The Green Knight (2021)

Although The Green Knight has been available to stream on Prime Video for ages now, it wasn't until I came across the Blu-Ray in an Amazon sale the other day that I finally decided it was time to clear 130 minutes in my schedule and sit down to watch this Arthurian epic.

It's Christmas in the court of King Arthur and aspiring knight Gawain (the perfectly cast Dev Patel) is seated beside the king, his uncle, when the mysterious emerald-skinned Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) rides in and issues an honour challenge.

He will allow someone to strike him, but then the following Christmas they must seek him out in The Green Chapel and he will repay the blow in the kind.

Gawain, with the loan of King Arthur's sword (is it Excalibur?), beheads the Green Knight, but then the supernatural entity picks up his head and rides off.

Eventually, time passes and the aged Arthur (a brilliant turn from Sean Harris) tells Gawain he really should go and find The Green Knight.

Thus begins Gawain's odyssey across the misty realm of Ancient Britain, searching for The Green Chapel where the unearthly knight will be found.

A hypnotic, often unsettling, blend of gritty Medieval verisimilitude and mythological magic realism, odd things happen throughout A24's The Green Knight and are just accepted as par for the course.

On his journey Gawain helps a ghost, meets a talking fox, mystical tokens are lost and found, and our hero is nearly flattened by hauntingly ethereal giants (who look like they've stepped out of the classic 1973 French animated movie Fantastic Planet).

As far as I can figure - and it feels as though you are diving into a dense text as you try to follow along on a first viewing - the story is primarily concerned about upholding a chivalric code of honour, a parable about being true to your word.

For some bizarre reason, although I've heard the tale of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight several times, I can never remember how it pans out, but the dialogue-free extended epilogue of writer/director David Lowery's adaptation of the original 14th Century text is sublime.

Although prone to occasional atmospheric mumbled dialogue and minimalistic, naturalistic, lighting that makes some scenes as dark as The Long Night, there's a lyrical quality to the narrative of Lowery's The Green Knight that buoys you along. 

While not the traditional swords-and-sorcery, knights-and-armour type of film that I enjoy, it certainly doesn't feel like an arduous two hours if you allow yourself to sink into the world David Lowery has conjured up for us.

It's not necessary to know the names of all the characters and their backstories (in fact, if you check IMDB very few of the characters even have names), because The Green Knight isn't that sort of story, rather it's a period piece told using modern technology but as it would have been recounted "back in the day".

We also don't need to know where the giants came from or how the fox spoke, because these were aspects of Medieval storytelling that were just accepted in stories told around the campfire.

That said, on a more academic scale, I strongly suspect that with a bit more reading about - and research into - the subject matter of The Green Knight, more will be gleaned from this great movie upon subsequent viewings.

The Northman (2022)

Having witnessed the murder of his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), by his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), the young Viking prince, Amleth (Oscar Novak), rows away pledging vengeance.

Years later the princeling has grown up to be a mighty berserker (Alexander Skarsgård) in the Land of The Rus.

After a raid, Amleth is visited by a mysterious seeress (Björk) who reminds him of his Fate to slay his uncle and free his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), from Fjölnir's clutches.

Amleth learns that Fjölnir has been usurped and now lives as a chieftain in Iceland, so he stows away on a boat of captive slaves, disguising himself as part of the cargo.

On the boat to Iceland he meets and befriends Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Arriving at Fjölnir's homestead, at the foot of a mighty volcano, Amleth passes himself off as 'just another slave', but is soon guided mystically to a cave where he receives another vision.

This one sends him to retrieve the magical Night Blade, which will be the instrument of his vengeance.

Working with Olga, Amleth then begins in earnest his campaign against the man who slew his father.

Inspired by historical Viking sagas, directed by Robert Eggers (of The Witch and The Lighthouse), and with such a phenomenal cast (including my favourite, Anya Taylor-Joy), The Northman should have been a shoo-in to take my "film of the year" crown (as I have seen it declared by several of my geeky peers).

But there's something not quite right about the flow of the core narrative.

Amleth's quest is such a stop-start affair that the choppy pacing at the heart of the film is really jarring.

There's so much to love about this movie - it features an actual magic sword, for crying out loud - that the patchy, and rather bloated, middle third is such a disappointment.

Speaking as an armchair director, I'm pretty sure The Northman would have benefitted from tightening its two hour 17 minute running time by a good 20 minutes.

Conversely, the ending is superb, tackling head-on central themes of many Viking stories (namely, fate and revenge) in a setting more than reminiscent of the climax of Revenge of The Sith.

Eggers, from a script he co-wrote with Icelandic author Sjón, deftly handles the magic-realism of the Nordic acceptance of everyday sorcery as he weaves a tale only slightly more grounded than The Green Knight.

Alexander Skarsgård has already proved himself as a great physical actor in shows like True Blood and movies such as The Legend of Tarzan.

Here he is outstanding as Amleth, a Scandinavian Conan the Barbarian, from moments of brutal aggression to when he's employing his stealth and cunning to get the better of Fjölnir's men, his presence dominates every scene he is in.

The Conan vibe is most front-and-centre in the scene where Amleth obtains the Night Blade, which strongly echoes Conan's retrieval of the Atlantean sword in 1982's Conan The Barbarian.

With its powerful lead and its atmospheric use of the landscape and mise-en-scène, The Northman is this close to brilliance that it's hugely disappointing that the juddering middle act comes dangerously close to derailing the whole thing.

The script reaches a point where it could have gone either way, and Eggers' cannily pulls out a twist that - for me - saved the film and strengthened the theme beautifully.

In the end, I enjoyed The Northman (more than I thought I would when I was about halfway through), but I was expecting better from this cast and crew.