This is one of those films that only truly captivates you on a second viewing. The first time, leaving the theater, I wanted to criticize it for an openly unpleasant main character with whom it was impossible to empathize. Every one of his actions felt irritating or shameful, and the ending left me baffled — that’s it? But once I began analyzing the film and rewatched it at home, I saw a completely different movie. In it, the protagonist is exactly as he needs to be to convey the film’s core idea.
You can have different attitudes toward the philosophy of The Green Knight, but for me personally, it was fascinating to dig into the film and decode it. From an analytical point of view, this is a perfect film, because it leaves enormous room for interpretation. So I fully allow that many of my conclusions will be purely my own imagination, but I seriously doubt that David Lowery wasn’t aiming for this exact effect.
Warning: spoilers ahead!
At the beginning of the film, Gawain — the nephew of King Arthur himself — appears before us as a spoiled boy who gives no thought to the future. “I have time, there’s always time,” he tells his lover Essel when she urges him to hurry and become a knight.
But during the Christmas feast, sitting beside the legendary King Arthur and looking at the renowned knights at the Round Table, Gawain realizes how empty his life is. Thanks to his mother, who summons the Green Knight to the feast, Gawain gets a chance to prove himself — and at the same time to understand what it truly means to be both a man and a knight.
Gawain’s journey begins in anything but a heroic way: he is robbed, tied up, and left to die in the forest (in much the same way the original poem deconstructed and mocked the chivalric romances of its time). Then comes an unexpected sequence: the viewer suddenly sees Gawain dead. Yet a few moments later, he is alive again. This strange scene in the forest can be confusing — perhaps this outcome is the real one, and everything that follows is merely the dying imagination of a man abandoned in the woods?
The key to understanding the forest scene lies in the camera’s movement. At first, it slowly rotates clockwise in a full 360-degree circle, during which the seasons change before our eyes. This is how director David Lowery shows the passage of time and the life cycle of all living things, which inevitably ends in death. That is why, when the camera completes its circle, we see Gawain’s remains.
But as the camera begins to move closer to the skeleton, it suddenly shifts sharply to the left and starts circling in the opposite direction — in other words, rewinding time. Returning to the original point, we once again see Gawain alive. This is his first vision, and not the last. But it is the key one, because Lowery will return to it more than once.
Every time Gawain begins to doubt that he will survive the Green Knight’s “game,” a character appears who reassures him of a safe outcome. Their confidence is so unshakable, as if founded on the absolute impossibility of Gawain’s death. It is as though the Green Knight’s challenge were nothing more than a child’s pastime, and Gawain’s beheading would be only pretend. But even in a children’s puppet show, the puppet knight’s head is truly cut off.
The only person we can fully understand is Gawain’s mother: as the organizer of the game, she certainly knows her son will come to no harm. That is why she makes him an enchanted belt and secretly accompanies him throughout the journey (for example, in the form of the fox). The source of everyone else’s confidence, however, is a crucial riddle for understanding the essence of the film. And to solve it, we must ask: who exactly is the Green Knight?
The answer to why the Knight is green is given directly in the film: green is the color of nature and life itself, but also of rot. In other words, green serves as a kind of tombstone, a reminder of life extinguished — and of its inevitability. Thus we return once more to the life cycle and to the forest scene.
The life cycle is inseparable from another concept — time. From time there is no escape, no hiding place, no protection by any armor. It is no accident that King Arthur is shown in the film as already an old man, near death, barely able to hold Excalibur — far from the legendary hero we are accustomed to seeing in literature and film. Thus, the Green Knight embodies the life cycle itself, and his weapon (the axe) is time. It is by time (the axe) that Gawain is destined to die at the end of his journey.
Let us return to Lady’s monologue about the meaning of green. In that scene, we hear the same music and the same sounds of nature and decay that we heard earlier in the forest with the bound Gawain. This echo gives her monologue special weight — it becomes a direct message from Lowery to the viewer (reinforced by the sudden shift in the Lady’s intonation to one of utmost seriousness).
The essence of the message is this: most of us do not think about the inevitable end awaiting each of us. We avoid thoughts of our own mortality and spend the time given to us as if we will never die. This is the answer to why the characters in the film casually ignore the fact of Gawain’s impending beheading and so unshakably believe in his return.
Lowery’s message also touches on the conflict between man and nature. It is no accident that we are shown deforestation as soon as Gawain leaves the castle (and note that Gawain himself beheads the unresisting Green Knight, who resembles a living tree). The castle itself is a manmade structure — walls that shelter man from the threats of the outer world. But in this conflict, man cannot win; nature will inevitably reclaim its own. The image of the ruined chapel, Gawain’s final destination, covered in moss and greenery, is an unmistakable reminder of this truth.
Death is the central motif of the film. We encounter it throughout Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel: on the battlefield strewn with corpses, in each of his visions, in the house of Saint Winifred, and in the castle of the lord who loves to hunt. Moreover, in the scene with Winifred’s severed head (a foreshadowing of Gawain’s own fate), we likely hear the voice of Death itself. It tells him, “I see you,” and promises to strike him “with all care.” And the Green Knight, we are told, is someone he already knows (more on this later).
But we actually first hear the voice of Death in the pond, from which Gawain retrieves Winifred’s head. This occurs during his second vision, when everything around him suddenly turns red.
In the scene where Lady explains the meaning of green, she also mentions red, defining it as the symbol of desire: of women, glory, wealth, and so on. Before diving into the pond to retrieve Winifred’s head, Gawain asks her about a reward — meaning he helps her not out of honor but from a selfish desire to gain something in return. But as Lady says in her monologue, “While we chase red, green arrives.”
That is why, when Winifred’s head is restored to its place, Gawain discovers the stolen axe of the Green Knight — the instrument of time, of green, whose blow he must soon face.
The encounter with the scavenger, in which Gawain loses the axe, is a test of one of the five knightly virtues — in this case, generosity. Gawain arrogantly tosses the scavenger some gold as thanks for his “help,” fails the test, and as a result loses his horse, the enchanted belt, and the axe.
An interesting detail: when the scavenger takes the axe from Gawain, his voice suddenly changes, and he addresses the hero with the words, “my little brave knight” (apparently under the influence of enchantment). Later, in the chapel, the Green Knight will call Gawain by the very same words.
Considering that the axe is returned to Gawain after he helps Winifred (a test of honor), we can conclude that it is the Green Knight himself who sets all the trials for the hero. His role is not limited to sitting in the chapel waiting for Gawain’s arrival. Once Gawain leaves the castle walls, he finds himself on the Green Knight’s domain — returning us again to the conflict between man and nature.
The next stolen item, the enchanted belt, comes back to Gawain a little later, after his encounter with the double of his lover Essel, who now appears not as a prostitute but as a married Lady.
The third of Gawain’s trials concerns courtesy — the rules of conduct toward a woman. In this test, the Lady appears in the guise of Gawain’s lover Essel, whose origins and status he is clearly ashamed of. We can sense this in the awkward pause that follows when Essel asks Gawain whether he would like to make her his Lady. But Gawain reduces their relationship merely to gold.
This shows us that Gawain does not understand the essence of knighthood and seeks only glory and wealth, cloaking his ambition in muddled talk of honor. Yet he himself lacks the courage to keep his promise and give the lord the enchanted belt he receives from the Lady (a test of loyalty). Instead, he returns only a kiss (and many viewers will say thanks that it stopped at a kiss). In this way, Gawain proves no knight at all — something the Lady herself confirms.
When Gawain renounces his beloved Essel by handing over her gift (a pendant), he prepares to pose for a portrait. But the Lady does not paint him a portrait — she takes a photograph, an image that truthfully reflects reality (and, of course, Photoshop did not exist at the time). Thus, Gawain’s betrayal becomes a mirror of his true essence.
By contrast, the court painter at the beginning of the film depicts Gawain as a brave knight — the way others see him. The portrait, in this case, distorts reality, just as any legend or myth does.
As I’ve already mentioned, the original poem mocked the chivalric romances of its time, in which the hero passed every trial and became a flawless role model. The anonymous author, however, presented a realistic character: an imperfect man, afraid to part with life, who therefore resorted to trickery — the magic belt.
Lowery emphasizes this key feature of the poem in the Christmas feast scene, when the celebrated knights of the Round Table, confronted with the Green Knight’s challenge, do nothing but glance at each other in bewilderment. Even King Arthur himself asks not for a true story of their deeds, but for a legend or poem of their own invention.
In other words, a legend is nothing more than a beautiful story. And it is one thing to be a true example, and another to merely seem like one. The most eloquent demonstration of this truth comes during Gawain’s third and final vision in the Green Chapel.
At first, Gawain ignores the plea of his mother in the form of the fox to return home (it uses the same words about “holding his head high” that his mother told him when sending him on his way). Still, he flees from under the Green Knight’s axe and fails the final test of manhood.
Returning home on the horse graciously provided by the Green Knight (the very one earlier stolen by the scavenger), Gawain accepts the crown and becomes a fake hero of a poem of his own making (co-written with his mother). This false glory leads to a brutal break with Essel, the death of their child in a future war, the disfavor of the people, and the siege of his castle. Even his closest ones — his wife and his mother — abandon him.
The circling movement of the camera in this scene already hints at the hero’s approaching end, which comes not from the arrows or swords of the invaders but from the axe of the Green Knight, which finally strikes Gawain. At this point, Gawain’s vision ends, and he draws the main lesson from his journey: no matter how you run, you cannot escape time — the end will come sooner or later. And since death is inevitable, why not act rightly and live life with dignity, without chasing honors and rewards? Here it’s fitting to recall Essel’s words: “Why be great? Isn’t it enough to be good?”
Now Gawain bows his head willingly before the inevitability of time, but the Green Knight does not strike. Instead, he sits beside him and gently strokes his cheek — repeating the gesture of King Arthur, who once wiped the dirt from Gawain’s face after a tavern brawl. And then comes the familiar phrase: “My brave knight.”
Why does the Green Knight behave as though King Arthur himself hides beneath his guise? Recall what Winifred’s severed head said: “The Green Knight is someone you know.” In the night scene in the chapel, Gawain looks at the sleeping Green Knight, whose face shifts — becoming Arthur’s, then the lord’s, then his wife’s, then even Gawain’s own. Lowery hints at the inseparable connection between nature and man (“God is in each of us”), and in that sense, Gawain truly does know the Green Knight. Nevertheless, the Green Knight still utters the fatal words: “Off with your head.” What follows is his smile — and then the credits.
Gawain cannot truly lose his head — otherwise the story’s central message could not reach the audience. Yet by not showing the blow itself, Lowery leaves the finale open to interpretation. And Arthur’s words earlier — “And if God smiles upon you, then hurry back” — leave hope that Gawain will indeed return home alive, unharmed, and most importantly, a changed man.
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