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"I will kill your monst-uh!"
Nov. 14th, 2007 08:28 pmI knew two good things about the movie Beowulf before I saw it. One was that, well, Beowulf, it's a while since I read it, but it's good stuff. And the other was Neil Gaiman: not in the sense that Neil Can Do No Wrong, but his writing is always interesting, entertaining (I found Stardust, for example, pretty fluffy, but it was enjoyable fluff). I knew one bad thing, which was the trailer, but then it's in the nature of trailers to do their utmost to put me off seeing the film, so I took this with a pinch of salt. And I was neutral about the technical aspects of the film; it was made in motion capture, whatever that might be, and the result was that having seen the trailer, I was still taken aback when Gail referred to the film as "animation". I didn't think this was a very big deal - I don't usually rate films on the basis of the special effects.
Well, there's a first time for everything. And Beowulf was the first film I've seen in which the visual effects were the most noticeable aspect, the most important factor in my response to the film, not just at particularly spectacular moments but all the way through. When we talked about this afterwards in the pub, Gavin suggested that the problem was the uncanny valley, that the characters - the human characters, not the monsters - looked real enough that the shortfall, the ways in which they were not quite real, was creepy. Certainly the monsters, the characters which made no pretense of being human, were effective: not so much the dragon but the sea-monsters, and above all Grendel himself, were genuinely monstrous, and I had to look away from the screen during the battles (not least because these made generous use of that old favourite, the injury to the eye motif).
But Grendel's mother was monstrous in a different sense, no sea-monster* but (and if this is a spoiler, I've been spoilered by every bus-shelter in the city) Angelina Jolie, rising from the water wearing nothing but liquid gold, her spherical breasts completely without nipples, and her bare feet high-heeled. This was seriously disturbing (the credits attribute the design of Grendel's mother to John Bolton: what, John Bolton?). Since her role required her to do nothing but look sinister and alluring, this worked adequately.
Similarly, as long as Beowulf has to do nothing but strike heroic attitudes, his performance translates well; if it's a little overstated, well, the role of hero does appear overstated to the modern eye, and there's maybe even a hint that Beowulf himself is aware of this. Despite the title of this post, I didn't mind his accent, nor the fact that Anthony Hopkins' Hrothgar is as much Welsh as Danish (better this than the cute non-specific foreign accents adopted by the women). On the other hand, the lack of subtlety in the facial expressions meant that the exchanges of glances between Beowulf and the young queen, for example, translate as very ham acting indeed. The world in which they lived was not quite real, either: The great golden drinking horn has no weight (and falls to the floor with a tinny clang); the mead that splashes from the barrel is as thin as water; Beowulf hauls himself up from a precipice onto rocks coated with non-slip ice; a bridge is destroyed by fire, but the flames are so unreal that a horse can be ridden through them (or perhaps the fire is real and the horse not - later it is ridden up a spiral staircase). I can't judge the 3D effects, since I didn't see them as they were meant to be seen, but in an ordinary cinema and without special glasses, they were simply distracting: yes, here's a spear hurtling towards us, here are some gold coins falling through the air and now we are about to be crushed beneath the prow of a viking ship, and so what? The effects all shout "Look at me! I'm a 3D effect! Forget about the story and admire me!"
Somewhere in there, there is a story struggling to get out. It's the story of the hero who defeats the monster, and what happens next, it takes the old tale and gives it a twist (not the subtlest twist nor yet the most fully worked out, but then there isn't much room to develop the story, in among all the effects). But there is one magical moment: years after Beowulf's victory, when he is king, married to the beautiful queen, and the fame of his heroism has spread across the world, he sits in his mead-hall on the anniversary of his defeat of Grendel and listens to the story of his mighty deed. Two actors play out the battle, with mime and acrobatics and a curious mask, while the bard recites something in a language I don't understand, but which I'm guessing is the original poem. It's rich and it's real and it is telling a story which is not quite how - according to the film we are watching - things really happened. But the fact that it is the story which is being told at this point explains why it differs from the film's account as it does. I'd have been very happy to watch a film made of moments like that one.
*My mother once wrote an version of Beowulf for performance in the primary school where she taught, in which Grendel's mother had the lines:
Well, there's a first time for everything. And Beowulf was the first film I've seen in which the visual effects were the most noticeable aspect, the most important factor in my response to the film, not just at particularly spectacular moments but all the way through. When we talked about this afterwards in the pub, Gavin suggested that the problem was the uncanny valley, that the characters - the human characters, not the monsters - looked real enough that the shortfall, the ways in which they were not quite real, was creepy. Certainly the monsters, the characters which made no pretense of being human, were effective: not so much the dragon but the sea-monsters, and above all Grendel himself, were genuinely monstrous, and I had to look away from the screen during the battles (not least because these made generous use of that old favourite, the injury to the eye motif).
But Grendel's mother was monstrous in a different sense, no sea-monster* but (and if this is a spoiler, I've been spoilered by every bus-shelter in the city) Angelina Jolie, rising from the water wearing nothing but liquid gold, her spherical breasts completely without nipples, and her bare feet high-heeled. This was seriously disturbing (the credits attribute the design of Grendel's mother to John Bolton: what, John Bolton?). Since her role required her to do nothing but look sinister and alluring, this worked adequately.
Similarly, as long as Beowulf has to do nothing but strike heroic attitudes, his performance translates well; if it's a little overstated, well, the role of hero does appear overstated to the modern eye, and there's maybe even a hint that Beowulf himself is aware of this. Despite the title of this post, I didn't mind his accent, nor the fact that Anthony Hopkins' Hrothgar is as much Welsh as Danish (better this than the cute non-specific foreign accents adopted by the women). On the other hand, the lack of subtlety in the facial expressions meant that the exchanges of glances between Beowulf and the young queen, for example, translate as very ham acting indeed. The world in which they lived was not quite real, either: The great golden drinking horn has no weight (and falls to the floor with a tinny clang); the mead that splashes from the barrel is as thin as water; Beowulf hauls himself up from a precipice onto rocks coated with non-slip ice; a bridge is destroyed by fire, but the flames are so unreal that a horse can be ridden through them (or perhaps the fire is real and the horse not - later it is ridden up a spiral staircase). I can't judge the 3D effects, since I didn't see them as they were meant to be seen, but in an ordinary cinema and without special glasses, they were simply distracting: yes, here's a spear hurtling towards us, here are some gold coins falling through the air and now we are about to be crushed beneath the prow of a viking ship, and so what? The effects all shout "Look at me! I'm a 3D effect! Forget about the story and admire me!"
Somewhere in there, there is a story struggling to get out. It's the story of the hero who defeats the monster, and what happens next, it takes the old tale and gives it a twist (not the subtlest twist nor yet the most fully worked out, but then there isn't much room to develop the story, in among all the effects). But there is one magical moment: years after Beowulf's victory, when he is king, married to the beautiful queen, and the fame of his heroism has spread across the world, he sits in his mead-hall on the anniversary of his defeat of Grendel and listens to the story of his mighty deed. Two actors play out the battle, with mime and acrobatics and a curious mask, while the bard recites something in a language I don't understand, but which I'm guessing is the original poem. It's rich and it's real and it is telling a story which is not quite how - according to the film we are watching - things really happened. But the fact that it is the story which is being told at this point explains why it differs from the film's account as it does. I'd have been very happy to watch a film made of moments like that one.
*My mother once wrote an version of Beowulf for performance in the primary school where she taught, in which Grendel's mother had the lines:
"Here come I, old Grendel's mum
Full of soldier is my tum!"
