Writer/Director David Lowery‘s adaptation of the anonymously written, 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” sends young Gawain (Dev Patel) on an arduous, existential quest. Every step of his journey inspires new growth, and hard lessons won; fitting considering it all begins with an invitation to play a deadly game. In The Green Knight (read my review), the eponymous character, played by The Witch‘s Ralph Ineson, rides into King Arthur’s court on Christmas day and issues a beheading challenge.
True to his name, the Green Knight is a being of nature, a giant tree of a man with an otherworldly presence. So much so that, outside of Ineson’s distinct and commanding voice, it’d be easy to assume that VFX brought the character to life. But Lowery insisted on practical for his medieval epic, which meant an arduous makeup and prosthetic process for Ineson.
Ineson explains, “it involved getting up very, very early because the prosthetic makeup took three-and-a-half hours. [Prosthetic Makeup Designer] Barrie Gower and [SFX artist] Jessica Brooks had to spend three-and-a-half hours with me every morning, putting it on. And it’s very heavy, obviously. The head itself is asymmetrical. You’re constantly having to keep adjusting the weight because it weighs quite a lot. So you have to keep your neck straight because it was weighted more on one side than the other. The armor as well is pretty bulky. And the cloak he wears is also quite stiff. So yeah, getting around was quite tricky. And then getting on a horse and riding a horse with all that was again quite demanding physically.”
The process of getting into the makeup wasn’t the only complicated aspect of bringing the character to life; the heavy prosthetics and contact lenses significantly impaired Ineson’s senses. He tells us, “Sometimes the best performances come out of the being under physical or emotional kind of stress, which kind of is the truth. There was an element whereby it was hard to get to do that, and you have to concentrate very much on how to move. It became quite meditative in a way. It’s a bit like being underwater when you’re in a full prosthetic like that. You can hear, but not clearly.”
It turns out, though, that it enhanced the one sense not limited by the makeup transformation. Ineson recounts how it helped his performance, “One very specific thing is with all your senses dulled by contact lenses and not being able to hear properly, your sense of smell becomes heightened because it’s one thing that you do have. When we filmed the green chapel scenes at the end of the film, the location was flowering wild garlic. It just smelled really intense and really beautiful. And that in itself helped me. It got me into a weird, intense place, which was good. So sometimes the trickiest things make you find something a bit more interesting.”
The daunting process and weight of the prosthetics wasn’t an initial concern for the actor, but whether it would impede his ability to imbue the Green Knight with personality. Ineson says of his worries, “I was worried when I took the part that the prosthetics would be so heavy that I wouldn’t be able to act, in a sense, that they would be an impressive physical presence, but you wouldn’t be able to see anything that I was doing in the face. It’d be like wearing a mask, a very impressive-looking mask. But the detail around the cheeks and the nose and the eyes, I think, makes it very readable and helped me to make the character a bit more playful and a bit more fun, hopefully. Even though it’s this huge, hulking tree monster, hopefully, there’s some joy. You know?“
Ineson is referring to the more pleasant, soothing nature of the Green Knight. Despite laying down a potentially lethal challenge to Sir Gawain, there’s a playfulness about the Green Knight.
When asked if prosthetics could become a deterrent in future projects, Ineson replied, ‘I’m doing prosthetics at the moment. I’m doing a job that has quite a lot of prosthetics. No, I tend to try and not make the potential comfort or discomfort of a job a deciding factor. It’s always a case of trying to keep the filmmaker, the script, the part being much more important than the physical comfort whilst doing the job, as it were.”
Ineson currently has a lot of upcoming projects on his plate, including Robert Eggers’ The Northman. Could his reunion with The Witch director be the prosthetic-heavy role to which he’s referring? Only time will tell, but it’s clear that the actor is hitting his stride in working with auteur filmmakers within the genre space.