Yesterday, a manic pixie dream elf! Today, a mysteriously seductive Christmas Lady. In director David Lowery’s The Green Knight, Dev Patel plays Gawain, a young knight-to-be sent on a quest of doom in order to secure his place at the famed Round Table of King Arthur’s court. Having bested the infamous Green Knight in combat on Christmas Day, he must face the supernatural creature one year hence at his place of power, the Green Chapel. After a long journey full of bizarre adventures and inscrutable characters, Gawain collapses at the door of a mysterious castle and wakes to find himself surrounded by comfort and luxury after weeks of hard and brutal travel:
We’re starting with this screencap for a reason. When he awakes, he meets the Lord of this castle, played by Joel Edgerton, who takes him downstairs to a waiting breakfast, where he informs him that it’s only a few days until Christmas, the Green Chapel is less than a day’s ride away, and he’s welcome to stay and rest up until he needs to complete his quest:
The reason we haven’t actually focused on the Lady of this essay, is because both the bedding and the Lord are meant to serve as visual introductions to her:
The Lord, the Lady, and the bedding are all rendered in the same shade of teal. The entire film hews as closely as possible to the tone and style of an epic poem, so it has a dream-like, borderline nonsensical quality as scenes sometimes stop completely so a mysterious character can give a long monologue. And sometimes, that mysterious monologuing character is a fox or a beheaded saint. It’s a film practically drowning in symbolism, much of which can only be divined if you know the story or the history well. But wrapping this whole scenario up in the same color means something quite specific and easily understood. This is a house of temptation, mystery and desire.
The point of Gawain’s quest, like all knightly quests, is to gain honor and remain true to chivalric principles. All throughout his journey, he’s tempted to stray from his destiny, to not pursue greatness, to run away from almost certain death. It should be noted that Alicia Vikander also plays the peasant girl that Gawain claims to love, which means her appearance here is some form of magic meant to seduce him.
Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska did absolutely stunning work in this film and we’d go so far as to call it some of the very best cinematic costume design of the last decade. She understood that an Arthurian tale doesn’t have to owe a single thing to historical accuracy and freed herself from any such concerns as to how a high-born lady in roughly seventh Century England would have dressed. There’s no embroidery and the techniques used to render this garment are closer to haute couture than anything made 1500 years ago. The point is not to be historic, it’s to be mythic. The Lady sets about seducing and enticing Gawain while the Lord enters into a strange agreement with him that Gawain would share anything he received while in his house in return for his hospitality. Again, all of this is wrapped up in teal, which permeates every scene in this scenario. There are no servants in the house, which forces the question of how the Lady even manages to get dressed or get her hair done. The only other occupant is a silent, blind old woman who stands or sits in judgment of the happenings around her.
On the night before Christmas, she gives a long and vaguely disturbing speech about how green doesn’t represent life, but death and disease, the way it creeps over stones, tears down walls, and consumes graves. Later, she will visit Gawain in his bedchamber, seduce him, and let him steal a magic girdle off of her that will allow him to survive his encounter with the Knight by essentially cheating. This is a castle of temptation and teal is the color of sin. Because after all, what is teal but blue with green seeping in?
Next up: A Christmas curveball!
[Photo/Still Credit: A24]
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