'The Green Knight' Is Like No Other Arthurian Movie You've Ever Seen

Modern pop culture tends to make only one kind of King Arthur movie. It's usually focused on the king himself and it almost always covers one of two aspects of his story: As a young man embracing his destiny and discovering Excalibur, or as a slightly older version dealing with the discovery of the affair between his wife and best friend. What many people don't always remember is that the world of Arthurian legend is vast. It contains many, many stories and most of them involve characters other than those named Arthur, Guinevere, or Lancelot.

David Lowery's new film The Green Knight is based on the 14th-century medieval alliterative verse poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a story that follows an adventure by one of Arthur's most famous knights. The original poem, written by an anonymous author whose other surviving works are much more religious in scope, is one of the most famous and incorporates many popular tropes from the period including the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Yet, are modern audiences still aware of this story?

Well, if they're not, they're about to be. The Green Knight is not just a great Arthurian fantasy movie. It's a great movie, period - a gorgeously filmed and emotionally moving tale about goodness, honor, and heroism, grounded in lush visuals and a career-making turn from star Dev Patel. But if you're looking for a commercial Arthurian tale, this film is not it, though it will certainly delight anyone familiar with the bone-deep strangeness of many of the original medieval tales.