Students Be Warned, You Must Still Read the Poem

            English teachers across the nation are all rejoicing after seeing Beowulf in theaters because if any of their students choose to watch the newest take on the old Anglo-Saxon poem instead of actually reading it, they will surely fail the next test. It is true that the newest Beowulf will be of no help to the student who wants to avoid reading the poem that is seemingly omnipresent in high school and college English courses, yet the new Beowulf may serve an ultimately greater purpose: making Beowulf both funny and entertaining.

The newest adaptation of Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis, better known for the Back to the Future Trilogy and Forrest Gump, is at times strange and at times exciting. The adaptation is in no way an appreciation of the dignified meter, rhyme, and storytelling tradition of the Anglo-Saxon language present in Seamus Heaney’s wonderful recent translation of the classic poem, but rather an appreciation of the booze drinking and fighting of the time. The movie is surprising with its gratuitous, and sometimes on the verge of ridiculous, displays of nudity and violence, but all these factors make the movie interesting where the poem lacked excitement.

The unique screenplay of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary is aided by the performance capture system previously used less effectively by Zemeckis in The Polar Express. The system in which actors’ real movements are used to generate life-like animations aids Zemeckis in making some excellent fighting scenes. This new animation process also allowed Zemeckis to create some very cool monsters in Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. Teenagers around the country are praising the new performance-captures system because it allows them to see a practically naked Angelina Jolie in a PG-13 movie. The rating is admittedly a bit startling, yet the producers must be quite pleased with the rating and the money it will generate.

The movie’s screenplay is also greatly aided by the work of wonderful actors Ray Winstone, Crispin Glover, Robin Wright, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, and John Malkovich. Malkovich—like he always seems to—plays a skeptical, villainous character in the king’s aid Unferth.  Jolie also does an incredible job of portraying a totally original character of Gaiman and Avary; Jolie turns Grendel’s monstrous mother from the epic poem into a seductive goddess-like villain who creates a whole new sub-plot in the story. Like with Grendel’s mother, Avary and Gaiman make many connections and sub-plots that are absent from the poem, but they serve to suggest reasons for unexplained occurrences in the poem. The movie’s action and drawn out fight scenes are also aided by a wonderful soundtrack done by Alan Silvestri, who has worked with Zemeckis many times in the past. The Paramount Pictures film had a $150,000,000 budget, and in my opinion should do quite well as long as people want to see funny movies.

Some other critics have dismissed the movie as a gross adaptation of the original, but I think they are entirely missing the point Gaiman and Avary were trying to make: that Beowulf can actually be fun. In her critical review of the movie Beowulf, Manohla Dargis comments that the movie “doesn’t offer much beyond 3D oohs and ahhs, sword clanging and a nicely conceived dragon” (Dargis). However, Daris fails to see the Beowulf as anything more than a phantasmagoric, unfaithful adaptation of the old Danish tale filled with gratuitous violence and sex. Dargis sees the movie as an injustice to the beauty of the original poem’s language and imagination. Yet, as Claudia Puig points out in her review, the unfaithfulness of the screenwriter to the original poem is, “actually a good thing for moviegoers” (Puig). What Dargis misses is that the new Beowulf is actually quite funny and as Puig points out “a lot more fun that the mythic adventure most of us read in school” (Puig). As Roger Ebert says in his review, some of the dialogue is almost Monty-Python like in its hilarity. The movie dazzles and surprises with its intense fighting and performance-capture technology, and sometimes, even often, causes a laugh. Dargis is right that there is myriad gratuitous violence, sex, and nudity but that is what makes the movie ultimately funny and even enjoyable. The movie may not lead to an incredible appreciation of the Anglo-Saxon language that is present in Heaney’s wonderful translation, but it will entertain and maybe even get some kids interested in Beowulf, which can’t be a bad thing. “Either way,” Puig notes, “Having Beowulf become a household name can certainly due to no harm” (Puig). As Ebert says, just enjoy it and “Laugh I tell you, Laugh” (Ebert).