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the Robert Zemeckes’ (“The Polar Express,”
“Cast Away”) latest endeavor—
an endeavor that some have raved
about, some have called a violation
of literature or, in Roger Ebert’s
case, assumed to be a “parody of
the poem.”
These didn’t make me feel warm
and fuzzy inside, mind you. They
were hazy, what-did-I-just-see
feelings.
Although I had a hard time recalling
what was depicted in the
poem that I read in the 9th grade,
I was fairly certain that it wasn’t
what I just saw.
The first half of the movie
stayed fairly true to the Old English
poem, with Beowulf (played
by Ray Winstone) coming across
the sea, telling tales of a swimming
match in which he had to slay
nine sea monsters (“The last time
he told this story, it was three,”
quips one of his loyal followers),
and slaying the monster Grendel.
The second half, however,
strayed from the original poem.
Angelina Jolie, as Grendel’s mother,
crawled out of the water as a
beautiful creature, dripping gold
and purring at Beowulf, which,
as anyone who’s read the poem
knows, was different from the
original tale.
There were plenty of other deviations
present, but I’ll leave them
alone for the sake of surprise.
Zemeckes’ motion capture animation
made and broke the movie.
Grendel was truly disgusting. I
found myself covering my eyes (or
my 3-D glasses, rather, as I happened
to catch one of the few showings
of that type) on more than one
occasion when he was on screen.
The landscape was beautiful,
the fight scenes impossible to look
away from, but the humans (or human-
looking, in Grendel’s mother’s
case) were quite dead in the
eyes and wax-like.
I found myself disengaged, for
while there was life in the dialogue
and the action, there was no realism
in the characters.
Beowulf was humorous at times.
His affinity for taking off his
clothes and shouting “I AM BEOWULF!”
again and again had
me literally laughing out loud. Although
the original character was
described as being prideful, there
was no mention of his being naked
whenever the opportunity presented
itself.
Beowulf was undoubtedly an
entertaining film, but I had the
problem most people have when
Hollywood takes too much creative
license with a revered text–I
felt that its reputation was sullied
and that it would never be able to
reclaim its former glory.
This isn’t to say that I was wild
about the poem itself. As a matter
of fact I think it was my least favorite
part of the freshman curriculum.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t
appreciate the impact that it has
on society.
In any event, I wouldn’t recommend
spending the extra $2.50 on
the 3-D showing of the production.
However, “Beowulf” compensates
for a lack of a viable plotline in the
visual feast it was crafted into.
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