Beowulf

[jack]

I finally saw the Beowulf film. On reflection I decided the story, although it had bothered me somehow at the time, was actually really interesting, very much in the spirit of the original, but doing interesting things too. And that the filming had some iconic moments, and many moments that were notably 3d but not particularly interesting in any other way, and otherwise was rather perfunctory.

For instance, as in the opening scene, depicting a roistering mead hall. But they seemed to glide around the hall showing each appropriate thing "drunken people, check, vomiting, check, persuing swedish wench, check, heaving bosoms but nothing inappropriate, check". But no real sense of majesty or exuberance or chaos — or even decadence — was particularly evoked.

This dichotomy was explained nicely when I looked the film up on wikipedia, and discovered it had been co-written by Neil Gaiman, but directed by someone other than Neil Gaiman.

Spoilers

The best example of the perfunctory filmography was near the end, with the thin spot in the dragon's neck. This was wonderfully described, it sounded natural that the anatomy should have a weak spot there, and that a dragon was a nearly impossible enemy, but if you knew that spot, you stood a chance. And cool that beowulf rips his way in and tears its heart out.

However, it looked kind of stupid. It was a glowing hole in the neck. Well, it was supposed to be. But it didn't look natural, or anything, just like someone had said "what should a glowing hole look like? Well, let's make a hole glow, ok." (And kind of stupid that the whole inside of the dragon is hollow, wasn't this designed by, you know, humans? Who let alone ever having seen, actually are non-hollow vertebrate bodies?)

Story

Nowadays I can do a fair job of watching a film and seeing what's derived from the underlying work, but I'm still often surprised, often pleasantly so. I admit, I hadn't read the story of Beowulf, all I knew was that Beowulf defends someplace called Heorot from something called Grendel who marauds every night. I had impression of Grendel as a monster, and that it was more complicated than that, but didn't really know any more.

If anyone doesn't know, the basic idea is: Beowulf is a roving hero, coming when he hears Heortot's distress to discharge his father's debt to the king (on account of killing his kin and not being able to pay restitution and being banished). Grendel is disturbed by the mead-halls singing and repeatedly attacks it, eventually squatting in it. It's not clear what Grendel is, there was probably less clear distinction than now between humanoid/monstrous and sapient/animalistic, so most conceptions have him as some sort of troll, human enough to be considered a warrior, but outcast/monster enough to beat up a hundred vikings and be outside any sort of civilised society.

Eventually Beowulf rips his arm off, he flees and dies, his mother slaughters everyone, Beowulf goes out and battles the mother under a lake, and returns a hero. Then he becomes king of some other place, someone accidentally boosts a gold cup from a dragon's horde, which attacks the kingdom, Beowulf goes out to fight it to a standstill, dies, and Wiglaf finishes it off.

This film adds the idea of successive heroes vanquishing successive monsters, and incautiously siring the following monster on their common mother. Including that Beowulf accepts a devil's bargain with Grendel's mother, ensuring a nice reign for the kingdom, but eventually producing a dragon. The old king sired Grendel. Wiglaf locks eyes with Grendel's mother as he lies crying over Beowulf's body.

That's really interesting. I'm normally leery of derivative works which totally subvert the original (it's an interesting idea, but often done a bit perfunctorily: I've witnesses some great "Snow White as revisionist history, actually the step-parents were the heroes" stories, but many dire ones). And of ones that make up a whole bunch of different stuff. But this seems somewhere in the middle. The changes ring very true: I wouldn't know how to classify them, but I like it a lot, it feels like a different, fascinating norse myth.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there was some sort of 3d thing. I didn't have anything to say about that that wasn't already said, so I concentrated on the plot, characters, dialogue, and design.

[simont]

And kind of stupid that the whole inside of the dragon is hollow

Although, hmmm. Humans are non-hollow vertebrate bodies, but even if they had wings they'd be too heavy to fly. A dragon that size suffers even more from the cube-square law, meaning it's hard to make it light enough to fly – so perhaps being hollow is a feature, not a bug!

[simont]

Also, the thing that bothered me was the way that after Beowulf ripped Grendel's arm off and Grendel legged it, everyone celebrated the fact that Grendel was dead. OK, so it turned out he was dead, but how did they know that at the time?

Sure, he's minus one arm, Beowulf has done better against him than anyone else so far, and everyone has renewed hope, so there's definitely cause for at least some kind of celebration. But the blithe assumption that obviously he must have run away to die just smacks of huge and unwarranted optimism to me. Who says a monster like that won't just spend a month convalescing and then come back with vengeance aforethought and with some serious weaponry to compensate for his lack of arm? And, indeed, who says a supernatural weirdything like Grendel can't regrow arms anyway?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I could have done without the in-your-faceness of the 3D, and the trying to make keeping Beowulf's genitalia covered a running gag.

Also, despite not having met her (though she is a local so it might yet happen), I do not myself believe that naked Angelina Jolie has high-heel-shaped feet.

That said, there was a lot that was good in it, and keeping Grendel and his mother's dialogue in Old English I really liked. My family discussed afterwards whether it would have worked better to keep the whole film in Old English, and whether if that had been the case it would have, in Montreal, only been available subtitled in French, and whether suitably contemporary French would just come out as Latin, and then remembered again that not everybody reads Latin so that would not, alas, work for most of the Montreal audience as well as it would for us.