The Green Knight (2021)

A modern-day but true-to-original take on the medieval epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, filmed with a Pan's Labyrinth style, a Monty Python and the Holy Grail structure, and a Yorgos Lanthimos-esque satirical breaking from the setting (complete with Yorgos-favorite Barry Keoghan).

Dev Patel (bigfoot-hunting Neil from The Newsroom) is soon-to-be-Sir Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, who wishes to be a noble and chivalrous and honorable knight, just as soon as he's done drinking and sleeping around in the brothel. When a supernatural tree spirit enters King Arthur's court on Christmas day and challenges any willing knight to a "game" of swordplay, it is Gawain who volunteers. The tree guy lays out some simple rules: you strike me with your sword today, and on Christmas in one day you shall quest to the tree spirit's temple and have the same blow returned to you. Gawain shrugs and chops the tree's head off. But this is supernatural shenanigans, the tree doesn't die, and Gawain slowly starts to realize what he signed up for in this little tit-for-tat exchange.

A year later, no more mature but pretending to be, Gawain heads off on his adventure with money and weaponry and magical charms and love bracelets and fancy clothing and a horse. He soon meets Barry Keoghan, who immediately dupes him and ties him to a tree and steals all of his shit. They speak in a healthy mix of gallant medieval English and modern facetiousness, not at all unlike the millenial Shakespeareanism of Lady Macbeth (2016), though certainly better.

Gawain hops around between disjoint Arthurian castles and side quests, rescuing a lady's decapitated head from a pond and camping with a cartoonishly CGI fox. He is taken in by a royal couple and the intentionally unexplained blind lady who follows them around wordlessly. When the lord goes out hunting, his wife stays in and relentlessly sexually assaults Gawain. Gawain, against his better wishes, relentlessly proves himself rather ignoble and moderately dishonorable.

Eventually, Gawain does make it to the green knight's temple. When the tree beast awakens, it goes for the decapitating blow and Gawain realizes that this is no joke or moral lesson, and there is no deus ex machina coming to save him. He musters up all of his knightly pride and Arthurian honor, shrieks, and runs away.

Back home, King Arthur dies, and Sir Gawain rises to king. But conscience and responsibility are a heavy burden; one by one he loses his love, his child, his subjects, and his kingdom. In his final moments, he reawakens in the past, in the green knight's temple again, under the axe blade again. This time around he gently removes his magical talismans and protective charms, casts them away, and tells the green knight – for the first time in his life with stoic confidence – that he is ready.