Ain’t Them Bodies (Decapitated) Saints: Director David Lowery On A Scene From ‘The Green Knight’
What do a decapitated Christian saint and the 1984Star WarsTV movieCaravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventurehave in common? They were both influences on writer-directorDavid Lowery, whose commentary in a new video explains how these two seemingly disparate things came together to inform a scene in his new movieThe Green Knight, in theaters this weekend.
The New York Timeshas posted an “Anatomy of a Scene” video in which Lowery walks you through a full five-minute scene fromThe Green Knight, unpacking the various influences at play. Note that this video is somewhat confusingly labeled: it says, “Take a Journey withDev Patel,” but it’s Lowery who provides the commentary. Patel is the star of the film; he plays Gawain in this adaptation ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight. However, you won’t see him (or much of anything) at first because the scene starts out shrouded in darkness in a cottage in the countryside.
Saint Winifred in The Green Knight
Lowery’s breakthrough film wasAin’t Them Bodies Saints, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.The Green Knightdraws from the history and lore of real Christian saints: specifically,Saint Winifred, a 7th-century Welsh virgin martyr. Tradition holds that a jealous suitor decapitated Winifred after she decided to become a nun.
Guys, that’s not the way to handle rejection.
Thankfully, as Lowery explains, someone threw her head into a spring and a saint came along, rejoined it to her body, and she came back to life. This spring endures as a place called Holy Head in Wales, which reputedly has healing powers.
In the video, Lowery notes the “striking presence” ofErin Kellyman, the actress who plays Winifred, who he first saw inSolo: A Star Wars Storyand who at-home audiences recently saw inThe Falcon and the Winter Soldieron Disney+. He also sprinkles in some other interesting tidbits about how they shot on location in Ireland but wanted it to look like a soundstage in an old Hammer Horror film.
Elsewhere, Loweryhas citedBram Stoker’s Dracula,The Dark Crystal,The Passion of Joan of Arc,Marie Antoinette, andWillowas key influences onThe Green Knight. Here, he saves the Ewoks reference for last, explaining howCaravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventureinspired him to film a sequence of his own where Gawain dives into a magical pond to retrieve Winifred’s head. If the cosmic effects look wonky, it’s because Lowery did them himself “using YouTube tutorials.”
