I'll openly admit I haven't been much of a fan of Lowery's work to-date. He is an effective stylist no doubt, but I've largely found his films to fall flat when it comes to emotion, often feeling very cold and off-putting when you step back from the impressive visual tableaux. While I wouldn't say The Green Knight completely sheds that stigma but it remains his most impressive feature to date. A beguiling fantasy that lends itself to Avant-garde flourishes, projecting a dream-like atmosphere that manages to feel grandiose in its existential designs but it also can feel self-serious and overwrought, desperate to achieve honor and glory in its dramatics similar to its main character who searches for it among the social order. Lowery doesn't spend too much when it comes to character development, like at all, but this fantastical journey projects a consistent lucidity to its otherworldly designs, managing to craft a visual poetry ripe with deception, elucidating one of the underlying themes related to the failings of such pursuits as honor and glory. Honor can be an external fabrication, a deception in itself that distracts us from what we really desire in life, our internal impulses being pure and honest. The games men play and the human toll it has both on the body and the soul is something that feels transparent to me in The Green Knight. While I still think this film struggles at times from feeling too self-serious, The Green Knight manages to overcome that as well as its flawed characterizations, being my favorite film of Lowery's to date but also one that makes me begin to question if he will ever deliver something which truly is effective on a humanistic level. For many, I would suspect this film will manage to confuse as much as titillate.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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