In the poem, Gawain’s moral failure centers on his breaking the terms of his agreement with Lord Bertilak. The movie understands things differently, focusing especially on Gawain’s fear of death, his lack of courage and honor. When Lord Bertilak gives Gawain a last chance to surrender the girdle, it is not Gawain’s breaking of his word that is at issue. It is the girdle itself.

This new understanding of failure dramatically changes the events that take place at the Green Chapel. In the 14^th-century poem, Gawain kneels before the Green Knight, who twice feints with the axe but misses, for the two days when Gawain held up his end of the bargain. But on the third swing, the otherworldly Knight, revealed to be Sir Bertilak himself, just nicks the side of Gawain’s neck, as punishment for failing to keep his word. He does not take off Gawain’s head, though, explaining: “it was loyalty you lacked: / not because you’re wicked, or a womanizer, or worse, / but you loved your own life; so I blame you less.” In the end, the Green Knight instructs Gawain to wear the girdle as a reminder of his broken vow.

The Green Knight’s Gawain, unlike the one in the chivalric romance, flinches at both the first two swings of the axe. At the third swing, Gawain flees before the blow can land, riding back to Camelot having failed to complete the quest. This Gawain continues to wear the girdle because he is too cowardly to take it off; too afraid, still, of his own death. We see a long montage of Gawain’s life after this failure, and at every turn he seems to make decisions to fit the expectations placed upon him, rather than having the courage to do what he believes is right. It is a bleak picture of destruction and pain raging through Gawain’s family and, with Arthur’s death and Gawain’s ascension to the throne, his court, and it ends with Gawain sitting, alone, on his throne in the besieged castle, having lost everything he held dear. He finally pulls off the girdle, through a hole like a wound in his tunic, and as it comes free, his severed head falls to the floor. In this version of the story, Gawain’s wearing of the girdle is not a reminder of an isolated failure, but an ongoing and everyday mark of his cowardice.

But this, to me, is where the climax of Lowery’s film misses the true lesson of the Green Chapel. The canon of King Arthur sits a tricky crossroads between the pagan roots of the stories, and the Christian influences on them. I first fell in love with Sir Gawain and this story with the Green Knight at eleven years old, when I stumbled across a stumbling across a series of novelizations of Arthurian Legends called The Squire’s Tale in my school library. Written by Gerald Morris, a pastor and seminarian, they seem to effortlessly weave together the Christian and pagan themes of the stories until you can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins. To me, this is what makes them so eternally resonant; like many of the best stories, they offer us another glimpse into the gospel narrative.

In Morris’s version of the story, Gawain has the opportunity, as a “good Christian knight,” to make his confession to a priest before riding to take the Green Knight’s blow, and the conversation ends with this exchange:

“I’m sorry, Father,” Gawain said. “I’m afraid that I don’t know how to confess.”

“Then you must learn to be ashamed.”

“Ashamed of what?”

“Find out,” the priest said decisively.

After the game is revealed and the Green Knight has tasked Gawain with keeping and wearing the green girdle, Gawain asks if it is meant as a badge of failure. The Green Knight replies, “failure is easy. This is a badge of shame.”

At the Green Chapel, the 14^th-century Gawain comes face to face with his own moral failings; he is not the paragon of knighthood and virtue everyone believes him to be. But not because he is evil; simply because he is human. When Gawain begs to know how he might clear his tainted reputation, the Green Knight merely laughs, declares to a baffled Gawain that by realizing and confessing his failures he has already made amends. The lesson of the Green Chapel is this: we must learn to be ashamed, to live with our shame, and to know our shame does not define us. We live in the paradoxical intersection of both our failings and our absolution. Like Gawain’s green girdle, shame is a constant reminder of our own weakness and dependence. But perhaps it is one that we might, all the same, wear lightly.

A story that will resonate over centuries is one that reconciles a seemingly irreconcilable tension. In meeting Gawain’s failure and shame with the Green Knight’s absolution, the 14^th-century poem tells a remarkable tale. Though Lowery’s The Green Knight brings Arthurian legend to the screen with matchless style, the ending lacks this resonance, because it strips the core lesson out of the Green Chapel. The modern Gawain learns that cowardice leads back to pain and death—not just for himself but for those he loves as well. But when the dream sequence ends and, back in the Green Chapel, Gawain removes the girdle to take the Green Knight’s final blow, he succeeds in the quest. The modern Gawain passes the test by finding the courage and conviction that make him worthy of honor. What is missing in this telling is the opportunity for mercy; the modern Gawain must either succeed or be resigned to a miserable life. In the 14^th-century, Gawain could fail and find forgiveness.