(no subject)
At long last, it's my Beowulf movie update. For those of you that don't remember, I went and saw it at MIT with Z the weekend before last. I really couldn't have asked for a better lecture hall full of geeks to watch it with. Their continuous snickering and snarking eased the pain of my inner medievalist dying a little bit, very slowly and painfully.
So now, my review in a compact, two-point nutshell for those who don't want to wade through the full version:
1) It was bad. Without even going into the adaptation, it was almost unwatchably bad. That had a lot to do with the cringeworthy dialogue, but the animation didn't really work for me either. But what really got me was the way the film sacrificed the rich and complex medieval mentality that suffuses Beowulf, the poem, for a warts-and-all, oversexed, rude, crude modern conception of medieval reality. The movie may have given us what life in the middle ages was like, but it certainly didn't give us how medieval people thought of their experience, or what a poem like Beowulf meant to its medieval audience.
2) After Beowulf defeats Grendel, there's a funeral scene in which the Geats cremate their fallen comrades. And um, cremate them pyres that were little more than raised wooden beds. I mean yes, they weren't cremating them with their horses or anything ostentatious like that, but if there's one thing I've learned from advisor R, it's that it takes a serious fire to cremate someone. It has to be big, and it has to be hot, and according to advisor R, it probably takes a professional. In other words, those piddly little pyres weren't cremating anything. Charring a little, sure. But reducing bones to ash? Or even smallish bits? No way.
Of course, advisor R has a point when she says that most medieval historians don't pay attention to archaeology. But she's trained me to know better. But anyway.
Beowulf: The Extended Commentary
During the first two thirds or so of the film, the adaptation had me more or less cursing under my breath as a substitute for what I really wanted to be doing, which was shrieking in outrage at the horrible desecration of the text. What I eventually realized, however, is that I was wrong to interpret Beowulf, the movie, as an adaptation of the poem. This became clear during the scene in which Beowulf watched a re-enactment in his hall of his fight with Grendel, accompanied by the text of Beowulf, the poem, in the original Old English. In the movie version of the fight with Grendel, Beowulf traps Grendel's arm in the doors of Heorot and Grendel tears it off as he tries to escape. But in the re-enactment, Beowulf pulled off Grendel's arm as he does in the poem. At that point, it dawned on me that I was not watching a horrifically off-base screen adaptation of Beowulf. Rather, I was watching the story of what Neil Gaiman et al. imagined were the “real events,” so to speak, that inspired Beowulf, the poem. Like some other pseudo-historical movies I could name but won't, it wasn’t meant as a reinterpretation of Beowulf so much as a Hollywood does "this is the true untold story" version of Beowulf.
It’s certainly an ingenious artistic strategy, especially in this case, where it’s done quite carefully and subtly and without introducing too many atrocious anachronisms. I recognize that there’s intelligence behind it - and OMG, more meta than you can shake two sticks at - but I think, nevertheless, that the “true story” approach does unforgivable violence to the poem in two ways: first, by opening it to the imposition of modern sensibilities and values, and second, by claiming an authority based on historical truth that ultimately dismisses the poem itself as a valid cultural production in itself.
Modern values, as should surprise no one who’s ever seen any of the big historical films to come out of Hollywood, were all over Beowulf, the movie. The poem, if it has a “moral of the story” (a reductionist view that obscures the greatness of the poetry itself), more or less boils down to the fact that early medieval northern Europe was a terrifying place, where bad things beyond human control were bound to happen. Because of the uncertainty of life, pagans, who could not find comfort in the promise of eternal life (and even if they had, they were going to Hell anyway), had to seek immortality on Earth through heroic deeds. And so everyone should have become Christians and then it wouldn’t matter so much that life sucked. Admittedly, none of that is probably very appealing to a lot of the modern filmgoing audience.
Beowulf the movie, however, puts its own moral spin on the story. First and foremost, there’s no such thing as absolute, random evil. In the film, Grendel and his mother, whom in my limited understanding of the critical scholarship on the poem, represent at once the uncontrollable, unpredictable power of untamed nature and the terrors of exile, are not randomly evil at all. They’re very carefully set up, first, to symbolize the sins of (western) society being visited back upon it, and second, to be the embodiment of the darkest aspects of humanity. Humanity has sinned against nature and sinned against itself (Abel sinning against Cain, if you want), and it has denied its own lusts and its own evil, and it reaps what it sows in Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. It’s not hard to read some nice, educated western liberal environmentalist and anti-racist/colonialist allegory there if you want. It’s all very post-9-11, post-Da Vinci Code, Freudian evil depths of human psyche, embracing nature, rejecting fundamentalism but advocating the universal brotherhood of rational secular man. Note that in principle, I agree with pretty much everything that’s buried in there, except the nasty streak of sexism that the film introduces in the very, very ambivalent figure of Grendel’s mother as Eve/sex/sin - I think we can all say overdetermined here - but also nature/holistic paganism/wronged lover and mother.
However, as interesting as the moral subtext of the film is from the perspective of what it says about contemporary society, like I said, unforgivable violence to the original text. The film substitutes its own moral reality for that of the poem, and in a way that I think particularly undermines the value of the poem. By purporting to give the “true story” behind Beowulf, the movie, for all its intelligence, in a sense appropriates the authority of the original text. There’s no space left for the sensibility, or the cultural world, of the poem’s author and audience. Even though Beowulf likely sprang from an oral tradition open to reinterpretation and reshaping, this film doesn’t so much reshape the tradition as sweep it aside.
I think this passage from an article I was reading the other day about medieval French literature and translation encapsulates part of what I’m getting at. Michel Zink, the author of the article, is talking about the dangers of creating a translation that shades into transformation and makes the medieval work too close to modern sensibilities:
The remarkable translation he [the translator] has given to The Knight with the Cart bears witness to a profound understanding of the text, but at the same time, he has transformed the text by giving it a systematically modern interpretation. It [the translation] brings the text almost too close to the modern reader. It opens the work to unfair comparisons with more recent works.
- Michel Zink, "Trente ans avec la littérature médiévale: note brève sur de longues années," my translation.
I think what Zink says here captures the essence of my problems with the film. The filmmakers demonstrate, by some of their wickedly clever choices (especially their characterization of Grendel), that they know the poem well. But by professing to be the "real story" behind the poem, the film opens the medieval story up for the transformations that allow it to convey modern values and suit modern tastes. In addition, it implies that the poem is somehow lacking (or naive, or just plain wrong) in the face of modern historical and psychological understanding. In a sense, an attitude of we don't need the poem, we know what really happened and what people are really like.
In short, Beowulf, the movie, brings a thoroughly modern historical understanding and psychological realism to the poem, but in doing so, it subverts and denigrates the poem's the artistic merit and the culture that shaped it. It sacrifices the rich and complex medieval mentality that suffuses the poem for a warts-and-all, oversexed, rude, crude modern conception of medieval reality. Medieval reality may have resembled the rude, crude portrayal it's given in Beowulf, the movie, more closely than it resembled its depiction in the poem. However, the mental universes of the poet and his audience as the poem Beowulf reflects them, are also a kind of reality. And this movie completely tramples that reality, with all the insight it potentially offers into the way medieval people understood their society, in favor of a sordid version of imaginary "real events" that I think ignores and discredits the poem itself.
And that, as I reach the end of my thoughts and my rant, is what really caused my inner medievalist's anguish. Also plz to be noting my ever-so-appropriate icon. For the less medieval-enabled, that's the opening lines of the only surviving manuscript copy of Beowulf.
That's what I think. Seen the movie? Not seen the movie? I'd love to hear what you think.
So now, my review in a compact, two-point nutshell for those who don't want to wade through the full version:
1) It was bad. Without even going into the adaptation, it was almost unwatchably bad. That had a lot to do with the cringeworthy dialogue, but the animation didn't really work for me either. But what really got me was the way the film sacrificed the rich and complex medieval mentality that suffuses Beowulf, the poem, for a warts-and-all, oversexed, rude, crude modern conception of medieval reality. The movie may have given us what life in the middle ages was like, but it certainly didn't give us how medieval people thought of their experience, or what a poem like Beowulf meant to its medieval audience.
2) After Beowulf defeats Grendel, there's a funeral scene in which the Geats cremate their fallen comrades. And um, cremate them pyres that were little more than raised wooden beds. I mean yes, they weren't cremating them with their horses or anything ostentatious like that, but if there's one thing I've learned from advisor R, it's that it takes a serious fire to cremate someone. It has to be big, and it has to be hot, and according to advisor R, it probably takes a professional. In other words, those piddly little pyres weren't cremating anything. Charring a little, sure. But reducing bones to ash? Or even smallish bits? No way.
Of course, advisor R has a point when she says that most medieval historians don't pay attention to archaeology. But she's trained me to know better. But anyway.
Beowulf: The Extended Commentary
During the first two thirds or so of the film, the adaptation had me more or less cursing under my breath as a substitute for what I really wanted to be doing, which was shrieking in outrage at the horrible desecration of the text. What I eventually realized, however, is that I was wrong to interpret Beowulf, the movie, as an adaptation of the poem. This became clear during the scene in which Beowulf watched a re-enactment in his hall of his fight with Grendel, accompanied by the text of Beowulf, the poem, in the original Old English. In the movie version of the fight with Grendel, Beowulf traps Grendel's arm in the doors of Heorot and Grendel tears it off as he tries to escape. But in the re-enactment, Beowulf pulled off Grendel's arm as he does in the poem. At that point, it dawned on me that I was not watching a horrifically off-base screen adaptation of Beowulf. Rather, I was watching the story of what Neil Gaiman et al. imagined were the “real events,” so to speak, that inspired Beowulf, the poem. Like some other pseudo-historical movies I could name but won't, it wasn’t meant as a reinterpretation of Beowulf so much as a Hollywood does "this is the true untold story" version of Beowulf.
It’s certainly an ingenious artistic strategy, especially in this case, where it’s done quite carefully and subtly and without introducing too many atrocious anachronisms. I recognize that there’s intelligence behind it - and OMG, more meta than you can shake two sticks at - but I think, nevertheless, that the “true story” approach does unforgivable violence to the poem in two ways: first, by opening it to the imposition of modern sensibilities and values, and second, by claiming an authority based on historical truth that ultimately dismisses the poem itself as a valid cultural production in itself.
Modern values, as should surprise no one who’s ever seen any of the big historical films to come out of Hollywood, were all over Beowulf, the movie. The poem, if it has a “moral of the story” (a reductionist view that obscures the greatness of the poetry itself), more or less boils down to the fact that early medieval northern Europe was a terrifying place, where bad things beyond human control were bound to happen. Because of the uncertainty of life, pagans, who could not find comfort in the promise of eternal life (and even if they had, they were going to Hell anyway), had to seek immortality on Earth through heroic deeds. And so everyone should have become Christians and then it wouldn’t matter so much that life sucked. Admittedly, none of that is probably very appealing to a lot of the modern filmgoing audience.
Beowulf the movie, however, puts its own moral spin on the story. First and foremost, there’s no such thing as absolute, random evil. In the film, Grendel and his mother, whom in my limited understanding of the critical scholarship on the poem, represent at once the uncontrollable, unpredictable power of untamed nature and the terrors of exile, are not randomly evil at all. They’re very carefully set up, first, to symbolize the sins of (western) society being visited back upon it, and second, to be the embodiment of the darkest aspects of humanity. Humanity has sinned against nature and sinned against itself (Abel sinning against Cain, if you want), and it has denied its own lusts and its own evil, and it reaps what it sows in Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. It’s not hard to read some nice, educated western liberal environmentalist and anti-racist/colonialist allegory there if you want. It’s all very post-9-11, post-Da Vinci Code, Freudian evil depths of human psyche, embracing nature, rejecting fundamentalism but advocating the universal brotherhood of rational secular man. Note that in principle, I agree with pretty much everything that’s buried in there, except the nasty streak of sexism that the film introduces in the very, very ambivalent figure of Grendel’s mother as Eve/sex/sin - I think we can all say overdetermined here - but also nature/holistic paganism/wronged lover and mother.
However, as interesting as the moral subtext of the film is from the perspective of what it says about contemporary society, like I said, unforgivable violence to the original text. The film substitutes its own moral reality for that of the poem, and in a way that I think particularly undermines the value of the poem. By purporting to give the “true story” behind Beowulf, the movie, for all its intelligence, in a sense appropriates the authority of the original text. There’s no space left for the sensibility, or the cultural world, of the poem’s author and audience. Even though Beowulf likely sprang from an oral tradition open to reinterpretation and reshaping, this film doesn’t so much reshape the tradition as sweep it aside.
I think this passage from an article I was reading the other day about medieval French literature and translation encapsulates part of what I’m getting at. Michel Zink, the author of the article, is talking about the dangers of creating a translation that shades into transformation and makes the medieval work too close to modern sensibilities:
The remarkable translation he [the translator] has given to The Knight with the Cart bears witness to a profound understanding of the text, but at the same time, he has transformed the text by giving it a systematically modern interpretation. It [the translation] brings the text almost too close to the modern reader. It opens the work to unfair comparisons with more recent works.
- Michel Zink, "Trente ans avec la littérature médiévale: note brève sur de longues années," my translation.
I think what Zink says here captures the essence of my problems with the film. The filmmakers demonstrate, by some of their wickedly clever choices (especially their characterization of Grendel), that they know the poem well. But by professing to be the "real story" behind the poem, the film opens the medieval story up for the transformations that allow it to convey modern values and suit modern tastes. In addition, it implies that the poem is somehow lacking (or naive, or just plain wrong) in the face of modern historical and psychological understanding. In a sense, an attitude of we don't need the poem, we know what really happened and what people are really like.
In short, Beowulf, the movie, brings a thoroughly modern historical understanding and psychological realism to the poem, but in doing so, it subverts and denigrates the poem's the artistic merit and the culture that shaped it. It sacrifices the rich and complex medieval mentality that suffuses the poem for a warts-and-all, oversexed, rude, crude modern conception of medieval reality. Medieval reality may have resembled the rude, crude portrayal it's given in Beowulf, the movie, more closely than it resembled its depiction in the poem. However, the mental universes of the poet and his audience as the poem Beowulf reflects them, are also a kind of reality. And this movie completely tramples that reality, with all the insight it potentially offers into the way medieval people understood their society, in favor of a sordid version of imaginary "real events" that I think ignores and discredits the poem itself.
And that, as I reach the end of my thoughts and my rant, is what really caused my inner medievalist's anguish. Also plz to be noting my ever-so-appropriate icon. For the less medieval-enabled, that's the opening lines of the only surviving manuscript copy of Beowulf.
That's what I think. Seen the movie? Not seen the movie? I'd love to hear what you think.