David Lowery’s "The Green Knight": An Ecocinematic Dialogue between Film and Poem

Authors

Sarah L. Higley, University of Rochester, NYFollow

Abstract

A “faithful” film adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has long been awaited. The romance lends itself well, it seems, to cinema in its vivid staging, psychology, and suspense. David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2019) reflects its visual splendor but dismantles its plot, the relationship of its characters, re-signifies its significant objects—ax, shield, and girdle. It forefronts contemporary anxieties about film revision of a medieval poem and invites us to examine our technical engagement with and representation, then and now, of the natural world. By suggesting that Gawain might die by the Knight's third blow, Lowery challenges the human exceptionalism inherent in all fantasies of the hero’s journey through a forest (the point of which is to get through it alive). Rather, Gawain remains with the Knight in a state of ambiguity, and either engraves or becomes the stump shown at the end, which bears his new name. This essay puts both poem and film in dialogue with each other to show how Lowery's ecocinematic film "re-greens" a text already given much ecocritical examination.

Recommended Citation

Higley, Sarah L. (2022) "David Lowery’s "The Green Knight": An Ecocinematic Dialogue between Film and Poem," Medieval Ecocriticisms: Vol. 2, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/med_ecocriticisms/vol2/iss1/4