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| Monday, May 24, 2010 09:43 AM |
| On the Viewer - Beowulf (2007) |
 by Fëanor |
I finally got around to watching Robert Zemeckis' computer-animated, motion-capture film adaptation of everybody's favorite epic Old English poem. Well, I didn't really watch the whole movie, but I saw large portions of it, including the ending, so I think I got the gist. If you haven't seen the film yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post, as I'll be dropping some pretty big spoilers.
Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary wrote the screenplay, and man did they totally alter the story! And seeing as how I actually really enjoy the story, and the original poem as a whole (what can I say, I was an English major), I found it hard to get over all the changes they made. The original poem tells a relatively simple story about a man who was essentially an ancient superhero. He is ridiculously strong and incredible. He kills two monsters, becomes a king, and then many years later, kills another monster, and in the process, dies. The end. The movie adds many more layers and connections to this story - secrets and lies and twisted sex. It makes Beowulf into a flawed and fallible man (Beowulf actually says in the movie that he wants to be remembered as a flawed and fallible man, which is a pretty corny line), when the point of the original story was that he was not that at all - he was effing Superman! The original poem was also written by a man looking back on heathen heroes and legends from a Christian perspective, and recasting them and their actions from that perspective. But the film tries to take the perspective of the heathens, and Beowulf even gets a line where he trashes Christianity. There's also gratuitous nudity and gratuitously disgusting violence. I mean, did we really need to see Grendel bite that dude's head off and chew it like that? Did we really need to see Beowulf punch Grendel in the side of the head until he busted his eardrum open and juice came out? Ugh. Speaking of Grendel, the film's conception of him is very unsettling: he's presented as a large, angry, disabled child. It's a little hard to cheer Beowulf on when he's fighting this thing. And the computer-generated people aren't nearly as impressive as Zemeckis seems to think they are. Sometimes their faces seem realistic and manage to convey real, human emotions, but other times they just look like dumb, wooden masks.
A few things that struck me as odd and fascinating: during his fight with Beowulf, Grendel seems to exhibit various magical abilities - when he enters the mead hall, the fire turns blue and swirls upward with a howl, and unless I was misunderstanding what I was seeing, he moves a spear with his mind in order to stab one of the warriors. Also, as Beowulf is ripping Grendel's arm off, he shouts a quick speech by way of introduction which sounds almost as if it were cribbed from John Gardner's Grendel (a fascinating, postmodern reimagining of the poem from the monster's perspective that I highly recommend) rather than the original poem: "I am Ripper... Tearer... Slasher... Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength... and Lust... and Power! I AM BEOWULF!" By that I kill you?
Despite my misgivings about the movie's changes, I have to admit the story the movie tells is a pretty strong one that seems, at least on the surface, and judged on the qualities of modern narrative, more cohesive than the original. It has one, continuous plot-line with various strong themes running through it: the desire for power and glory can poison and destroy you; the sins of the fathers come home to roost; never have sex with Angelina Jolie because she'll have a baby and it will be really annoying. (That last one is a moral I'm sure Brad Pitt can appreciate. Zing!)
But seriously. I have to admit that the story Gaiman, Avary, and Zemeckis tell here is pretty intriguing and moving, and the open-ended and highly evocative conclusion is very powerful. The suggestion that the reason Beowulf's story has survived and that we know it now is because of the deal he made with Grendel's mother is an interesting, metatextual one. Plus Beowulf's fight with the dragon is amazing. When he's chained to it by his arm, and realizes that in order to win he will have to cut his own arm off, and that this is the very way he killed Grendel - wow. In his attempt to stab the dragon in the heart, he drops his sword, and ends up having to swing himself back by his severed arm, swoop in, and rip the dragon's heart out of its chest with his bare hand. That is just about the most bad-ass thing of all time.
So really I'm of two minds about the film. As an adaptation, it's pretty much a failure, as it completely alters the source material. But as a reimagining and commentary upon the source material, and as a film considered on its own merits, it's actually not bad.
One good thing it did: it made me want to read the original poem again. So I took our copy of Seamus Heaney's celebrated verse translation down off the bookshelf and start reading it finally. In fact, I started reading it aloud to poppy and Griffin. I kind of wish I could read it in the original Anglo-Saxon, because I bet that would sound really cool. There are prose translations of Beowulf, and I remember reading one that I enjoyed, but I definitely prefer the translations that stick as close as possible to the original format. I like Old English poetry, with its kennings and its alliteration and its caesuras. I appreciate that Tolkien used a similar format when writing the poetry of the Rohirrim in Lord of the Rings. Speaking of which, I was fascinated to read in the introduction to Heaney's Beowulf how instrumental Tolkien was in changing the way the poem is read and appreciated.
But I've wandered a bit far afield here, so I'll stop now. The point is: if you want to avoid reading Beowulf for your English class and think you can just watch the movie instead, you're wrong. |
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