The Green Knight
Short description
The Green Knight is a fantasy adventure based on the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain, King Arthur's nephew. When a mysterious stranger with green skin and clothing arrives at Camelot during a Christmas celebration, he proposes a contest: anyone may strike him a blow, provided that he may return it a year and a day later. Gawain accepts and decapitates the visitor, who calmly retrieves his head and reminds the young knight of their appointment. Bound by his word, Gawain sets out for the Green Chapel to face the return stroke.
David Lowery wrote and directed the film, his fifth feature after Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Pete's Dragon, A Ghost Story and The Old Man & the Gun. Dev Patel leads the cast as Gawain, alongside Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris and Kate Dickie. The production, a collaboration across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and the United States, cost about 15 million dollars and earned roughly 19 million worldwide.
Audience response is moderate: on IMDb it holds 6.6 out of 10 from more than 111,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.6 from over 2,300. The critics' rating stands at 8.1 out of 10 from 331 reviews, noticeably higher than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by an unknown author of the 14th century.
- Essel, played by Alicia Vikander, wears bells on her cloak. In the Middle Ages, bells on clothing identified an 'unclean' person, such as a prostitute; they were forced to wear them to warn others of their presence. Alicia Vikander's character has a short haircut for the same reason—in medieval London (and elsewhere), prostitutes were forced to have short hair as a sign of humiliation and as a punishment.
- The voiceover at the beginning of the film is read by the director, David Lowery, and his wife, Augustine Frizzell.
- The engravings on the Green Knight's armor are in the Sabaean alphabet. This is an Old South Arabian language spoken between 1000 BCE and the 6th century CE by the Sabaeans, an ancient group from South Arabia and the founders of the Kingdom of Saba. The filmmakers used this detail to give the character an air of mystery.
- At the beginning of the film, an unusual spiral tower is shown on screen several times. This is a real structure located in Ireland. The building is a barn constructed in 1743 on the outskirts of the Connolly family's Castletown House estate.
- The film does not specify the exact time period in which the action takes place. The technologies shown in the movie are too advanced for the era usually associated with the myths of King Arthur (approximately the 5th-6th centuries CE). Rather, the action likely takes place in the 14th or 15th century CE, when many Arthurian myths first emerged. Often, these myths reflected the realities of the time they were created rather than the era they described, which is also true of later legends of Arthur.
- Gawain's yellow cloak features an enlarged thumbprint of Joe Anderson, the husband of costume designer Małgorzata Tujanjska.
- Initially, director David Lowery didn't consider Dev Patel for the role of Gawain (a role typically played by Anglo-Saxons on screen), but after seeing him advertising menswear for an Italian brand, he realized how regal Patel looked and changed his mind, even though the actor was not playing a monarch.
- The finale was intentionally left ambiguous; according to director David Lowery, he and lead actor Dev Patel had differing opinions on what should follow the events shown on screen.
- The horse carrying the Green Knight became stubborn during the scene where he meets the other Knights of the Round Table, so even Ralph Ineson (who played the Green Knight), an accomplished rider, was unable to control it.
- Fishing line and gunpowder were used for the episode featuring the floating letter that bursts into flames in the air.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
