Spoilers for "The Green Knight": Why that startling last moment is truly a "happy ending"

Spoilers for "The Green Knight": Why that startling last moment is truly a "happy ending"

Warning: this article contains spoilers. The conclusion of "The Green Knight" is described in this narrative. If you haven't watched it yet and don't want to know, stop reading now. 

"The Green Knight" is a mind-bending experience.

Gawain (Dev Patel) is an arrogant young man who plays in a deadly game with a treelike creature called the Green Knight in David Lowery's beautiful retelling (in cinemas today) of the anonymously penned 14th-century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (Ralph Ineson). After chopping off the head of the Green Knight in a challenge at King Arthur's (Sean Harris) court, Gawain must track down the legendary horseman a year later to endure the same blow.

Gawain meets a cast of characters along the way, including a menacing fox, a headless saint (Erin Kellyman), and an unnerving couple of swingers (Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton), who put his principles to the test. Is he interested in becoming a knight for the sake of glory or to uphold the code of chivalry? And if he turned around, did it matter if he lost his dignity as long as he kept his head?

In the closing ten minutes of the film, Lowery pulls off a startling twist. Gawain locates the Green Knight in the woods and anxiously awaits the monster's reawakening. Gawain hurries home, where Arthur crowns him king, just as the Green Knight lifts his ax to cut off his head. Gawain realizes that he is only alive due to his cowardice, and he goes on to live a wretched life, rejecting his true love and watching his son perish in combat. His kingdom falls apart, his family and subjects desert him, and he dies in exile.

The film then returns to the forest, where we find that the terrifying other reality was all in his head. "I'm all set. Before the Green Knight shouts, Gawain says, "I'm ready now."

Lowery adds, "My aim is that you leave with a grin on your face and the sense that this is genuinely a happy ending." "Regardless of what occurs after the picture fades to black, I wanted there to be a sense that this man had arrived at the position he has to be in."

What occurs next is seen differently by the filmmaker "But, because it doesn't matter, I didn't want to impose my own opinion. He'll pass away at some point. Perhaps he had his head cut off at that very time. Perhaps he will die of old age later in his life. He will, however, perish. We are all going to die."

"What matters is that we know we're progressing toward our full potential; that we're living our lives with kindness and honesty, with a feeling of righteousness that is defined by our own particular sense of value rather than by greatness or legacy."

Part of what drew Patel to the film was a gloomy montage of Gawain's prospective future, which showed how Gawain could never be happy or satisfied knowing he was a dishonest man.

Patel adds, "Everything he wanted and dreamt his life would be, he received." "However, you witness someone with a moral foundation fall under the weight of deception."

Much of the film is about coming to grips with one's death, something Gawain admits he couldn't have predicted. But, in the last scenes of the film, he appears to be at peace with death: just as the Green Knight is about to behead him, Gawain instructs him to wait while he removes a green belt thought to have magical abilities that would keep him safe.

"That girdle symbolizes his own timidity," Patel explains. "You can tell he's come of age when he decides to take it off."

Patel was inspired by "Green Knight" to consider wider issues of honor and legacy, as well as how they applied to his own life.

"In my experience as an actor, I could connect to it," Patel adds. "Ambition is a powerful motivator, and the film shows how pointless it may be at times. Rather than aiming for grandeur, why not aim for goodness? What does it mean to be more in the grand scheme of things?"