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Movie: The Green Knight
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....
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....