Cinema - Beowulf
Went to see Beowulf last night with M and was pleasantly surprised - the reviews I'd read were quite lukewarm and I think it may be falling betwen two stools. Literary people won't touch it with a bargepole because "OMG animation!" and "Hollywood!" and the like, and it's far too adult/gory/literary/grim/complicated for the audience of teenagers that I think the marketers are going for (judging by the trailers screening with it).
Biggest problem, as ever, is the attempt to make CGI animated people look 'realistic'. It doesn't matter how much money/time/computer power you spend trying to make hair move in the right way, or motion capturing 'real' actors and trying to make them look like themselves, I really don't think it's ever going to be properly convincing, and I do wish people would work this out. The upshot was that you spend the first half hour wondering why you're watching Schrek again, and with the back of your brain going "agh, zombie!" until you get used to it. The accents/use of famous actors are also pretty distracting - Ray Winstone's "I am Bear-woof, and I will kill your mon-stah, you slaaaaaag" cockney, Anthony Hopkins' Welsh(wtf!) and John Malkovitch being, well, John Malkovitch really didn't help. However, once you get past all this and into the action sequences, it worked grand. The monsters, locations, dragons etc. were all fabulous, convincing, exciting and beautifully animated.
For those who don't know, Beowulf is, I believe, the oldest piece of literature in Old English (despite being set in Scandinavia), dating from between the 8th and 11th centuries (according to Wikipedia anyway). Like a lot of mythic literature, it only gives you the very barest bones of a story, which goes like so:
Community is being attacked by Horrible Ogre-ey Thing, especially when they gather to feast, much doom, gloom, wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues. Hero turns up, Hero waits for Horrible Ogre-ey Thing at night, fights and kills it by ripping its arm off, everyone thinks all is good. Horrible Ogre-ey Thing's mum turns up, slaughters lots more people, Hero goes after Horrible Ogre-ey Thing's mum and kills it. Hero gets lauded, everybody's happy, at some point later in the story a dragon turns up and Hero kills that too. The tone of the poem is, unsurprisingly, relentlessly grim and really quite scary. I don't think to tell you that spoilers the film, as the makers are assuming you know the basics already, it being a bit famous and all.
Because of the above sparseness of story, and because it's from an oral tradition anyway, I have no problem whatsoever with the makers adding stuff in/reinterpreting to make a decent film of it. The major thing they do is to personalise the story - rather than the monster (Grendel) just appearing at random, it turns out to be the consequence of the Old King's liason with a local female water spirit/deity. I really liked the implication that this had gone horribly wrong somehow (more on this anon), and that was why Grendel was this horrible mess of a creature, which basically has no choice but to attack people. In turn, when Beowulf goes out to 'kill the monster's mother' what actually happens is she seduces him (we are talking about Angelina Jolie clad only in gold paint here), and offers him protection, kingship, riches and fame, which he takes, and shags her. He goes back and makes out he's killed the monster, the old King declares him his heir and jumps off the nearest parapet, and he gets everything he wanted. Cut to twenty years later, Beowulf has become the old king, and then a dragon appears, ravaging the countryside etc. The old agreement has broken, and the dragon turns out to be his son. Cue epic battle, he eventually kills the dragon and dies in the process.
So what (EDIT: what I think) the writers have done (and we are talking about Neil Gaiman here, who knows a thing or two about myth), is combine the Beowulf story with a story of a Sacred Marriage - the union between (usually) a king and the local (usually female) deity. There's usually a rite signalling this union, which confers prosperity and fertility on the king and the land, and when he gets too old or feeble, he's sacrificed, and the whole thing starts again. There's a few things that signal this in the film aside from the main plot - the Old King also killed a dragon in his youth, and at the end, Beowulf's second in command (who's now de facto king), sees/is tempted by Grendel's mother. Also all the sequences in her lair are fabulously feminine - big dark, sparkly watery space with several narrow, cleft shaped entrances, anyone?
As I hinted above, I really liked the idea of Beowulf as a sacred marriage gone wrong in some way - the king gets protection, but the fertility part really doesn't work out well *at all*. They've set it during the transition from paganism to Christianity, so I'd probably reach and suggest that this is *why* it's all gone wrong - the king cannot acknowledge the sacred marriage, the goddess becomes a nameless demon, and it's all a matter of shame and guilt. On the other hand, as M pointed out, these here ancient Norse types atually loved having monsters around to fight and kill (and boast about), so it could have nothing to do with Christianity.
Anyhow, the dragon is deeply cool, and actually looks like it could fly!! The monsters are dead scary, there's lots of blood and gore, and they get in quite a lot of rude words through the strategic use of songs and Old English (lots of swiving, and not a bit of wanking and fucking too). And yes, Beowulf does fight the monster with no clothes on, which isn't explained properly, looks a bit odd 'cos he's *certainly* not the same shape as Ray Winstone, and involves quite lot of comedy with strategically placed helmets, swords etc.
On the whole, it's certainly flawed, but is well worth an evening's entertainment if you're into that kind of thing.
Biggest problem, as ever, is the attempt to make CGI animated people look 'realistic'. It doesn't matter how much money/time/computer power you spend trying to make hair move in the right way, or motion capturing 'real' actors and trying to make them look like themselves, I really don't think it's ever going to be properly convincing, and I do wish people would work this out. The upshot was that you spend the first half hour wondering why you're watching Schrek again, and with the back of your brain going "agh, zombie!" until you get used to it. The accents/use of famous actors are also pretty distracting - Ray Winstone's "I am Bear-woof, and I will kill your mon-stah, you slaaaaaag" cockney, Anthony Hopkins' Welsh(wtf!) and John Malkovitch being, well, John Malkovitch really didn't help. However, once you get past all this and into the action sequences, it worked grand. The monsters, locations, dragons etc. were all fabulous, convincing, exciting and beautifully animated.
For those who don't know, Beowulf is, I believe, the oldest piece of literature in Old English (despite being set in Scandinavia), dating from between the 8th and 11th centuries (according to Wikipedia anyway). Like a lot of mythic literature, it only gives you the very barest bones of a story, which goes like so:
Community is being attacked by Horrible Ogre-ey Thing, especially when they gather to feast, much doom, gloom, wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues. Hero turns up, Hero waits for Horrible Ogre-ey Thing at night, fights and kills it by ripping its arm off, everyone thinks all is good. Horrible Ogre-ey Thing's mum turns up, slaughters lots more people, Hero goes after Horrible Ogre-ey Thing's mum and kills it. Hero gets lauded, everybody's happy, at some point later in the story a dragon turns up and Hero kills that too. The tone of the poem is, unsurprisingly, relentlessly grim and really quite scary. I don't think to tell you that spoilers the film, as the makers are assuming you know the basics already, it being a bit famous and all.
Because of the above sparseness of story, and because it's from an oral tradition anyway, I have no problem whatsoever with the makers adding stuff in/reinterpreting to make a decent film of it. The major thing they do is to personalise the story - rather than the monster (Grendel) just appearing at random, it turns out to be the consequence of the Old King's liason with a local female water spirit/deity. I really liked the implication that this had gone horribly wrong somehow (more on this anon), and that was why Grendel was this horrible mess of a creature, which basically has no choice but to attack people. In turn, when Beowulf goes out to 'kill the monster's mother' what actually happens is she seduces him (we are talking about Angelina Jolie clad only in gold paint here), and offers him protection, kingship, riches and fame, which he takes, and shags her. He goes back and makes out he's killed the monster, the old King declares him his heir and jumps off the nearest parapet, and he gets everything he wanted. Cut to twenty years later, Beowulf has become the old king, and then a dragon appears, ravaging the countryside etc. The old agreement has broken, and the dragon turns out to be his son. Cue epic battle, he eventually kills the dragon and dies in the process.
So what (EDIT: what I think) the writers have done (and we are talking about Neil Gaiman here, who knows a thing or two about myth), is combine the Beowulf story with a story of a Sacred Marriage - the union between (usually) a king and the local (usually female) deity. There's usually a rite signalling this union, which confers prosperity and fertility on the king and the land, and when he gets too old or feeble, he's sacrificed, and the whole thing starts again. There's a few things that signal this in the film aside from the main plot - the Old King also killed a dragon in his youth, and at the end, Beowulf's second in command (who's now de facto king), sees/is tempted by Grendel's mother. Also all the sequences in her lair are fabulously feminine - big dark, sparkly watery space with several narrow, cleft shaped entrances, anyone?
As I hinted above, I really liked the idea of Beowulf as a sacred marriage gone wrong in some way - the king gets protection, but the fertility part really doesn't work out well *at all*. They've set it during the transition from paganism to Christianity, so I'd probably reach and suggest that this is *why* it's all gone wrong - the king cannot acknowledge the sacred marriage, the goddess becomes a nameless demon, and it's all a matter of shame and guilt. On the other hand, as M pointed out, these here ancient Norse types atually loved having monsters around to fight and kill (and boast about), so it could have nothing to do with Christianity.
Anyhow, the dragon is deeply cool, and actually looks like it could fly!! The monsters are dead scary, there's lots of blood and gore, and they get in quite a lot of rude words through the strategic use of songs and Old English (lots of swiving, and not a bit of wanking and fucking too). And yes, Beowulf does fight the monster with no clothes on, which isn't explained properly, looks a bit odd 'cos he's *certainly* not the same shape as Ray Winstone, and involves quite lot of comedy with strategically placed helmets, swords etc.
On the whole, it's certainly flawed, but is well worth an evening's entertainment if you're into that kind of thing.