The Green Knight: Dev Patel As King Arthur’s Nephew Is A Joke

The Green Knight

Director

David Lowery

Writers

David Lowery

Cast

Dev Patel,Alicia Vikander,Joel Edgerton

Plot

An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men.

Rating:  * ½

The Green Knight Movie Review: “Why  the Green  Knight, why  not blue or red or  black?” someone asks about the  adversary that  our  hero must confront.

I have a  much more  important question: why Dev Patel, for Chrissake? Does he look like  King Arthur’s nephew ? If the 14th century medieval  king were  alive he would laugh the loudest and probably sue  the makers  of this dumb period drama trying hard to pass off as wise wonderful, but ending up looking like a wholly derailed unholy version of  the Holy Grail.

Dev Patel recently  played David  Copperfield  in  Armando Iannucci  film adaptation. Where we were supposed to believe that  Copperfield was a chocolate-coloured  Brownman masquerading as a Britisher  . The  cult of colour   blindness is  truly  killing all cultural credibility  in  Hollywood.

Patel as King Arthur’s nephew Gawain  is God-awful. He  looks  eternally  confused  and acutely sex-starved.We first see him a brothel with his wickedly wanton wench(yes we are fully into the medieval mood) Essel, played by  the supremely talented Alicia Vikander.Alas  all of  Ms Vikander’s magical powers of character assumption are put to the most preposterous test  by the  screenplay which is  replete  with  corny situations and laughable  dialogues.

At  one point a  a queen tells our  constantly confounded hero to  retrieve  her head from the  lake. “But  your head is  on your shoulder,” Gawain splutters  like  a teenager being force-fed Horlicks by his  mother. No, insists,my head just SEEMS to be  on  my shoulder

Okay. Just like this  film SEEMS to be bland dull and sluggish when in fact it is just the opposite.

Speaking  of mother,the perpetually committed Sarita Choudhary  plays  Dev “Gawain” Patel’s mother. Poor Sarita has nothing to do except behave like Shabana Azmi on a bad-hair day. To be fair Sarita does look like Dev’s mother. But  does Sean Harris who  is  as white  and British as the  Buckingham  Palace, look anything like Dev’s Uncle  King Arthur?

By now  Dev Patel looks  extremely agitated , as he should:when he beheads The Green Knight, the  GK laughs and put its head back where it  belongs.

As the  Green Knight  Ralph Ineson has a  good head on his  shoulder. But his motivations  as  Gawain’s  primary adversary are obfuscated  by the gloom  of time. Poor guy, he just  has to ‘green’ and bear  it as he waits for Gawain’s seemingly endless journey to end.

At some point  Gawain reaches  a castle  where he meets two  royalties  simply called The  Lord and the Lady  played by  the wonderful  Joel Edgerton  and Alicia  Vikander.Yes yes  she has  already appeared as  the whore  in the  preamble.  She has  a double  role like Sita and Geeta. In  the (k)night(green  or otherwise) she shows up in Gawain’s chamber . He catches hold of her and  begins to  run himself  against her in a very pubescent gesture of affection.

Doing his juvenile  self-pleasuring ,this is the  only time Dev Patel  looked convincing. It was back to  an expression of  chronic confoundedness when the earlier –mentioned   Lord  gallops up to the retreating figure of  Gawain and  said , “I’ve something to  give you”.

Before Gawain could react Edgerton reaches down from his horse and kissed Patel on the lips.

 Good Lord! What is this?  Is this really a re-telling of  the medieval poem Sir Gawain & The Green  Knight or a spoof on those stuffy royals  in King Arthur’s  court who were prone  to  bouts  of childish valour and  impetuous  libidinousness?

 For an ambitious  costume drama, The Green  Knight is  depressingly  devoid of  an epic  vision. The  grandeur  of medieval history is  gone. Instead we have what seems  to be  a badly scripted  joke on the Caucasian King Arthur’s  brown-skinned nephew  whose  listless  deportment  hides a storehouse of  ennui  gathered from the growing realization that this…this…mission(or what  it is)  is just not working.