Back to Beowulf
Jan. 14th, 2008 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustSeeing Beowulf the movie made me want to reread the poem*. I had some very specific questions: Is the story really set in Denmark? Is there any basis for the film's depiction of Unferth as the only Christian at the court, and a sort of Wormtongue? Did Beowulf and his men really arrive at Hrothgar's hall mounted on horses they had brought with them in their ship? Answers: yes, no, and no.
Despite this preponderance of nos, I was struck by how closely the filmscript followed the original. Closely rather than faithfully; it presented the outline of the story, and offered an alternative interpretation, so that although comparing a film to the book it adapts is usually unfair to the film, on this occasion it made me aware of the cleverness of the script. It's a particular kind of cleverness, the cleverness of fanfic, spinning a story to match the teller's preoccupations out of material that is not either latent in the text, or simply consistent with it. Yes, it's Beowulf / Grendel's Mother slash. The scene which charmed me in the film, which demonstrated how the familiar story could be the public version of the events whose hidden underside was revealed in the film; refreshing my memory of the poem made me still more aware of its ingenuity.
Except that rereading the poem also reminded me how far its world was from the society depicted in the film. Society is scarcely the word for Hrothgar's court, a rugby club celebration awash with mead and raucous songs, presided over by a king too drunk even to keep his clothes on. How unlike the home life of the Danes of the poem, entertained in the mead hall Heorot by a bard singing the Biblical account of the creation! From this beginning, the two diverge: the film shows a handful of warriors in a wasteland of ice, while the poem emphasises the webs of kinship and obligation that connect every character who appears with each other and with a wider circle who do not appear but whose names are mentioned. Treasure is important, not as riches, or beauty, or a path to power, but as something to be given and received, the physical sign of the bond between the king and his men.
Weapons, in particular, are also a link between the past and the present, valued for their workmanship but also for the valiant men who have owned them in the past, the feats they have accomplished. When Unferth lends Beowulf the sword Hrunting (a scene so incongruous in the film, with its hostile characterisation of Unferth, that it had to be an authentic trace of the original), it is described as "one of the finest of heirlooms", which "...had not failed / any of those men who had held it in their hands".**
The film, in short, presents an image of the Dark Ages, the long northern winter nights illuminated only by fire and the barbarian splendour of gold, and uses it as a backdrop for an interpretation of the story in line with modern preoccupations. The poem, written some thousand years earlier, depicts a society of warriors held in equilibrium by their interdependency, who battle monsters but celebrate their victory with dignity and ceremonial.
One final surprise in this re-reading: I was convinced that my copy of Beowulf had illustrations by Charles Keeping, but no, they are by Virgil Burnett. This page shows both, and some others.
*It hasn't taken me this long to read it, it's the backlog in the writing up that needs to be cleared.
** Kevin Crossley-Holland's translation.
Despite this preponderance of nos, I was struck by how closely the filmscript followed the original. Closely rather than faithfully; it presented the outline of the story, and offered an alternative interpretation, so that although comparing a film to the book it adapts is usually unfair to the film, on this occasion it made me aware of the cleverness of the script. It's a particular kind of cleverness, the cleverness of fanfic, spinning a story to match the teller's preoccupations out of material that is not either latent in the text, or simply consistent with it. Yes, it's Beowulf / Grendel's Mother slash. The scene which charmed me in the film, which demonstrated how the familiar story could be the public version of the events whose hidden underside was revealed in the film; refreshing my memory of the poem made me still more aware of its ingenuity.
Except that rereading the poem also reminded me how far its world was from the society depicted in the film. Society is scarcely the word for Hrothgar's court, a rugby club celebration awash with mead and raucous songs, presided over by a king too drunk even to keep his clothes on. How unlike the home life of the Danes of the poem, entertained in the mead hall Heorot by a bard singing the Biblical account of the creation! From this beginning, the two diverge: the film shows a handful of warriors in a wasteland of ice, while the poem emphasises the webs of kinship and obligation that connect every character who appears with each other and with a wider circle who do not appear but whose names are mentioned. Treasure is important, not as riches, or beauty, or a path to power, but as something to be given and received, the physical sign of the bond between the king and his men.
Weapons, in particular, are also a link between the past and the present, valued for their workmanship but also for the valiant men who have owned them in the past, the feats they have accomplished. When Unferth lends Beowulf the sword Hrunting (a scene so incongruous in the film, with its hostile characterisation of Unferth, that it had to be an authentic trace of the original), it is described as "one of the finest of heirlooms", which "...had not failed / any of those men who had held it in their hands".**
The film, in short, presents an image of the Dark Ages, the long northern winter nights illuminated only by fire and the barbarian splendour of gold, and uses it as a backdrop for an interpretation of the story in line with modern preoccupations. The poem, written some thousand years earlier, depicts a society of warriors held in equilibrium by their interdependency, who battle monsters but celebrate their victory with dignity and ceremonial.
One final surprise in this re-reading: I was convinced that my copy of Beowulf had illustrations by Charles Keeping, but no, they are by Virgil Burnett. This page shows both, and some others.
*It hasn't taken me this long to read it, it's the backlog in the writing up that needs to be cleared.
** Kevin Crossley-Holland's translation.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 06:16 am (UTC)The script imposed plot, which the poem does not have. It has "story" which is not quite the same thing. It also imposed a classic tragic structure (which I suspect was Gaiman's contribution.)
(Oh cripes, I've volunteered for the book to film adaption panel at Orbital, and this is gonna come up, I can feel it right now. I admire this script, and I am not going to be popular.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 11:34 am (UTC)