The film: a boost for Beowulf
Last Friday, I went to see Robert Zemeckis’ film Beowulf. As was to be expected, I found the director and writers had taken quite a few liberties with the source material, in particular by introducing sex as a powerful motive - as anyone who has read the poem can testify, sex is so conspicuously absent as to make one wonder automatically what was going on. Germanic legends as a rule had no difficulties in discussing sexual matters and using sex as a steering power for men and women alike.
Overall, I must say I found the film disappointing. I would say that though. In my opinion, the film lacks that element of almost haughty melancholy and raw power exuded by the poem. It explains too much, is much too eager to have all the strands meet at the end. The mystery is gone.
As an action / fantasy film, it is not bad, though. I’m not too familiar with the genre of fantasy - never liked Tolkien, I’m not ashamed to admit - but the films I have seen in the genre are usually infested with magic and insufferably good elves / people, and both are missing from Beowulf the film.
One very good point about the film is that it boosts interest for the poem Beowulf, and for John Gardner’s Grendel. I cannot stress enough that I believe Grendel is one of the best post-modern works of fiction ever written. It deserves to be read, even by those who do not care for Old English poetry. But it had been out of print for quite a while. Today, I received an email from Amazon urging me to purchase ‘the books from the films’, and there, to my surprise and joy, were both a dual-language edition of Beowulf and the reappearance of a 1989 edition of Grendel. At all interested? You can view an excerpt of the book on http://www.amazon.com/Grendel-John-Gardner/dp/0679723110/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196022137&sr=1-2
Thank you, mr. Zemeckis!
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