Beowulf is based on the Old English Epic poem (yes the one that many of us struggled through in junior high or high school) supposedly written around 700AD. It's a simple tale about the Geatland warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) who arrives on Danish shores to rid them of a monster known as Grendel (Crispin Glover). At the Comic-Con this past July, co-writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary had this to say about this latest adaptation of Beowulf .
Neil Gaiman: Beowulf is the oldest story that we have in the English language.
Roger Avary: And were trying to tell it with the most modern technology available today.
Neil Gaiman: It's really cool.
Roger Avary: You'll feel like you're coming down off an acid trip after you watch it, it's wonderful.
Beowulf (Paramount)
And the film's animation and how it looks is what's been talked about most. Director Robert Zemeckis used motion capture in Polar Express (in which Tom Hanks played multiple roles, my idea of a nightmare). It's a process of digitally recording actor's movements for a life-like style of computer animation that Zemeckis says has advanced considerably from the time of Polar Express in 2004. One of the reasons the filmmakers wanted to employ this process was that the character of Beowulf has to age fifty years. The other obvious reason involves creating an ancient pagan world where demons and dragons are commonplace. The 3-D technology is pretty impressive and allows for spectacular battles. But being in the audience is comparable to watching fireworks and hearing the crowd react to each display with ooohs and aaahs. When a spear is thrust into the audience or a limb thrown out, the audience marvels at the technology.
And the technology is definitely something to marvel at. But the problem may be that it is too close to real without being as good. While Winstone gets a major physical makeover to play Beowulf, most of the other key actors look pretty much like they do in real life except they have dead, soulless eyes. It's like watching alien versions of people you know. Maybe this would have been the perfect technique to use for the latest adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where people look human but not quite. So the result is sometimes distracting and even disturbing. In some ways the recent Renaissance , a French animated film that employed motion capture, was smarter because it chose to use the digital information in a more stylized manner. Instead of striving for photo-realism, it went for a high contrast black and white image that was like Japanese manga. Going for the highly stylized effect allowed the animated human characters more leeway in how they looked and you weren't distracted by the fact that maybe they didn't move as fluidly as a real person or that their eyes didn't quite sparkle with life.
With Beowulf , it's so close to real that you wonder why not use the real actors and get the benefit of their humanity. 300 , about the famous Spartan battle, had the right mix. Use real actors for the most part but use state of the art digital technology to create the ancient, foreign landscape and the bizarre creatures. 300 used computer animation to fill in everything that could not easily be found in the real world but stopped short of replacing all the actors with computer-generated alter egos. There are certainly moments in Beowulf when performance and 3-D animation mesh stunningly but not consistently enough for the film to be an unqualified success.
Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother in Beowulf (Paramount)
In addition, Zemeckis not only mixes an old story with new technology but he also tries to modernize the ancient story as well. Beowulf is no longer an epic hero but a rather a great but tarnished warrior. Gaiman and Avary decide that the best way to make the fifty-year leap that the poem has is to try to create a link between the two halves of the story. So now Beowulf kills the monster Grendel but not Grendel's mother and he did in the poem. Grendel's mum in the poem was described as the most loathsome hag he had ever beheld. Her hair was a growth of long hissing snakes that twisted and writhed about her head. Her face was almost completely hidden by them, and all he could see was a hideous gaping mouth filled with sharp green fangs, and eyes that burned at him like live silver. Ummm? Not exacltly the seductively curvaceous Angelina Jolie who rises naked (save for some strategic liguid gold) from the water and walks on rather anachronistic stiletto heels (or are those hooves?). Jolie's demon mother seduces Beowulf by attacking his vanity and suggesting that under his glamour he is as much a monster as her Grendel.
Instead of letting Beowulf return to his Geatlands to govern as a kindly and protective monarch, the film has him remain in Denmark where he opts for a pretty young maid instead of his headstrong queen, and where he must confront the sins of his past. This Beowulf suffers from modern relationship problems, greed and ambition as well as the equivalent of media hype and spin. There are moments, as when the aged Beowulf faces an young upstart who wants to kill the King to earn a place in history, where genuine emotion and sympathy for Beowulf almost develops. The writers also tweak the religious tone. The poem presented a tension between pagan and Christian beliefs and symbols. The film, however, tends to dismiss Christianity and make any believers appear weak or as objects of ridicule. Beowulf even suggests that the Christ-God killed our heroes and left us with weeping martyrs. To raise such issues but not be willing to deal with them fully is problematic, why bring it up if its not really something the film is willing to explore?
Beowulf (Paramount)
The film has earned a PG-13, which some have speculated would have been an R if the action were live and not animated. But Beowulf should have learned from the highly successful 300 and gone for an R. That would have meant that they would have had to held back on language, action or even nudity. Yes, animated nudity. The film drew unexpected laughs as it tried to hid Beowulf's naughty bits during his battle with Grendel where Beowulf decides to fight in the raw. As with Austin Powers , props and people are strategically placed to hid any potentially offensive body parts. Heck, Bart got to flaunt his penis in The Simpson Movie , why did they have to be so prudish about Beowulf (but maybe those kind of 3-D possibilities raised too many concerns). But the attempts to cover him up are so silly that you wonder why they had him strip down in the first place.
As with most 3-D movies, the film has shot that are self-consciously designed to show off the technology. So people point, throw things and thrust items out into the audience for no real reason. Those people who choose to see the standard 2-D version of the film may be baffled by these moments. The technology, which does require wearing glasses but not cardboard ones with the goofy blue and red lenses. The 3-D effect does work well with the actors looking genuinely separated from the background.
This film version of Beowulf (rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity) is less heroic but not necessarily more human. Zemeckis seems unwilling to buy into the heroic legend wholeheartedly yet he doesnt want to let go completely of the fantasy world. Zemeckis' Beowulf aspires to epic realm of 300 and the fantasy of Lord of the Rings but falls short of both. But it's an intriguing novelty act with a few stirring scenes.
Companion viewing: Sexy Beast, Renaissance, 300, Lord of the Rings, Beowulf and Grendel (with Gerard Butler as Beowulf)
