Beowulf & Grendel
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| Beowulf & Grendel | |
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| Directed by | Sturla Gunnarsson |
| Written by | Andrew Rai Berzins |
| Starring | Gerard Butler Stellan Skarsgård Sarah Polley Ingvar E. Sigurdsson Eddie Marsan |
| Music by | Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson |
| Cinematography | Jan Kiesser |
| Editing by | Jeff Warren |
| Distributed by | Truly Indie |
| Release date(s) |  Sept. 14, 2005 January 6, 2006 |
| Running time | 102 min. |
| Country | Canada Iceland UK |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Beowulf & Grendel is a 2005 movie adaptation of the Old English epic Beowulf; filmed in Iceland and directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, it stars Gerard Butler as Beowulf, Stellan Skarsgard as Hrothgar, Ingvar Sigurdsson as Grendel and Sarah Polley as the witch Selma.
The film is a cooperative effort between Eurasia Motion Pictures (Canada) Spice Factory (UK), and Bjolfskvida (Iceland). The screenplay was written by Andrew Rai Berzins. The soundtrack was composed by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.
The story takes place sometime during the early half of the sixth century A.D. in what is now Denmark, but the filming of the movie in Iceland provided many panoramic views of that country's unique landscape.
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[edit] Plot synopsis
Hrothgar, king of Daneland, and a group of mounted and helmeted warriors chase a large and burly man, whom they consider a monstrous troll, and his young son across a large open field until father and son find themselves on the edge of deep cliff overlooking a beach and a large sea. The father directs his young son, Grendel, to climb down and hide from the attackers' view. The Danes shoot the father dead with their arrows and his dead body plunges down onto the beach far below. The Danish king walks towards the cliff edge and sees the young Grendel hanging but chooses to spare him. Later, Grendel is on the beach below and finds his father's body. After failing to move the large and heavy corpse, the boy takes a sword and cuts the head off to take it home.
Many years later, the severed (and mummified) head is inside a cave where the boy Grendel has grown up to be as large and burly as his father. Grendel bloodies his own forehead with stones to express his vengeful anger towards the Danes and the beginning of his own murdeous campaign of revenge.
When Hrothgar finds twenty of his warriors killed inside his great hall, the Danish king falls into a depression. Beowulf, with the permission of Hygelac, king of Geatland, sails to Daneland with thirteen Geats on a mission to slay Grendel for Hrothgar.
The arrival of Beowulf and his warriors is welcomed by Hrothgar, but the king's village has fallen into a deep despair and many of the pagan villagers convert to Christianity at the urging of an Irish monk. While Grendel does go into Hrothgar's village during the night, he flees rather than fight.
Beowulf learns more about Grendel from Selma the witch and seer, who tells Beowulf that Grendel will not fight him because Beowulf has committed no wrong against him. When Beowulf and his men locate Grendel's secret cave, with the aid of a Christianized villager who no longer fears inciting Grendel's anger, they find Grendel absent but one of Beowulf's men nonetheless smashes the mummified head of Grendel's slain father. Later, the villager who had led Beowulf and his party into the cave is found dead.
In revealing more about Grendel's nature, Selma recounts how Grendel had once visited Selma's hut and clumsily raped her and has protected her since that day, troubling Beowulf all the more.
Hrothgar admits to Beowulf that he had killed Grendel's father for stealing a fish but had spared the child-troll Grendel out of pity. That night, Grendel attacks Beowulf and his men while they sleep in Hrothgar's great hall, killing the Geat who destroyed his father's severed head and then attempts to escape. But Beowulf, who has set a trap using a pulley and rope, manages to capture the monster, now suspended above the ground by his right arm. Grendel escapes by hacking off the ensnared arm. The troll, bleeding severely, manages to reach the same beach where he had once found his father's slain corpse and wades into the water, where he dies, his body claimed by a mysterious webbed hand.
There is great celebration in the hall of Hrothgar, and the king's mood has been livened up by the defeat of Grendel, whose severed arm is kept by the Danes as a trophy. However, the Danes are later attacked by Grendel's mother, the Sea Hag. Beowulf finds her lair, where she placed Grendel's dead body along with a pile of treasure, and slays Grendel's mother with a sword from this pile. Beowulf realizes the battle has been watched by a strange young boy, obviously Grendel's son from the mating with Selma. The boy raises his own sword but Beowulf chooses to end the conflict and not slay him.
Beowulf, with Grendel's son watching from the shelter of the rocks, buries Grendel and builds him a marker, honouring him. Shortly thereafter, Beowulf and his band of Geats leave Daneland by ship but not before warning Selma that she must continue to hide her son, lest the Danes hunt him down as they did his father.
[edit] Themes
As alluded to in the title, the movie is a retelling of the first two thirds of the heroic poem, the killing of Grendel and his mother, leaving out the dragon episode and the death of Beowulf.
The moral outlook is significantly changed by making Beowulf an unwilling agent in a killing that he comes to regard as unjust, but nevertheless accepts as his duty. Although the poem does provide a motivation for Grendel's evil deeds, his resentment at being an outcast from human society, the movie's plot reinforces the element of Grendel as a tragic figure rather than merely a monster. Grendel acts in retaliation of a wrong done to him, while still observing an ethical code, in killing only Danish warriors, not women and children, and not the Dane who, although he killed his father, had spared his own life. As Beowulf gains insight into Grendel's motivation, he comes to deeply regret the need to destroy him, and yet accepts it as something that must be done (wyrd).
Another theme of the film is the element of Christianity appearing on the Germanic pagan cultural horizon. The presence of the Irish missionary has no counterpart in the poem, but does echo the Christian imagery employed by the poet which gives the purely pagan epic a Christian frame or background. Terrorized by Grendel, the people of the village turn away from their Norse gods and turn instead to the Christian God. This is epitomized by the cripple who was afraid to reveal the location of Grendel's cave, but who after baptism loses his fear of death and chooses to help the Geats.
Towards the end of the film, when the King and Beowulf argue the good of the Danes' conversion to Christ, the King points out that the Christians promise heaven. He asks Beowulf if he worries where he is going after his death who in classical Norse pagan stoicism says he'll likely go "where he’s sent".
[edit] Reception
The film received generally mixed and average reviews from professional critics; it scored 53% at Metacritic and 48% at Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics praised the film's cinematography, its brutal action sequences, and aspects of its revisionist script, but criticised the dialogue and some of the acting.
William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes, "The film's near-fatal flaw is its dialogue, which had to be invented wholesale from the Old English text. It alternates between sounding stagy and anachronistically hip -- with more overuse of the F-word than any two Samuel L. Jackson movies. It's a big mistake." Nevertheless, Arnold eventually recommends the film for "keeping its strain of rowdiness and violence in control, and lending the tale the kind of somber respect filmmakers tend to give adaptations of Shakespeare and Dickens."[1]
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly commends director Gunnarsson for his "[focus] on the more interesting psychology of tribalism."[2] Bill Gallo of Village Voice writes, "It's good, bloody fun that stirs the intellect whenever it feels like it, and as a swashbuckler, the dead-game Butler outswings just about anyone in Troy or Kingdom of Heaven or Tristan & Isolde."[3]
The film has at least one major champion in Danél Griffin of Film as Art (for University of Alaska Southeast), who claims it "exists on the same plain of unadulterated genius as other mad, operatic visions like Stroheim’s Greed, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America." He hails the film for its reinterpretation of the poem as "a study of [the]sharp contrast [between] our ego-inflated perception versus the more humbling reality of our existence. ... Gunnarsson and Berzins’ ultimate conclusion is that we are creatures of the world, not creatures above or below it, and for all of our theology and philosophy and courage and civility, there is Grendel’s severed arm nailed to our castle, and this trophy makes us feel good about ourselves. Its gory depravity representing our feelings of triumph transforms into one of the most revealing metaphors in all of literature."[4]
Other critics are less forgiving. Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle says, "Imagine the worst "Deadwood" episode ever, and you'll get an idea of the general tone of Beowulf & Grendel, which is full of anachronistic cursing, tortured syntax, dark humor and lots of hairy, homely, filthy-looking people. The filmmakers get their point across in about 30 minutes, leaving 70 more for severed heads and period charm. There's no charm."[5] Todd McCarthy of Variety (magazine) agrees, writing, "Director Sturla Gunnarsson seems aware of the savagery intrinsic to the story, but is unable to mine it deeply, proving too genteel in the end to make a genuinely creepy or disturbing film."[6] Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail concludes, "The movie is a lumbering and ludicrous mess."[7]
[edit] References
- ^ Seattle Post-Intelligencer (June 16, 2006) "Potty-mouthed dialogue mars scenically stunning 'Beowulf & Grendel'" by William Arnold
- ^ Entertainment Weekly (July 12, 2006) "Beowulf & Grendel" by Lisa Schwarzbaum
- ^ Village Voice (July 5, 2006) "The Blood of a Poem Icelandic director gives Beowulf the Monty Python treatment" by Bill Gallo
- ^ Film As Art, University of Alaska Southeast (October, 2006) "Review of 'Beowulf & Grendel'" by Danél Griffin
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle (June 30, 2006) "Beowulf meets girl; girl meets troll. Eeew." by Mike LaSalle
- ^ Variety (magazine) (October 12, 2005) "Review of 'Beowulf & Grendel" by Todd McCarthy
- ^ The Globe and Mail (March 10, 2006) "Review of 'Beowulf & Grendel'" by Liam Lacey
[edit] Cast
Gerard Butler - Beowulf
Stellan Skarsgard - Hrothgar
Sarah Polley - Selma
Ingvar Sigurdsson - Grendel
Tony Curran - Hondscioh
Steinunn Olina - Queen Wealhtheow
[edit] External links
 Cinema of Iceland |
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