What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I watched one movie a day for 30 days and spent 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2021. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
Tell me a story, so that I shall know thee
I shouldn’t be here.
This newsletter series is a celebration of my birthday. September 26. That date is about a full nine weeks ahead of what it should have been. I had my first major surgery at two weeks old and my last one around 4 years old, and have the scars to show for it.
I spent the first several months of my life in the NICU and didn’t go home until March of the following year, with asthma and wires and a nebulizer and a feeding tube. Doctors gave me 10 years to live at the most.
And yet.
Through a combination of luck, prayer, God’s grace, advances in modern science, grit, genes and determination, I’m still here.
I’ve told that story for years. But it’s a story about something that happened to me, not something that I could control.
And there’s a lot about that story, about my early years, that I couldn’t control, that I’m very thankful for. The privilege of who my parents are, for one. My dad’s job, for another. TriCare insurance helped immensely in paying for all of those surgeries.
That’s not to mention the geography. Last year, I found out from his obituary that one of the doctors who first operated on me was the best pediatric intestinal surgeon in the country in the ‘90s. And he happened to be working near the University of Arizona in 1991, where I was born.
The story of my birth is one of family lore, something I’m as familiar with as the back of my surgery-needle pockmarked hands, or my stitched-together lower abdomen. The story has been integral to my being for as long as I could talk, as long as I could tell stories.
The stories we tell about ourselves tell us about ourselves.
And the story I told about myself — the story others told about me — was that I was a Miracle Child.
No stories, yet
I grew up very religious, in a very religious family. The miracle of my birth was used as a sermon illustration multiple times. It was an everyday occurrence for me to be told that I was special and that I was spared from death because God had a plan for me. I internalized all of that from a very young age, just as I internalized that all humans are depraved sinners at birth in need of redemption, which is a hell of a thing to juxtapose at any age, let alone when you’re 7 years old.
But I took finding my purpose seriously, and I was a very serious child. I memorized Jeremiah 29:11 in earnest. I read Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” at 14, desperately searching for whatever it was I was supposed to be doing to live up to the stories told about me. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.
The way I saw it, I was destined for greatness, because that’s what I’d been told my whole life. (Honestly, that probably gave me more confidence to try things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.)
Every random encounter with a family friend in Walmart or every visit with my extended family back home reinforced to me that I was proof to some people that prayer worked. Those encounters used to annoy me so much. Here I was, a healthy, grown adult, and I felt like some people only saw me as the sick child they prayed for decades ago.
But now I understand that feeling. “We prayed for you so much as a kid” and “You’re an answer to prayer” are just other ways of expressing love. I’m grateful to everyone who takes the time to think of me during the time they speak to God. And after 30 years, I’ve come to terms with how others tell my story. It’s an honor that anyone would think I’m an answer to prayer, or a miracle. I just wish that others would give themselves that same grace — it’s a miracle anyone is here, really.
Eventually, I came to realize that the things I naturally gravitated toward and was good at could be my purpose; I didn’t have to force it. Hence, the lifetime of writing.
But enough about me. What does all of that have to do with a movie about a fictional knight who rose to fame by chopping off another knight’s head?
Off with your head
David Lowery’s “The Green Knight” is an adaptation of the 14th-century Arthurian poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Nobody knows who wrote it, although it’s been translated numerous times since its original publication (I like J.R.R. Tolkien’s adaptation a lot).
The film is rich, strange, haunting and moving in equal measure, complemented by a sparse score from Daniel Hart and some amazing visual effects and makeup for the Green Knight himself. Incredible cinematography and editing as well. Why it got snubbed at this year’s Oscars is a mystery to me.
The poem tells the tale of Gawain, a young (“green”) knight eager to prove himself among King Arthur’s knights of the round table. At Christmastime one year, Arthur (Gawain’s uncle) asks to hear a tale of a fantastic adventure. Before anyone can speak, a stranger arrives: a green knight on a green horse, wielding an axe. The Green Knight poses a challenge: Whoever lands a blow on him with his axe will win his axe, on the condition that one year and a day from the fight, the Green Knight will be able to return the blow in return. (Side note: This movie is a Christmas movie now, them’s the rules.)
Gawain steps up to the challenge and thinks he has a way out of this predicament. He chops the Green Knight’s head off in one fell swoop. Dead knight and a free axe, and he proves himself to the table. Except the Green Knight then picks up his own head, mounts his horse and rides away with a reminder that a year and a day from now, Gawain will have to get his own head chopped off at the Green Chapel.
The year in between tells of Gawain’s quest to the chapel, with various adventures along the way. (In the film, this includes helping a martyr find her own beheaded mug, walking with literal giants and running around with a talking fox.)
Once he gets there, he is put to another test by a lord and a lady who live close to the chapel. The lord promises to give Gawain anything he finds on a three-day hunt if Gawain promises to give the lord everything he finds at home. The lady then tries to seduce Gawain every day. Gawain refuses, but takes a sash that the lady says is magic and will keep him safe from all harm.
Eventually, Gawain learns that the Green Knight’s test was just a trick put on by Morgan le Fay (in the movie, Gawain’s mother) in an attempt to frighten Queen Guinevere to death (in the movie, in an attempt to force Gawain to grow up). He receives a nick on the neck from the Knight’s axe as punishment for taking the sash and trying to get out of his bargain and gets to keep his head.
Now I’m ready. I’m ready now
Lowery’s beautiful, deeply weird (and wyrd, in the Middle Age definition dealing with fate or destiny) movie remixes the poem and makes Gawain (Dev Patel) into a cowardly, decidedly non-chivalric knight. He begins the movie in bed with a prostitute before he runs off to daily mass, and he routinely shirks his responsibilities and tries to get out of helping others on his quest. The movie has him succumbing to the lady’s seduction and trying anything to avoid his fate.
What Lowery’s movie lingers on, and what I’m drawn to the most, is how Gawain reacts to the townspeople in the year in between the game and his quest. He is a subject of legend before he even embarks from the kingdom. People ask him if he’s going to behead the Green Knight a second time. Kids act like Gawain when they play-fight. The court’s jester makes him the subject of a puppet show. He becomes a symbol of greatness simply by existing. He doesn’t want to leave on his quest.
And, in a stroke of genius, Lowery evokes Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” in the final reel, where, just as Jesus is given a final vision of what his human life could be if he just got down from the cross, Gawain is given a vision of what happens if he simply kept the sash, ran away from the knight and lived a great, conquering life. He marries the “right” royal woman instead of the prostitute he’s in love with. He leads crusades and conquers lands. He has heirs. But he never takes the sash off, and his empire is built on lies.
In the poem, Gawain never gets that vision and he lives. Jesus rebukes Satan in “Temptation” and dies, thus saving humanity. Lowery chooses to leave the fate of Patel’s Gawain up to the viewer, ending the film right as the Green Knight draws his axe a second time after Gawain finally relents and removes the sash: “Now I’m ready. I’m ready now.” He goes from a coward to a knight before our eyes.
The question “The Green Knight” asks is: What makes a great man? Do you do that by living up to and fulfilling the story that other people tell about you? And is it wrong to want that greatness for yourself? Is a great life made simply by showing up and honoring your commitments? Living up to your potential? Merely existing?
The film offers no pat answers on those fronts. The viewer has to decide, and has to control their own story.
But hopefully, whatever you choose, you’ll do it gratefully and worthily.
I should be here.
You should be here.
And living a good life is a noble quest all on its own.
Letter of Recommendation
The “Heavyweight” podcast is all about people trying to reconnect with other people from their past. A recent episode features author John Green talking about a time when he once worked as a NICU chaplain counseling a young couple about their infant son, Nick, who was close to dying. The experience scarred Green so much he left his chaplaincy internship and became a writer instead.
20 years later, John tracked Nick down and talked about that time in the hospital and how it affected both of them. As the “Nick” in this story myself, listening to this was incredibly cathartic. Bring the tissues.
“What a miracle that anyone’s alive,” indeed.
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This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
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