Go that way and your doom is at hand

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 51 Movies of 2021 

#2 : The Green Knight

Dev Patel rides high in the director David Lowery’s sublimely beautiful quest, which conjures up visual wonders and metaphysical mysteries from the anonymously authored 14th-century chivalric poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This is the second of two films on the list I've previously seen - the other one was Palm Springs, which rattled along nicely and I thoroughly enjoyed.  This, on the other hand, I found INCREDIBLY dreary but I was obviously "happy" to watch it again to see whether my opinion changed.

Oh no - I was definitely right the first time.  It has remarkably little story to tell, it tells it incredibly slowly and it tells it in the dark.  And there's so much bloody horse-riding (although that takes ages to start as well).  We basically follow Gawain as he goes on a quest, meets some odd people and has some often quite surreal adventures - and that's it.

I do have to admit that, when you can see what's going on, the film often looks good.  The imagery used is impressive and reeks of meaningful symbolism, but I just wasn't interested enough to try and work out what was going on.  But the dialogue is slow, slow, slow - you get the impression the actors do what they're asked, but I wish they'd been asked to do something else.  Dev Patel does a good enough job carrying the film - the various other actors around him kinda fade in and out and don't make a huge impression.

I was vaguely aware of the original poem and was somewhat surprised that the film doesn't overly follow it - particularly the ending which is very odd when compared with the source material.  But that's just one more choice the director made that I don't understand - tbh the whole thing is very curious.  Gah - I've just read on Wikipedia that there's a post-credits scene which suggests more fidelity to the original text, but that's just one more choice which makes absolutely no sense.  Why would a film like this have a post-credits scene?

So, it's quite a mysterious film - which brings us to the biggest mystery of all.  Why did the critics LOVE it so much?  They really did - it's got an 89% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  But, to my complete lack of surprise, it's got a 50% audience rating (although I even think that's generous).  I just don't understand the appeal I'm afraid - there may be a decent film hiding in there, but I find it impossible to forgive the darkness and everything just taking BLOODY AGES to go anywhere.  In case you couldn't tell, I found the whole thing quite infuriating - both times!

This is an Amazon film, so you can find it, unsurprisingly on Amazon Prime.

#3 - A lovely, lovely film
#1 - Not quite as clever as it thinks it is