Spoiler alert! This story details the ending of “The Green Knight.” Stop reading now if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know.
Dev Patel goes on an Arthurian quest in ‘The Green Knight’
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“The Green Knight” is a real head trip.
David Lowery’s stylish retelling (in theaters now) of the anonymously written, 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” follows a cocky young man named Gawain (Dev Patel) who engages in a dangerous game with a treelike creature called the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). After slicing off the Green Knight’s head in a challenge at King Arthur’s (Sean Harris) court, Gawain must seek out the mythical horseman one year later to receive the same blow in return.
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Over the course of his journey, Gawain encounters a series of characters – a foreboding fox, a headless saint (Erin Kellyman), and an unsettling pair of swingers (Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton) – who test his values. Does he want to become a knight for the glory or the code of chivalry? And if he were to turn back, would it matter if he lost his integrity as long as he still had his head?
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Lowery pulls a stunning twist in the film’s final 10 minutes. Gawain finds the Green Knight in the forest and patiently waits for the monster to awake. But just as the Green Knight raises his ax to lop off his head, Gawain runs home, where Arthur crowns him king. Gawain knows he is alive only because of his cowardice, and goes on to lead a miserable life where he shuns his true love and watches his son die in battle. His kingdom collapses, his family and subjects abandon him, and he dies alone.
Then the film cuts back to the forest, where we learn that horrible alternate timeline was just in his imagination. “I’m ready. I’m ready now,” says Gawain, before the Green Knight bellows “off with your head” and the end credits roll.
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“My hope is that you leave with a smile on your face and the feeling that it is truly a happy ending,” Lowery says. “I wanted there to be a sense that this character has arrived at the place he needs to be in, regardless of what happens to him after the film cuts to black.”
The director has his interpretation of what happens immediately after, “but I didn’t want to impose my own idea because it doesn’t matter. He’s going to die someday. Maybe he got his head chopped off in that moment. Maybe he dies of old age later in life. But he will die. We all die.”
“What’s important is that we know we are becoming the best we can be; that we are living our lives with goodness and integrity, with a sense of righteousness that is not defined by greatness or legacy, but by our own personal sense of worth.”
The dark montage of Gawain’s potential future was part of what drew Patel to the film, showing how Gawain could never be happy or fulfilled knowing he was a dishonest man.
“Everything he hoped and dreamed his life would be, he got,” Patel says. “But you see someone who’s got a moral framework really crumble under that (deceit).”
Much of the film is about coming to terms with one’s mortality – a reality Gawain says he could never prepare for. But he seems at peace with death in the movie’s last moments: Just as the Green Knight is set to behead him, Gawain tells him to wait as he removes a green belt, which was said to have magical powers that would keep him safe.
“That girdle is representing his own cowardice,” Patel says. “When he decides to take it off, you finally see that he’s come of age.”
“Green Knight” made Patel think about larger themes of honor and legacy, and how those apply to his own life.
“I could relate to that in my journey as an actor,” Patel says. “Ambition is a consuming force, so the film explores how futile that can be at times. Instead of striving for greatness, why don’t you strive for goodness? What means more in the scale of things?”
With theaters back up and running, and Hollywood returning to normal, it’s time to catch up on the must-see movies of the year so far.
A mysterious formidable figure (Ralph Ineson) visits the knights of the Round Table with a Christmas challenge in the fantasy film “The Green Knight.” Here’s how it ranks against the rest of the best movies of 2021:
24. “The Water Man”: Hoping to help his ailing mom, young Gunner (Lonnie Chavis, with Amiah Miller) searches for a mythical figure in the forest said to hold a key to immortality in director David Oyelowo’s old-school family adventure with a 1980s sensibility.
23. “Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar”: Kristen Wiig (left) and Annie Mumolo are middle-aged BFFs who stumble onto a plot to take out a Florida vacation spot in a bizarro comedy featuring killer mosquitoes, a helpful water spirit and the very earwormy song “I Love Boobies.”
22. “Honeydew”: After getting stranded in the middle of nowhere, Riley (Malin Barr) wonders about their strange host’s home cooking while Sam (Sawyer Spielberg) chows down in a rural thriller that’s a gory mix of “Hansel & Gretel” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
21. “Zola”: Stefani (Riley Keough, left) involves her new friend Zola (Taylour Paige) in some seriously shady dealings in director Janicza Bravo’s bonkers but empowering comedic thriller based on A’Ziah King’s infamous Twitter thread.
20. “Plan B”: Strait-laced Sunny (Kuhoo Verma, left) and her rebel BFF Lupe (Victoria Moroles) are South Dakota high schoolers on an epic trip to find a morning-after pill in director Natalie Morales’ fun and heartfelt one-crazy-night caper.
19. “In the Heights”: Anthony Ramos plays a New York bodega owner who dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic in Jon M. Chu’s infectious movie musical version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show.
18. “Raya and the Last Dragon”: Young warrior Raya (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran, left) teams up with legendary water dragon Sisu (Awkwafina) in an epic and sassy animated fantasy adventure for youngsters not yet ready for “Game of Thrones.”
17. “Come True”: The intriguingly freaky and clever sci-fi horror thriller centers a troubled teen (Julia Sarah Stone) who dreams of disturbing dreamscapes at night and enlists in a sleep-disorder study where the darkness of her subconscious arrives in reality.
16. “Quo Vadis, Aida?”: A UN translator (Jasna Đuričić) fights for her family’s safety while dealing with inept Dutch officials and ruthless Serbs rounding up Muslims in the excellent and harrowing Oscar-nominated Bosnian war drama.
15. “Night of the Kings”: A jailed pickpocket (Bakary Koné, center) is forced to become a storyteller in a prison run by its inmates in director Philippe Lacôte’s absorbing drama, which pays tribute to the oral tradition of the tale-spinning West African griots.
14. “The Boy Behind the Door”: Lonnie Chavis (“This Is Us”) stars as young boy who has to rescue his best pal Ezra Dewey) when they’re kidnapped and taken to a strange house in the country in an excellent survival chiller with a cool twist.
13. “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”: The Mitchell family – Katie (from left, voiced by Abbi Jacobson), Linda (Maya Rudolph), Rick (Danny McBride) and Aaron (director Mike Rianda) – team up with some screwed-up robots in the joyful animated comedy.
12. “Pig”: Nicolas Cage gives a wonderfully soulful – and unusually un-Cage – performance as an Oregon truffle hunter whose beloved porcine best friend is stolen in Michael Sarnoski’s intriguingly quirky, somewhat bittersweet and surprisingly tender drama
11. “Judas and the Black Messiah”: Daniel Kaluuya (center) plays influential Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in director Shaka King’s timely period drama, which functions as political thriller and historical vehicle.
10. “Nine Days”: In writer/director Edson Oda’s deep and thoughtful existential fantasy, Will (Winston Duke, left) interviews and tests Kane (Bill Skarsgård) and a bunch of other souls to see if they’re fit to be born on Earth.
9. “Cruella”: Emma Stone gamely plays Disney villainess Cruella De Vil as a young London designer in 1970s punk-rock London who tussles with a chic and ruthless fashion icon in an intriguing, colorful exploration of nature vs. nurture.
8. “Riders of Justice”: Mads Mikkelsen (far right) is a soldier who comes home to take care of his daughter (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) and exacts vengeance on the street gang responsible for his wife’s death in the brutal and heartwarming Danish action-comedy thriller.
7. “The Sparks Brothers”: Edgar Wright’s rock doc chronicles the five-decade career of Sparks, how the art-pop band was huge overseas but never in America, and what keeps brothers Russell (left) and Ron Mael passionate and still together today.
6. “The Vigil”: A Jewish New Yorker (Dave Davis) of lapsed faith takes an all-night job that turns into a battle for his soul thanks to the arrival of a demonic dybbuk in a chiller that scares up serious religious mythos and haunting historical connections.
5. “Together Together”: A 45-year-old bachelor (Ed Helms) unlucky in love but who badly wants children, hires a 20-something barista (Patti Harrison) to be his surrogate in Nikole Beckwith’s feel-good pregnancy dramedy.
4. “Summer of Soul”: Sly and the Family Stone perform at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in the splendid new documentary, directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and featuring a slew of never-before-seen performances from the event.
3. “I Care a Lot”: Rosamund Pike plays a conniving conservator who bilks aging clients out of their money in the dark crime satire, a genre-exploding effort that’s awash in ethical quandaries and severely lacking in good guys.
2. “The Green Knight”: Headstrong young man Gawain (Dev Patel, left) wields the sword of his uncle, King Arthur (Sean Harris), and sets out on an epic quest in director David Lowery’s dazzling dark fantasy.
1. “The Father”: Anthony Hopkins stars as an elderly London man with dementia trying to make sense of his constantly shifting reality in writer/director Florian Zeller’s immersive character study and exceptional drama.
25/25 SLIDES
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Green Knight’ spoilers: Why that shocking final scene is actually a ‘happy ending’
