Alternate Best Actor 2021: Dev Patel in The Green Knight

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Dev Patel did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Gawain in The Green Knight.

The Green Knight is an entrancing telling of the story of the Arthurian legend about Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. 

Let me tell you a tale of a young thespian, by the name of Dev Patel. A performer who did not find his strength until tempering the overacting of childhood to find success when removing any sense of adolescence. Fitting then to this tale of a knight, or at least a wannabe knight, in Gawain. Gawain who we first glimpse within the film in a house of ill-repute, spending time with the peasant woman Essel (Alicia Vikander). Patel's performance portrays a man with contentment in his wayward state. Patel brings an eager smile on his face as he explores through this place, barely making an excuse to his mother for his state when returning home. Patel suggests the man enjoying the baser pleasures of lust, and doing so with the ease of a younger man without responsibility, or at least sheds the notions of such things. An eager smile that speaks to the love of these vices and shirking what would be seen as the virtues needed for the ideal of a knight. The realization of this state truly comes upon Patel's expression when hearing of entering the audience of the King (Sean Harris), a great man, whose virtues seem obvious as does his respectable state. Where Patel showed Gawain walk through the halls of the low house with an eager smile, his expression is filled with only trepidation as he enters the great holdfast of Camelot. 

In the place of the King, who is most inviting to Gawain and supportive of a man who isn't quite yet a Knight, Patel's performance naturally becomes much more modest and weak. He looks into the hall of the great warriors and true knights with a sense of fear but more so unworthiness. Even the way Patel sits as Gawain is filled with an uncertain weakness and timidness in the corner of the room, unsure of himself and particularly unsure of why he belongs in such a place. When asked to regale a tale of himself, Patel speaks Gawain's words as this burden of failure to act and speaks without the confidence, since he has no great tales to tell. The opportunity for Gawain seems to reveal itself as on this Christmas feast a Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) arrives with a most unorthodox request, a game, a game that requires one warrior strike him with only the requirement that said warrior returns to allow the Knight to give him the same strike that he received the following year. Patel depicts with bated breath an eagerness in Gawain to prove his measure by taking on the Knight's game. The King offers Gawain his own sword, with a magnificent reaction from Patel that reveals the sheer weight this offering means to the young man, the weight of it as he holds it, and looks into the blade with awe. 

After this moment of pause Patel's performance is that of a performance, the performance being Gawain becoming the knight suddenly, at least a knight as Gawain would imagine one in his head. Patel brings a notable bluster, even the way he rushes over to the knight is with all the aggression of a man wishing to prove his measure in every breath. In this aggression, there is a kind of fear in Patel's eyes, the anger in a way the attempt at hiding the fear that creates an unusual weakness even as Gawain is doing everything to project strength at the moment. Patel barks out the orders to the Knight to defend himself with a hurried speech, suggesting confusion at the very nature of the Knight's apparent ease in facing death Patel pushed this bluster and boasting immediately as he grasped his sword with all his might and charged towards the Knight. Patel is not being the hero, but rather making the image that Gawain has of the hero. The way he speaks his orders is with false bravado, he dashes as the image of the Knight and the whole attempt at courage comes off as a false act. Patel emphasizes this in the fear within his eyes when after decapitating the knight, the knight rises, still alive, demanding that Gawain meet in a year's time for the same blow. 

After a year's time, we find Gawain hasn't at all improved, still spending his time in houses of ill-repute. Patel shows the man barely able to keep his head up as the drunken fool ready for a meaningless fight, but not at all prepared to meet the Knight once again. Patel shows a man without growth, a man with a cowardly down turned head when the king pays him a visit and reminds him that he must fulfill his duty by meeting the knight as agreed. And it is here where the quest begins as Gawain goes out to meet the knight and into the world of much danger. Patel having established successfully a striking sense of the man Gawain is. A man who wishes to be a knight, yet leads a life of little meaning and even less responsibility. A coward truly, though with just the hints of some ambition to be more than this. Patel embodying the arrested development of a man. He's now older, but there is no true growth we see in his intention as a person. We see this even as we see his final conversation with his apparent love in Essel where Patel speaks with such uncertainty in this so call pledge of his affections for him. Patel showing a man who is yet to find his confidence or really his strength despite his youth. A man who thought he may have it, even attempted to show it in taking on the green knight, yet stays nothing but a fool who would wish he could live up to the standard the king and the green knight have set upon him. 

The quest begins and here we have what is a dramatic shift in terms of the challenge behind Patel's performance, though he wholly effectively established where it was that Gawain begins before his quest. The challenge is I feel of any film that one might categorize as a "director's film" which is not to be swallowed up by the visuals and really the journey itself, to stand as a part of it, while still captivating within in. To be forgotten within the narrative here seems possible as the film becomes Gawain coming across various unusual sights (giants, talking foxes, ghostly maidens, elvish thieves), each fascinating in their own strange ways and in the ways they offer some help, challenge or hindrance to Gawain. Patel delivers a fantastic performance here by not getting lost within the captivating imagery but being essential in not only grounding them but making them part of the  journey for Gawain. Patel's reactions are tremendous throughout in he is able to portray the sense of discovery, astonishment, confusion or fear, with such conviction. He brings you into every fantastical experience with his portrayal of Gawain seeing it as all essential truths. What Patel expresses in every sight is fundamentally real in his performance and crafts a real sense of the journey through his performance that is as captivating as the sights, by making the sights ever so tangible. 

Within Patel grounding the fantastical he also portrays the changes and consistencies of Gawain. The intensity of his fear when seeing a vision of his dead corpse before finding the strength to escape his binding after being left by thieves. His curious fear when asked to find Winifred's head, by Winifred herself, and the sympathetic calm that Patel portrays when finding her missing member. When this perhaps is most alive when he comes across the house of a lord (Joel Edgerton) and his enigmatic lady (Vikander again). Two individuals who seem to know far more than any are fully letting on as they seem to wish to seduce Gawain and torment him in equal measure. Often both speaking with much wisdom towards his quest, and Patel being a perfect straight man throughout this sequence. His work suggesting the sense of confusion and intrigue in equal measure. The lust of moments, but also the fear as well. Showing the state of in-between and uncertainty they still leave him in, even as he has come so far. Patel though shows the man perhaps not quite ready for his final challenge, which is to meet the Green Knight once again. Before he goes, a talking fox warns him of the deadly nature of the meeting, as foxes so often do, and Patel's grounded reaction is great in showing just the pent frustrations and in the moment of the man moving forward not through courage rather just a near mania of being done with all he's been through. 

 

I fear this performance was not meant for greatness, actually I lie I already think this is a great performance regardless as a "in the moment of a journey" style turn, but I couldn't resist the line. However where the greatest achievement is found in the final minutes of the film comes when Gawain decides to not allow the Knight to return the strike and returns home as the coward. This is a silent sequence built upon visuals and Patel's performance. He is outstanding in every step showing the life of the coward. As we see him giving into lust in his return taking satisfaction and a child from Essel but leaving her alone as a coward would. Patel portraying with conviction the lack of conviction in Gawain as he is knighted and even becomes king himself. Continuing as a man passing through the moments of life with this underlying burden of failure and weakness of a man unfulfilled. We see him take another wife, and lose his first son in battle. Patel in just a moment establishing the palatable sense of relationship with his son in a matter of seconds and the failure of the father to protect his son, in his painful reaction of seeing his son dying and the father defeated in his ability to do nothing to save his son. It is incredible as Patel brings such genuine gravity in this death despite the fact that we've experienced this entire episode in what is a moment. We see him become an unpopular ruler where he seems weighed down by his very crown in Patel's performance, a man burdened by any responsibility and just the craven fool looking over his people with dejection as they look upon him with scorn. Patel expressing the inability of a man to ever be a man as he stares off waiting in his keep to be taken by an enemy no doubt to his death. It isn't with fear in Patel's final expression but rather this depressing acceptance of a life misused and defined by hollow cowardice. We snap back though to see this was Gawain experiencing a vision of his life if he chose the way of the coward eternally. We now see him facing the Green Knight and willingly giving himself up to whatever his fate would be. Patel doesn't show the fear is gone, rather he powerfully portrays the moment of thinking through the act, finding the courage and willfully speaking that he is ready, with Patel finally showing a man willing to be brave and truly become a knight. And so ends this chapter in our tale of one Dev Patel. A thespian who proved his measure through his nuanced and emotional portrait of a knight finding his strength not through escaping death but rather by facing it. 

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