The Green Knight and the Paradox of Faithful Adaptation

David Lowery's latest cinematic jaunt is a clinic on modern adaptation.

Hello and welcome back! It’s been awhile, lot’s has happened. Alas, we’re here. If you’ve seen The Green Knight, I’d like to know what you think of this short take down in the comments. If not, I hope this urges you to take the gamble. For the uninitiated, A24 is doing an online streaming event starting tonight (August 18th) for those looking to watch from the safety and comfort of their own homes.

With so much of today's cinematic IP being some form of recycled material, adaptation has become an increasingly important skill. Be it yet another rendition of a pulped fiction or more obscure cult favorites, ensuring the core of a story remains as it moves across mediums is difficult. For every Annihilation, there are a number of other titles that don't enjoy the privilege of careful hands, able to surgically replant the fundamentals of a beloved tale in new soil. 

In many senses, the medium is the message. Part of what makes adaptation so hard is that whoever is retelling a story in a new setting needs to understand a myriad differing dynamics including but not limited to; what the original prose intends to impart, how said story used the faculties of the original medium to impart its concepts, and a thorough understanding of the new medium so to adequately communicate the message in a new setting. Conveying a story across time or mediums is similar to translation. A word-for-word retelling won't do much justice- especially if the message contains any degree of nuance.

For David Lowery's newest undertaking, The Green Knight, this translation occurs across several dimensions. Time, arguably language, and medium all encompass his repackaging of the 14th-century chivalric romance. Though many might find Lowery to be proficient in communicating across the language of film, how one might accurately surmise what and how 14th-century peoples would've engaged with such a story, for example, likely sits beyond anyone living today for many reasons. How Lowery tackles the problem of retaining the poem's core message, then, should delight viewers. 

Though most will probably be unfamiliar with the source material - at least in a thorough understanding of its intention- the prose seems to center around how people viewed the idea of knighthood- specifically those moral or ethical attributes associated with its status. While the source material differs in how Sir Gawain deals with the various challenges faced on his journey to fulfill the contract entered with the green knight, it's exactly in this difference that Lowery succeeds in positing the same message more than half a millennia later. 

For many, the setting, vernacular, and expectation of the film will all be skewed. As is evident through the explanatory manner of most of its popular reviews, common audiences seemed to imagine this to be a 'classic' medieval tale. One where armor-clad knights vie for the hand of some fair maiden, or perhaps that of an enchanted chalice. A24’s execution of yet another beautifully shot, albeit at times impenetrable Arthurian journey, doesn’t really deliver on that populist expectation. It does, however, look to offer means for which the 21st-century viewer can contemplate the same quasi-philosophical issues of yore. Lowery making Dev Patel's Gawain something of a green, bumbling but well-intentioned not-yet-knight gives modern audiences a point in which they might supplant themselves. Unaware of how to fulfill the requirements to greatness, but yearning for the accouterments of said status all the same. 

Perhaps somewhat unintentionally, Lowery engages with the rhetorical language of today by utilizing the perceptions we ascribe onto ideas about knights and chivalry to investigate the questions the author of the original poem asked all those years ago- what does it mean to have honor? Is one a knight solely because they slay a fearsome foe or undergo a hero's journey? Or does the evolution to that lofty place happen in moments found unworthy of immortalization? 

For Lowery, it seems the ambiguity of the imagery presented honors the original. Just like anyone who encounters a story anew, its symbolism is ripe for interpretation. We’re not entirely sure of what to make of the giants walking along the valley never to be seen again, or what role the anthropomorphic fox has in Gawain’s ostensibly orchestrated quest for true knighthood. *Spoiler alert* Even the events presented to us take on an air of uncertainty as we’re twice presented with alternate, imagined realities. These things are there to deliver a modern experience of the original in a manner that adequately engages with someone who isn’t a serf or member of the clergy.

As Stanley Kubrick once said, "You don't try to photograph the reality, you try to photograph the photograph of the reality." Lowery’s adaptation of a long pondered, ancient poem may draw ire from academic and action fan alike, but it does an excellent job of plating what, for most, was an undigestable tale. By departing from the source material, Lowery created a more faithful retelling of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight than a word-for-word remake ever could.