Green Knight: Enchantment and Nightmares

on the historical and artistic references in the production design of Green Knight (2021)

(this is an old article i wrote that im archiving on here, I hope you like it if you never read it)

GREEN KNIGHT (2021) by David Lowery is a movie that is beautiful, luscious and grandiose, in a way that rarely is in the cinematic landscape of the 21st century. In a world where magic and tales of courageous knights coexist. This is a tale that takes place years after the rise of King Arthur and the sword in the stone. A movie that doesn’t hold your hand and does not carry you through the finish line. It is the kind of films that need several viewings to correctly absorb and interpret. And even there, there are so many ways to interpret this movie, to understand its meaning. A story that has been around for centuries and was part of a larger folkloric narrative. Based on a poem from the 14th century and the chivalric romances of the king Arthur, the story of Gawain and the Green Knight is one worth reading, if you have the chance to. The legends of Camelot I have already made a podcast episode on the role of arthurian imagery in art, but after watching this movie, I really wanted to dive deeper in the visual aesthetic and production design of this movie. Because whenever a movie puts so much effort and thoughts behind the visual aspect of it, as well as the way those visual symbols tie up with the narrative thread of the story, it always fascinates me to no end and this movie is no exception

Of course, as we explore how the visual aspect of this movie ties in with the narrative, and we analyze the visual and the significance that they can have, please know that I will spoil this movie, and so, if you have not watched it yet ? What are you waiting for ? Please watch it and come back to this article as soon as it is done !

GREEN KNIGHT is a beautifully intricate story of a very (pretty) irresponsible and spoiled man facing the consequences of his actions. He is selfish, and has an enormous ego, he wants heroism and the prestige of being a knight without having to make any effort, nor put himself in the line of danger. He is a coward, and keeps failing at each of the various tests given to him across the course of the movie. But in the end, by accepting to face the green knight, to take off the belt and surrender, it is growth that we see. I don’t think this movie would have ever worked with any other actor than Dev Patel, simply for the charm and regality that Patel has in this role. He is a very beautiful man, but he imbues this very unlikable and complex character with a charm that is inescapable. No matter how terrible he keeps being as a person, you still want him to succeed, you want him to have a change of heart, you want him to do the right thing and ultimately, succeed and survive. I do not think this could have been accomplished with any other actor than Dev Patel. He brought the nuance needed for this character to work, to be likable, to be sympathetic even though he was so utterly despicable. This story is not one that will hold your hand, there are a lot of interpretations and understandings of the entire plot, and of course of the open ending. I think it is amazing how many conversations the entirety of this movie, and especially that ending spawned so many conversations between me and my friends. The main question was that one, so did he die ? But we are getting ahead of ourselves, after all, shouldn’t we start by the beginning.

Before we even really begin, I think it is unavoidable to talk about the fact that Patel is not a white man. And the significance that this has with him playing the role of Gawain and the huge step forward that this represents, not only in the grand scheme of things, as a sign of progress in the film industry, but also within the world of the movie. First of all, before someone plays the historically accurate card, this movie is based on a fictional poem from the 14th century, and does not claim to represent History. It is a fantastical movie, a gothic and fantasy tale that has no basis in history, after all there is a green knight who does not die after his head is chopped off…So if anyone is playing the card of realism, I do not think this is the right movie to do so.

Folktales and stories are made to be constantly reinvented, and there are part of the zeitgest that people of color living in the west grew up with. These stories belong to us as much as they belong to white people, and we deserve to have a place within that reimagining as well. It is in the nature itself of folk tales, of legends and myths and fairytales, to be constantly moving and ever changing, to constantly change and evolve with the society. After all these stories were part of the oral tradition, and part of the general culture. So why should these tale conform only to a white supremacist visions of history ? These are the stories that belong to all of use, and everyone should be welcome to partake in them. And so seeing Gawain, an extremely layered and complex character, being played by Dev Patel, was something that was more important to me than words can express, and I do hope this will continue to happen in cinema, and that actors of color will get the chance to take part in these amazingly fantastical movies. Even if we accept the argument of historical accuracy as a valid one, and it is not, Green Knight is a fantasy movie, not a historical one, these movies are still being created in 2021, and there’s no excuse for this kind of exclusion. There are absolutely no reason to make whole stories entirely white, because the world has always been global and multicultural, yes even in the Middle-Ages. This world of ours has always been a varied one, and the choice to use Dev Patel as the lead actor of Green Knight was a well chosen one, as he has been the darling of the public for good reason. He is an incredibly handsome and pretty man, and my favorite description of him describes how he « has grown into a leading man with romance-novel hair, empathetic eyes and a well-kept beard » and he definitely sustains that charisma throughout the entire movie. Patel had a lot on his shoulders with this movie, and he carried that weight gracefully and flawlessly. The acting was phenomenal on every single level, and I will not be surprised when he wins several awards for this role. (as he well deserves !)

The movie opens with Gawain, sitting on a throne, a scepter and a sovereign’s orb in his hands, and the halo-like metal crown on his head. Draped in beautiful golden fabric, a single ray of light falls on him, and as the camera pans closer to him, his head combusts on fire, an omen of the threat of beheading that will be on the forefront of Gawain’s mind during the entire movie. The items Gawain carries in this scene are symbols of the english monarchy, both items of power and status. The sovereign’s orb was specifically created for the coronation of Charles II of England in 1661, the first king of the Restoration. It is interesting to consider that the previous king was Charles I who was beheaded following a civil was and the dissolution of the monarchy. Considering the anachronistic stylistic and deliberate choices in this movie, it is easy to think that this was very much on purpose and to read into the decision of giving him a Sovereign’s orb an allusion to the beheading to come.

Already, this sets the tone of the movie, as well as the atmosphere in Camelot, which is optimistic, and yet, there’s the feeling of something heavier yet to , something brewing right under the surface. The inspiration for the castle of Camelot came from the french abbey L’abbaye du Thoronet. This means a roman style for Camelot, because it has a simplicity over the ornate complicatedness of the gothic cathedrals and castles, which falls in line with the more pared down visual aesthetics of the movie, costumes and the sets, which are grand and majestic, compelling and striking, but ultimately very simple and straightforward which adds to the effectively creepy and intense atmosphere. The round table, which we immediately see during the christmas dinner is more of a horse shoe shape instead of the usual round table. The crew had to work within a very small budget and set, which This is a way to reinvent this idea that we are all familiar with, this round table of legends, where all the men around it were equal. The composition of the people behind the table, notably the king and queen, as well as Arthur’s closest advisers is a stark visual reminder of the Davinci painting of The Last Supper (1490s), an allegorical reference to the importance of Arthur in the kingdom and the value he gives his closest ones. It is a movie that visually embraces the aesthetics of catholicism and paganism, in an era where both were still intimately intertwined. When catholicism was first introduced in England, it took a long time for it to genuinely dominate the spiritual landscape. For years and years, paganism and catholicism were cohabitating in the same world, and this dichotomy can definitely be seen in the way the movie looks, in the different symbols and visual references that are peppered throughout the film. This movie is very vibrant and lush, like an old story book of sorts. This film is separated with title cards, that are reminiscent of both early 20th century noirs and horror movies, as well as the beginning of a new chapter in a storybook. This gives the film a very retro feel to it, but also shapes the storytelling of the movie, not in a straightforward way, but in a very segmented way, the way one would tell a story in the oral tradition, not necessarily bound by the constraints of narration.

The scenes decline themselves in colors that can be found in the pages of 14th century manuscript pages. Natural colors of course, but also sumptuous golds, vibrant greens, blues and reds. This use of a restricted color palette for the look of this movie really helps to set the story visually as well as narratively. I feel like people often forget that movies are a story yes, but it is primarily told through a visual medium, and the use of the visual, of what we see, to support and manipulate the narrative is extremely important. The green was a very strong color that was deeply important and connected to the green knight, and thus Lowery and his director of photography, Andrew Droz Palermo, decided to use the color carefully. And this is why the greens that were used were more often than not: ochre greens or blue-tinted greens and deep turquoises, instead of a straight up green.

The golden cloak that Gawain wears for the duration of the story is a direct reference to the golden mantle of Gawain in the original poem. It starts out in a vibrant and a brilliant golden yellow, and the colors muddy and fade as the movie goes on. This color is the same as the Gorse, an irish plant, which once again shows an intrinsic link with nature, which is a theme that resonates through GREEN KNIGHT, but also it was the one vibrant splash of color in the movie, a color that was uniquely tied to Gawain. This cloak was quilted with the shape of a thumbprint to really separates Gawain as an individual, as a person who is inherently selfish and self-centered. This is just one of the few of the many costumes that the costume designer Malgosia Turzanska manufactured for the movie when it came to the various ensembles that dressed the actors in GREEN KNIGHT. She mentions the fact that the costumes were not constructed with a desire of historical accuracy, which would not quite work for this movie that toes the line between fantasy and reality, dreams and nightmares. Instead, she went for a very fantastical and fantasy vibe, reminiscent of how these stories were put together and fabricated over time, gleaning influences from different historical periods and places, as an amalgam of various influences. The Arthurian legends too, while usually historically placed during the 500s, do not happen in one single period of the Middle-Ages, an era that lasted a thousand years if we remember. The earlier legends lean more toward an amazing warrior king of the pagan era, while the later iteration of the Arthurian legends depict Arthur as a gentle and good catholic king, who searches for the Holy Grail. And this intricacy is something that is reflected in how the story moves forward. Even the costumes of Green Knight are extremely simple in their cuts and materials, something that contrasts with the ostentatious nature that we often picture with stories of kings and queens of yore.

There is also a clash between the perception that we have of these times and the grim and bleak reality. In this tale, the King Arthur seems like an older and peaceful king, but we are in a field of bodies, killed in a battle. It was the ages of battles and war, something that Lowery wanted to convey in the background of the movie, without referencing it directly, with the allusion to the historical battle in which King Arthur allegedly singlehandedly killed 960 men, and this is just a reminder that life in the middle ages was bloody, and to have been a king of his stature, even just on a fictional level, means that there has to be a lot of bloodshed and violence to assert and maintain his power, which is not something that we often think about when thinking about the arthurian legends, because the version that we often reference were written in the later years of the Middle-Ages, from the 12th century onwards, where being a knight was associated with courtly manners and chivalry, but if King Arthur really did exist, he would have existed in the 500s, an era where carnage and violence were common, and where that kind of bloodshed was ordinary. And it is something that Lowery delicately bring to the fabric of this universe.

When it comes to the costumes that Turzanska crafted for the movie, she used only natural materials, from pineapple leather to bark cloth and linens. The reason that she cites for that choice is that David Lowery is vegan, but even then, I think it makes sense thematically, because that movie has such a strong tie to nature, with the Green Knight and the pagan religions, that the use of natural materials that simply makes sense to the centering of the natural world in this movie, a continuity of that atmosphere that is being established, where the characters have one foot in the real world, but also one foot in the world of the woods, where they can easily get lost and never come back, where they can meet ghosts, thieves and green knights who have issued them a challenge on christmas night. The main visual inspirations for those costumes were definitely early medieval paintings, but once again, this movie was not meant to be historically accurate, it was meant to tell a story, a story that belongs to a land of myth and a time of magic. I think this movie really captured really well the ambiance and atmosphere of arthurian legends, that evasiveness of place and time way better than if it tried to root it in reality.

Even though this is very much a fantasy movie, with a fantasy-inspired wardrobe, Turzanska definitely looked a lot at historical references, especially armors and pieces of jewelry, themes that come back especially once again in the outfits of the king and the queen, some of the few characters whose outfits are ornate and adorned in decoration. The queen’s dress in which we meet her in the beginning of the movie was decorated in milagros, which are small metal votive offerings that are small metal charms with a folkloric and religious meaning that was meant to give thanks, and are usually found in shrines or altars. This mix of the folklore and of the religious once again underlines the way the pagan and catholicism were united. It is also possible to note, that during the movie, the king and the queen are often posed as if they were paintings or statues. Their status as legends part of a myth is heightened, This is doubly true given their crowns, halo-like contraptions resembling the religious halos of the medieval arts, giving them an allure of saintly, thus setting them apart from the rest of the characters.

Despite it there being no body of armor in this movie apart from the Green Knight’s, metal was still hugely incorporated to the costumes, which is a historical inspiration from 5th and 6th century clothing. They were often woven in wool or cotton, as well as metal, « but the clothes itself just decompose and the only thing that stayed was metal.“ This can be definitely constructed as a metaphor of how nature will always have its way in the end. A concept that can be visually represented through that scene in which Gawain is tied up, and the camera spins around, and then back to Gawain who is now a skeleton. All those careful details give it a very distinct visual identity that is precise and knows what it wants to communicate. It is a very thoughtful use of the historical details when it comes to creating the look of the movie.

While Arthur and Guinevere represent the christian side of the duality this movie seems to embody, Morgan Le Fay definitely embodies the arts of sorcery and magic. Even though nothing is really explicitly said, it is understood that she is the one who summoned the Green Knight and orchestrated this whole thing as a way to give Gawain, her son, the opportunity to prove himself and legitimize his name within the kingdom. Gawain wants to prove himself, to his mother, to his uncle, as well as to himself. He feels like he hasn’t done anything yet worth talking about, that would give him a place next to the heroes of legends he is surrounded with. He wants to leave his mark on history, but is not very driven to actually do so. He is lazy and pathetic, and likes to spend his days drinking and fucking, and there seems to be a sense of fatality about him. Gawain is extremely human, in the way he feels this pressure to live up to the grand destiny of his uncle. Meanwhile, the other characters, especially the king and queen, seem to live on an another plane of reality, as paintings that are unmarked by the banality of human emotions, symbols instead of people.

The ambiance of this movie is very eerie, one could definitely say almost gothic. I am saying it. It is definitely gothic, there’s an oppressive quality to the atmosphere,. The movie starts at Christmas, a time of year that does not inherently feels gothic, but definitely is in the context of the movie. The sun sets early, the snow is falling, the air is heavy, and despite the fact that people are rejoicing and celebrating, there is an undercurrent of unease and disquietness that runs through the whole evening. The ambiance is moody and downcast, Camelot is shrouded in darkness, a single light shining through the hole in the roof. Visually, this movie takes a lot of cues from the gothic, with its claustrophobic feeling, despite most of the story being set in the woods. There is a feeling of Gawain being trapped in his own destiny. The scene where the green knight leaves with his head in hand and gallops away after having issued his challenge, seems to be a visual reference to Sleepy Hollow (1999) directed by Tim Burton, which is a very gothic film that also deals with, you guessed it, a beheaded character. Whether it is intentional or not, and I have the feeling it is, with how carefully crafted this movie has been, there are layers upon layers of artistic, historical as well as visual references to beheadings sprinkled throughout the run of this film. Lowery does not let you forget that Gawain is walking inexorably toward his own beheading.

The gothic movement of the 19th century owes a lot to a certain form of medievalism, to the significant interest to the romances the middle-ages that the writers of the 19th century had, from the Romantics to the Pre-raphaelites, there was this vested passion for everything relating to the medieval era, but of course, to a romanticized and fantasized medieval era, with adventures, magic, romance and a very sanitized version of history that conformed to their ideals of beauty and art. The early gothic stories, with authors such as Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole, were set in the medieval era, and thus the Gothic and the Middle-Ages are so closely linked that they will be forever entwined. Especially when it comes to the medieval era in the United Kingdom, where there is so much we don’t yet know. This period is elusive and mysterious, fleeting and ghostly. Everything seems to be shrouded in mist and fog and if that era of history. When you think abt the middle ages in Europe, specifically Britain. While the rest of the world was honestly kind of thriving, I mean if you look at the Muslim Empire, the Chinese empire, the ottomans and etc etc, those societies were thriving and prospering, and there are a lot of primary sources from them, as well as a lot of artefacts, but European medieval history is different. It is blended with history and myth, a weird entanglement of fact and fiction. The way historians worked in the middle ages, and this is not exclusive to European history, is not the same way we conceive of a historian today. There is a fusion of fantasy, reality and propaganda. They wrote a history that was both an exercise in story telling and facts. So whenever you read primary sources from the medieval period, you really have to take it with a grain of salt, because the goal was not to preserve what happened, but to create a story to assert power and status. And because of that, it is even harder to distinguish what is fact and what is simply made-up. European history in the Middle-Ages, especially when it comes to arthurian legends and history is a combination between paganism and catholicism, in an era of magic, legends and ghosts.

The meeting with Winifred is a section of the movie that was not in the original poem, but falls wonderfully seamlessly with the rest of the story, it is yet another test for Gawain to get through before he can reach the green knight. Yet another opportunity for him to show that he is virtuous and merciful, that he acts with honor and has the makings of a true knight. This whole scene has a very victorian impression to it, it definitely looks like the typical gothic romance, whether one from the 19th century or a later gothic romance of the mid-century pulps. Winifred is dressed in a nightgown, and the prominence of the house in the background. These visuals look like a gothic romance book cover of the 20th century came to life. The tale of Winifred is a gothic romance that ended badly. She was a welsh martyr of the 8th century who had her head cut off by her fiancé when she told him she wanted to become a nun, and is now haunting the house she died in until her head is brought back to her. It is another task for Gawain to accomplish, another challenged issued probably by the Green Knight himself, and another allusion yet again to a beheading just to keep Gawain on his toes about what is going to befall him.

The compositions of this movie often look like they are straight up taken form a Caravaggio painting. Caravaggio was an Italian baroque painter who lived from roughly 1571 to 1610, and had a terribly eventful life which included murder, being a violent fugitive and a tragic figure. He is definitely not what one would call a good person by any means, but his art was magnificent and transcendent. His art style was profoundly realistic and especially toward his life was very bloody and violent. One of the techniques he used was chiaroscuro, which is directly translated to light/dark and describes the way artists use very dark and the very light to create their compositions in three dimensions, and it is something that Lowery and his director of photography when it comes to the use of dark shadows and lights in the movie. The banquet scenes right before the green knight enters, where they are all drinking and feasting, look like it could have been directly transposed from a Caravaggio painting. Also a lot of Caravaggio’s paintings such as Judith Beheading Holofernes (1599), The Decapitation of Saint John the Baptist (1607), David with the Head of Goliath (1607), and Medusa (1597), and a fair few more paintings that it would take m me a while to list them, all deal with the subject of beheading, which leads me to believe that Caravaggio’s art definitely was a central inspiration in the construction of the visual identity of Green Knight.

That visual identity was carefully crafted, when you look at the way the movie presents itself, every single shot feels like it is stylized as a painting, with a very careful and very theatrical compositions. The characters often seem to hold their position, as if momentarily part of a painting or a photograph, a theme that comes back a few times during the run of the movie, striking a pose for a single moment for the audience. It feels like breaking the fourth wall without expressly doing so, it is simply a way of including the audience from within the story. Despite being a movie, this film often feels a lot like theatre, if only by these very intricately and meticulously designed shots. The work of art A Philosopher in a Moonlit Churchyard (1790) by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg is a good visual reference to the early Gothic from which a lot of visual and atmospherical inspiration comes from. The cloudy night with the moon shining as the only source of light is reminiscent to not only that first Christmas night in which the Green Knight first issued his Christmas game, but also of the journey Gawain takes on. When Gawain leaves Camelot on his way to the Green Chapel, it is possible to notice ruins in the background as he is making his way on his horse. A sign of the future that waits for Camelot one day, because nature will win again in the end, whenever that will be.

This conflict between Nature and Humanity is a central theme for Lowery in Green Knight, as he explores the climate anxiety that haunts him and troubles him. He says «As soon as you pick those two against one another — which should never have happened in the first place — but as soon as nature and mankind are pitted against one another, I just see the fallibility and the fallacy of man» In this way, the Green Knight is the central figure of the natural world, and he is thus in conflict with human world. When he comes to Camelot, moss grows where he walks and puts his axe, a single ray of green light shining on him, he is not only the personification of the nature world, he is nature in itself.

A lot of the movie was shot on locale in Ireland, which gives this very haunting and realistic quality to the movie that couldn’t have been achieved with the use of CGI. The use of on-site sets, from the outside locations to the interiors, made it so that they could really work with the the turn of seasons and the passage of time. Something that was visually communicated through the movie with the medieval theatre and a wheel that kept turning and showing the changing of the seasons, from winter to spring, summer, autumn, and finally, winter again. One year hence. It is now time for Gawain to face his fate.

When Gawain is at the house of the Lord, it is an amazing and lovely anachronistic moment, with the production design, the costumes and the set. The house is set in such a way that it feels disconnected from the rest of the film, isolated from time, both visually and narratively, as if one has jumped a few hundred years into the future. Notably by the presence of the camera obscura room, something that would only be created during the Renaissance era. This consolidates this air of fantasy and magic, of not quite being in a historical place and time. The house of the Lord feels as if it is separated of the rest of the world, which adds credence, in my opinion, to the theory that the Lord is simply the Green Knight. Once again, this movie does not give you any real answers, it is up to the viewer to read between the lines, and to take what is given and see what you understand from it. On the walls, there is a medieval hunting tapestry, an item that was very expensive and prized during the Middle-Ages and is still an artefact that’s witness of an art that once was. The creation of a large tapestry could take months to finish with five weavers working on it. It was a highly expensive object that took a lot of labor and skill to complete. And this tapestry that was created in the movie shows a hunt, but also, it shows the fox that was accompanying Gawain throughout his quest. The tapestry is lush, inviting, worrying, layered and complex, and it reflects both the story so far, as well as Gawain’s interior narrative.

In the vision he has before deciding to take off his girdle and face his fate, whatever shape it might take, it is possible to notice that the queen he marries hugely resembles Elizabeth I, with the vibrant red hair and the heart shaped hair style and the very pale face. It immediately frames her as the legitimate queen versus Essel who was simply a commoner and a whore. The movie establishes the legitimacy of rank by a very immediate visual reference to a well known queen that is associated with power and royalty in the visual culture.This movie takes a lot of cues from popular culture, from the film inspirations from movies such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1991) directed by Francis Ford Coppola and outfitted by the late Eiko Ishioka, for the boldness of style and vibrant visual aesthetic, or the 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, a movie with a lot of close ups and striking composition and cinematography. 1980s fantasy movies such as Willow (1988) were also a huge inspiration especially for the filmmaking techniques and sporadic use of CGI, as a way to give a grounded feeling to the movie.

«Lowery further engaged with his love for ’80s fantasy and adventure by deploying the occasional matte painting and as many old-school practical effects and in-camera tricks as he could, in order to give The Green Knight its throwback feel. “The aesthetics of those ’80s and ’90s films,” Lowery says, “they didn’t have the tricks up their sleeves that someone like Peter Jackson or even we had. There’s a tactile quality that helped stick them in my head. I love Willow because I was seven years old when I saw it, but also [because of] its craftsmanship.”

The Green Knight’s throwback vibe was also strategic. “We couldn’t afford to do an actual, literal period piece set in the 14th century with enough period-accurate costumes,” he says. “So [we were] finding this weird middle ground where it doesn’t have to be true to history and yet also feels grounded. Films like Willow and Ladyhawke did that really well.”»

The shot of him entering the green chapel, is vaguely reminiscent of the scene in Alice in wonderland, where she wanders off to Wonderland, of finally entering another world, a world of magic and enchantment, fully separated of reality. He finally enters the realm of nature and he is fully to the mercy of the Green Knight. He takes off his girdle, and is ready to face his fate. And so it ends.

Green Knight is a magnificent movie visually, the narrative is complex and winding, the lore behind the story is layered and never ending, and the first time I watched it, I was simply blown away. This is definitely a movie that uses style as substance, by which I mean the visual aspect of this movie is used as a way of conveying the story. It is a heavily atmospheric and dreamy film that manages to capture the volatile essence of the Arthurian legends perfectly. It is a feat of cinema, and I am so incredibly excited to watch whatever will come next from Lowery and his team, as well as Dev Patel, whom I have no doubt will continue to shine.