The Green Knight (2021) thing I didn't exactly get? Maybe?
Maybe I just gotta read the original tale again (been since 9th grade, and I wasn't paying attention like that), but from the brief synopsis I just brushed up on, I think my questions come from aspects added and altered in this adaptation. Because first, this Green Knight seems more magic as himself and not Bertilak enchanted. Whether Gawain is beheaded at the end also isn't that clear. But mostly, what's the deal with the belts in this one?
The two green belts and how they were presented threw me off. I was trying to talk about this with my husband, but we just weren't on the same page. So Gawain's mom, who is a witch and apparently involved in orchestrating the Green Knight's visit, gives him the first green belt and says it will protect him. It didn't protect him well enough to keep him from getting mugged and it stolen, though. Then, the Lady inexplicably, but presumably for magic reasons, gives him an identical green belt she says will protect him.
Question: in this adaptation, would either belt have actually protected him? Were one or both of them genuinely magic, and if just one, why are they different? Where I didn't fully understand my husband's take is that he felt like they'd both work, but the second wasn't as psychologically comforting because Gawain knew it was "fake." And my question was, "If they both work, what makes the second fake?" And the only answer he could give me was that it wasn't the one his mama made. But if they would both magically work, though, what's the functional difference? And if the second wouldn't work, why would the mycelial network of witchy fate lead the Lady to give it to him? Did the second being "fake" impact his decision to take it off and accept his fate? Making it two separate belts complicates that moment a little. And the way he takes it off makes that moment pretty important. The presentation of the second belt heavily implies magic in its origin, at least in how the Lady knew to make and give him such a specific replica. And if it's by magic that he gets it, why wouldn't it be just as magic in its function as the first?
But it makes more sense to me if they don't work magically and are just a psychological trick to give him confidence (what I thought at the beginning) or to force him to decisively commit to keeping his promises without a fall-back (what I think after). In flinching, Gawain has a vision of the life he would have if he survived: continuing to be an asshole and fumble Essel, do her wrong regarding their son, marry someone else for status, lose his son in war, get attacked, and finally, remove the belt when he's ready to die because the jig is up. So he sees that that life, continuing to run from responsibility, is not the life he wants nor a noble one. He removes the belt and allows the Green Knight to behead him. Whether the belt(s) would have worked as a ward or not, it made the act of removing it tied to Gawain's acceptance of responsibility, facing death because he had promised to take an equivalent blow and owning the fact that his blow was idiotic. And maybe it doesn't matter for that if the belt worked or not, because he did take it off. It would only matter if he didn't, lived, and then had to choose to keep wearing it or not.
The way that the old woman at the castle (meant to be Morgan le Fay) was kept so ambiguous, and Gawain's mom, not Morgan, was written as the one to orchestrate the Green Knight's visit makes things make less sense. To me. I also didn't get her advice for him to "watch" at court, because it didn't seem to amount to anything. I was expecting him to have to notice something, but he was just a regular idiot who chopped the Green Knight's head off. She should've told him to listen, I guess.
But then there's the fox, too. At the boat, the fox warns Gawain against going to the Green Knight because he'll die. It asks if Gawain is fully aware of what awaits him and says the man who is aware would heed the warning and not go, and that man wears the green belt. That bit seemed to turn the belt from a symbol of avoiding accountability to one of wise self-preservation. Because the fox had been presented as a benevolent nature spirit of sorts, being friendly with Gawain and having a good connotation, it makes Gawain progressing despite the warning look more foolhardy, trusting his green belt to protect him, than a responsible man going to face his consequence. It detracted from what I thought was the point and muddied the waters around what the belt was meant to do. The only time in the movie, apart from taking the belt off, that we really see Gawain moving forward without the background prospect of surviving was when he continued without the first belt after it was stolen, which is then undercut by the presentation of the second belt. Unless the repeated "are you sure?" sense was the point, which it may be, and that's fine.
I just found it weird to have two belts like that, and my point is more on whether the movie wanted the audience to think they worked or not and whether there was a real difference between them.
