Karma is a B****

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I’d never broken a bone before the week I decided to relentlessly troll Ottawa Senators fans during their 2017 Eastern Conference Finals run. The funny thing is, as I was pulling my Sidney Crosby jersey over my shoulders for the third time in five days, I basically dared the universe to give me its best shot. I’ll tell you, the universe heard my challenge, and responded with swift karmic justice.

As a former Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I’d never had an issue sharing my true feelings about the Sens or their fans. The truth is though, before moving here in 2012, my animosities were mostly directed towards the Habs and their fanbase in Montreal. But going to university where the campus bar had a gigantic Senator logo painted on the wall, and where obnoxious Sens fans roamed the halls just waiting to tell me how much they hate the Leafs at every turn, I started to become bitter. So much so, that whenever the Sens had even a fraction of success, I would deliberately go out of my way to antagonize their spirited fans … without taking things too far.

In 2017, while the Leafs failed to make it out of the first round of the playoffs, the Sens made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final for a date with Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. By that point, Elgin Street had annoyingly been dubbed “Sens Mile,” and the volume coming from Sens fans was at an all-time high. It was insufferable, really. Fortunately, my grandmother from the East Coast is a huge Crosby fan and once gifted me a Penguins jersey with his name on it. So, after the Sens won game one in overtime, I decided to up the ante: even if it was over 30 degrees, on gamedays I threw on that heavy, black jersey and made sure everybody knew I was immune to the plague of Sens fandom that was ravaging the city.

The night of game two, I met my friends after work at Hooley’s on “Sens Mile.” I must have stuck out like a sore thumb because as soon as I walked in, I was getting jeered from all directions. It never bothered me, even when I sat on the back of a booth and loudly chanted down the final seconds of the Sens’ first defeat of the series. As the crowd solemnly began to file out, some random guy flipped whatever beer was left in his cup all over me, which only fed my ego.

Two nights later, while my jersey hung in the changeroom at work, my boss Sarah and my friend Graham discreetly covered the Crosby nameplate with duct tape and wrote the words “LOSE BAG” in large black letters. They laughed at me as I walked past them, oblivious to what they’d done. It wasn’t until I got to another friend’s place where he started laughing at me that I realized I was the butt of some joke. I took off the jersey, saw Graham and Sarah’s work, and called them to give the credit they deserved.

Which brings us to Friday, May 19 – the Friday of the May long weekend and the day of game five. As I pulled the beer-stained, once-vandalized jersey over my head, I said out loud to myself, “What’s it going to be today?” Not 30 minutes later, through no fault of my own, I was involved in a collision with a Blue Line taxi while biking to work that resulted in a broken left elbow and a hairline fracture in my right forearm. As I picked myself up off the road, the first thing I did was struggle to remove the jersey and tuck it in bag, because the last thing I needed was to limp my way into work looking like the enemy of the town. My friends were sympathetic, and made sure I contacted my family and made it safely to the hospital, but I couldn’t help feeling like karma had caught up to me.

I won’t lie, leaving the hospital wearing two arm slings was a blessing in disguise. Instead of beginning a long summer’s grind at work, I drank wine through a straw, was fed filet mignon, and got an unexpected East Coast holiday while I recovered. Best of all, the Sens ended up losing game seven in double overtime, and I like to think my sacrifice had something to do with that. The downside is, though, I’ll likely having lingering pain in my elbow for the rest of my life. I certainly learned my lesson – I’ll never openly challenge the universe again.

Connor Burk

Connor is in his second year of Algonquin’s Professional Writing Program. He is also an avid sports fan, fantasy football commissioner and believer that if one yells loud enough, they’ll be heard through the televison.

A Beautiful Wandering Mess in David Lowery’s The Green Knight

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David Lowery’s The Green Knight is confusing and confounding. Baffling. Disorienting even.  The longer this film went on, the less sure I was that I had a grasp on what the piece or the director was trying to convey. It’s been weeks and I still don’t understand what the point is.

Praise where due, there are no weak links in the cast. Dev Patel’s Gawain is craven but remains especially compelling once on his journey. Alicia Vikander shines in her parts, both as Gawain’s playful and wistful lover Essel and as the enigmatic doppelgänger. Ralph Ineson, the eponymous Green Knight, manages incredible range with just his eyes and voice buried beneath a beautifully rendered prosthetic, managing tender and imposing in equal measure across his scenes.

The film is also beautifully shot and constructed. Lowery has an undeniable talent for creating interesting and beautiful scenes out of the most mundane and dreary environments. He makes the most of talented actors but manages the stellar performances so they never distract from the scenes. There’s a lot to be said for the nuance his choices as director bring as well; for example, the Christmas revels in the film are dark, bare, and subdued, emphasizing Arthur as a king (and warrior) past his prime.

An adaptation of the 14th century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the story follows the knight Sir Gawain and his conflict with the Green Knight, a man literally green of skin, hair, eyes, armor, and horse. On New Year’s Eve, the Green Knight challenges anyone of King Arthur’s court to strike him but they must accept the same blow a year later in the Green Chapel. Gawain beheads the knight and then watches the torso retrieve the head and ride away. A year later, Gawain journeys to the Green Chapel to submit to the Green Knight, for good or ill.

Gawain’s journey forces him to face the conditions of his oath as a knight and as a Christian; temptations of selfish, dishonest, and sexual natures; his own savagery and weakness; and unexpected mercy and forgiveness. The poem is a coming-of-age story for Gawain and asks the reader to contemplate what it means to be good, if being good is great and if being great is good?

The film’s plot is effectively the same and, give or take some scenes and details, begins the same way. This Gawain aspires to knighthood and to sit among the “legends” of the Round Table. This ambition is shallow, however, as Gawain spends all his time whoring and drinking instead of performing any great deeds. His journey is forced by the expectations of his mother (Sarita Choudhury), implied to be the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, and his uncle, an aging King Arthur (Sean Harris). “Is it wrong to want greatness for you?” Arthur asks. Conversely, Essel pushes Gawain to foreswear his oath and stay with her: “Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough?” The film sets itself up to walk a similar moral, theme, and trajectory as the poem. Goodness or greatness? Why one and not the other? There is interest in the fact that Gawain of the film is arguably neither.

Once Gawain departs on his journey in the second act, though, the film falls off the rails. Moments that enhance these themes are present but buried in scenes that feel obtuse, oblique, and too often completely irrelevant. Act two is a thematic fever dream of existentialism, mortality, and powerlessness. Questions arise if everything in the film has been a hallucination induced by either hunger, mushrooms, or premature death. The third act also sees the revelation of an entire new set of themes and ideas brought to the forefront but never superseding or supplanting the themes of the previous two acts. A tangent with the ghost of St. Winifred, pregnant giants, and his lover’s doppelgänger are all new elements to the story, among many others, while an extended portion of the poem is condensed to a bewildering denouement in act three.

My issue with the film is that it doesn’t say anything of substance. Where the poem is specific and pointed, the film is meandering and vague. The adaptations of The Green Knight are all intriguing but often they feel like poor fits at best, completely out of place, or meaningless at worst. With new themes being introduced with every act, nothing is ever explored with real depth. Perhaps intent on not repeating the messaging of his source material, it seems Lowery forgot to make sure that his film said anything at all.

Andrew Gilvary

Andrew is a former graduate of the University of Ottawa where he got his B.A. with Double Major in English Literature and Classical History. He enjoys doing nerdy things and cuddling his cat.