A friend and I went to see Beowulf tonight (in 3-D, for what it's worth). I'm glad I saw it--but the gladness is more from an academic standpoint than from an actual sense of true enjoyment. You feel immersed in the movie, but more because it feels like an immersive experience than a good, well-rounded story.
But then, I'm a purist.
Some of the changes actually weren't bad. The original Beowulf doesn't follow the Aristotelean plot arc quite to my personal satisfaction--that Grendel's mother is changed significantly makes for a better story, for example, though the ending is depressing as all heck. No--the thing that bothered me was how all of the Christology was treated. It seemed like every few minutes there was a new subtle poke at Christianity. The unfinished tapestry illustrating Christ's ascension. The abusive nature of the sole worshipper of the "new Roman god." The burning cross on Beowulf's funeral pyre. The movie's message is apparent: there's no such thing as a savior, and those who claim to be one probably caused the problems they eventually solved in the first place. If we're lucky, we might magically manage to avoid falling into the same trap as our predecessors, but probably not.
Should I have expected anything less from a screenplay that was co-authored by one of the co-author of Good Omens? I suppose not. But I'd rather they had left the Christian stuff out entirely. The movie just leaves you with a feeling of utter despair; in fact, the demons have a distinct upper hand. Compare it to the end of the poem itself--Beowulf isn't strong enough to kill the dragon by himself, but with the help of his companion, he manages it. Yes, Beowulf dies; but good triumphs over evil, and there's a new hero in town.
Actually, I think that's at least part of the message of the original: heroes are the ones who can fulfill justice when another no longer can. Beowulf fulfills the social obligations Hrothgar can't at the beginning (form of extracting the wergild, or the reparations for various peoples' deaths, out of Grendel), and eventually Wiglaf takes over for Beowulf. Point: even heroes need a redeemer, but the movie never gives them one. In fact, the only social obligation fulfilled is
the wergild granted to Grendel's mother, form of a new child to replace the dead one, thereby creating the monster of a consequence the next hero has to fight.
How utterly hopeless, right? Sounds like the sort of vicious cycle only a hero can break. Too bad there aren't any.
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4 comments:
On his weblog, Neil Gaiman seems to imply, without being... unpolitic, that the film that was made was rather different in a number of ways from the screenplay that he presented to Robert Zemeckis.
That's the price of having a high-budget, properly-promoted film some times, and as films get more expensive it's more and more difficult to find a George Harrison who will reach into his pocket and say "Here, make your movie" like he did for some of the Monty Python crew.
Beowulf had remnants of a good screenplay; then again,so did Van Helsing, and apart from no one complaining about watching two hours of Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, that was a pretty bad movie, too.
It makes me sad as someone who would have liked to see a good Beowulf movie and thought Gaiman would be a great choice for such a thing, but other than that... well, the movie pretty well bombed in terms of reviews and even sales compared to something like 300, which actually presented some bona-fide heroes.
Interesting... I just spent a few minutes skimming his blog, and I think I'll have to dig a bit deeper. I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the script book just to see if there's a good explanation of what changes were made and why. Really, the movie's like a lot of Great Literature (tm): you read it (or, in this case, watch it) to learn something about the art and zeitgeist, not because it's a great, pleasurable experience. That actually probably sums up the movie: the epic infused with modern zeitgeist.
Also, zeitgeist is a great word. Zeitgeist zeitgeist zeitgeist.
Zeitgeist is an AWESOME word. Because it's GERMAN.
One nicer little cycle: one of the conditions of handing the project over to Zemeckis was that he cast Crispin Glover (as Grendel)... Glover having been kind of outcasted from mainstream movies after he sued the studio over Zemeckis' use of stock footage to insert him into one of the Back to the Future sequels which he did not actually participate in or get compensated for. He won the battle, good for future actors, but lost the war, getting a bad reputation in Hollywood.
thanks for sharing this with me.
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