A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Beowulf (2007)

Date Viewed: 11/18/07

Details:

Ray Winstone (Beowulf)

Brendan Gleeson (Wiglaf)

Anthony Hopkins (Hrothgar)

Robin Wright Penn (Wealthow)

John Malkovich (Unferth)

Crispin Glover (Grendel)

Angelina Jolie (Grendel's Mother)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay: Neil Gaiman & Roger Avary

Score: Alan Silvestri

Score: 0

The Review: The OE ballad channeled by Neil Gaiman and stiffly animated by motion capture -- but hell, at least it permits casting a dragon.

This tale has tireless feet; it's been used and reused by many -- from John Gardner (Grendel, from the monster's viewpoint), to Samuel Delany (Dhalgren, as science fiction metaphor). Curiously, this is the second time Gaiman has used this particular material -- see the story "Monarch of the Glen" in his recent collection Fragile Things; his narration of the book-on-CD version is quite effective.

Motion capture mostly, but there are occasions when the detail and facial expression imply that some live transformations might have been employed: some of the close-ups of both Hopkins and Winstone are incredibly realistic. To rate this level of technology, this movie deserves at least a 1/2 or 3/4 -- but as overall entertainment, I'm a bit less impressed. The people are OK, but they vary widely in their expressiveness. This is likely not just good acting (to keep a face so devoid of affect as to be flat) but lack of time to improve the on-screen characters beyond a few leads. However, the horses and their gait are much less persuasive -- almost caricatures. But whoever they got to track the dragon did an excellent job!

Ignoring the medium, this has an all-star cast, and many of the performances are reasonable. It's not Anthony Hopkins' finest hour, but Malkovich is appropriately slimy as Unferth and Glover offers up a good turn with Grendel himself. As for the decidedly non-canonical interpretation of Grendel's mother (Jolie), she appears as outright adolescent male fantasy (high-heeled feet?! -- give me a break!) and an excellent advertisement for antigravity (golden globes, indeed!). Robin Wright (Penn) gets a promotion from Princess Buttercup (Princess Bride, 1987) to Queen Wealthow, although she loses much of her beauty and attitude to a computational lobotomy.

In a clever touch, during the play within a play (narration of the exploits of Beowulf and Grendel earlier in the adventure), it seems like actual Old English dialog from the original prose poem. Cool!

Interesting score from Alan Silvestri.

(18-Nov-07)

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