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Paul Murphy
Beowulf, (2007), dir Robert Zemeckis, starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovitch
At last the earliest English epic, Beowulf, is given a Hollywood makeover. The problem with the film is that it seems unsure about its target audience, whether it is for children and young teenagers or adults. This conflict brings out all sorts of camp hilariousness, possibly because the underlying psychological naivety of the original will not allow any liberties to be taken with its form and because of the tottering nature of the narrative that unfolds almost in retrospective. The (unknown) author of Beowulf was no Sophocles or Aeschylus, but the epic is still powerful, dark, visceral, terrifying, but lacks the cruel twists, cynicism or cathartic atmosphere of the Theban Trilogy or Orestia.
The original poem is beautiful enough (and perhaps should have been left alone), this makeover is more about the development of film art than about the art of adaptation or even about the explosive nature of Beowulf the poem. The language of Beowulf, Old English, is a foreign language to us. The English of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare is still sufficiently close to Modern English to be understood by modern folks. Therefore, it must be presumed that the culture, society, way of life of Beowulf is as remote as the language. In short, the earliest English poem and written in a language unrecognisable to us as English. Now, it happens that the language of cinema, after the silent era, is predominantly English, and thus the production of a version of Beowulf seems to mark a certain watershed.
Of course the demons are tropes, something that the advertising campaign for the film cheerfully acknowledge; “face your monsters.” Beowulf cheerily decides to do so, making some common sense observations about the nature and failure of armour. His own soldiery is founded in aerobics not brute force. Obviously one must conjecture that Grendel represents (in some sense) the sexual jealousy that exists in the triangle Hrothgar, the Queen, Beowulf. Hrothgar fails to mention that Grendel has a mother, nor can he identify his father (which is presumably Hrothgar himself, since Grendel refuses to attack him and Hrothgar kills himself directly after Beowulf returns with the head of Grendel - also lying about his defeat of Grendel’s mother, for he has forged a deal with her in exchange for Hrothgar’s golden dragon horn.) When Grendel/the Dragon returns at the end of the film and years later, Beowulf has begun to enjoy, or has become intoxicated by the fact of his celebrity and indeed his defeat of Grendel is even becoming a story. The epic itself is being performed before Beowulf as the dragon horn is once again discovered by Unferth. In a certain sense the film is a meditation on celebrity culture but the film lacks a sense of humour as all its ‘seriousness’ is really undermined where it could have really been very gripping indeed. For instance, it’s quite obvious that Wiglaf and Beowulf have a buddy relationship which, although quite literal and serious in the context of the era of Beowulf, has to be taken with a large pinch of salt by contemporary viewers. He tells Wiglaf, “I have something to tell you…” (“I’m a member of the CID, my real name is Jackie.”), then Wiglaf replies: “Do you want me to go with you?” (“Wot, get off this bloody horse, I’m knackered I am…old war wound, blah de blah…”). Obviously (for the film is as simple and direct as the original epic) the dragon represents jealousy, as that between Beowulf, the Queen and his new concubine, and Beowulf dies destroying the dragon, waking beside it on the strand as it is transformed into his brother. Then time for even more mead, roasted pig and a good ol’ Viking burial at sea, as Beowulf is joined yet again by Grendel’s mother for even more post-prandial coitus interruptus, yelling, belching, farting, drinking songs, imbecilic Dark Ages dirty jokes.
Beowulf is as innovative or daring as it makes itself out to be. What it lacks entirely is something dark and subversive, something much more masculine yet altogether lacking in the kind of clunk-headed machismo represented by Winstone, who (it must be said) is also daringly aerobic and acrobatic. But the film had very few laughs.
Paul Murphy, Holloway Road London
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