Beowulf Review I: Summary and Technical Review

Finally saw Beowulf.

1 Paragraph Review:
All indicators to the contrary, Beowulf is a quite good movie, and an even better adaptation. Certainly it is the only Beowulf film to give any attention to the poem itself--not only is Old English featured (once narrating a preformance, once in a rather more inexplicably creative manner), not only is there dozens of jokes showing that Gaiman and Co. have read and understand the poem, but it nails my favorite themes from the heart of the poem. And has a great dragon fight (but more about that in a moment.) And does something interesting with the scholarship, a gamble which (for me) quite succeeded (but more about that in quite a while.) Two thumbs up--but be ready to kinda sit through an awkward and self-consciously "this-is-dark-ages" first chapter.

The Tech Report
Beowulf films live or die by their dragon fights. This is why every previous attempt failed--no dragon fight = bad dragon fight(1). With Gaiman's incarnation (and it is Gaiman's, btw., this will be one of those rare films where the screenwriter dominates) the dragon-fight is the one moment where 3D makes the difference. It's one thing to see people shoot arrows at a hero. It's another thing to watch from the hero's perspective as arrows fly out of the screen and through one's body. More impressive, though, is a simple shot of Beowulf free-falling(-ish) through midair. I've seen midair antics a thousand times in films such as Die Hard 2 or Air Force One, but this was entirely different. There was a real sense of space, and I felt exactly where Beowulf was, where the dragon was, and exactly how precarious his midair fall was. On that scene, at least, I'm sold.

With the rest of the movie, not so much. Imax 3D is good, but far from perfect. Every time something got too close to my field of reference, I began to see double; by the time I left, I had a minor headache. Moreover, the characters seemed strangely flat most of the time--sure it was cool to see some pop out in the foreground and others "pop in" to the background, but somehow the same doesn't apply to the characters themselves. It's a minor quibble, but distracting--as if the entire world was populated by animated cardboard cut-outs.

As far as the animation itself, though, any of the infamous "deadness around the eyes" was overridden by the gee-whiz impact of the 3-D. Ceratainly I saw what they were trying to achieve with the CGI and I think they were largely successful. Many reviews claim that the film would be R-rated if it were live-action, and they're entirely correct. But so would Wiley E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, if made into a realistic live-action film. The artificiality of the animation provides a bit of distance between the viewer and the flesh-and-blood "reality" of the characters. That's a good thing. This isn't The Lord of the Rings, here, with its fully-formed and lived-in alternative world. This is a legendary and highly evocative sketch-portrait of a clearly three-dimensional protagonist and his adventures. I think the test indicator may be the Infamy Herself--a naked Grendel-mother who seems to physiologically lack the naughty bits is a strangely literary creation for a film. One gets the full narrative idea of "naked-woman-threateningly-seductive" but not the same shock of "naked-woman-on-screen." The discontinuity works as myth and Story, much more than exploitation. (Not that exploitation isn't there, because it really is. It's just that a larger role is assigned to the viewer's interpretation.) And of course the same is true of the violence--blood doesn't flow freely so much as in specific ways to suggest the very specific type of violence the filmmakers want you to think about at the moment. It was a courageous move, but I think it was also the right one.

Still...the combination of the "paper effect" from the 3D and the artificiality of movement was perhaps a bit too distancing--about 20 minutes in I had to start thinking of the film as an extended video-game cut scene. It was only after I made the shift that I began to "get into" the story. I wouldn't be surprised if this process was very subjective--after all, I'm the type of guy who found my eyes full of tears when Aeries died.


(1)Dragons are kind of ironic like that. Characters tend to (rightly) think no dragon is a good dragon, but viewers know better.