BEOWULF
Reviewed by Sam Hatch
In spite of its largely Scandinavian cast and setting, the classic poem Beowulf has been largely considered a masterpiece of epic English storytelling. The identity of the author of the work is still unknown to this day, but the mystery poet's end result is still being studied (and yawned over, in the case of high school students) and interpreted. Fittingly, none of the epic's many cinematic adaptations can agree on all of its essential story elements.
In the past decade we've already seen the highly underrated The 13th Warrior (which is technically an adaptation of Michael Crichton's highly retooled 'non-fiction' version of the poem) and 2005's Icelandic production Beowulf & Grendel, starring Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgard. Having finally caught up with that production recently, I questioned the need for yet another silver screen incarnation of Beowulf.
This film's sole distinction is that it is a CGI motion capture feature, using the same soulless animating technique that was showcased in Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express. The script actually predates both of those other versions, for cult comics guru Neil Gaiman and indie filmmaker Roger Avary (Killing Zoe, Rules of Attraction) worked together to pound out a draft back in the mid-90s, following a failed attempt at adapting Gaiman's own mythologically rife graphic novel Sandman.
Avary was always intended to direct, but somewhere along the food chain producer Zemeckis knocked him to the side and reimagined the live-action opus as an animated product. The script was revised to include as many jaw-dropping visual effects as possible, now that the power of the pixel had rendered the original budget irrelevant.
For those unfamiliar with the seed story, Beowulf is a three-part story that is essentially hinged upon a series of great battles – first against a Dane-slaughtering monstrosity named Grendel, followed by an encounter with his bereaved mother, and finally a flash-forward fracas with a violent dragon. Most versions omit this final fight, and while Avary and Gaiman had to restructure the story greatly to warrant its inclusion, I'm glad somebody finally decided to give it a shot again.
The character Beowulf (voiced by Ray Winstone) is the leader of a war-hungry pack of Geats, who travel to Denmark at the plaintive request of King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), whose massive mead hall Heorot has been repeatedly invaded by a beastly entity known as Grendel. Grendel's nature is still a matter for debate, for while in some films he appears as a traditional Scandinavian troll (or a spin on Sasquatch) or a mere human, it is also possible to read him as a demonic force. The latter tack is chosen here.
The Grendel of this film (voiced by Crispin Glover, delighting in his usage of the Old English dialect) is a misshapen, monolithic mutant whose sensitive ear is repeatedly abused by the raucous merrymaking courtesy of Hrothgar and his men. The entrance to the cave in which Grendel resides adds to the torturous experience by amplifying the cacophony to unbearable levels. Instead of simply packing up and moving out (it's Mom's pad, so I'm assuming he doesn't have to pay rent) he wreaks havoc on Heorot and dismembers all inside save Hrothgar.
The reason for this last act of mercy has been written many different ways – in some cases Grendel cannot harm the King based solely upon his royal status. In both the 2005 film and here, there's also an element of hidden shame the King harbors that inexorably ties him to the heinous creature. These first fifteen minutes of the film contain a pile of standout visuals (especially when viewed in 3-D on an IMAX screen), from the insanely long pullback from the mead hall to Grendel's cave (itself a reference to a similar scene in Zemeckis' Contact) to the balls-out murderfest that follows, eerily lit with a supernatural blue flame.
This brutal encounter is shot so that it resembles the virtual camera work of the Moria Mine cave troll battle in The Fellowship of the Ring, but the similarities to that other massive fantasy epic don't end there. Hrothgar and his royal hall bear a striking similarity to The Lord of the Rings' Rohan King Théoden and his hilltop fortress Edoras. Of course that material was most likely influenced by the old poem in the first place, since J.R.R. Tolkien was a Beowulf scholar of note and spent much of his life analyzing it.
There's also a similarity in the computer generated visage of Beowulf to the likeness of actor Sean Bean, who portrayed Boromir in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. Ray Winstone lends his voice to the brave warrior, but he's one of the few cast members whose facial features aren't referenced by their onscreen character. Other characters who essentially look just like their vocalists include the Christianity extolling Unferth (John Malkovich), Queen Wealtheow (Robin Wright-Penn), Beowulf's sidekick Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson) and of course Sir Anthony himself. There's also an appearance from Angelina Jolie as the creature's mother in the second part of the story.
Once Beowulf exerts his superiority over the offending monster by fighting it in the buff (accompanied by numerous joke moments as his genitals are obscured by phallic-looking obstacles – is this Austin Powers: The Geat Who Slayed Me?), the ensuing celebratory revels are cut short by murderous revenge at the claws of Grendel's mother. She's another character who has been envisioned as many different things, but many consider her to be a full demon. Avary took this position, and used numerous unanswered questions within the poetry to come to his own conclusion about her nature and the identity of Grendel's father.
So here Grendel's mother is a siren-like trickster, a golden personification of the temptation that accompanies (or causes?) the acquisition of power. The ensuing events are psychologically interesting, and morphs Beowulf from a true hero-warrior into a complex figure and unreliable narrator. He inherits certain shameful histories from King Hrothgar, and then his entire Kingdom as well. Whereas in the original story Beowulf returns home to become a ruler in due time, here he is immediately sired unto a Danish throne and takes Hrothgar's queen as his own.
Thus, the segment in Beowulf's silver years unveils – where we find him a flawed, womanizing character who must suck it up and face down mistakes from his past. These bad choices literally grow up to take the form of a dragon (or more accurately a variation of the English wyrm), and a fight to the grave with this fire-breathing beast takes up the remainder of the film's running time.
For all of the effort spent on perfecting the mo-cap CG avatar technology, I haven't been very impressed with anything this side of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Plenty of time is spent lavishing loving detail on 'realistic' elements such as chapped lips, freckles and scraggly beard stubble. Still, these showcase elements only serve to draw attention to themselves, and the only thought they really conjure is “Why bother?” It'd be easier to simply hire an actor and be done with it.
The further decision to make these computer-bred stand-ins resemble famous actors goes that extra distance to make the audience members focus on just how fake they look. There are moments where Angelina Jolie's cloned face convinces, but in others she looks like a badly drawn replica. And for all of the technological advances in the field since The Polar Express, most of the characters have creepy, dead eyes, resulting in a sense that these are merely digital corpses being used as marionettes. There's also an unattractive grayish color palette at use on their faces, probably due to the fact that completely realistic skin tones have not been conquered yet.
The locations, special effects, monsters and 3-D imagery are truly incredible. Gaiman and Avery's script is actually quite good. That's why it's such a shame that the computer generated stars of this film are the ones that ultimately sink it. For all of their photorealism, they still essentially look and move like the human characters from the Shrek films. (Unferth in particular sports a ridiculously huge looking head compared to the rest of his body.) And considering that their motion was snatched directly from the movements of real people, I am at a loss to explain why their limbs often flail in a stilted, overly quick fashion.
For a story that is primarily comprised of stoic behavior and terse dialogue (there is however one repeated comic gag about Wiglaf's cowardice), you need actual actors (and not just their voices) to bring the rest of the material to the table. It's okay for a short piece (like The Final Flight of the Osiris from The Animatrix), but even with the added gimmick of 3-D it grows tiresome watching these unconvincing compu-golems for nearly two hours. Even the newest version of the movie's poster looks like an advert for a video game rather than a motion picture. The film is too gory by far for young kids, which is ironic given the fact that they're probably the only possible audience that could enjoy the film without being distracted by its population of bland automatons.
This Beowulf is a great idea gone bad, and I honestly wish Avary had been able to make the film as he originally envisioned it. Or even the rewritten version shot on a digital set with live people (a la the much more successful 300). Though as a failure, at least it's a stunning one. I remain unconvinced as to the necessity of the continued drive to perfect hyper-realistic human substitutes, and wish we could all be happy with the stylized work present in traditional animation. To twist the words of Hunter S. Thompson: Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Wait for it to stop.