Two Movies about the Royals

I really liked Spencer. The vaguely horror-film style of Pablo Larraín is not always to my taste – I found Jackie really off-putting – but Spencer is scored by Johnny Greenwood instead of Mica Levi, and though that kept things in a decidedly terrifying minor key, it wasn't the descent into madness that Jackie was.

But anyway this movie is great. It's tense and intriguing, and it documents a kind of insanity within the British Royal family (not actual insanity, just insane behaviors). In many ways, Spencer is a film about Diana that is also a film about Prince Harry today, and indeed Kristen Stewart herself, which I think makes the whole thing much richer. The way everyone pokes and prods and has something to say, the way they're watched and scrutinized. It's a terrifying, weird life – a very nice one to be sure, and I am not usually one to feel sorry for very wealthy people, but one can see how difficult it would be to be an actual human person in this insane world.

This is definitely worth a watch. And Kristen Stewart is finally going to get a Best Actress nomination, so that's cool.

And then there's David Lowery's The Green Knight, which is an adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and might, for all I can tell, actually be titled this. (The title is something of a mystery to me. It is, appropriately either Sir Gawain... ...and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or ...The Green Knight, but I'm splitting hairs, I guess.) 

Here's the thing. Why is this movie so boring? It looks fucking cool. It is designed beautifully. It has Dev Patel looking gorgeous and having lots of feelings. But it's mysterious without being intriguing. It doesn't ask you to puzzle through what's happening at all; instead it behaves as though you really already ought to know what the fuck is happening.

And maybe The Green Knight would have been interesting if I had read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight beforehand. I really ought to have. The film is a revisioning of the poem, and I guess it needs knowledge of that in order for it to mean anything.

To be fair, I was with this for a while, but then near the very end, the movie takes a turn and launches off into a quick montage of the future (without, I might add, telling us what it's doing), and during this montage I just kept thinking why am I watching this???? Who cares! Honestly, though, I was just so bored. I didn't know enough of about any of the characters to be interested in them.