When I was in college, I was very obsessed with the legend of King Arthur and medieval knight literature, so basically every movie about this theme must be watched. But when I saw this movie, it still surprised me.
Unlike most of its predecessors, this film does not aim to adapt Sir Gawain's romance into a Hollywood-style modern adventure story, but almost restores the original story structure and spiritual core. Not only that, in terms of picture and tone, this film also tries to restore the taste of medieval knight culture: oil painting-like long shots, obscure lines and whisper-like dialogues, and facialized characters like church frescoes. And that iconic interlude... all trying to pull the audience into an old medieval poem. From an artistic point of view, the film is truly special and self-consistent.
However, the core of medieval knight literature is allegorical moral preaching and religious exhortation, and its stories are often simple or even illogical. Therefore, from the perspective of today's commercial films, the story of this film seems simple and uninteresting, and the theme does not quite conform to the thinking and cognition of modern people, so it is inevitable that most audiences will feel that it is convoluted, or that there is a feeling that the form is greater than the content.
But it seems to me that such contradictions may be precisely the unification.
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