The writer-director of A24’s upcoming epic The Green Knight originally set out to make a simple medieval tale, inspired by the Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
He finds his chance when he’s challenged by the monstrous Green Knight, but when their Christmas Day wager turns deadly, honor dictates that Gawain must embark on a journey that will almost certainly end in death.
DAVID LOWERY: I read the poem in college, and by reading it in college, I mean I probably haphazardly skimmed it because I had so many texts to read that freshman year.
It had been at that point probably 20 years since I had read it, so I ordered a copy off Amazon and started reading it, and I just started writing it as I was reading it.
I thought that this would be a very tiny, indie movie, and it had quickly grown to a point where I thought, This would be a really exciting movie to make, but I don’t know anyone who would finance anything this weird.
I always am thinking, How will history look back upon me? How will history look back on my generation? How will history reflect upon the things that I’ve done? And in my case, that is generally the movies I’ve made.
And the idea that he would knowingly embark upon this quest, knowing that he was probably going to die at the end of it, because that was the right thing to do, based on the code of conduct of the day – that was really meaningful.
I took a lot of the worst tendencies of myself – the version of myself that never wanted to move out of my parents’ house, all of my laziest qualities – and I put all of those into the script and then made them even worse.
But I also knew that he could do anything in the movie and would still be on his side.
But in terms of visual references, we looked at everything from Andrei Rublev, which is, I think, one of the greatest movies ever made, and which you could never make now.
It’s seven hours, and again, it’s a movie that would cost a billion dollars if they made it today, but because it was funded by the Russian government in the ’60s, they were able to pull it off.
We had one day, the day where Gawain first gets to the Green Chapel, and that particular day was one of the most fun days that I’ve ever had on set.
I was like, if I can just make it through the shoot, I might die at the end of it, but at least I’ll make it through.
I mean, I’ll never try to make a giant medieval epic fantasy quest movie for this budget number again.
I love pushing the boundaries no matter what movie I’m making, whether it’s a tiny indie film I’m always going to be pushing the boundaries of what we can do, what we can afford, what we can pull off.
But I feel like if I were just to open it up again and watch it, I would instantly see things that I could do to enrich it even further, or to illuminate the themes even further – so it’s a double-edged sword.
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