David Lowery
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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced The Green Knight (2021)
Themes Visuals
These intriguing questions are enough to hold one’s interest in the absence of physical forward motion, and, before long, our man finds himself at his true destination, whereupon he more fully wrestles with the very concepts that launched him on his journey — dubious motivations that inspire meditations on nothing less than the meaning of life — via a sequence reminiscent of the penultimate stretch in The Last Temptation of Christ .
While the poem concludes in a joyful reversal that reflects the spiritual renewal of the New Year, the filmmaker opts for a more sober and uncertain ending that evokes no less a film than The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Lowery, never shy about wearing influences on his sleeve, borrows a little from both, while nodding also to the controversial revisionism of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ and to the allegorical dread (and talking fox!) of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist .
Lowery presents this theme with such an assured hand that comparisons can be made to Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), in which a character struggles to embrace their morals in the face of overwhelming adversity.
Lowery attempts an equally audacious movement here–a full fifteen minutes without dialogue, spanning decades in an amazing homage to “The Last Temptation Of Christ.”
He imagines the life he might have had (like Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ”).
Appropriately for an adaptation of a poem once translated by Tolkien, there are occasional hints of Middle-earth, and Lowery clearly relishes realising boyhood fantasies of fantasy (he has previously cited Ron Howard’s Willow as an early inspiration).
The Green Knight’s aesthetic is built on a wildly diverse collection of cinematic references: There are touches of everything from sincere 80s fantasies such as Ladyhawke and Willow to the more transgressive work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier (including one CGI-rendered character familiar to viewers of Antichrist).
With inspiration from films such as Willow , The Dark Crystal , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , The Green Knight is a slow-burning, character study.
Lowery’s cine-literacy also points to his eclectic influences — Terrence Malick’s stamp is all over his first film; the visual textures of The Old Man & the Gun are right out of ‘70s New Hollywood; the transfixing rhythms of A Ghost Story take their cue from the haunting slow-cinema lyricism of Apichatpong Weerasethakul; and the director acknowledges Ron Howard’s Willow as a key ‘80s-throwback inspiration on this new film, which nonetheless feels entirely original in its imaginative world-building.
The path for Lowery to this medieval tale apparently resulted when he came across some action figures from Ron Howard’s Willow , a 1988 period tale that also featured a perilous journey.
Lowery has cited multiple films that influenced him over the years as he worked to bring The Green Knight to life onscreen: Willow , Bram Stoker's Dracula , The Dark Crystal , Marie Antoinette , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , a 1928 French silent film by Carl Dreyer.
The most Gilliamesque (a director I was frequently reminded of) moment, unfortunately brief, is with the giants – who are blankly staring alien-like beings reminiscent of Fantastic Planet (1973).
Gawain’s brush with a plucky miscreant (played by Barry Keoghan) on a corpse-strewn battlefield is equal parts “The Mists of Avalon” and “Come and See,” while a jaw-dropping encounter with a clan of bald-headed giants borrows from René Laloux’s “Fantastic Planet” as the film’s (relatively) grounded first half gives way to the unmoored fantasy of its second.
Giants that evoke the design of the creatures in “Fantastic Planet” aren’t so much intimidating as they are lonesome and magic is as obvious as a trick of the light.
Lowery has cited Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V as inspirations; the film also hints at John Boorman’s Arthurian extravaganza Excalibur and Guillermo del Toro’s sylvan fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth.
Director John Boorman certainly did with his 1981 "Excalibur," which was a reprise of one of the old Camelot tales, featuring Arthur and Merlin and Morgan le Fay, as well as the Knights of the Round Table, the Lady of the Lake and so on.
Written and directed by David Lowery, this adaptation has its influences in everything from the original surviving text to elements of Sean Connery’s Sword of the Valiant and John Boorman’s Excalibur.
Even unassailable classics of the genre such as The Thief of Bagdad , Excalibur , and The Lord of the Rings feel unmistakably like features made in 1940, 1981, and the early 2000s, respectively.
Pitched between John Boorman’s extravagant Excalibur and Robert Bresson’s austere Lancelot du Lac, Lowery’s grungy and gloomy fantasy epic (in theaters July 30) has deconstruction on its mind, and those heady concerns ultimately enhance its beguiling intrigue and terror.
It’s Excalibur (1981) retold for adolescents, without the unsettling and aggressive acts of sexuality.
The Green Knight reminded me in subtle ways of a lot of other films I’d seen – Darren Aronofksy’s The Fountain , Robert Eggers’ The Witch , even Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal as just a few examples – while at the same time feeling unlike anything I’d seen before.
With inspiration from films such as Willow , The Dark Crystal , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , The Green Knight is a slow-burning, character study.
Lowery has cited multiple films that influenced him over the years as he worked to bring The Green Knight to life onscreen: Willow , Bram Stoker's Dracula , The Dark Crystal , Marie Antoinette , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , a 1928 French silent film by Carl Dreyer.
Instead, it’s reminiscent of the artsy sterility of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man , except you don’t get the sense that Lowery hates the genre he’s working in.
Lowery's obsessively crafted mise en scene occasionally brings to mind the work of director Robert Eggers (“The Witch,” “The Lighthouse”), though movie buffs will likely also detect the influence of trippy midnight fare like the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and cult curios like Jim Jarmusch's black and white Western “Dead Man.”
Buyer beware: this extremely peculiar medieval movie owes less to “Game Of Thrones” and more to acid Westerns like “El Topo” and Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man.” (A more accurate title might have been “The Assassination of the Green Knight by the Coward Sir Gawain.”)
Lowery, never shy about wearing influences on his sleeve, borrows a little from both, while nodding also to the controversial revisionism of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ and to the allegorical dread (and talking fox!) of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist .
The Green Knight’s aesthetic is built on a wildly diverse collection of cinematic references: There are touches of everything from sincere 80s fantasies such as Ladyhawke and Willow to the more transgressive work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier (including one CGI-rendered character familiar to viewers of Antichrist).
What we do have is a talking fox, imported from Lars von Trier’s no less arboreal “Antichrist” (2009), plus an introduction to Gawain’s mother (Sarita Choudhury), a sorceress of many charms, and a cameo appearance from a gang of passing giants.
It’s right up there with “Truly Madly Deeply,” in which Alan Rickman returns from the dead to hang with his ex (Juliet Stevenson), only to realize his presence makes things worse.
It’s about love’s link to the afterlife, more Tibetan Book of the Dead than its warm and fuzzy big screen interpretations “Ghost” or “Truly, Madly Deeply.”
Just when you're beginning to wish you were watching "Truly, Madly, Deeply" instead, a motley group of posers takes over, bristling with piercings and pontifications.
Like Truly Madly Deeply and Ghost , it posits what happens when one-half of a couple has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Yes, Lowery’s residential Texan locale superficially echoes scenes from The Tree of Life , but beyond this vague pictorial similarity there’s no comparison.
As with Lowery’s first pairing of Affleck and Mara, 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints , a Texan crime romance with echoes of Badlands , the comparisons with Malick are apt again here: in the spirit of The Tree Of Life , A Ghost Story is both deeply intimate and vast in scope, bridging years, then centuries, before looping back on itself.
This a movie that will remind you of the best, most thought-provoking moments of Interstellar , The Time Machine , A.I. and The Tree of Life .
Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2011) is the closest comparison film in terms of tone, mood and narrative construction to this picture, and that is an eccentric compliment.
When Lowery resorts to aping the spacey visuals of Terrence Malick’s similarly laborious “The Tree Of Life,” “A Ghost Story” is still a pleasure to look at.
(Call it a sapling sprouting from the soil around The Tree Of Life .)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
influenced A Ghost Story (2017)
Characters Themes Visuals
The almost ridiculous quality of Affleck’s sheet-covered spook finds a parallel in the slightly silly, red-eyed monkey spirits of Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives .
The touchstone here is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2011 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, an animist Thai masterpiece that Lowery wrote about rapturously on his blog.
It’s as if the vaporous Thai favorite Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives had been reconceived by the maestro of clunks, M. Night Shyamalan.
The primitiveness of Affleck’s costume in some ways recalls the low-rent, matter-of-fact magic of the great Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose films (including “Tropical Malady” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) often unfold along the porous boundaries between this world and the next.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Directed by Terry Jones
influenced The Green Knight (2021)
Visuals Themes Dialogue
In these moments, Lowery evokes everything from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Where the Wild Things Are to Prometheus .
As far as King Arthur films go, “The Green Knight” has a lot more in common with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” than most newer, high-energy takes, such as Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”
They’re also subtly funny, though, in ways that can’t help but conjure images from the more ubiquitous and absurd Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The mythical, adventure-packed drama The Green Knight is the best Arthurian adaptation this side of Monty Python and the Holy Grail .
When the forgettable Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie came out a few years ago I was making jokes in my head about Monty Python and the Holy Grail the entire time; I did none of that for Green Knight .
His underreaction to his beheading brings John Cleese’s “a mere flesh wound” (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) to mind.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced A Ghost Story (2017)
Music Themes
Hart’s music oscillates between tender strings and grand orchestral pieces that imply a cosmic significance, in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey, on the most mundane set pieces.
Eventually, Lowery even works time travel into the narrative, giving “A Ghost Story” a kind of rural “2001: A Space Odyssey” vibe.
The ghost sees families come and go in rapid succession, with A Ghost Story eventually building towards a crescendo (best left unspoiled, but if you don’t want it alluding to, skip ahead now) that suggests that this is more of a science fiction tale than a horror one – a look at the changing face of American society in the same way 2001: A Space Odyssey is a tale of mankind’s evolution.
He stays and watches what remains of the time his partner M (Rooney Mara) spends there and then some – imagine spending an entire film in Kubrick’s Renaissance Room from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
If this setup reminds you of another “Ghost” story starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, rest assured there’s no medium played by Whoopi Goldberg arriving to intervene and no pottery was harmed during the making of this picture.
Unlike such genre diverse films as the 1946 Abbott and Costello comedy, “The Time of Their Lives,” the 1947 supernatural romance, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and more recent features as the two versions of “Ghostbusters” and the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore weeper “Ghost,” spirits and humans do not interact in this story.
Imagine if the 1990 tearjerker Ghost had been remade as a movie that thoroughly examined the nature of grief, lamented the passing of love, and tried desperately to articulate the ineffable paradox in searching for permanence from within a transient life.
I bring up the late actor because of his appearance in the thematically similar and far more engaging and certainly more visually and narratively kinetic "Ghost."
It is inspired by classic Hollywood films, including Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Cool Hand Luke (1967) and The Sting (1973).
It’s a story innately attuned to cinema – think Bonnie and Clyde meets The Bucket List .
It's "On Golden Pond" meets "Bonnie and Clyde."
While the original poem references Welsh geography, the filmmakers chose Irish locations in County Wicklow, with the 12th century Cahir Castle in County Tipperary (a site used in Excalibur and Barry Lyndon ) standing in for Camelot.
On top of the narrative mystery, the grand scale of the journey is in the scope of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia , and the impeccable visual stylings could be equal to that of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon .
Lowery shot much of the film in County Wicklow in Ireland, with scenes in a castle previously glimpsed in John Boorman’s take on Arthurian legend, Excalibur , and in another tale of a young man fumbling his way forward, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon .
Lowery has cited Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V as inspirations; the film also hints at John Boorman’s Arthurian extravaganza Excalibur and Guillermo del Toro’s sylvan fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth.
There are Dutch painters you could call out here—Brueghel with fewer figures within a denuded landscape—as well as scenes of pillage and splash and splatter in Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev,” but the design research for “The Green Knight” is absorbed into its wholly realized world.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced A Ghost Story (2017)
Themes
Again, Spielberg provides a helpful point of reference, though here it’s not E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) but A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), with its epochal time frame and keening sense of abandonment.
This a movie that will remind you of the best, most thought-provoking moments of Interstellar , The Time Machine , A.I. and The Tree of Life .
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced The Old Man & the Gun (2018)
Characters Themes Plot
And yet, there’s a grudging respect for each other, their rivalry harkening back to the father-son relationship of DiCaprio and Hanks in Catch Me If You Can .
There are traces of Catch Me If You Can to their relationship; it’s flirty, loving even, despite not really being properly developed.
That's the long and short of "The Old Man & the Gun," a kind of "Catch Me if You Can" for the old-timers set, with Robert Redford as the world's friendliest, most charming crook.
Catch Me If You Can this isn’t: He is no worthy adversary to Tucker.
Unlike “Catch Me If You Can,” whose colorful main man Frank Abagnale Jr. committed similar wrongdoings — stealing, false identities, evading police — “Old Man” isn’t hilarious or sleek.
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
influenced The Green Knight (2021)
Visuals
With inspiration from films such as Willow , The Dark Crystal , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , The Green Knight is a slow-burning, character study.
Lowery has cited multiple films that influenced him over the years as he worked to bring The Green Knight to life onscreen: Willow , Bram Stoker's Dracula , The Dark Crystal , Marie Antoinette , and The Passion of Joan of Arc , a 1928 French silent film by Carl Dreyer.
(In doing so, she also reveals one of Lowery’s unusual influences: The pie-eating is a near copy of a scene in Chantal Akerman’s Je Tu Il Elle .)