Where The Green Knight excels is with the distillation of mood and myth-making while not losing sight on its own sense of humanity.

He rides out of Camelot in search of the Green Knight and perhaps a solution out of his predicament. The months pass and Gawain is drinking and sleeping away his last remaining time before finally accepting to meet his fate. He only picks up his fallen head and promises that in one year, he'll deliver the same to Gawain. Full of bravado, Gawain takes mighty Excalibur and decapitates the Green Knight. That knight can inflict whatever blow or mark upon him, but then the Green Knight will return the exact favor in one year's time. Then one Christmas, a Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) enters the kingdom and challenges any daring knight to a game.

He longs to be accepted as a respected knight but he has no adventures to his name.

Gawain (Dev Patel) is the nephew to the King of England (Sean Harris). It's got good graces, an artistic vision, and a preponderance on atmosphere that can feel a little strained at points. It's not surprising then that The Green Knight would be a polarizing film of differing expectations. Maybe they were expecting something more conventional, which is a mistake considering it's written and directed by David Lowery, who has dabbled in a studio sphere (Pete's Dragon, the upcoming Disney Peter Pan remake) but seems more at home with introspective, quiet, occasionally overly obtuse art-house pictures, the kind like 2016's A Ghost Story where Rooney Mara eats a pie for ten minutes (I will never forget this puzzling movie moment). Much like the contentious differences of opinion over It Comes at Night and Hereditary, it seems like general audiences are a little more indifferent to hostile for this arty release than the critics. The Green Knight is an indie drama heavy on atmosphere and mood and a little lax on pacing, falling into yet another A24 discrepancy between critics and audiences.

Knights of the old empire