The Green Knight – Memphis Flyer

This year was an up-and-down time for film, as audiences cautiously returned to theaters. But even if box office returns were erratic and often disappointing, quality-wise, there was more greatness than could be contained in a top 10 list. Since I hate ranking, here are my personal awards for movie excellence in a weird year.

Vicky Kreips and Gael García Bernal aging on the beach in *Old*.

Worst Picture: Old

“There’s this beach, see, and it makes you old.”

“That sounds great, M. Night Shyamalan! You’re a genius!”

Annabelle Wallace wonders what it’s all about in *Malignant*.

Dishonorable Mention: Malignant

WTF was that about?

Bryce Christian Thompson stars as Shah in “The Devil Will Run.”

Best Memphis Film: “The Devil Will Run”

Director Noah Glenn’s collaboration with Unapologetic mastermind IMAKEMADBEATS produced this funny and moving memory of childhood magic. Glenn topped one of the strongest collections of Hometowner short films in Indie Memphis history.

Honorable Mention: “Chocolate Galaxy”

An Afrofuturist hip hop opera made on a shoestring budget, this 20-minute film features eye-popping visuals and banging tunes.

Best Performance by a Nonhuman:
Puppet Annette

This coveted award goes to Annette, Leos Carax’s gonzo musical collaboration with Sparks, which used a puppet to represent its namesake character, the neglected child of Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, because they couldn’t find a newborn who could sing.

Dev Patel as Sir Gawain in *The Green Knight*.

Medievalist: The Green Knight

To create one of the strangest films of 2021, all director David Lowery had to do was stick to the legend of Sir Gawain’s confrontation with a mysterious Christmas visitor to King Arthur’s court. Driven by Dev Patel’s pitch perfect performance, The Green Knight felt both completely surreal and strangely familiar.

Best Animation: Cryptozoo

Annette and The Green Knight were weird, but the year’s weirdest film was Dash Shaw’s exceedingly strange magnum opus. Think Jurassic Park, only instead of CGI dinosaurs it’s Sasquatch and unicorns drawn like a high schooler’s notebook doodles come to life.

Bad robot — director Michael Rianda’s *The Mitchells vs. the Machines* finds one family squaring off against the techno-pocalypse.

Honorable Mention: The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Gravity Falls’ Mike Rianda pulls off the difficult assignment of making an animated film that appeals to both kids and adults with this cautionary tale of the connected age.

Anna Cobb in *We’re All Going to the World’s Fair*

Best Performance: (tie) Kristen Stewart, Spencer; and Anna Cobb, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Both Stewart and Cobb played women trapped in nightmarish situations, trying to hold onto their sanity while watching their worlds crumble around them. For Stewart, it was Princess Diana’s last Christmas with the queen. For Cobb, it’s a teenager succumbing to an internet curse. The success of both pictures hinges on their central performances, but the difference is that Stewart’s one of the world’s highest paid actresses, and this is Cobb’s first time on camera.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Sandie in *Last Night in Soho*. (Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh / © 2021 Focus Features, LLC)

MVP: Edgar Wright

Wright started the year with his first documentary, The Sparks Brothers, an obsessive ode to your favorite band’s favorite band. Sparks’ story is so strange and funny, and Wright’s style so manic and distinctive, that many viewers were surprised to learn it wasn’t a mockumentary. Then, he dropped Last Night in Soho, a humdinger of a Hitchcockian horror mystery which evoked the swinging London of the 1960s. Wright continues to deliver the most fun you can have in a multiplex.

Ariana DeBose as Anita in *West Side Story*.

Best Director: Steven Spielberg,
West Side Story

I feel like this Spielberg kid’s got potential. Hollywood’s wunderkind is now an elder statesman, but his adaptation of the Broadway classic proves he’s still got it. With unmatched virtuosity, he brings Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s songs to life and updates the story’s sensibilities for the 21st century. West Side Story stands among the master’s greatest work.

Sly Stone performing at the Harlem Cultural Festival in *Summer of Soul*.

Best Documentary: Summer of Soul

The most transcendent on-screen moment of 2021 actually happened in 1969, when Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson duetted “Precious Lord” at the Harlem Cultural Festival. Questlove’s directorial debut gave the long-lost footage of the show the reverent treatment it deserves. Thanks to the indelible performances by the cream of Black musical talent, Summer of Soul was as electrifying as any Marvel super-fest.

Riley Keough and Taylour Page are strippers on a Tampa tear in *Zola*.

Best Picture: Zola

I can hear you now: “You’re telling me the best picture of 2021 was based on a Twitter thread by a part-time stripper from Detroit?” Hey, I’m as surprised as you are. But director Janicza Bravo turned a raw story of a road trip gone wrong into a noir-tinged shaggy-dog story of petty crime and unjust deserts. The ensemble cast of Taylour Paige, Nicholas Braun, Colman Domingo, and particularly Riley Keough is by far the year’s best, and Bravo shoots their ill-fated foray into the wilds of Tampa, Florida, like she’s Kubrick lensing A Clockwork Orange. Funny, self-aware, and unbearably tense, Zola is a masterpiece that deserves a bigger audience.

King Arthur movies rise and fall like ancient kings in history books. You usually know what to expect: valiancy, swordplay, armor fetishism, forbidden courtly romance, etc. But David Lowery’s The Green Knight is a different breed of fairy tale.

The closest comparison is Excalibur, director John Boorman’s 1981 labor of love. Excalibur was nothing like the turgid Knights of the Round Table from the ’50s or the musical Camelot from the ’60s. It was an attempt to tell a story of King Arthur in a way that the original audience would have understood. Sure, the “original audience” was made up of medieval Christian fanatics imposing their performative masculinity onto stories of a Romano-British warlord, and if you showed them a moving picture rife with gratuitous nudity, they would have burned you for witchcraft, but that didn’t stop Boorman. Excalibur is a visual feast of verdant Irish landscapes and shiny armored men, featuring an all-time great battle sequence filmed in a real medieval castle. But unless you watch it a few times and develop a working knowledge of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, it’s pretty hard to follow.

**Dev Patel is Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew, who faces coming-of-age and a challenge set forth by the Green Knigh**t.

The Green Knight signals it’s coming from a similar place with the title card, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance by Anonymous.” When we meet Gawain (Dev Patel), Arthur’s nephew is waking up in a brothel next to Essel (Alicia Vikander), a commoner. It’s Christmas, so he has to sober up and go to dinner with King Arthur (Sean Harris) and Guinevere (Kate Dickie). When his uncle asks him for a story of his exploits, Gawain admits he has never really done anything. That’s when a mysterious figure on horseback charges into Camelot. The Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) delivers a challenge. Any of the brave knights of the Round Table filling their bellies with figgy pudding can come take a free swing at him, but next Christmas, said knight must be willing to journey to the Green Chapel and submit to exactly the same wound he inflicts. Since the Green Knight is 8 feet tall, apparently made out of living wood, and wielding a magic axe, the knights are reluctant to take up his challenge. Gawain, needing stories to tell, volunteers. When Arthur loans him Excalibur, Gawain has an idea: If he cuts off the Green Knight’s head, he won’t have to worry about keeping his end of the bargain! But Gawain’s game theory comes undone when the Green Knight calmly picks up his severed head and says, “See you next year, sucker!” It’s all been a magic test of the future king’s capacity for mercy, and Gawain has failed the pop quiz.

Failure will be a recurring theme for our hero. The next Christmas season, he sets out alone to face decapitation. On the way, he is subject to a series of tests and temptations which, more often than not, he whiffs. Do you see Lancelot getting jumped by bandits and tied to a tree, or accidentally eating magic mushrooms while lost in the forest?

The Green Knight unfolds like a tapestry, as Lowery and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo serve up one luscious image after another. The episodic story is held together, to the extent that it is, by Dev Patel’s charismatic performance as a callow, thick-headed youth being dragged kicking and screaming into manhood.

Personally, I loved The Green Knight for its uncompromising vision and flights of downright weirdness, but I realize it’s not for everyone. If you’re looking for Conan the Barbarian-style, hack-and-slash action, you’ll be disappointed. The film has bawdy moments, but there’s no Game of Thrones-style exploitation. There’s humor in Gawain’s plight, but not the Peter Jackson, dwarf-tossing kind. Lowery channels Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and, in a stunning, wordless climax, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. I found Lowery’s deliberate pacing hypnotic, but as my wife said, “There’s a lot of gazing.” My advice is, don’t worry too much about the intricacies of chivalry and magic. To get on The Green Knight’s wavelength, just sit back and let the mists of Avalon wash over you.