Dev Patel in Green Knight
This was my first piece of writing for university, and was submitted as coursework for my ‘Acting for Stage’ module, as an early assessment. It is a review of Dev Patel’s performance in Green Knight.
Performance Review of Dev Patel in ‘Green Knight’
Green Knight (2021) is a film set in the mythical time of King Arthur and follows the spiritual journey of his nephew Gawain (played by Dev Patel) as he seeks to prove his worth as a knight of the Round Table by undertaking a perilous quest. Patel’s performance is that of a flawed, fearful man searching for honour, using awkward physicality, emotional intensity, and other techniques to grapple with themes of valour and identity. The film is based on the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (anonymous).
Early on, Patel clearly proves Gawain’s immaturity through his use of unashamed stumbling. He is constantly out of breath and makes use of grunting and sighing to show his cockiness. This shows he is not yet of knightly character. He then appears quite different when in the presence of the court, especially King Arthur, whom he admires. He shows admiration with hesitant speech and his ready-to-receive gaze. During the beheading of the Green Knight scene, Gawain’s internal conflict is visible as he forces himself into bravery, his fear leaking through via the use of nervous pacing and ragged breathing. A minor detail is that his beheading of the knight is infused with some anger because he did not get the noble duel he was after. I thought this showed good depth of character study.
Patel’s acting is visibly different depending on who he is with. With his lover Essel, he is detached and preoccupied with his looming quest, shown by gazing deeply into space, unaffected by her advances. With the scavenger, Gawain is disinterested (despite the scavenger’s friendliness) until he is given directions. This reveals his self-concern. With the lord and lady of the castle, he is very engaged and listening to what they are saying, allowing the other actors’ energies to influence him.
His map of reality changes before our eyes as he experiences increasingly strange things. He maintains a consistent tone of bewilderment throughout the “quest” part of the film, through searching, wide eyes. You can see the cogs turning in his head. Later, his eyes become heavy-lidded and duller as he is burdened by the shame of what he perceives to be his own cowardice: running from the Green Knight’s axe, not honouring the game.
Upon observation, Patel seems to have really familiarised himself with Gawain’s psychological arc, which lends the character great credibility. A major takeaway for me were the multiple emotional threads he layers in to create continuity. He will not drop a thread until it has run its course in the story; bewilderment remains a key undertone for much of the quest, as well as fear, and he slowly turns the dials on these different currents as more strange events befall him. At times he shows more acceptance (like in the chapel initially), but he quickly slips into fear again before running away, showing how flawed he is, and how profound courage can wobble in the face of death.