A24’s The Green Knight (2021) Strays From the Source Material—And it’s Brilliant.

Dev Patel as Gawain from The Green Knight, 2021

David Lowery’s 2021 film, The Green Knight, takes an arthouse style approach to Arthurian legend: atmospheric, visually beautiful, and unquestionably disturbing. While it may not be classified as a horror movie, it’s produced by A24—the same indie company that delivered Hereditary (2018) and A Ghost Story (2017)—another artsy film directed by Lowery.

Audiences who are unfamiliar with the medieval poem by the same name may have difficulty understanding the rich symbolism woven throughout the movie. The following 4 examples give a bit more context, highlighting how The Green Knight diverges from the original story, and the brilliant message Lowery communicates through Gawain’s ill-fated quest.

1. Camelot is Rotting

As the film opens, the famed knight Gawain (Dev Patel) is seated on a throne as a king. He appears stoic and regal… until his head bursts into flame. Immediately after this, the movie commences with a grim depiction of medieval life, complete with overcast gray sky and an evil-looking goat reminiscent of one of A24’s other ghostly films, The Witch (2015).

A hungover young Gawain is woken by his lover, Essel (Alicia Vikander) in a brothel. This is the first major departure from the poem, as Gawain is traditionally represented as the epitome of chivalric heroism and morality. After hurriedly preparing for a Christmas feast in King Arthur’s hall, the untested knight steps into a shadowed, unfriendly version of the famed Round Table.

The first twenty minutes of the film show a major twist on older Hollywood versions of Camelot, a grim re-imagining of a world that is usually depicted as beautiful and thriving.

King Arthur (Sean Harris) and Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie) reflect the familiar noble goodness, but they’re represented as aging rulers in their twilight years. Through Gawain’s young and fearful perspective of the Christmas event, it’s revealed that the knights of the Round Table and royals who lead them have had their glory days and are now aging and tired.

This theme continues throughout the film. The world is beautiful, but in a decaying, impoverished kind of way. It probably smells like mold and old blood. But despite the medieval rot, Gawain receives gentle admonishment from his elders, including a kindly, “do better” lecture from his uncle (Arthur). Camelot is undeniably struggling, but the inhabitants cling to the old ideals of purity, chivalry, and glory.

In this sense, the film both subverts and echoes the original poem, which depicts Camelot in its young days, when all the knights were eager to take on great quests and adventures.

2. Paganism is Alive and Well

The same feast includes a critical speech, one of two in the movie. While Arthur addresses his knights fondly, speaking of brotherhood and Christian values, there are alternate glimpses of Gawain’s mother (Morgan le Fay, played by Sarita Choudhury) casting a spell with bones and runes and smoke. David Lowery himself revisited this scene multiple times to get the balance between the Christmas speech and pagan ritual just right, as it is a core moment in the movie.

Mythologists and folklore lovers may be excited to see the use of Ogham staves—the Irish tree alphabet—and the more familiar Anglo-Saxon runes sometimes used in movies. Morgan’s gritty mysticism is a welcome break from typical depictions of magic as sparkly and dramatic.

In a lot of ways, Lowery’s film is more consistent with older myths that preceded romantic knightly stories. Whereas those tales centered on holy knights and fair maidens, the earlier versions were darker, representing nature and magic as wild and untamable.

One of the most visually impressive moments later in the movie is a 360 continuous shot. Gawain has been robbed and tied up and as he lies dejected in the forest, the camera pans to show everything rotting away until he too is just a skeleton. And then, just as the viewer begins to assume the movie has finished prematurely, the camera continues panning to show rich green moss, leaves, plants—and a living Gawain.

This core scene could be interpreted in two ways:

1) Gawain is imagining what will happen if he gives up.

2) Gawain is making the transition from the human world to the Otherworld, where fairies and ghouls exist.

The second option seems the most likely as, shortly after this shot, Gawain stumbles upon the ghost of a murdered woman, a fox that serves as his animal guide, and the spookiest character of all…

3. The Green Knight is a Jolly Terror

In the original poem, Gawain takes up the Green Knight’s challenge because he is the strongest and bravest. In the film, the responsibility is thrust on him because he has yet to prove himself worthy of knighthood. The Knight’s entrance is more or less the same. A man rides into the feast hall on a massive horse, carrying a branch that he throws on the ground as a sign of peace. He is dressed in green armor and has green skin and hair. As the other knights look on in wonder, he cheerfully greets them and challenges them to a game: strike him with an axe and in one year, he’ll return the favor. It doesn’t sound particularly fun, but for a knight eager to prove himself, it’s the perfect opportunity. After all, who could survive a blow from an axe?

But of course, the Knight is not a normal knight. This is made visually obvious—rather than a Jolly Green Giant, he looks more or less like a dryad or an Ent from Lord of the Rings.

Under pressure from King Arthur and Gawain’s mother (who probably orchestrated the entire quest with her magic), the young protagonist accepts the game. Gawain relieves the Tree Knight of his head. Easy enough… but when the beheaded man doesn’t die, Gawain realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. Laughing madly, the Knight scoops up his head and rides back through the doors in Headless Horseman fashion, very much alive.

The Knight doesn’t appear in his true form again until the very end of the movie. In the original story, Gawain and the Knight go off as friends once the trial is over. In the film, it’s less clear. Through his journey filled with trials and tests of courage, Gawain realizes that facing death is not as brave and honorable as he’s been led to believe. In fact, it’s bone-chillingly terrifying.

Unlike most stories about heroic quests, Gawain finds that he was maybe just born a coward. Who can blame him though—anyone might cry a little if they were about to be killed by an 8-foot-tall forest god.

4. Lady Bertilak is a Predatory Environmentalist

This is when many theatergoers were really thrown off. Lady Bertilak is brilliant—and possibly the real antagonist of the film. She’s also one of the most confusing characters. For one, she is played by Alicia Vikander, who also portrays Gawain’s commoner lover, Essel. To fully understand both characters, it’s important to pay attention to how they interact and the warnings she gives Gawain. Considering the nature of the Otherworld, it’s possible this is not Lady Bertilak’s real form at all, but rather a mask meant to seduce Gawain.

In both the poem and the film, Lady Bertilak is the wife of the lord who offers hospitality to Gawain just before he faces the Green Knight. In both versions, she attempts to seduce our hero. But the poem summarizes this briefly and serves only as another trial Gawain must overcome during his quest. In the film, Lady Bertilak is everything. She delivers one of the most pivotal and revealing soliloquys, accusing humans of prioritizing glory and heroism when, in the end, everybody dies and goes back to “green” or nature:

“Red is the color of lust. But green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die too.”

Beyond her strange speech condemning men, society, and industrialism, she is also a scientist and sorceress. She shows Gawain an early version of a camera, a reference to the fact that many medieval people considered anything vaguely scientific to be witchcraft. She also has a handmaiden that may or may not be Gawain’s mother in disguise.

In her role as a seductress, Lady Bertilak provides one of the most unsettling scenes in an already unsettling movie. One of the primary purposes of the medieval poem is to represent the moral goodness of a true knight who is not compromised by external temptations. Lowery pushes that boundary, showing a version of Gawain that is inherently good in a world where being good isn’t enough to survive.

A Story of Heroism and Hubris

David Lowery’s vision for The Green Knight is as complex and confusing as it is compelling. To get a full understanding requires a deeper look into medieval poetic conventions, the traditional hero cycle, and the use of nature and occult symbolism to reflect human failings. But the above examples shed a little light onto the core themes and messages Lowery communicates.

The ending may be frustrating to viewers who want catharsis after two hours of continual bad luck and ominous warnings. But the lack of certainty may be the ultimate point. Gawain has been forced into a laughably impossible quest by aging rulers who want to reawaken the glory days of Camelot, a kingdom that has already decayed morally and physically.

The end of the journey matters less than the transformation Gawain undergoes. But the story captures something that is too often missing from contemporary hero narratives: the idea that chasing glory and honor at the expense of morality, decency, and understanding of their own shortcomings may not be worth the ultimate outcome.

As Essel asks Gawain before his quest, “why greatness? why is goodness not enough?”