Happened across "The Green Knight" on Redbox last Saturday. Amazing movie.
The basic plot is King Arthur and his knights gather for Christmas. The Green Knight appears with a challenge: A knight may strike a single blow against him and next Christmas the knight must appear before him for the same in return. Gawain, not yet a knight, takes up the challenge.
"The earliest appearance of the Green Knight is in the late 14th century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which survives in only one manuscript along with other poems by the same author, the so-called Pearl Poet.[4] This poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, writer of The Canterbury Tales...." -- Green Knight
To give you a taste of the alliteration followed by rhyming couplets, here from the latest translation, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
One criticism I've read concerns the poem's juxtaposing pagan and Christian elements but the film's leaving out much of the Christian element: “The Green Knight”: A Christian Failure, A Pagan Masterpiece.
At the center of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight are the themes of time’s cyclical nature through the four seasons of life and death, the power and terror of nature, and the question of paganism in relation to Christianity. The movie addresses these themes with great care, taking extra time in one scene to describe the earthy nature of the Green Knight and asserting that ultimately the Green of nature is not a sign of life, but of decay, fungus, mold and decomposition, ever at war with the Red of the blood and lust of men. This is where the film shows its atheistic, pagan tendencies most. It shuns the Christian answers of the original story in favor of its own. While the poem joyfully concludes with the Christmas miracle of penance and compassion, implying that Christianity is the force that breaks the pagan cycle of life and death by promising everlasting life, the film gleefully concludes that since there is nothing after death, one ought to die sooner rather than later, facing his death with his head held high. “Is that it? Is this all there is?” Gawain asks at the end of the film. “What else would there be?” the Green Knight replies. This is the best the pagan, atheistic world can offer: nothing.
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