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BEOWULF & GRENDEL (2005)
And I thought I started shaving early Fifty or sixty bucks, that's what it would've cost to see this at the film festival last November. I wanted to see it, but not that badly. Worth the wait? Sure, but I'm not kicking myself for waiting. You know the story, even if you haven't read any translation of the Old English epic (and if you haven't, don't feel bad, neither have I). Grendel terrorizes village, Beowulf and his buddies come to the rescue, and finds out there's more to the story than just a naughty troll. (several plot developments seem likely to be modern elaborations) Gerard Butler, one of the only saving graces of that shitty Timeline movie, plays Beowulf and he has one of the best entrances I've seen in a long time, which is first misleadingly scenic, then misleadingly grotesque, then amusingly pathetic. He brings with him a band of warriors who alternately play up his legend in campfire tales, and roll their eyes at the enthusiasm with which they're greeted when their fame precedes them. Stellan Skarsgaard plays King Hrothgar, the stressed monarch whose ale hall keeps getting depopulated (partly because his guards have a damnable habit of being tapped on the shoulder, turning around, and gawking uselessly long enough to get killed). Grendel, the surprisingly complex "villain", is played by Ingvar Eggert Siggurosson, who garners a lot of unsentimental sympathy with as little as a lot of inarticulate bellowing. He is not the "monster" many people might expect, but simply a big, strong guy who's a lot smarter than his "Unga bunga!" quasi-dialogue suggests at first, and you know he's a badass because of how young he was when he chopped off his dad's head. And later on he gets the Mad Max ultimatum, where he...see for yourself. His sea-hag mother is one of the movie's only two fantastical elements. The other one of those is not a dragon (there was a dragon in the epic, right?), but Sarah Polley as a witch-woman who lives on the outskirts of town and can foresee people's deaths; I like her, but I didn't like her here. The north American accent is not inappropriate (she is, after all, something of an alien), but she's the most frequent source of anachronistic, unlikely lines and plays the role like a goth chick without the makeup - trying to be hard, cynical and sarcastic but too softly pretty to pull it off. If you're gonna say "cunt", you can't say it shyly. Filmed in Iceland, B&G boasts a lot of shiveringly chilly-looking scenery, a little desolate but still beautiful and as atmospheric and believable as any movie of this sort since Braveheart made them hip. This also has the one aspect of Braveheart that all the battle epics in its wake inexplicably didn't attempt to emulate: an earthy sense of humor. With each movie in the battle-epic genre getting increasingly dry and humourless, it's nice to see a movie which remembers how much color some well-placed levity can add. Never thought I'd be so glad to hear two bestiality jokes in one movie. Oh, who am I kidding - there's always room for bestiality jokes. Lots of introduction-of-Christianity stuff, and it isn't as critical of it as I was expecting (though I would've been pissed if Beowulf wussed out and got the baptism). Other not-too-heavyhanded themes include racial tolerance and genocide, the futility of revenge and counter-revenge, and some murky sexual politics...was that rape? Would it matter if it was? Well done. Oh, and I know it's a little late, but...The 13th Warrior is much better than my first impression suggested. And, uh...chances are the Christopher Lambert movie isn't. (c) Brian J. Wright 2006 BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |