David Lowery

THE GREEN KNIGHT: more of a test than a quest

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Photo caption: Dev Patel in THE GREEN KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of A24.

In the swords-and-sorcerers fantasy The Green Knight, Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain of Arthurian legend. Gawain is privileged to be the son of a sorceress (Sarita Choudhury) and the nephew of the king (Sean Harris), and both have high hopes for him. But Gawain is short in the maturity department; he is so much of a wastrel that he can’t find his own boots after a debauch.

The callow Gawain asks, Is it wrong to want greatness? His girlfriend (Alicia Vickander) replies, Isn’t it enough to be good? This movie is about goodness (responsibility, duty, loyalty, faithfulness) as a prerequisite to greatness. Gawain would prefer to skip a necessary step.

The otherworldly Green Knight crashes Christmas dinner at the king’s court and offers a chilling “game”. He challenges anyone to strike him a blow, on the condition that the Green Knight return the blow in one year’s time. Gawain doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to pick up that the actually heroic knights around him are all spooked by an offer that seems to good to be true. Impulsively, Gawain beheads the Green Knight. The Green Knight then picks up his head and exits, turning to utter the words, One year – hence. Oops.

One year later, it’s time for Gawain to keep his end of the bargain and travel to the Green Knight’s chapel in the woods. Not having used the year to develop any more maturity or responsibility, Gawain embarks on his quest, clearly not ready for prime time as a heroic knight. He is gifted with talismans that he keeps losing and which are nonetheless restored to him. He is embarrassingly outmatched by an untethered punk of a brigand (Barry Keogh).

After a series of adventures, Gawain arrives in the Green Knight’s forest lair, and it’s time for us to see what he’s made of. The Green Knight is less a movie about a quest than it is about a character test. The thing about a test is that it can be passed or it can be failed.

Writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story) seems like a pretty high brow director for a Knights of the Round Table tale. It is Lowery’s focus on character that makes The Green Knight a movie fit for thinking adults (and decidedly not a popcorn movie for kids).

It may not be apparent from The Movie Gourmet’s unrelenting menu of indie, international and documentary films, but I like a good adventure movie. What The Green Knight demonstrates, as a counter example, is that the folks who make tent pole movies today aren’t even trying.

The special effects are great. In particular, the face of the Green Knight himself is literally wooden, yet his eyes range from mischievous to profoundly sad, and somehow he manages an expressive smirk. There’s a CGI fox as realistic as any I’ve seen and a spectacular platoon of ghostly giants.

Lowery creates a dark, damp, sinister medieval England. The Dark Knight was filmed around Cahir Castle in Ireland, a delightful place that I’ve visited in the summertime, but which is gloomy and forbidding in this movie.

The Green Knight is slow but not ponderous, the exception being when Vikander, as a second character, has to recite a pretentious and tiresome monologue.

Dev Patel ‘s performance is excellent. Patel is remarkably charismatic. His performances here and in The Personal History of David Copperfield indicate that he is currently underutilized – this guy can carry the biggest film. It’s hard to believe that he was only 18 when he broke through with Slumdog Millionaire. At 31, he should be on the verge of an epic body of work.

Joel Edgerton shows up late in The Green Knight, and steals scenes as a charming nobleman. Edgerton turns on a melodious voice and the delivery of a trained Shakespearean.

Edgerton continues to surprise me. He is a guy who could have settled into a career of hunky action roles; he played the Navy Seal leader in Zero Dark Thirty and the thuggish Baz Brown in Animal Kingdom. But he’s also played the husband in the civil rights drama Loving. And he’s written and directed the brilliant neo-noir thriller The Gift and the topical Boy Erased.

Does Gawain have the makings of a chivalric hero? Outwardly, he’s got the chain mail and the battle axe. The Green Knight takes the measure of what’s on the inside.

DVD/Stream of the Week: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

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AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS

The skeleton of the story in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is simple – a Texas prison escapee goes looking for his wife and kid. But that capsule understates the totality of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, an atmospheric romantic drama that is superbly written, directed, acted and scored.

Every filmmaker should watch the first ten minutes of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints for its extremely economic story-telling, which lets the audience piece together the setting and the cores of the characters without obvious exposition. Bob and Ruth are young lovers, and Ruth is pregnant. They are involved in a crime, for which Bob goes to prison before their child is born. When the daughter is four, he escapes from prison and everyone – Ruth, Bob’s old crime partners, the community and the cops – know that he’s headed back to Ruth. Both the cops and the criminals are awaiting – the story follows the path to the inevitable conflict.

The characters are unforgettable. Bob, played with ferocity by Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James blah blah), has an obsession to reunite with Ruth and the daughter he has never seen. He has framed this quest as his moral obligation to take care of his family – but, of course, they would be better off without him and the trouble he will bring. He’s not really capable of nobility, but he doesn’t know that.

Ruth has a profound passion for Bob, and she owes him for taking the fall for her. But, despite her loyalty, she is entirely realistic about the consequences of his return. We see Ruth’s steely determination and wilfulness in yet another searing performance by Rooney Mara (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

The complexity of the secondary characters contribute to the compelling story. With an unsettling mixture of decency and creepiness, the local cop (Ben Foster, equally good in The Messenger and Rampart) becomes very attentive to Ruth and her daughter. He had been wounded at Bob and Ruth’s capture, seems to be genuinely interested in the welfare of the little daughter and also clearly has a thing for Ruth.

Ruth has also been helped by a fatherly gentleman storekeeper (Keith Carradine), whom we later learn is the local crime lord. His actions seem rooted in all the right values, but, given his criminality, how benevolent can he really be? As a leading man, Carradine had an impressive run in the 70s where he starred in Robert Altman’s Nashville, Ridley Scott’s The Duellists and Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, all within three years. Now with 128 screen credits, Carradine’s performance here perfectly strikes every note.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints looks beautiful – much like a Terence Malick film without all the confusion and boring parts. I also liked Daniel Hart’s atmospheric but unobtrusive music.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is completely absorbing – and that doesn’t happen by accident. This is writer-director David Lowery’s first feature with a theatrical release. Who is this guy? Lowery edited two recent indies that I criticized for other reasons, Upstream Color and Sun Don’t Shine, but in which his editing was remarkable. It’s clear from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints that Lowery is a major talent.

So there you have it – a gripping story with brilliant performances by Rooney, Affleck, Carradine and Ben Foster in the debut of a promising filmmaker.

What does the title mean? I have no idea. And I hope that Lowery lets someone else name his next exceptional movie.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now and XBOX.

2013 at the Movies: breakthroughs

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Adèle Exarchopoulos in BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

The year’s biggest breakthrough has to be 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, who delivered the year’s best cinematic performance in the year’s best movie, Blue is the Warmest Color.

American actress Brie Larson‘s star-making performance Short Term 12 showed her to be a big-time talent, possibly another Jennifer Lawrence.

Other remarkable breakthrough acting performances:

  • Elle Fanning in Ginger & Rosa (in which she, at her actual age of 14, played a 17-year-old).
  • Michael B. Jordan, thoughtful and charismatic in Fruitvale Station.

And here are the filmmakers whose work showed special promise:

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints: absorbing and unforgettable

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AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS

The skeleton of the story in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is simple – a Texas prison escapee goes looking for his wife and kid.  But that capsule understates the totality of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, an atmospheric romantic drama that is superbly written, directed, acted and scored.

Every filmmaker should watch the first ten minutes of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints for its extremely economic story-telling, which lets the audience piece together the setting and the cores of the characters without obvious exposition.  Bob and Ruth are young lovers, and Ruth is pregnant.   They are involved in a crime, for which Bob goes to prison before their child is born.  When the daughter is four, he escapes from prison and everyone – Ruth, Bob’s old crime partners, the community and the cops – know that he’s headed back to Ruth.  Both the cops and the criminals are awaiting – the story follows the path to the inevitable conflict.

The characters are unforgettable.   Bob, played with ferocity by Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James blah blah), has an obsession to reunite with Ruth and the daughter he has never seen.  He has framed this quest as his moral obligation to take care of his family – but, of course, they would be better off without him and the trouble he will bring.  He’s not really capable of nobility, but he doesn’t know that.

Ruth has a profound passion for Bob, and she owes him for taking the fall for her. But, despite her loyalty, she is entirely realistic about the consequences of his return.  We see Ruth’s steely determination and wilfulness in yet another searing performance by Rooney Mara (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

The complexity of the secondary characters contribute to the compelling story.  With an unsettling mixture of decency and creepiness, the local cop (Ben Foster, equally good in The Messenger and Rampart)  becomes very attentive to Ruth and her daughter.  He had been wounded at Bob and Ruth’s capture, seems to be genuinely interested in the welfare of the little daughter and also clearly has a thing for Ruth.

Ruth has also been helped by a fatherly gentleman storekeeper (Keith Carradine), whom we later learn is the local crime lord.  His actions seem rooted in all the right values, but, given his criminality, how benevolent can he really be?  As a leading man, Carradine had an impressive run in the 70s where he starred in Robert Altman’s Nashville, Ridley Scott’s The Duellists and Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, all within three years.  Now with 128 screen credits, Carradine’s performance here perfectly strikes every note.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints looks beautiful – much like a Terence Malick film without all the confusion and boring parts.  I also liked Daniel Hart’s atmospheric but unobtrusive music.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is completely absorbing – and that doesn’t happen by accident.  This is writer-director David Lowery’s first feature with a theatrical release.  Who is this guy?  Lowery edited two recent indies that I criticized for other reasons, Upstream Color and Sun Don’t Shine, but in which his editing was remarkable.  It’s clear from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints that Lowery is a major talent.

So there you have it – a gripping story with brilliant performances by Rooney, Affleck, Carradine and Ben Foster in the debut of a promising filmmaker.

What does the title mean?  I have no idea.  And I hope that Lowery lets someone else name his next exceptional movie.