Beowulf

[rating:4]
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich

You remember that movie where a grotesque computer animation of Tom Hanks is, like, ticket collector on Santa’s choo-choo train? Yeah, I didn’t see that either. The reason I didn’t see it is because while it was clearly meant to be heartwarming holiday fare, the characters were all animated in an excruciatingly near-realistic manner that rendered them more disturbing to look at than those Disneyland mannequin horrors.

Robert Zemeckis’ new film, Beowulf, is roughly the same kind of animation. It’s set somewhere in Denmark in the year 507, and I’m pretty sure the place’s name would translate as Uncanny Valley. You really have to overcome the not-quite-ness of the characters to enjoy this movie, and it’s a huge leap to make. The good news is that, thanks to Zemeckis’ no-holds-barred direction and a daring script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, viewers should be able to cross that valley and enjoy the hell out of the two-hour experience.

Zemeckis (who also directed that CG Christmas film, along with Cast Away, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, What Lies Beneath …) makes the most out of abandoning live action. The “camera” whips around in ways no actual camera could; action is breathtakingly intense; some sets, such as the exteriors during the dragon battle and the gold-strewn interior of the monsters’ cave, are stunning. His inhuman characters, the dragon and the initial monster, Grendel, are like nothing you’ve seen before—magnificently disturbing. That’s what makes the film overcome the drawbacks of the animation: It moves so wildly, so quickly, and especially in 3D, it is so entrancing, that you rarely have time to ponder how creepy everyone’s skin and eyes are.

In the original, Beowulf is a weird story. A Danish kingdom parties too loud, so an vaguely described horror comes out and routinely kills people. Many a hero dies facing the monster, we’re told, but then Beowulf arrives and wins the day. Then he slays the creature’s mother, a similar monstrosity. All hail Beowulf. Flash 50 years forward, after he’s been one hell of a king back home (’round-abouts Sweden), a dragon menaces his kingdom, he goes to fight it, his chicken-shit men abandon him, and Beowulf dies in the act of singlehandedly slaying the monster. A heroic age ends with a Viking funeral, and now off to bed with you.

The thing lacks a lot of what we like in a modern story. Character development, a complex villain, a love interest, a satisfying narrative arc—that sort of thing. In the hands of a storyteller like Gaiman, it was pretty well guaranteed that the changes needed to make the film palatable to modern audiences would be good ones, and we’d get a retelling for the ages. What’s surprising is how Gaiman and Avary do it: They barely change a damned thing.

The writers do expand on some obvious but unasked questions the narrative raises, and take absolute liberties with the character of the mother—it’s no spoiler at this point to reveal that the original tale’s savage and beastly mother is mostly rendered here as a supremely gorgeous and fairly naked woman modeled after voice actress Angelina Jolie. They also keep all the action in Denmark in a way that’s satisfying and helps unify the two halves of the story. But for all that, they keep to the tone of the epic poem in a way that’s really brave.

The source material is full of boasting and machismo, and the era and context are certainly not the sort that today’s audiences find palatable. One might’ve expected this film—rated PG-13, no less—to recreate sixth-century Denmark the way Disney reproduces pirates: They’re wacky rapscallions, and on the theme park ride, you see them chasing women, but you don’t see the women being, you know, raped and murdered and raped. This Beowulf gives us loutish heroes that probably wouldn’t be likable to anyone outside a college fraternity. No mascara’d Johnny Depp to soften the historic ruthlessness here. As a result, the film feels like a window into a lost culture, instead of a half-assed, anachronistic reflection of our own.*

Where the writers’ initiative is most clearly felt is in the twists that derive from having Angelina Jolie as the monster’s mother. They add depth and logic to the original story in a way that, as the film suggests, makes it feel as though what we’re seeing is the true story behind the corrupted 11th century poem that has been handed down to us. This is Gaiman’s third film, behind the bizarre original fairy tale MirrorMask and last summer’s top-notch adaptation of his enchanting Stardust (he also crafted a brilliant English adaptation to Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke). Being a largely faithful retelling of an ancient tale, done in collaboration no less, this film feels the least Gaimanesque, but continues an unbroken streak of compellingly crafted entertainments.

The actors are, for the most part, fun. It’s a very shouty movie, and if you liked the bravado of Gerard Butler’s Leonidas in 300 (“We! Are! Spartans!” … “Hey! Who! Ate! My! Sandwich!?!” … “Anyone! Got! Change! For! A dollar!?!”), but wish that film had had any awareness of how goofily overblown it was, you’ll love watching Ray Winstone chew the digital scenery as Beowulf. If there were a drinking game where you dropped a shot every time Winstone shouts “Beowulf!” or “I! Am! Beowulf!” there’d be fatalities before the third act. The film lets us laugh at it in a number of places. The original poem says Beowulf fights Grendel buck naked, and so does our animated hero. Austin Powers-ish staging, and flat-out cheating, hides the hero’s naughty bits, but there’s humor in it all.

The women in the film are the least canny, if you will. Of significance are the queen, a serving girl named Ursula and Jolie’s shapeshifting monster mom. The first two generally appear in quieter scenes, and their emoting is cooly remote due to the computer graphics. Jolie’s babe of a monster (her digital avatar is naked but for the magic equivalent of gold latex paint) is meant to be jaw-droppingly sexy, and she is, but you can never quite surrender to the effect. Nonetheless, the film is a noble experiment, and a successful one in which the triple-threat of brilliant writing, dazzling direction and a great voice cast overcome all other limitations for anyone with the imagination to give themselves over to a wild, heroic, visionary tale.

* For the record, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride is Disneyland’s best (rivaled only by the Haunted Mansion). Feel free to substitute “romanticized” for “half-assed, anachronistic.”

Tags: angelina jolie, fantasy, neil gaiman