The Importance of Greatness: The Green Knight (2021)

Movie seen on August 12, 2021 at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY.

THE IMPORTANCE OF GREATNESS: A REFLECTION ON THE FILM THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)

Michael DeNobile reviews the 2021 film The Green Knight and its moral implications.

Michael DeNobile wishes to ask his audience, how is it that something written over six centuries ago still has relevance today? Not only that—but how can something written by a poet we know nothing about have intimate relevance so many centuries later?

Is goodness enough? Or must we strive for greatness? Michael DeNobile challenges this: why can’t it be both? What if the keys to greatness, glory, honor, courage, renown, lie in simple acts of mundane goodness? The keeping of a promise? Giving without expectations? Loving another without conditions? Companionship and hospitality, whether for another human being or for an animal?

Michel DeNobile acknowledges that life is ever fleeting; its transitoriness makes every choice we make that much more important. And when seeking greatness, we can be remembered for hollowness or hallowed-ness. Beyond the usual Catholic devotion to the Eucharist and Mary, and the ardent warning of the spiritual void of hell, St. John Bosco offered the following formula to becoming a saint (which comes from the Greek verb “to set apart”): do your duties at home, in school, and at work—in every aspect of your life—well and to the best of your abilities; be faithful to those duties and stay the course, regardless of the situation; conquer the world with kindness, humility, and strength; community (living your life with and for others) and fun is key to a joyful life.

Life is short—we are flesh and bone on borrowed time. Prior to being a Supreme Court Justice, then Judge Amy Coney Barrett once said in an interview about being a working mother to seven children, “If life is really hard, at least it’s short.” Because life is short, if we want to live lives that are truly great, we must understand that there is no magic girdle to get us unscathed from point A to point B. When we are honest and true and faithful, though we are not perfect, then little knight, “off (you may go) with your head (intact).” A virtuous life is not a perfect one; it’s a trying life.

Michael DeNobile believes that there be great legends that live in our midst, but the greatest of tales are of individuals who took their short lives and did small acts of great deeds enshrined in goodness. As the great prophet Walt Whitman once sang:

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, 

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

 

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

 

* * * 

Michael DeNobile leaves his audience with these questions: will you have the courage to bear your neck to the axe of life, and if you do, will you have any regrets? Or will you be ready?

“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” ~John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10