#the green knight spoilers

[coralinejones]

if a wealthy lord and his lady offered me to join their relationship, live with them in their big castle, let the lord hunt food for me and the lady gift me books and paint portraits of me and also let the both of them caress my face tenderly and kiss me softly –– i'd say yes immediately. rip to sir gawain but i'm different (not stupid)

[userscully]

Well done, my brave knight.

[peri-hellion]

I imagine there’s going to be a lot of Film Discourse about The Green Knight in the next few days, so I will just say that I had a great time and also had to put my head down and silently cry-laugh when I realized that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER was going to pronounce ‘Gawain’ differently in what I imagine was a gleeful middle finger to many decades of petty medievalist debate. 

[a-sweet-pea]

[betty-draper]

DEV PATEL AS GAWAIN IN THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) DIR. DAVID LOWERY

[nitewrighter]

Shout out to that part of The Green Knight when Gawain was like “are you a spirit???” and delicately reached out and Saint Winifred was like “don’t touch me wtf” and Gawain’s like “but you’re a ghost… right?” and winifred’s like “excuse you does that fucking matter? Rude.”

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, Dev Patel’s The Green Knight takes a really interesting approach to reconciling Gawain’s portrayal as a paragon of knighthood in the early texts with his post-Vulgate characterisation as a coward with an undeserved reputation for chivalry, and framing the whole business with the Green Knight as an intervention arranged by Gawain’s mom is frankly a fascinating piece of mythological revision.

Heck, it doesn’t even bother me that the latter requires the film to conflate the characters of Morgause and Morgan le Fay. It’s not like Gawain’s parentage is terribly consistent in source material anyway, and The Green Knight would hardly be the first piece of Arthuriana to combine those particular roles.

On the other hand, it strikes me that, while going on a quest to get your head cut off may be morally instructive, it’s not a terribly practical therapeutic model, at least insofar as putting that model into practice will probably result in the recipient needing therapy!

[thejackalhasarrived]

DEV PATEL in THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)

[s-k-y-w-a-l-k-e-r]

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)

[coralinejones]

sir gawain has his face touched very softly and (mostly) carefully (around) 13 times in the film—

[spaceaudio]

i think what’s getting me most about this movie other than all the other changes is that lowery flipped gawain inside out. in the poem gawain is a man who wants to live honorably, who is trying to do the right thing in order to feel like he belongs at court, who refuses the lady’s advances, who respects lord bertilak as a host and agrees to his game, but who ultimately does not reveal the sash to the green knight. he fails to live up to his principles because his fear of death is stronger than his desire to be honorable.

dev patel’s gawain is not interested in honor: he sleeps with a prostitute but refuses to be with her legitimately, he is reluctant to help a dead girl out of goodwill, he gives in to the lady, he won’t play the game with bertilak. he isn’t looking for moral goodness in order to feel like he has earned a place at court, he wants notoriety— a story that will become legend. but he gives up the sash in the final moment, because he realizes that honor is worth more than his fear of death.

[lauralot89]

can we talk about how Movie!Morgan Le Fay’s motivations are less “test the resolve and expose the weaknesses of the knights” and more “get my lazy unmotivated child out of my house”

[aburstoflightpdf]

oh to be cast in the green knight and be paid to lovingly stroke dev patel's face

[pieartsystuff]

Seriously tho, reflecting back on the movie, Gawain is a coward, a drunkard, a liar, and a fuckboy but I was distracted

[lumi-of-the-universe]

I’m a little obsessed with how the Green Knight has Gawain jump into actions but shy away from the consequences. One of his earliest scenes is him lying to his mother about having “been in church all night” he cuts the Green Knight’s head off thinking it’ll kill him so he doesn’t have to bother meeting up with him in a year. He asks the Giant for help but shies away from it’s outstretched hand, he runs from the manor, the whole flash forward dream vision thing is about what happens if he keeps running from consequences. The end is him deciding to accept consequence, so he takes off the belt. What the actual consequence is doesn’t really matter.

[klaushargreeveses]

Let me tell you instead a new tale. I’ll lay it down as I’ve heard it told. Its letters sent, its history pressed, of an adventure brave and bold. Forever set, in heart, in stone, like all great myths of old.

The Green Knight dir. David Lowery