The Best Medieval Fantasy Movie Of The 2020s Is Streaming For Free On Tubi

If you're looking for some Christmas viewing, might I suggest David Lowery's 2021 fantasy film "The Green Knight," starring Dev Patel and currently streaming free of charge on Tubi. If "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie because it takes place on Christmas day, then "The Green Knight" is a Christmas movie too.

The film adapts a 14th century poem, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," a classical hero's adventure of a brave and chivalrous knight. The identity of the original author is lost to time, but Lowery makes his mark as an author with a revisionist take on the story.

Patel plays Gawain, nephew of King Arthur (Sean Harris) and an aspiring knight. A coddled and hedonistic young man, Gawain has no tales of his own to tell when his uncle requests one. On Christmas day, the tree bark-skinned Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) — apparently summoned by Gawain's witch mother, Morgan Le Fay (Sarita Choudhury) — enters Camelot. The Knight offers to play a game; one of the Knights of the Round Table may strike him and win his axe, but in a year's time, they must return the weapon to him and he will repay the blow they dealt him.

Gawain takes the challenge and, wielding his uncle's sword (implicitly Excalibur itself), he beheads the Green Knight. But while the Green Knight bleeds like a man, the strike doesn't kill him. He rides off carrying his own head, laughing, and one year later Gawain must seek out the Green Knight or forsake his honor.

/Film named "The Green Knight" the best film of 2021 and, now that it's had a few years of sitting in the public consciousness, it's lost none of its power.

There's a reason that historical fiction (especially medieval historical fiction) and fantasy blend together so well. The past was a time when people didn't quite understand the world, and so looked to answers not from science but from myths, witchcraft, and religion. Stories weren't told just for entertainment, they were ways of passing down tradition, reinforcing belief systems, and making sense of the seemingly inexplicable. Films like "The Green Knight" recreate those ancient times with visual fidelity but operate on the narrative logic more in-tune with contemporary superstitions of the era depicted.

The fantasy in "The Green Knight" is not quite Tolkien-esque; it's more surreal, understated, and eerie. There's not even a proper duel between two sword fighters in the movie, the kind that might seem mandatory for a medieval epic. The impetuous Gawain tries to spur a duel with the Green Knight, giving you a sense of how Gawain views knightly duties, but his opponent lays down his axe and offers up his head, no fight needed.

Gawain's road to the Green Knight's chapel is littered with discarded, decaying bodies; one of the many questions that "The Green Knight" might provoke is what those dead men's tales were. The most fantastical bits, like talking animals, giants, or the Green Knight himself are there to frighten and confound you. One sequence, where Gawain retrieves the dead skull of a murdered girl, Winifred (Erin Kellyman), is an outright ghost story. (It's also foreshadows the fate awaiting Gawain should he seek the Green Knight.)

Gawain may be related to King Arthur but he's hardly an ideal hero. When a scavenger (Barry Keoghan) gives Gawain directions and asks for a token of payment, Gawain thinks his thanks are enough. When Winifred asks for his help so that she may rest, Gawain inquires how she might repay him. He gives into temptation and fear until the very end, and craves honor but never acts to deserve it. He even takes his quest to find the Green Knight and complete their game with reluctance.

Though only about two hours long, "The Green Knight" uses an episodic structure, befitting the various detours and encounters he makes during his quest. The film even uses onscreen title text to denote when a new sequence begins, giving you the feeling of coming upon a new chapter in a book.

While "The Green Knight" will never test your patience, it does demand it. It's a leisurely movie, sometimes with sparse dialogue as Gawain travels the land himself. Yet if you let the movie play at its pace, it'll dig under your skin like vines taking root in the earth. I've admittedly only seen the movie twice but there's images within it I can never forget. The landscape shots (filmed in Ireland) are beautiful and ominous, as is Lowery and his design team's craftsmanship. 

A simple yet telling detail is the adornment of Arthur and his Queen Guinevere's crowns with an angelic halo. The crowns' design only reinforces that Gawain is unfit to carry his uncle's legacy; if he's no knight, then he's definitely not a saint either. Being a hero takes selflessness and courage, and the ambiguous conclusion of "The Green Knight" suggests Gawain's true quest was finding those qualities inside himself.