This isn’t grandpa’s Arthurian story.

Writer and director David Lowery brings a luscious, modern retelling to the centuries-old chivalric honor story of “The Green Knight.”

If you are looking for epic sword fights and typical Knights of the Round Table antics, you’ll find yourself disappointed. But if you allow yourself to be immersed in this fantastically artsy world, you may just enjoy your time in Lowery’s version of Camelot.

Gone are the technicolor, gilded finishes of yore. Instead, “The Green Knight” opts for muted and earthy colors, save for the bright yellow cloak main character Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) dons throughout much of his journey.

The movie takes a slow, methodical pace from the opening scenes of young, unambitious Gawain in his uncle’s mythic court on Christmas Day.

Gawain longs to be a knight, or anyone of consequence, but seems to lack the kind of honor and drive seen in most knights. So his mother (Sarita Choudhury), a witch, and his sisters perform a spell to bring forth the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), an imposing, tree-like creature who crashes the party at King Arthur’s (Sean Harris) and proposes a Christmas game: To the man who can land a blow, the Green Knight will return the same “one year hence.”

Gawain agrees and decapitates the knight in one strike, but the knight simply picks up his head and leaves telling Gawain to find him in one year at the Green Chapel where the game will be complete.

The year comes and Gawain has done little to prepare or change his drunk and carefree ways, but he agrees to meet the Green Knight, armed with his uncle’s sword, a shield blessed with holy water and a sash that has a protective spell sewn into it from his mother.

His journey is laced with trials and tribulations, from being robbed, retrieving the head of a ghostly St. Winifred and having his knightly chastity tested.

Dev Patel is great as Gawain and proves that he can be the next big movie star if he (and Hollywood) wants. He’s got the acting chops and the look (boy, does he have the look). He carries the movie firmly on his chiseled shoulders, while being supported by equally solid performances from the rest of the cast, even those who only have a few minutes of screen time. Vikander is also wonderful pulling double duty as Essel and the Lady — and doing it so well you may not realize at first it’s the same actor.

But they and the rest of the cast as a whole resort a little too much to whispering their dialogue for what feels like the sake of “art,” and it’s overdone. Beyond that, everything from the cinematography, score, costume design and set design is near perfection. Lowery utilizes the camera in such an interesting way that it captures the attention in a scene that otherwise would seem overlong. Even with the slower pace of the film as a whole, it never feels its length too much, with each point in the story getting just the right amount of attention.

It is probably the most artsy Arthurian movie to be released in recent memory. “The Green Knight” leaves a lot of things open to interpretation, using metaphor and allegory throughout to keep your brain active searching just like Gawain for meaning.

Lowery gathers all of the old story traditions from the 14th-century poems of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and remodels them for a fresh and modern approach, proving that these stories can be reinvented without compromising their heart over the centuries.

“The Green Knight”

130 minutes

Rated R for violence, some sexuality and graphic nudity

3.5 stars