Beowulf poem

Anonymous author of Beowulf

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Editor Eric

Beowulf
(1999 DVD)

The 13th Warrior
(1999 DVD)

Beowulf & Grendel
(2005 DVD)

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 of works like Beowulf continue to show up in popular culture all the time. A 1990s episode of Star Trek: Voyager, for example, replays the story, with a holographic Grendel and a phaser-equipped hero.

The first English-language film to call itself "Beowulf" similarly recasts the character and setting. The 1999 film Beowulf, starring Christopher Lambert in the title role, is more a horror-cum-action flick than a retelling of the Anglo-Saxon classic. It's actually a diverting B-movie, once you stop expecting anything particularly meaningful—or anything particularly to do with the original story.

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'etre of the movie. That and chances to stare at the exposed chest of co-star Rhona Mitra (better known as a regular 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 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.

You can check out another film from 1999, The 13th Warrior, which is also said to be a version of the Beowulf story. A better film, though even less to do with the Beowulf tale. This big-budget movie is actually based on a Michael Crichton novel, Eaters of the Dead, which in turn is supposed to be a retelling of Beowulf. Antonio Banderas is an Arabic poet who joins a party of Vikings who are trying to hold off supernatural flesh-devouring demons from attacking a village. More like The Magnificent Seven or The Seven Samurai in the Dark ages really.

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. A more recent film comes a bit closer.

Beowulf & Grendel (2005) is fairly faithful to the original: Beowulf brings his team of warriors to the aid of Hrothgar, a Danish king, to rid him of a monster who has been slaughtering his men. But there's quite a back story filled in here too: the monster Grendel—whom they call a troll in this film but seems really to be a primitive man, like a tall Neanderthal—is killing apparently in revenge for the murder of his own father by Hrothgar some years earlier. There's also a subplot about a witch who wins Beowulf's heart and turns out to have shared with Grendel as well.

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 the heroine's rival in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life). 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.

Apparently a Hollywood version, with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie, is in the works. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

— Eric