The Green Knight 4K 2021 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The king celebrates Christmas in the castle, surrounded by the court and loyal knights, where the mysterious Green Knight suddenly appears and offers to accept his challenge. Anyone present can stab him, but after a year and one day he will have to meet the Green Knight in the green chapel nine days' journey north and take the blow back. Young Sir Gawain, nephew and only heir to the king, is challenged to a duel and chops off the strange guest's head. But he, putting his head in place, recalls the agreement and leaves. A year later, faithful to his word, Sir Gawain sets out to meet fate on a journey full of dangers.

Review 4K Movie

The Legend of the Green Knight from screenwriter and director David Lowry is an amazing maxim of images intertwining into a single whole and forming a special cinematic magic of metaphors and symbols. The screen version of the 14th century alliterative poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Lowry has a number of significant advantages that can elevate the picture to the status of a cult, but its excessive pretentiousness does not allow the "Knight" to reach the sensuality of the masterpiece "Ghost Story". Lowry, being a powerful visionary, flirts too much with the shape of the tape, trying to make it as deep and multifaceted as the original poem by an unknown author remains to this day. The film still lacks in some places the content that Lowry tries to cover with bizarre editing and amazing work with the camera, scripting continues to tell a simple story.

Lowry left the crutches of the plot in their places, transferring the poem almost literally to the screen, adding a couple of new characters and events from himself to the original plot. During the feast in honor of Christmas, the mysterious Green Knight arrives in Camelot and offers King Arthur (Sean Harris) a bet: any of his most worthy knights can hit him with an ax, provided that in exactly one year and one day he will strike back in the same way, be- then a scratch or a severed head. The challenge is accepted by young Gawain (Dev Patel) - a daredevil who does not have any feats of chivalry behind his shoulders, and therefore, wishing to earn himself a reputation as a hero among the knights of the round table, accepts the challenge. With one dexterous blow, he manages to chop off the head of the mystical guest, but he gets up, raises his head and reminds Gawain of the meeting a year later, after which he leaves, leaving the shocked young knight alone with his demons.

From this moment, Gawain's epic journey through the world of the film, rich in various images and symbols, begins, trying to find not only answers, but also to find honor and courage on its way. And it is the inner battle of the protagonist with himself that forms the very epic that some expect from the "Knight" not at all in the form in which it appears as a result, mistakenly preparing themselves for the classic fantasy of chivalry. The main battle takes place deep in the main character, an arrogant boy and a man worthy of a knight's title are fighting in him. Therefore, the story of Gawaine is not replete with pretentious speeches and sword battles every ten minutes - the director gives all the time of the film to its main character: scared, selfish, and, despite fears, still able to look death in the eyes and take an unequal battle not only with his fate , but also with mother nature, devouring all that exists.

Over the course of 130 minutes of meditation, Gawain Deva Patel sometimes progresses, then regresses, which is why at the beginning and at the end the viewer really meets two completely different personalities in the body of one person. Patel perfectly managed to show all the metamorphoses of his hero, not only thanks to his speech abilities, but also with the help of his body language. Gawain is like a spoiled child who has to face an unequal battle with the consequences of adult life one-on-one. The hero faces the confrontation between Christianity and paganism, meets a fellow traveler in the form of a talking fox and crosses over with giants only to fight in the final of his path with himself. Gawain, played by the talented Virgo Patel, is the best role, one of the brightest and most versatile characters in the career of a 30-year-old actor.

The very story of Gawaine through the prism of Lowry feels like a simple and very straightforward parable, reminiscent of the tale of knightly honor that a mother tells her child before going to bed on New Year's Eve. This does not spoil the perception of such a serious and adult picture as a whole, however, Lowry's postmodern approach to storytelling, when the director begins to literally flirt with Tarkovsky, whose fan he is, the viewer has questions literally from scratch due to a number of strange editing solutions. Editing is actively trying to make the film more difficult, but it is trying, not doing. De and in general, editing is the weakest feature of the tape. The Legend of the Green Knight has a complete lack of understanding of what tempo and rhythm are - it simply ignores it all. One part of the film is cut like a salad, the other is replete with prolonged episodes for the sake of savoring a beautiful frame. In some places, it is the editing that brings pretentiousness to the history of the tape, especially when the director combines one scene with a completely different one, so that one image comments or 'enriches' the other.

The strongest side is the great atmosphere and the equally fantastic cinematography by Andrew Palermo ("The Ghost Story"). The tape looks incredibly stylish, with a deep study of the color palette and a competent play with light. At the same time, the camera itself rarely takes any incredible or technically difficult angles - in this regard, the picture remains very mundane, like the protagonist himself. The shooting style is very similar to Nicholas Winding Refn's Climbing Valhalla, especially in the second act. The viewer almost always looks at the world of the film from the bottom up, thanks to which Gawain is even more perceived as a small person 'lost' in the big and cruel world of mysticism and magic, drowning in Daniel Hart's music with medieval folklore. Less often, there are shots from above, shot from a bird's eye view, which all work on the same idea - to show the hero as weak and vulnerable.

"The Legend of the Green Knight" is an exhausting journey through the darkest nooks of a man, told through the prism of the story of an ambiguous young knight, who set out on Christmas Eve to seek honor and courage. The director David Lowry, who earned the trust of the A24 studio and the love of the audience after the "Ghost Story", did not fall face down in the dirt and, if he did not make the second masterpiece in his career, then, at least, gave him a worthy heir. It is the director's handwriting that this film is valuable first of all. And if some of the director's vision will definitely repel, others will elevate the film to the status of a cult after the very first viewing, then still others will twist their fingers at their temples, remaining completely bewildered by what they saw. But is not such a reaction to be expected from a picture in which the main character dives into a pond after a severed head, talks to a fox and ends his journey with an enchanting interlude that elevates the visual feast of cinema to the pinnacle of art, thereby creating his own unique monomyth about the formation of a man.