch it again. I dunno, I might pick up on a lot more things and subtleties I may have missed while my brain went into full-scale ADHD over-analaysis on this one prop or moment and lose total focus on what's happening in the movie because it's still going.
I also suppose it could have been "worse", it could have gone the stupid Vikings TV show route and had been made into a TV series. >shudder<
Yeah let's take this One Story from the Sagas you can read in an Hour and stretch that cash-cow out to an 80 episode or whatever how many GD seasons there are now of it.
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Date: 2022-03-22 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-23 11:28 pm (UTC)