Wearing a surprising amount of green clothes and drinking a green smoothie (all unintentional) I dove into The Green Knight on a whim. Usually the color of clothing would be something irrelevant in my experience with a film. I only mention it here because the picture’s biggest issue is that it is devoid of color. This is one of the most dim and grim movies ever made with respect to its presentation. Even when the camera frames Gawain in front of a massive landscape it looks off. What happened to the grading here? The lighting? Even some of the lensing is atrocious. 

To digress from some of the technical issues, it’s important to bring attention to the narrative itself. There is no rhythm in the story telling at all. Long, arduous sequences filled with dialogue often follow even longer, more arduous sequences without any. Sometimes this can work. It doesn’t work here because of how ugly the film is and because the camera tries too hard to execute techniques instead of capturing any inspiration, almost like listening to a musician play a scale note for note. The camera even flips upside down at one point. Whose perspective are you showing me here? 

All of the characters are stripped of any personality. They all play their roles with the utmost seriousness leaving behind a clinical and sterile result. Patel is a good leading man but he is given nothing to do. His character never makes any attempt to connect to the audience or the story for that matter. He is a vessel for the story to be told through rather than being a part of it. We only follow him because we have to. There are no interesting side characters or any conflict that creates sympathy for Gawain. 

Overall, The Green Knight insists on itself way too much. It feels like a music video by a late 2000s Djent Metal band. It’s darkness permeates the film in both sight and tone leaving behind little to nothing for the viewer to grasp a hold of.