An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur's reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men.
Critics broadly embraced David Lowery's medieval art film as visually ravishing and thematically ambitious, praising its willingness to sit with ambiguity rather than deliver genre satisfactions. The sharpest disagreement is whether that enigmatic quality runs all the way down or is merely surface-deep — a handful of dissenters argued the film actually irons out the weirdness of its source material rather than honoring it. Audience response landed noticeably cooler than the critical embrace, a gap that has only widened as the film's reputation among cinephiles has grown.
“a rivetingly weird and exceptionally beautiful fantasy film that offers no easy answers but ponders the biggest questions”
John Nugent·Empire
“one of the most memorable films of the year, a fascinating swirl of masculinity, temptation, heroism, and religion”
Brian Tallerico·RogerEbert.com
“smooths out the enduring mysteries, opaque psychology, and narrative idiosyncrasies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resulting in a work that's only superficially more daring and enigmatic than its source material”
Keith Watson·Slant Magazine
“while there's a lot of commendable chutzpah and curious longing baked into The Green Knight, the movie's never as compelling as it is unusual”
Simon Abrams·TheWrap
Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur's reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men.
Critics broadly embraced David Lowery's medieval art film as visually ravishing and thematically ambitious, praising its willingness to sit with ambiguity rather than deliver genre satisfactions. The sharpest disagreement is whether that enigmatic quality runs all the way down or is merely surface-deep — a handful of dissenters argued the film actually irons out the weirdness of its source material rather than honoring it. Audience response landed noticeably cooler than the critical embrace, a gap that has only widened as the film's reputation among cinephiles has grown.
“a rivetingly weird and exceptionally beautiful fantasy film that offers no easy answers but ponders the biggest questions”
John Nugent·Empire
“one of the most memorable films of the year, a fascinating swirl of masculinity, temptation, heroism, and religion”
Brian Tallerico·RogerEbert.com
“smooths out the enduring mysteries, opaque psychology, and narrative idiosyncrasies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resulting in a work that's only superficially more daring and enigmatic than its source material”
Keith Watson·Slant Magazine
“while there's a lot of commendable chutzpah and curious longing baked into The Green Knight, the movie's never as compelling as it is unusual”
Simon Abrams·TheWrap
Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
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