Awash in Meaning
This movie is not for everyone. Someone in my theatre yelled at the screen when it ended. “That’s it?”
Some of the audience didn’t register the film’s intention. Many may find the symbolism obtuse or the ending unsatisfying. I believe the director explored the poem’s themes well, and made some intentional choices for imagery and atmosphere to expand the source material.
It is a good movie to return to, to pick up additional details. The Green Knight is more concerned with its themes, subtext and exploration of humanity than its story, but it usually balances its plot and meaning on the edge of a blade successfully.
This retelling of the Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous. In both stories, Sir Gwain must venture to the fabled Green Chapel to find the Green Knight, a mysterious force of nature, a humanoid who looks like an Ent. After entering the court of the Round Table, the Green Knight says he will “return a blow” that Gawain struck during a Christmas game. The Green Knight survived decapitation, but Gawain has little hope of surviving the returned blow unless he uses the magic sash his mother, Morgan Le Fea in the movie, made to keep him safe. However, if he uses the magical item, does he really have honor, and can he live with his own cowardice?
It might sound odd, but the story is about chivalric values, and venturing forth to let the creature cut his head off is both a metaphor for the inevitability of death, and the pursuit of honor in life. In both the poem and the movie, the journey to the inevitable end is a metaphor for how we approach life and its many trials and temptations, and how our responses to these shape our death and legacy.
One could say the movie takes liberties with the original story. In the poem, Sir Gawain is an avatar of humanity. He conquered every trial and temptation put before him. Our Gawain in the film is no knight, only a boy playing at a greater dream, and he fails at every trial that comes his way. Our first shot of him in the movie is in a brothel with his favorite piece/ girlfriend.
The next day, in court, he attacks the Green Knight with such brutal force to prove to King Arthur, his uncle and liege, that he’s a worthy knight. Then, a year passes. Gawain hasn’t changed. He had better go to the Green Chapel unless he wants to face humiliation. I those days, your word was all that mattered.
Right after Gawain leaves the castle to fulfill his vow, bandits accost him after he refuses to show them charity and generosity. They take him for a knight because of his mighty horse and fine dress, but easily overpower him and realize he is nothing but a shadow. After his escape, he beds down and is tasked with helping a ghost. He begs for a token from the ghost who asks him to retrieve her head. A further display of his lack of valor. And then there’s what happens in the castle. Need I say more?
In the poem, Gawain fails his ultimate test of letting the Green Knight strike his neck, and while he lives, he is dishonored and shown to lack the greatest virtue: the sacrificing love of Jesus Christ. He is only a man for all his virtues of playacting as something greater. In the movie, the one trial Gawain does overcome is letting the Green Knight strike his blow. For all his failures, he has honor and faces his death like a knight. I think the best way a lot of this movie can be interpreted is as a negative of the poem. The poem talks of our failures in the face of death as humans; the movie speaks of our triumphs in living. I would argue that the director intends this interpretation. There are two moments in the film where Gawain sits for a portrait. The first shows him chivalrous as a knight of old, a flattering depiction which masks his true heart. This portrait represents him before his journey. The second comes near the end and is more true to life, but also dark, green, and inverted by the camera obscura. It is his shadow and his negative, but it depicts him true to life.
There is a lot of metaphor and subtext to this movie, and much could be written about it. But I love to see a director who cares about every detail in the scene. The placement, the dialogue, the characters, all of it has a purpose. Even the hair color of characters is a clue to the reading. All is open to interpretation.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the movie is its use of color. One of the most ambiguous characters in the movie, known only as the Lady, gives a speech about what the color green means. This speech goes on for more than a minute, and anytime the director feels they need to stop the movie and speak to you, we should pay attention. The director is telling us that color has meaning in the movie, and some of the more esoteric aspects make sense when viewed through color.
The primary colors in the movie are, unsurprisingly, green and orange, blue, and white. Red and gold are used sparingly, but meaningfully when they show up in a scene apiece.
Green is the color of decay, of the inevitability of death. It haunts many of Gawain’s shots, such as when he is captured by the vagabond bandits and he receives a premonition about what will happen if he does not master his cowardice. It also slowly takes over his life in the last premonition of the movie, showing how if he doesn’t take the blow with honor, then decay and rot will claim him, anyway. He will never be free of death, and it will ruin him. He can choose an honorable death, or flee from the inevitable. He can hide behind his lineage, or solidify his knighthood by welcoming the blow that will sever his head.
Green is also the color of the magic sash. This object is stolen by bandits, then inexplicably returned to him by the lady in blue. Viewers are invited to speculate on the meaning of events within the castle and whether they truly occurred.
Orange is the color of his mother and the contrast to Arthur’s blue. It’s what she and her attendants wear, the color of the cloak he adorns himself with, the color of the fox that accompanies and guides him, because it is her mother’s servant or a friend, and even the color of the torches in the castle. It is the color of the hair of the bride chosen for him in his disastrous vision of the future, and the color he wears as king in the first shot of the movie, the vision his mother has for him.
If green represents nature and the land reclaiming its true nature without humans, orange represents comfort and humanity bending nature to its will. But also comfort. While the actress playing his mother is only prominent in the first third of the film, she is nearly the reality of the film in other ways. She uses her magic to keep the fox near him as protector. She made a sash that would prevent her son from dying from the fatal blow of the Green Knight. Just the fact that he wears the cloak and sash for most of the movie is like her hand gently steering him to the destiny she wants. A destiny he rejects when he removes the sash that would save his life to meet his fate with honor. It is no coincidence that the only two colors present in the woods near the Green Chapel are bright, overpowering orange when the fox makes his last plea for him to flee and overpowering green in the chapel where the blow will be struck.
Blue is used for Arthur and royalty, perhaps as a symbol of things being just. The Lady is always clothed in it except for when she successfully tempts Gawain. At that point, she is wearing an orange-ish fur, like her husband the hunter. Or maybe like the fox. It is also interesting that Gawain is often seen in a light blue tunic. Either symbolizing that he is royalty in the making, or perhaps, as the blue has a green cast, a ruin in the making.
White can be interpreted as either innocence or deceit, depending on whether you wish to read the movie as a farce made from beginning to end by his mother or as a true quest Gawain undergoes. The strange woman at the Castle of Temptation is the only character always clad in white. She is also blindfolded. Does she represent his mother’s deceitful action in making an enchanted place for him to rest? Or does she symbolize chastity and the idea that chastity is something that is always there, waiting for us to choose the right path, and trusting we will. However, you want to look at some of these moments, all are gorgeous and work with the cinematography to create an experience worth seeing for its vision, especially when backed up by its rich, haunting score.
The acting is good, though subdued. However, this restraint fits in with a gallant tale told of an old world where knights and legends exist. Where foxes might speak and giants roam the land. However, every actor is capable of bringing out a range of emotions when needed. Though the script here and there is a bit odd, overall, it’s written well, if not clearly at points.
Ultimately, you can watch this film and come out with a personal interpretation. Was everything a dream? Winefred’s Ghost did say “What difference does it make?” when Gawain asked if she was real or a dream. Was his mother controlling everything from start to finish, meaning she was the Green Knight and the only thing Gawain controlled was that last decision to take off the sash? Did Gawain die or live? All are valid ideas and have evidence, and this adds to the film’s fun. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what the castle represents in its entirety. And that’s fine.
We can bring our own ideas to the film and glean something different and true from it. I focused on colors in the film, but others might hone in on other aspects. Like the film Joker: the events could have all been real or in the main character’s mind, but either way, the movie works. Such movies transcend film and become art, staying with us and teaching about our humanity as the original Poem did 700 years ago.
L. S. Popovich 
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