The Beautiful Mystery That Is 'The Green Knight'
#139: "The Green Knight," "In Pursuit of Love," "Back to the Future," "Captain Fantastic"
Edition 139:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: We’re trying to make sense of David Lowery’s hypnotic new film The Green Knight, plus a check in on Lily James’ new project and some streaming suggestions for your weekend. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Lady Gaga is really going for it.
The Green Knight
(In theaters)
When I was in undergrad, I once got this assignment to go to an art exhibit on campus and pick out a painting to write about that “spoke to me.”
It was as painful as it sounds. I wandered around and literally watched paint dry, seeing nothing more than canvasses hanging on walls until I eventually picked out one for no reason in particular and parked myself in front of it.
An hour later, out of sheer desperation, I had invented entire universes within the strokes of paint — don’t know you know those squiggly gray lines are actually clouds and represent the stratified caste system of 18th century Europe?
It was total B.S.
But the thing that sticks with me about the experience is how much more interesting the painting became once it had been endowed with my totally fictionalized backstory. If I weren’t a college student determined to maintain my belief that art was dumb, or if I’d been earnest in my attempt to create meaning rather than coming up with whatever I thought would sound good in my paper, maybe I could’ve admitted that my effort did elevate the painting’s quality in my eyes. Years later, I can see it was a valuable lesson about the participatory nature of art.
What makes a Vincent Van Gogh impressionist painting like “The Starry Night” so valuable? Is it what the art brings to us — some swirly blue and yellow lines — or is it what we bring to the art?
I’ve been thinking about that question a lot in the days since I saw David Lowery’s latest film, The Green Knight. It’s the type of movie that demands several days of deep thought and existential questioning, because it’s mostly unwilling to provide us with easy answers.
The actual plot of the movie is quite simple. A young, spoiled teen wants to become a legendary knight in King Arthur’s court, so he accepts a challenge from a demonic swordsman and goes on a quest to fulfill his destiny.
It’s Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey on an almost elemental level.
The question of what this movie is actually about is much harder to solve. Climate change? Christianity? The New Hollywood? It could be any of those things, as the movie stays purposely opaque and deliberately slow, begging its audiences to lean in and look closer.
It helps to have such beautiful things to look at. The cinematography and set design in this movie are some of the best I’ve seen this year or in the past several, a sumptuous and epic-scaled vision of medieval castles and countryside filled with beautifully nuanced faces and bodies.
The face at the center of nearly every frame is Dev Patel, a movie star-in-waiting who has never really been willing to accept the fact that everyone on the internet is in love with him. He’s tall and impossibly handsome, yet carries himself with the short of emotional transparency that seems unique to the newest generation of rising stars.
Beside him is Alicia Vikander, an enormously talented and compelling performer who has struggled to find her footing a bit since winning her Oscar but nevertheless makes a meaningful contribution to everything she appears in. Here, without giving away too much, she plays two roles — one a faithful lover and one a seductive temptress.
So yes, the movie is violent, and it’s sexy, and it has the sense of uneasiness that A24 has perfected across its recent slate of films (when in doubt, it seems the studio just throws in more pseudo-pagan imagery and some minor key string music).
Still, Lowery’s vision is too provocative to be enjoyed from a state of woeful ignorance. One cannot go along for the ride and not attempt at some level to figure out what the heck is going on, which is tricky because some scenes and images are so seemingly disconnected that they would be frustrating if they didn’t feel so intentionally crafted.
That’s the power of a good filmmaker, and Lowery is among the most underrated in the industry today (his last three movies are all good: The Old Man and the Gun, A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon). It’s clear he placed every pixel of this movie into its rightful position like a Michelin star chef adding garnish with a pair of tweezers, faithfully adapting a poem written in Middle English while also imparting a specific artistic vision.
But what is that vision?
I’d need several more rewatches before I could venture a guess. The movie is ready to reward whatever level of participation I or you or anyone puts into it, which already sets it apart of 90% of current box office fare (you’ll drop three IQ points for every minute you spend thinking about the latest Fast and Furious movie, for example).
Which is to say, The Green Knight is like a really good impressionist painting, except that the experience of watching it for the first time is more like a mind-bending acid trip. I don’t know that I can label it as great for the same reason I cannot recommend it to every single person who is reading this newsletter, which is it’s relative inaccessibility.
But for those few out there who are ready to park yourselves in front of this piece of art and grapple with everything it presents, you’re in for a royal treat.
Something New
The Pursuit of Love (Amazon Prime): This newsletter would feel like a failure if I didn’t update you on the latest developments from our queen Lily James, who is in the midst of a true make-or-break year-plus (both for my personal fandom and her larger moviestardom). She’s set to play Pamela Anderson in early 2022. Until then, she’s the star of a new Amazon Prime series written and run by the beloved actress Emily Mortimer. It’s sort of a Jane Austen-esque tale of a love-obsessed English girl, and in the first episode James, who is 32 years old, is meant to be…17, joining Dear Evan Hansen’s Ben Platt in the club of movie teenagers who look like they spent too much time at the beach from Old.
The show is ~fine~. It’s funny and plenty clever, sprinkled with enough of that Yorgos Lanthimos-The Favourite-style quirkiness to hold my attention, but it’s drowned in so much voice over there’s hardly even opportunity for scenes to develop, or for James to act. That may be a reflection on her talent — my blind love makes her ability continue to be a mystery to me — because Andrew Scott absolutely kills every second he’s on screen and totally steals the show. That dude never misses. I saw him recreating the famous “Choose One of Five” graduation speech this week on YouTube and was ready to run through a brick wall afterward.
Something Old
Back to the Future (1985): Of course you’ve already seen this 80s classic (if not, unsubscribe until you rectify that), but I’m using this entry to sneak in a recommendation for the Netflix series “The Movies That Made Us,” which just dropped its second batch of behind-the-scenes documentaries a few weeks ago. The series takes a look back at successful underdog movies of the newly-nostalgic past — the 80s and 90s — and unwinds the mini-miracles that led to their production and release.
I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of the style, which is over-the-top cheesy and jokey to a fault, but the interviews with key characters always reveals some interesting tidbits. In the case of Back to the Future, we learn that the studio wanted to name the movie Spaceman from Pluto. Like…what. The episode also goes deep on the widely-reported casting of Eric Stoltz in the role made iconic by Michael J. Fox, the clips of which can be found on YouTube. The Netflix series is also just a great excuse to go back and rewatch some of the most pleasurable movie experiences of all time, and Back to the Future certainly is that.
Something to Stream
Captain Fantastic (Netflix): This one has been on my list to get to for a while, because I knew it fit the off-beat, character-driven story style that I love. Viggo Mortensen (best known as Aragorn from Lord of the Rings) is the patriarch of a family he is raising in a sort of remote hippie utopia, where the children pour over the Constitutional amendments as if they’re the latest video game and celebrate Noam Chomsky as if he’s Santa Claus. When his wife dies, the family must reenter society for her funeral, coming into stark contrast with the joys and frustrations of a “normal life.” It’s a great concept that is well-executed, delivering light-hearted moments in one hand and emotional gut punches with the other. I doubt this could be anyone’s favorite movie ever but I also challenge anyone to watch this movie and not come away saying it was a great streaming choice any night of the week.
Trailer Watch: House of Gucci
Every year around Oscars time we get a movie, or if we’re lucky two or three, that are really going for it. This is a textbook example. We’ve got a period drama (check), a well-regarded filmmaker who hasn’t been rewarded yet by the Academy (check), crazy costumes (check), star-studded cast (check), and oh baby the cherry on top…ambitious accents! Check!
When Ridley Scott first tried to make this movie in the mid-00s, Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio were reportedly attached to star. Now Scott is 83 years old — which I mention only because he has TWO awards contenders coming out this same year — and he’s got Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek, and Jeremy Irons.
It looks like “Succession” set in the world of European fashion, with some sort of murder implication. Yep, that’ll do. Count me in.