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Beowulf
Anonymous
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Beowulf Odd, for some reason Hollywood producers have never engaged in bidding wars to adapt epic Old English poetry for the silver screen. However, the classic themes and characters from Beowulf do show up in popular culture regularly. A 1990s episode of Star Trek: Voyager, for example, replays the story, with a holographic Grendel and a phaser-equipped hero. B-movie horror
The time period has been moved up to...well, I'm not sure exactly when. The setting seems to be some kind of future post-apocalyptic world in which medieval knights slug it out with swords and maces—when they're not using power tools to hone those instruments and intercom systems to communicate in their stone castles. Lambert's Beowulf is a knight errant who arrives at the castle where the monster Grendel is killing folks off each night. And why don't they leave? Because the fort is under siege by other soldiers who don't want the monster to escape, so they kill everyone who tries to get out. Okay, so logic is not a strong point in this movie's favour. Beowulf it seems is fated to confront the beast. He's half-god, half-man, with a shameful past requiring him to redeem himself by roaming the world looking for evil to confront. He battles evil by back-flipping all over the place until he's in position to stab the beast. The drawn-out battle scenes seem the raison d'être of the movie. That and chances to stare at the exposed chest of co-star Rhona Mitra (better known on TV's Boston Legal). Several subplots involve secondary characters but they never get in the way of the main action. At one point the beast massacres every non-combatant woman and child in the castle, a horrendous bloodbath of the innocent, which makes for an emotional impact lasting about three seconds, after which it is entirely forgotten as attention is turned back to the hero's impending showdown with the monster. At one point I thought the film was going to take off into an interesting psychological direction, speculating the monster was created by the mind of man—or the mind of one man in particular—but, alas, I was reading too much into it. Reading does that to you. And, oh yes, the monster has a vengeful mother just as in the poem. Another battle. Some more back-flipping and some more not-bad CGI special effects. Cut-down epic Apparently The 13th Warrior was mercilessly cut down by the studio from the epic it was filmed as to the action/horror flick we see on our screens today. Too bad, as it shows great promise. Good acting. Realistic effects. Historically and geographically accurate. An A-film. All right, neither of these movies has much to do with Beowulf the Great Book. More recent films come a bit closer. A Beowulf to mull
Sounds far-fetched, but it mainly works. Grendel is humanized, which I suppose is why he shares the ampersanded title. He's sort of the misunderstood Frankenstein monster of his day, played beautifully and without a word of understandable dialogue by Icelandic actor Ingvar Sigurðsson. Our hero gradually comes to recognize the monster isn't necessarily monstrous, which doesn't keep him from dispatching Grendel and going after his mother as well. She too is semi-human, not at all the dragon I pictured from the poem—more like a crazed mermaid. Particularly admirable in this film is that Hrothgar and his so-called kingdom are so pathetic, nothing like the storybook king and castle you usually get in movies. He's really just a ragtag tribal chieftain, overseeing a bunch of near-savages eking out a living in a hostile environment and drunkenly brawling in their huts of sticks. The film also has its clever moments. There's a whole other subplot about an early Christian missionary who comes to the Danes to convert them. One of the men reports, "Jesus Christ never sleeps...he walks amongst us," to which Beowulf replies, "That's all we need, a god gone mad from lack of sleep." Beowulf is well personified by Gerard Butler (who was Dracula in Dracula 2000 but is better known as King Leonidas in 300). He's a manly hero for his time but also conflicted by his dawning realization that there is more to the story of Grendel than he was led to believe. But this promising deconstruction of myth doesn't go far enough. It's just hinted at, and then the hero goes his not-so-merry and bloody way. We're left with a feeling that we don't really know what this film was trying to do. That thematic confusion, coupled with the difficulties of following some of the dialogue (the combination of Scottish and Scandinavian accents!), leaves us lost much of the time. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the film was drastically edited for release—we seem to be missing basic points. But Beowulf & Grendel is the best adaptation of the story yet, and an intriguing one at that. You're liable to find yourself mulling it over weeks after viewing it. Beowulf as
action hero
But the stars are presented in that kind of supposedly photorealistic animation based on the actors' real facial and body movements against CGI backdrops. The process is fairly far advanced by this point, yet there's still a creepiness factor—perhaps not a bad thing for a story so reeking of dread. The film was actually created for 3D, and reports are that it was more effective when viewed in that mode. Beowulf himself is portrayed by veteran British actor Ray Winstone, who at age 50, benefits greatly from animation to turn him into the muscular and gymnastic hero who takes on the monster. He's actually quite a good, brooding hero who, after his initial victory, moves over to the dark side. Instead of killing the monster's mom next, Beowulf makes a deal with the devil. He allows himself to be seduced by her (as, it turns out, Hrothgar had been seduced earlier, which had produced the monster in the first place) in return for being made king. Eventually, as King Beowulf ages, he has to face the consequences of his betrayal. Much action ensues as the latest creation of the Jolie monster, a flying dragon, attacks the kingdom and threatens Beowulf's (human) loved ones. It's all very cartoonish for the big action climax, with the usual incredible, mid-air, physics-defying feats being performed. Great for the action crowd, not so for the literary set. Unreal monster This is a film made on the cheap—so not a big special effects budget to ruin it and no big stars to distract you from the ancient story. But it's made fairly well. A good script that adds to the Beowulf essentials (as every adaptation of the Beowulf poem finds necessary) by giving us some credible motivations for the monster's attacks without going overboard like some of the more fantastic versions. It also fleshes out some of the other characters without turning into a soap opera. The story is presented in part from the perspective of a young apprentice to the hero Beowulf, who ends up winning the love of King Hrothgar's beautiful blonde daughter in the bargain. Solid acting from a a cast of TV veterans led by Chris Bruno as Beowulf. A proper respect for the times and an engaging narrative. Until Grendel appears. The monster is obviously CGI, obviously an animated drawing that interacts unrealistically with the live actors who attack it. He's blood-thirsty, ferocious and all-round fearsome all right, but does he also have to be practically invulnerable? Arrows and swords bounce off him, while he rips out men's hearts with jabs of his pointy limbs. Beowulf's secret weapon against him is equally incredible: a crossbow-looking instrument that somehow launches exploding rockets. Once Grendel is eventually dispatched, his mother turns out to be equally ferocious, although more like a flying dragon-pterodactyl kind of thing, and equally unrealistic. Somehow our heroes prevail though, as demanded by the story. Too bad. The Beowulf tale is thoughtfully and interestingly presented in Grendel until the action nonsense messes it up. — Eric |
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