Beowulf (2007) — a brief review

My daughter Salem and I went to see “Beowulf” last night for her 22nd birthday. I sent an e-mail about it to an acquaintance, and he turned around and asked me if this meant that I thought (a) that “Beowulf” was a good movie and (b) that the motion capture technology used works. I spent quite some time crafting a reply and decided to post a slightly revised version here as well.

On point (a), “Beowulf” was a better film than I expected and (IMHO) a decent film on its own merits. The story presented was probably more entertaining and more “traditionally” plotted (in modern terms) for a general, contemporary audience that a pure presentation of Beowulf (kill Grendel, kill his mom, time passes, go off and kill the last dragon, die) would have been (I re-read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf a month or so ago for a baseline).This may be damning with faint praise, but I will say that it was a better picture than “Troy” (2004) in conveying the epic sense of the self-absorbed but “great” hero and those who surround him.

On the other hand, the script put in the ‘seeds of self destruction/sins of the father’ trope not once but twice (for both Hrothgar and for Beowulf) with suggestions of a third, and there were a few times when I thought Beowulf was about to roar “Tonight…we dine…in hell!” While some themes about emerging Christianity were preserved, they were given a slightly irrelevant-to-negative cast (think of “Dragonslayer” (1981), though not quite that blatant or negative). And while I appreciated the ‘purist’ sense of having Beowulf choose to fight Grendel naked and unarmed, the resulting ‘camera’ gymnastics to avoid southern exposure kept introducing a sly winking note to what should have been a tense, horrific scene.

Still, and this really is faint praise, I think “Beowulf” was a much better film than almost all of this summer’s blockbusters (Pirates 3, Spider-Man 3, etc.) — better written, better acted, more thoughtful, more tightly and coherently directed, and just more entertaining. However, I’ll still pick this year’s “Harry Potter” and — for all its knee-jerk anti-Americanism (or, at least, anti-CIAism, which bothers me less, given what an incompetent and politically disloyal organization the CIA appears to be) — “The Bourne Ultimatum” over “Beowulf”, though.

As for (b), the motion capture technology worked far, far better than I expected. There were lots of times when I actually forgot that I was watching animation — the graphics really were that good, especially on facial close-ups. At other times that I just didn’t care, and there were yet other times when I was very clear that I was watching animation because it was showing me things that were incredible, fascinating, impossible and/or breath-taking. Interestingly, the last cases were probably less jarring than when the same thing happens in live-action films, since I didn’t immediately start wondering, “How did they do that?” — if you will, the animation looks less “fake”, or at least does less to break the suspension of disbelief and pull me out of the film, than live-action special effects would. Of course, there were some other times (fortunately relatively few and brief) when I felt I was watching a very high end version of “Shrek” — mostly when there were horses galloping or large groups of men running around.

In short, I’m glad I went to see “Beowulf”, and I don’t wish for either my money or those two hours back — and nowadays, that’s about the best I can hope for in going to see a film. Your mileage may vary. ..bruce w..

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