Beowulf : La Légende Viking

I was fortunate to see Sturla Gunnarsson's "Beowulf & Grendel" at the Toronto International Film Festival. This film is MUCH MORE than the long epic poem we read in high school! It is a film infused with humor, heart, suspense, and qualities of character and motivation which make it memorable indeed! Yes, there is violence, but that is the nature of the beast, so to speak. The story tells of people living in rather primitive circumstances (compared to modern Western standards) and war is a way of life. Without going into the story, it can safely be said that the introduction of the hero Beowulf (wonderfully played by Gerard Butler) leads to a tale of honor, friendship, loyalty, bravery, horror, and retribution. The musical score, sets, costumes, armor and weaponry, and especially the landscape (filmed entirely in Iceland!) add to the splendor of this movie. I have recommended B&G to our friends, and we hope it is widely distributed.

I was fortunate enough to view the world-premiere performance of Beowulf and Grendel at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September 14th, and I found it to be a hauntingly beautiful film, with some surprising comedic moments added into the mix. All of the lead actors (especially Gerard Butler as Beowulf and Stellan Skarsgard as the King) were superb in their roles, and although I have never read the original epic poem, I found that the story was very well-told and that the director and his cast definitely succeeded in delivering the many-layered messages of racial tolerance, bravery and the real meaning of heroism. The Icelandic setting was absolutely breathtaking, and I certainly agree that it became an additional character and an essential part of the story as well. Finally, the bits of comedy which resulted from Beowulf's interactions with his band of warriors were a welcome and realistic addition to a story that could have easily taken itself too seriously and become bogged down in melodrama. I highly recommend this film to those who enjoy cinematic experiences which fall outside (and well above) the normal Hollywood, cookie-cutter action films. I am also looking forward to its wide release (I hope) here in North America in the next few months, since one viewing of this weirdly wonderful film is definitely not enough!

The ninth century Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf recounts the exploits of a hero of the Danes who saves them from a monster, Grendel, and the creature's vengeful mother, and then, decades later, dies fighting a dragon. This is an oral epic like Homer, which means it was composed and recomposed by oral bards among an illiterate but highly verbal people and "passed on" (actually constantly varied and renewed) in that way for many generations, and only later, when the tradition was waning, was written down. Epics, especially oral ones, have something in common. They are the embodiment of the primary values of the nation and culture they come from and represent. Their purpose is not just to entertain, but also to instruct, to inspire, to move, to instill pride in and knowledge of traditions and history. In a sense they tell stories everybody knows – everybody of the nation or culture – but they also preserve the values, the traditions, and the history and legend of the tribe. We don't know much about those traditions found in Beowulf, but in Iceland they do, and this movie was made in Iceland by an Icelandic director, Sturla Gunnarsson, who lives in Canada.

Anglo-Saxon poetry is alliterative, haunting, sad, and in a language utterly unlike modern English, completely strange. Here's how the poem begins, with translations for each line.

(You will have to look elsewhere, because the format of this website does not allow foreign languages.)

Which has been translated:

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he!

Along comes a movie, which doesn't have much US distribution but is currently showing in New York (July 2006). And I'm told there was a version with Christopher Lambert, but I have not seen it.

There are many translations but one by a poet of distinction recently done is that of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Here are a couple of short passages from Heaney's version:

You have won renown: you are known to all men far and near, now and forever. Your sway is wide as the wind's

It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, That will be his best and only bulwark.

This atmosphere that comes in the poem, even from a few lines, the importance of fame, of reputation, a deep fatalism, a sense of the power of nature and overwhelming sadness, are typical of Beowulf and of Anglo-Saxon poetry. But whether you get any of that from the movie I don't know.

What you do get is plenty of cussing, of F-words and S-words, spoken even by King Hrothgar and Beowulf himself, and body functions, and sexual intercourse – with a monster, who, for reasons best known to the filmmakers, is referred to as a "troll." Perhaps in Iceland a "troll" can be a giant, but in English the word has more often been used for a dwarf. Grendel isn't a dwarf. In the poem you don't see him clearly. He has scales. He's a monster. In the movie he's a big man who babbles incomprehensibly and has big muscles. He's like the Hulk.

It's rather unfortunate that Sarah Polley plays a witch, one who has intercourse literally with both troll and man. Everybody else has some sort of rustic English accent, but she speaks mall American. That doesn't work, and neither does her presence.

In the time of the Angles and the Saxons, the mead hall was a place for carousing, but also a semi holy place. Men got drunk and swore oaths, which they were bound to for life. The mead hall scenes are huge in Beowulf, but they just look like moments from any minor historical mélange here in this movie. Hrothgar's hall's structure is realistically represented from the outside, though.

The snowy Icelandic landscape has an austere beauty that is one of the best things about this movie.

Ingvar Sigurdsson as Grendel is impressive; but it would still be more evocative of the story and the poem not to see him clearly. Gerard Butler is dashing as Beowulf. But the way he talks! Stellan Skarsgård as King Hrothgar appears very beaten down; in the poem he is, indeed, depressed and presumably drunken, but somehow that is nobler in the mind than on the screen.

Whereas there's a lot of history -- epics are repositories of history -- in Beowulf the poem, in the movie things and people aren't explained very much. You get a rough idea, but explanation is almost totally omitted, even though every once in a while somebody in a boat speaks a few lines of poetry carrying the story forwrd.

The music by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson is astonishing and powerful, though it isn't the sad, slow music of the Anglos-Saxon poem. This is of course an action movie. But there isn't quite enough action. It made me think of the wonderful example of dramatic narrative on film, which is so succinct and gripping and atmospheric, and which evokes an archaic time among Scandanavian peoples: Nils Gaup's 1987 Pathfinder/Ofelas, a Norwegian-Finnish production shot in the snow. Smashing. Find it and watch it.

This is a very updated version of the Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf," using contemporary English.This movie still has the mythical, epic qualities of the poem that have inspired readers throughout the ages. In an excellent performance, Gerard Butler effectively captures the conflicted hero Beowulf as he endures the slow erosion of his military code of conduct. Beowulf & Grendel is more than a story of blood and war. Themes of vengeance, loyalty and mercy are powerfully entwined with the beginnings of Christianity in southwest Sweden in 500 AD. Another theme which is explored is human inability to tolerate that which is different. Gerard Butler is extremely effective as Beowulf, but perhaps the best performance in the movie is that delivered by the tempestuous and weirdly beautiful land of Iceland. I think this movie is definitely worth seeing.

My motive for seeing this film was mostly curiosity. I read it long ago (in a past almost as dim and distant as the times of the Geats), as a requirement for Grad English, and I wanted to know what a more modern sensibility would make of it. On the whole, I thought the film-maker was confused by it, and was forced by his twenty-first-century prejudices to turn it into something it wasn't. What he did, in fact, was feminize it.

If this had been the result of real artistic vision, it might have worked, but it wasn't; it was done by the book, in a Sensitivity 101 fashion, and inconsistently, so that the result wasn't either mythic or modern. Or not the way the film-makers hoped, anyway. Instead of being a synthesis, it was an uneasy mix.

Oh, it was moderately entertaining to a modern man and woman, the scenery was magnificent and the cinematography splendid - almost a given, these days. The acting, with one important exception, was very good. I'm glad I saw that and not... what was the other one? Snow dogs in Peril? Oh, 'Eight Below'. 'Beowulf and Grendel' was actually about something, and not just 'based on actual events' - the usual witless excuse for a dull and meandering story.

What was Beowulf about? Originally - think about this - the tellers and hearers of this tale lived the dullest and most dangerous existence possible. They were pioneers, always on the jagged edge of starvation, faced with endless toil and unremitting vigilance, just to survive against an unremittingly hostile environment. They must have longed for a single villain, an enemy they could strike at and defeat, once and for all. Thus, Grendel. Grendel is all their fear and drudgery rolled into one. And Beowulf. He is them, all rolled into one, their collective courage and strength.

It might be possible to adapt this to modern ideals, but it has to be re-imagined, which likely means changing time and place to, let's say, the recent old-west, the populace to sodbusters, the Grendel-menace to an unbeatable black-hat gunslinger and the hero to the man in buckskin. You can't just graft modern attitudes onto ancient warriors and pretend you've done something new and significant.

The addition of the witch, Selma, played by my countrywoman Sarah Polley, is the worst of the modernist grafts. She plays the part almost without affect, as if all her actions were the product of cool rational thought, and didn't matter very much, anyway. I picture the director ranting at her in Icelandic, while a very polite translator murmurs, "more intense, please". I hate to bad-mouth one of the more intelligent actresses of our time, and one most loyal to her Canadian Roots, but she really dropped the ball on this one, and it affects the whole movie's credibility. If she'd been crazier, dirtier, more savage, more a part of the threatening Other, the role might have worked. Since she chose to preserve the proprieties of a modern girl --don't flip out, even when a troll is ravishing you -- she sinks the whole enterprise.

Final comment: handsome, amusing, entertaining, but highly flawed.