The Green Knight… what a picture. To take one of the most notoriously contentious and elusive legends there is, and to pick it apart as both text and metatext on the nature of storytelling, to do so so beautifully and confidently is astonishing. Gawain is so fascinating because 
in the knowledge that he has little claim to goodness and even less to greatness, he marches on - at first reluctantly and then resolutely - towards his fate, figuring out on his path the man he is and making his peace with that self-excavation. What David Lowery does so superbly
with Dev Patel as his preternaturally gifted muse is to paint Gawain’s tale in all the shades of chivalry and cowardice, fear and stoicism that the figure carries in his tale. His camera always shows us Gawain coming towards, scarce away, and his destination is never revealed,
only the onward journey from whence he came. With magic and mortal pangs, ethereal and surrealist flourishes inescapably grounded in Earth and flesh and blood, Gawain is given the story he befits. Whether it is the one he would choose, or the one that he deserves, who are we to
truly say? But he is given the story that he befits. The way in which Lowery has chosen to tell it is audacious, poetic, profound, and measured to the point of sheer mesmerism. The final few minutes of this are about as wise and worthy in unspooling the many threads of the story
of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as any essay or translation of the “chivalric romance” I have ever come across. What a staggering rebuttal to any accusation that big, bold, beautiful, and truly ambiguous cinema has had its heyday. The Green Knight’s is a tale fit for a king.
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