The Green Knight

Locations
Call Number: Blu-ray Fantasy Green
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Pittsfield Branch, Traverwood Branch, Westgate Branch

Based on the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Originally released as a motion picture in 2021.
Wide screen.
Special features: Boldest of blood & wildest of heart: making The Green Knight; Practitioners of magic: visual effects; Illuminating technique: title design; theatrical trailer.
Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Barry Keoghan, Erin Kellyman, Kate Dickie, Sean Harris, Ralph Ineson, Anthony Morris.
A fantasy adventure based on the Arthurian legend, the film tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur's headstrong nephew, who embarks on a quest to confront the eponymous knight, a gigantic tree-like creature.
Blu-ray, region A, 1080p high definition widescreen (1.85:1) presentation; Dolby Atmos, descriptive audio; 5.1 Dolby Digital; requires Blu-ray player.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

BORING submitted by majean on July 22, 2022, 4:26pm Not at all like the legend. Could not finish.

Well, They Tried submitted by Meginator on August 21, 2022, 7:02pm This is a beautiful film built around a really interesting alternate perspective of a popular Arthurian myth and yet, somehow, it is absolutely awful and I actively hated it while watching it. Dev Patel does an excellent job portraying a very human Gawain, and the film’s instinct to show the grit and doubt underneath the typical heroic tales is a good one, but the story simply does not make sense and the script seems to actively go out of its way to avoid actually defining or even considering Gawain’s emotional character (let alone allowing for any potential growth). Events occur for no reason and sometimes without any real consequences, and what should be the character’s crowning moment (pun intended) of emotional growth rings worse than hollow, because the audience has no understanding of who he is even after spending two full hours in close company with him. Simply put, the story is bad: the parts the writer(s) added to pad out the runtime feel pointless and random, and the parts that do show up in the original Middle English text are distorted and don’t have anything even remotely resembling a satisfying payoff (or, for that matter, any direct relevance to what should be the story’s thematic development but what is instead a hollow shell of an excuse for some admittedly nice visual work). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a beloved legend for good reason, and simply being a gritty reboot isn’t enough to actually create a compelling story if you ignore everything that makes the original version work; even if you want to turn it upside down, you have to understand it and respect it. These filmmakers evidently couldn’t be bothered. As for my verdict on this film, Monty Python said it best in their own (brilliant) riff on Arthur and his comrades: Run Away!