Evyn Katherine McGraw

Artist and Fantasy Writer

The Green Knight is a Perfect Modern Film Adaptation

Table of Contents

The Green Knight is a fascinating movie in part because of the vastly different responses people have to it. As a modern retelling deeply critical of the Arthurian source material on which it’s based, critics seemed split on whether the movie seeks to deconstruct or to affirm the ideas of the original poem. One reviewer read its critical stance toward Arthurian chivalry as a metaphor for escaping millennial hustle culture. Another reviewer considered the movie’s cynicism too nihilistic and destructive to notions of virtue and human flourishing. Still others found in the movie a deep message about the meaning of life and death in the face of irrevocable decay, as in this video analysis. Other people I’ve talked to just thought the movie a bit slow. Its avant-garde approach to fantasy clearly appealed to some but felt emotionally remote to others.

In my own case, something about this film affected me more profoundly than any other movie ever has. By the time the credits rolled, I found myself quite literally weeping in a mostly empty theater. At the time, I couldn’t articulate what struck me so deeply, but since this first viewing, I’ve become more and more convinced that this movie is possibly one of the most perfect film adaptations ever created. It poignantly translates the existential concerns of the source material and makes them experientially accessible to a modern audience. The fact that reviewers come away from this film with such varied interpretations only affirms the paradoxes and tensions of its themes. So, out of sheer gratitude for this movie’s existence, I want to add my own interpretation to the many already available.

What is the Original Poem “About”?

Understanding how the movie translates the original source material requires a brief explanation of the source material itself, the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (So please bear with the nerdy digressions of this former Medieval Literature teacher). The meaning of the poem is admittedly a bit ambiguous and enigmatic, but as far as I’ve been able to glean in my time teaching the poem, it examines human frailty from the perspective of levity rather than tragedy. Through Gawain’s ostensible failure as a knight, the poem offers an ironic critique of pretensions toward perfection, extolling instead a humble acceptance of human limitation in a cosmos whose meaning doesn’t depend on human striving.

The poem begins with Gawain setting an impossibly high standard for himself. When the Green Knight barges into King Arthur’s court during Christmas festivities to challenge the knights to a game, Gawain steps forward to meet the challenge. The game is as follows: Gawain will strike the knight a single blow and, in a year’s time, will travel to the Green Chapel, where the knight will return the same blow to Gawain. Despite the obvious consequences, Gawain proceeds to behead the knight, essentially ensuring his own death. Rather than trying to shirk his fate, Gawain resolves to follow through on his part of the deal. By the code of chivalry, he is bound to stay true to his word, whatever the consequences might be to himself. Honor is worth more than well-being, it seems. Integrity is worth more than life.

The poem’s moral vision at first seems to affirm these valuations. Gawain prepares for his quest within a social structure that takes honor, virtue, and objective meaning for granted. The other knights arm Gawain and affirm him as an exemplary virtuous knight. He is given a shield with the five-pointed star, the pentangle, representing not only Gawain’s five senses and five fingers of his hand, but also the five wounds of Christ and the joyful mysteries of the Rosary. The combination of natural and theological symbolism elevates Gawain’s vocation. As he seeks to employ his natural faculties as a knight, the shield suggests that even the earthiness of his vocation symbolically gestures toward supernatural meaning, thereby heightening the value and honor of his role.

Furthermore, over the course of the year, the natural cosmos and the passage of time is treated with deeply symbolic importance that reinforces Gawain’s sense of purpose. The grand pageantry of the Christmas festivities, the noble descriptions of Gawain’s preparation and armament, the sparse but poignant description of his journeys—all of these paint the following year with a richness and grandeur practically unmatched in the history of literature (in my opinion). Ironically, Gawain’s death is sentenced at the new year’s celebration. Death and rebirth are set beside one another with a vivid complementarity. It is as if the promise of death suddenly makes Gawain more aware of life’s lushness, as if the threat of loss rekindles love. Thus, by trying to stay true to his word in the face of death, Gawain’s inhabits an almost liturgical existence, living the next year with a keen awareness of the passing seasons—his death tied inextricably to both the birth of Christ and the birth of the new year. He is about to die, but he’s never seemed so alive. He’s living for something. By inhabiting such a rich, symbolic universe, Gawain understands that his role as a knight is to live according to the meaningful code of honor given to him by his social and existential context. Thus, his integrity is worth more than life because integrity gives his life meaning.

The Ambivalence of Socially Constructed Honor Codes

However, the curious unspoken fact of the matter is that this is still all a game, according to the Green Knight. A certain arbitrariness pervades the whole affair. Why did the Green Knight devise the game? Why did the knights of the round table go along with it? Why must Gawain now travel to the Green Chapel to receive the returned blow? The Green Knight doesn’t explain. He himself remains a remarkably enigmatic figure. One is left wondering whether the arbitrariness of the game casts doubt on the meaning of Gawain’s quest. Gawain indeed thinks he’s living for something, but is he really if the entire affair is a capricious contrivance on the part of the Green Knight?

Indeed, the poem seems deeply interested in such questions of meaning, as it proceeds to pit Gawain’s various knightly duties against themselves as if to ask, “What obligations really matter in the long run?” When Gawain arrives at Bertilak’s castle as he nears the Green Chapel, he finds himself in a position where he must navigate conflicting obligations. Not only is he obliged to the Green Knight to receive the return blow from the beheading game, but he also has obligations to the code of chivalry and to Christian morality. He finds these latter duties tested when he stays as Bertilak’s guest and must resist the seductions of Bertilak’s wife. Gawain intends to stay true to his word, but he has given his word in multiple and apparently conflicting ways. On the one hand, Gawain is bound by Christian duty to remain chaste and avoid adultery. On the other hand, he is bound by the code of chivalry to honor the lady. Calling her out on her seductions would dishonor her. He must, therefore, resist her temptations without making her aware of his resistance.

Additionally, he is also obligated to Bertilak when they agree to exchange their winnings at the end of each day. Bertilak brings back wild game from his daily hunts. For Gawain, however, whatever romantic or sexual favors he might receive from the lady, he is bound to give to Bertilak, which could potentially dishonor all involved. However, if he were to withhold any of these “winnings,” his truthfulness, and therefore his honor, are forfeit. Thus, Gawain’s integrity seems threatened on all sides. It’s an incredibly demanding situation for him, given his belief in the objective worth of his chivalric and religious duties.

Human Frailty and Levity

That he should fall short in such a situation is entirely understandable. However, the way he falls short is quite unexpected. For most of the poem, Gawain deftly navigates the complexities of all these obligations, resisting the lady’s seductions and playing along with Bertilak’s game. However, on the third day, when Bertilak’s wife offers him a girdle she assures him will offer protection at the Green Chapel, he hides the girdle from Bertilak during their daily exchange of winnings, thereby failing in two of his obligations—the first to Bertilak’s game of exchange, and the second to his agreement to fearlessly receive a blow from the Green Knight. He fails not out of moral weakness but out of fear for his mortality. Apparently, contrary to his own self-perception, life is worth more than integrity after all. In the end, his instinct for survival takes over and reveals that, at his core, he values life over honor. For this shortcoming, he blames himself incredibly harshly. By the end of the poem, he considers himself a failure and berates himself before King Arthur’s court.

Against Gawain’s self-censure, the poem ends with surprising levity, striking an incongruous tone that casts Gawain’s perfectionism into an ironic, humorous light. No one else in the poem supports Gawain’s self-criticism. The Green Knight gives him a nick on the neck with his axe and cheerfully sends him on his way. The other knights in Arthur’s court simply laugh off Gawain’s purported shortcoming and even begin wearing similar girdles as a sign of their solidarity with him. It is unclear whether the poem’s ending ought to be positively interpreted as a light-hearted and festive appraisal of Christian mercy, in which Gawain’s guilt is forgiven, or if the ending instead hints toward an ironic disavowal of a knightly court who, despite their festivity, are failing to live according to the code of values they claim to follow. On this second interpretation, King Arthur’s court extols cultivated virtue to such a high degree that more subliminal aspects of human existence, such as the fear of death, are left out or ignored. Thus, the Green Knight’s very entrance into the court might be interpreted as an intrusion of untamed nature into a social world that seeks an impossibly high degree of control over human comportment.

Whatever the case, whether the poem is a critique of unrealistic chivalric honor codes or of Gawain’s individual perfectionism, the poem at least gestures at the need for humility in a world so much larger and more mysterious than a single individual’s ability to conceive of it. The meaningfulness of existence is not dependent on Gawain’s success. Thus, there is meaning inherent in the cosmos beyond Gawain’s social structure. This revelation, it seems to me, is quite a joyful one, because it means that human institutions, as fallible as they are, are not the ultimate arbiters of meaning.

Why this Examination of Human Frailty is Alienating for Modern Readers

The poem’s ambiguity and complexity rely on the degree to which readers affirm the goodness of the chivalry and honor extolled by King Arthur’s court. If readers don’t see such honor codes as worth pursuing, then much of the existential drama and tension of the poem is lost, and readers fail to wrestle with questions about human nature, guilt, honor, and the ultimate meaning of existence. I’ve seen this difficulty of engagement in myself and in my students. I’m sure I’m not the only Gen-Z/millennial to be distrustful of hierarchical systems of authority, of far too stringent social structures, of the codes of behavior that uncritically equate manners with absolute laws of morality (in other words, everything represented by King Arthur’s court). I think we’ve seen firsthand the sorts of injustices that can result from conflating social structures with religious absolutes.

While the upside of this wariness is a sensitivity toward injustice, there’s also a downside in that many contemporary individuals seem so distrustful of any structures of meaning that they fail to believe in any meaning at all. In other words, modern audiences are in precisely the opposite position from a medieval audience, believing in a lack of meaning rather than a conflicting excess of it.

When I taught this poem in a highschool literature class, most of the students were entirely unbothered by Gawain’s failure. They easily dismissed his staunch adherence to moral perfectionism, saying, essentially, that codes of chivalry didn’t really matter anyway. Distrust of social and moral absolutes made the poem’s drama seem remote to them. They didn’t view honor as a value inherently worth pursuing with the staunchness of the poem’s protagonist. They couldn’t simply put themselves in the same mental space as the poem’s medieval audience. Although I could explain the poem’s tension and drama, they couldn’t simply force themselves to experience it. Words were insufficient to overcome this existential barrier.

How The Green Knight Translates the Original Poem

The Green Knight is such a remarkable achievement because it actually does manage to cross this existential barrier and make the poem’s themes available to modern audiences. Through the use of techniques particular to film, it draws contemporary audiences into an experiential encounter with the sorts of ambiguous questions the source material seeks to elicit. Indeed, as I hope to show, the movie manages to overcome modern disaffection and recapture the original poem’s profound sense of levity and the existential richness of human finitude.

The film does so, firstly, by meeting modern audiences on their own terms. The film, too, distrusts absolute codes of honor and hierarchical social structures. After the beheading game, Gawain goes through the same motions during his year of preparation, but the knightly court’s liturgically rich tapestry of meaning rings hollow. Gawain does not exemplify the virtues symbolized by the pentangle on his shield, and he sees little meaning in his life. He is only undertaking this quest out of an inchoate desire for purpose. In Bertilak’s castle, when he is asked what he is seeking, he answers with a vague and half-questioning, “Honor?” The protagonist of this contemporary retelling perfectly exemplifies the rootlessness and nihilistic tendencies of modern disaffection. This version of Gawain no longer finds himself in a medieval universe in which his social structure and his religion might provide him with an external sense of purpose and a means by which he might meaningfully integrate himself into a harmonious cosmos.

However, the narrative proceeds to slowly open audiences up to the possibility of, firstly, a meaningful cosmos, and secondly, a sense of external obligation.

Re-envisioning a Meaningful Cosmos

As Gawain travels through the wilderness, the camera lingers on the rugged landscape, on the shadowed boughs of gnarled trees, on the play of light through branches. Long scenes are devoted to Gawain struggling against the elements, as when he hides away in a cave from a storm. Though the passage of time is not marked by the liturgical calendar as in the original poem, these long, ponderous scenes encourage in audiences a meditative state, drawing the viewer’s attention to the inexhaustible and inexplicable nature of each moment. Thus, time begins to take on a strange sense of import. Even for audiences who do not believe that the liturgical calendar invests time with an inherent theological meaning, the film’s presentation of time enables audiences to experience time as meaningful.

Furthermore, as Gawain travels deeper and deeper into this unknown landscape, the cosmos itself is presented as a place filled with numinous enchantment. In one scene, as he crests the top of a rocky peak, he finds himself face to face with a great number of giants, who come to meet him through a bright, vast expanse of mist. The sheer size of the giants (and of the surrounding landscape) gives the scene a sense of sublimity, which is only heightened by the ethereal film score. Following this encounter is a long shot of Gawain, a small figure dwarfed by a field of stone. Inexplicably, the camera then begins to tilt upside down, until it looks as though Gawain is suspended over the sky. Precisely because this shot comes without any warning or explanation, it reinforces the scene’s strange enchantment. It gives viewers an experience of the inexplicable excess of reality. The world, it suggests, is filled with wonders beyond human comprehension. Thus, while audiences might not experience the world according to an explicitly liturgical vision as in the original poem, the film affords a similar experience of a cosmos saturated with meaning beyond human comprehension. Thus, much of the poem’s felt reality is retained.

Re-envisioning the Desire for Honor

Toward the end of the movie, the film also re-establishes the poem’s emphasis on virtue and obligation. When Gawain arrives at the Green Chapel, he does not stay and face the Green Knight’s blow as in the source material. Instead, he flees back to Camelot and lies about having completed his quest. The ensuing montage is a devastating portrayal of a life lived without a true concern for honor. Gawain’s false victory is celebrated, and he is hailed as a hero. As time passes, he makes his way upward in the knightly court, eventually becoming king, finding a wife, and having a child. The lack of dialogue and the swiftness of each camera cut evokes the indomitable passage of time, but Gawain’s perpetually somber expression simultaneously suggests his own experience of monotony. The montage’s melancholy music, “Blome Swete Lilie Flour,” tells of an individual awaiting his own death. Even as Gawain attains worldly honor in King Arthur’s court, he is afflicted by the hollowness of it all, which is compounded by the fact that his girdle serves as a constant reminder of his failure. Over the course of the montage, the camera intermittently pans and lingers on the girdle, a stark green against the warmer tones of the surrounding compositions. This perpetual reminder evokes an irrevocable sense of guilt. Gawain cannot escape the fact that all of his prestige is built on a lie. He never succeeded in his quest, and all the honor he receives is therefore entirely undeserved and empty.

Rather than devolving into nihilistic cynicism, however, this unmasking of false honor actually reveals a longing to pursue true honor. If living honorably was truly meaningless, Gawain would not feel guilty for failing to do so. If living according to the truth did not matter, Gawain would have no qualms about continuing in this deception. Even as the film critiques false notions of honor, therefore, it also establishes a deep existential longing to live in accordance with the truth of things. That, the film suggests, is where true honor lies.

The movie thus elicits the felt psychological response of an individual who, perhaps in spite of one’s beliefs, cannot help but affirm moral obligations beyond oneself. Even in a meaningless social structure, even when the Arthurian authority figure is revealed as a small-minded and power-hungry old man, even when chivalry is a fraud, and even when all “heroes” must eventually succumb to the inescapable ravages of time, living truthfully still matters. Inexplicably. Inescapably. Gawain has discovered what honor, real honor, is all about.

For these reasons, the ending of the film is capable of evoking in modern audiences the same drama and tension of the original poem, affording readers a simultaneous experience of guilt and forgiveness, of sobriety and levity. When the montage ends, Gawain awakens in the Green Chapel to find that the whole span of years was a dream or a vision. The Green Knight stands over him, his weapon poised. He asks Gawain if he is ready. Gawain then removes the girdle from his waist and says, “I’m ready now.” As a Catholic, I can’t help but notice how this moment follows the pattern of a sacramental confession. By removing the girdle, Gawain brings his own failure to light and, in-so-doing, unburdens himself of it before the Green Knight. In response, the knight leans toward Gawain and says, with a hint of a smile, “Off with his head.” His lighthearted attitude suggests that the entire beheading game was just that: a game. Thus, the film ends on a note of lightness, a cathartic release of guilt and an affirmation of the deep humor and inexplicable goodness of existence. The universe is filled with meaning despite the failure of human institutions and the frailty of individual virtue.

A Balance Between Meaning and Meaninglessness

What strikes me most about the poem and the movie is the way it seeks to find the balance between meaning and meaninglessness where true freedom can be found. Attach too much meaning to human institutions and individual virtue, and you’ll find yourself crushed by perfectionism (like the poem’s Gawain) or destroyed by systems of power beyond your control. Attach too little meaning to anything at all, conversely, and you’ll float around aimlessly like Gawain at the beginning of the film. Between these extremes is an affirmation of meaning that acknowledges human frailty. In the poem, the knights of the round table laugh off Gawain’s failure. They know Gawain is imperfect as they know themselves to be imperfect. And that knowledge gives them a levity Gawain lacks. Is Gawain simply taking himself too seriously? Is he trying too hard to strive for an impossible perfection? By the very religion to which he ascribes, human beings are understood to be fallible, far more prone to weakness and cowardice than to the high aspirations of chivalry. And yet, it is precisely by admitting such weakness that the individual begins to grow toward authentic virtue. The Christian, therefore, can’t afford to take herself too seriously. By striving for a purely human perfection—a self-mastery and staunch adherence to one’s personal integrity—the individual might actually find herself enmired in the self-conscious and brittle egotism of the New Testament Pharisee. It is only by knowing one’s own frailty (and therefore entrusting one’s existence to the God who sustains the whole universe) that one can achieve the sense of levity the court enjoys. So, is this situation meaningless because it is merely a game? Absolutely not. It is meaningful precisely because it’s a game. All of existence, the poem suggests, is a sort of game. One ought not to take it too seriously.

And yet, there remains the grandeur and gravitas of the world Gawain inhabits; there’s still a lush attention to detail in the weather and the changing of seasons, in the liturgy and pageantry, in the wilderness filled with mystery. A grand seriousness still pervades both the poem and the film. Everything matters. Everything has an almost supernatural import. Somehow, both poem and film suggest, one must hold these in tension—seriousness and lightness. Existence is both a game and a profound doxology. Neither the poem nor the movie resolves this tension. Nor should they, I think. The point is to experience it, to feel the sudden lightness of knowing that everything you do matters but nothing really depends on your efforts. It’s a paradox the movie made experientially real to me, and I think that’s why I left the theater in tears of gratitude and solemn joy.

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Evyn Katherine McGraw