Movie: The Green Knight

[hudebnik]

We went to see the new movie about Gawain and the Green Knight a few nights ago. Yes, went to see, in a theatre, the first time we'd been inside a movie theatre in a year and a half.

The movie is not a period piece, and doesn't try to be. The clothes vary all over the map, from Hollywood-medieval-peasant-rags to 14th-or-15th-century armor to 15th-century female headdress to 17th-century jerkins to modern-looking shirts that look like they're made of printed T-shirt-knit, sewn together with broad contrasting seams diagonally at the shoulders. The feasting-room at Camelot is bleak, cold, undecorated, and ill-lit even at Christmas.

There are many versions of the story: in some, the Green Knight will return to Camelot a year later to deliver his return blow, while in others, Gawain is supposed to make his followup appointment at the Green Knight's place some days' ride away. In this movie, it's the latter, and the majority of the film is spent on Gawain's journey from Camelot to the Green Chapel, a few days before Christmas. Of course, Gawain has no directions to follow, so things are sorta aimless; he asks directions of locals, who take advantage of his out-of-town status to mug him for anything valuable he might be carrying, including his horse but (oddly) neither his sword or the Knight's axe. He pushes onward, on foot, and as he gets increasingly lost, tired, and hungry, his encounters and adventures get more and more surreal. There's an overarching sense of mystery: things don't make sense, and there's no reason they should make sense, because the Arthurian world is impenetrable and ineffable.

Eventually he does find the Green Knight, and has difficult choices to make. Do I submit willingly to have my head cut off? If so, do I do it while wearing the enchanted sash that I've been assured will protect me from harm, or is that cheating? (Or is it perfectly fair, considering that the Knight knew he could walk away after having his own head cut off?) If I go home without facing the Knight, what sort of man do I become? And so on. The end is left ambiguous: the audience doesn't know what happens to Gawain's head, only sorta what's happened to his self-image.

So after we got home from the theatre, I checked the bookshelves for the original tale. Which, it turns, out, we have in Tolkien's edition, but not a modern-English translation. OK, I can sorta handle Middle English... but this is harder Middle English than Chaucer, using a wide array of obscure words to assist the alliteration. So I've waded through about 200 lines so far, understanding about half of what I read. I'm sure there's a translation on-line somewhere....

Comments

[ilaine]

Is tolkiens editition that much harder than mallory?

[hlinspjalda]

Tolkien's version is Anglo-Saxonized, so there are long lines with rough beats and alliteration and a sort of King James Bible sentence structure, if you like that kind of thing (which I do). But the original Middle English is, as hudebnik says, harder and more obscure than Chaucer.

ETA: For Science!

[hudebnik]

I haven't read Mallory in many years, so I don't remember. The last Middle English I read (other than recipes and song lyrics) was from the Canterbury Tales, in a student's edition that had same-page footnotes translating most of the unfamiliar words, rather more of them than I needed. Tolkien's edition has endnotes discussing where there's a gap or missing ink in the ms, and the concomitant possible alternative readings, and what the use of this word rather than that says about the author's geographic origin, but doesn't lower itself to "this Middle English word means that modern English word."

[hlinspjalda]

I remember Malory being considerably less challenging than Chaucer, with fewer strange loanwords. But I too haven't looked at it in, oh, probably nearly a decade.

[hlinspjalda]

Did you enjoy the film? Most of the reviews I've seen have been unexpectedly positive, even the ones from stuffy Tolkienists.

[hudebnik]

Mixed, depending on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a literal translation of the story to the screen, this isn't it. If you're looking for props, sets, and costumes consistent with Arthur's Britain (or the author's 14th-century England, or any one time and place!), this isn't it. If you're looking for immersion in a more mystical/mythical, less mechanistic/logical world-view than ours, this might be it.

[hlinspjalda]

Yeah, I could tell from the promos that it wasn't going to be the drop-dead authentic treatment I crave (as if anything concerning a 14th century treatment of Arthur could be said to be "authentic" in the first place!). But to be honest, the bar set by the Miles O'Keeffe version in the '80s is so low (despite the cast) that it seems to me almost anything would be an improvement on it. And given the diversity issues rippling the Tolkien fan community right now, I figured it was a good idea to see what this treatment does with the essential nature of the story.

But I have interacted with the text in this past year, so I'm definitely going to have to turn off that part of my brain for immersion purposes.