I Saw a Movie! And It Was Beowulf.
Note: this review or meditation or whatever it is contains spoilers. However, Beowulf is not exactly the kind of movie that thrives on suspense, especially since most high school graduates have been forced into a passing familiarity with the plot.
I expected the experience of watching Beowulf to be something akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion. So, I thought, I might as well watch the train wreck in 3-D (Real D, for those who care). That might have been a mistake, because I’ve never seen a movie in 3-D before, and it made me dizzy. I left fairly disappointed in the visuals: motion-capture has resulted in human characters who look like people from Shrek. However, the movie as a whole was much better than I expected.
I’m not saying it was good, because that’s not it exactly. It’s very confused about whether it wants to celebrate macho-manly heroism or to mock and question it. It does both. But here’s the thing: I think that may be intentional, and I think the inconsistencies actually connect it to the original Beowulf poem . . . or at least to postmodern interpretations of the poem.
First off, Beowulf is a weird text. It’s a palimpsest of a pagan tale retold by a Christian author(s), or at least someone familiar with Christian works written in Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon literature tends to stress feats of physical valor, and the New Testament . . . well, not so much. Thus, in Anglo-Saxon Christian texts, you have Christ, like a young warrior, valiantly leaping up onto the cross to embrace his death. You wanna talk about inconsistency? It peppers this period of literature because of the difficulty of reconciling Anglo-Saxon and Christian values. And Beowulf is no exception.
However, one thing the pagan Anglo-Saxons and the Christians agreed upon was that it was bad to kill your brother (or your kin in general), so this gets a lot of emphasis in Beowulf. When Grendel is introduced, it’s in the context of the legend that monsters are the descendants of Cain, who was, of course, the first kin-slayer. I was happy that the movie kept the reference to Unferth as a kin-killer (though I could have done without some of the graphic details), because it’s especially important for the interpretive angle the movie took. If Unferth is a kin-killer, that raises the question if there’s really that much difference between some men and monsters. And, if the boundary between monsters and men is fuzzier than we thought, does that mean that Beowulf might actually be a kin-killer when he slays Grendel and the dragon?
The suggestion is there in the text (there are a lot of parallels between Beowulf in his old age and the dragon, especially with the hint that Beowulf may love gold too much), but the movie takes it and runs with it. Hrothgar, it turns out, is actually Grendel’s father, and Beowulf, thanks to Angelina Jolie’s—ahem, Grendel’s mother’s—seduction, is the dragon’s father. Do I, the textual purist, mind? Nope, not really. I think it brings out themes that are there in the text and makes them accessible to an entertainment-minded audience. I do mind the stiletto heels mysteriously growing out of Grendel’s mama’s feet, but that’s another issue.
In this Beowulf, our Geatish hero is not only fallible, but actually a blustery, overconfident liar. Much has been made of the utter absurdity of having Beowulf fight Grendel in the buff, with strategically placed candlesticks and other bits of furniture shielding his nether regions from view. Some critics have complained that this sets the wrong tone for the battle, making it comic rather than epic. I agree that it does destroy any sense of gravitas, but, again, I think that’s intentional; it reveals how ridiculous Beowulf’s o’erweening pride is. Since The Lord of the Rings movies, I think we’re too eager to make anything and everything into an epic (and actually, I think that’s one of the biggest problems with the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—it tried to make an epic of a story that’s really a completely different—and equally satisfying in its own way—genre). Tolkien himself argued in his famous essay “The Monsters and the Critics” that Beowulf is not an epic. I don’t think he would have been happy with a postmodern, ironic treatment of the tale, either, but, as a fairly postmodern, ironic viewer, I don’t object. Given the movie trailer’s silly “I am Ripper, Slasher, Terror, Gouger. I am the teeth in the darkness” line, I had expected to see a 300-esque celebration of macho valor. But when these lines actually occur in the film, Beowulf is completely ignoring Grendel’s plea (in Anglo-Saxon) that he is not a monster, he is a son—and whamming the door repeatedly on Grendel’s arm. Not really a very neat or heroic way of vanquishing one’s foe—and that’s the point, I think.
In Beowulf’s later battle with the dragon, you do find yourself rooting for the “hero” more, maybe because the dragon looks less humanoid than Grendel. But then you remember that the dragon is Beowulf’s son, and you feel really uncomfortable that you’ve been wanting Beowulf to kill him. Again, I think that confused effect is intentional. Since the biceps-and-blood-fest 300 was such a hit, though, will most viewers be able to embrace the discomfort in a more complex (if very imperfect) film? Maybe not. And maybe I’m reading too much into the movie in the first place, interpreting artistic flaws as ironic commentary because I’m a nerd who’s read way too much literary theory.
One more observation: in his older years, Beowulf laments that the age of heroes is coming to an end, and he attributes this to the rising popularity of the “Christ-God,” who, in his view, encourages people to become suffering martyrs. Given that Beowulf isn’t exactly a model of valor and honesty, we shouldn’t interpret his words at face value, which too many reviewers have done. Yes, the movie portrays a Christian negatively in the figure of the drunkard Unferth, but there’s also the beautiful and noble queen Wealtheow, who has the misfortune to be married to two men (successively) who have succumbed to temptation from Grendel’s mother. She seems to exemplify the kind of Christian heroism that Beowulf derides. In the background of one of the scenes in her bedchamber, we see that she has been weaving an image of the risen Christ. In the later scenes, she is wearing a cross around her neck. Wealtheow is one of the most sympathetic characters from the movie’s perspective, and it’s fitting that she doesn’t boast openly about her faith, as her silent strength heightens the contrast to Beowulf’s false bravado. However, I think the lackluster animation does a disservice here, because, if she’s silent, her face needs to communicate a lot. And it doesn’t, because so far the motion-capture technique hasn’t managed to capture the subtlety of human eyes. So, unfortunately, Wealtheow comes off as just passive, rather than quiet and strong.
The movie’s last scene, in which Grendel’s mother appears once again, this time to tempt Wiglaf, ends ambiguously, before Wiglaf chooses one way or the other. He’s probably the only other really sympathetic character, because of his unswerving loyalty to Beowulf, even when he questions his judgment. So I half-wanted to see him chuck something at Grendel’s mama’s head and turn his back on her, thus becoming the new kind of hero by winning the moral victory that Beowulf couldn’t (oh, and by the way, while the visual elements certainly focus on the sexual elements of Grendel’s mother’s temptation, she is verbally offering these men power and fame and wealth—so I’m glad that sin isn’t just associated with a woman’s body). However, I can also sympathize with the decision to leave it open-ended, because if you wrap it up, you diminish the focus on the persistence of evil—human evil. So maybe I’ll get my own satisfaction by renting the movie on DVD and throwing a Nerf ball at Angelina Jolie at the end.
2 comments December 1st, 2007