wastrel

“Let’s get rid of this wastrel. He’s not worth the effort.”

In one story, a hollow-eyed masseuse mourns the abrupt, outwardly random death of her son and the loss of her business to the pandemic as her wastrel husband dreams and schemes.

He described his father as a drunk wastrel who chased women, squandered a fortune and sold off family treasures to pay for the minimum of essential renovations.

Writer-director David Lowery and star Dev Patel present a young man attempting to find his way, fearful that he has nothing to offer the world: Gawain, wastrel nephew of King Arthur and not yet a knight, impulsively accepts a challenge from the Green Knight and perhaps assigns himself to death.

Leonard’s solution is to locate the exact historical point when Victorian bled into Edwardian — or, if you like, when the old girl died and passed on her throne to her corpulent wastrel son — and to cast his story with real people engaged in real intrigues.