First some things this film executes perfectly: almost everything that has to do with the senses: the cinematography, the color scheme (which is almost a character itself), the music, the costumes. I did not love the CGI fox, but that’s probably just my anti-CGI bias. I am glad they went with practical effects for the Green Knight. Also points for capturing a real sense of late Roman Arthurian Britain: the bigness, the danger, the “wastelands,” the cold stone, the bad teeth, rapid aging (Arthur as Gawain’s uncle is probably only about forty, but he convincingly looks utterly exhausted and on the way out). I also think there’s a good balance of magic and gritty reality.
The acting and directing are universally excellent, and the dialogue is very well written on the level of diction: it does a nice job of sounding both archaic and casual-modern, giving a sense of culturally different people being their everyday selves—and I’m a tough critic in this area. The whole speech about “green” is wonderful. It also does good “representation…”
(spoilers for poem and movie below the cut)( Read more… )
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