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film: Beowulf
director: Robert Zemeckis
cast: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie
Paramount Pictures / 2007
score: 67
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by Kaare Kvenild
Robert Zemeckis returns to motion-capture filmmaking, which he made famous with his last film, The Polar Express (2004). This time he tackles what is regarded as the oldest English Language poem every discovered in Beowulf. Joining Zemeckis on this ride is Ray Winstone as Beowulf, Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's Mother. The epic story of Beowulf centers on a small Danish kingdom in the year 507 A.D. The kingdom is being terrorized by the beast, Grendel (Crispin Glover) who has a lasting hatred of the kingdom. Hrothgar sends out the call to anybody who can kill the beast. When Beowulf and his warrior band come to the kingdom, Beowulf declares, "I've come to kill your monster," and kill him Beowulf does. Once Beowulf finishes his ordeals with Grendel, he must deal with Grendel's demon mother (Jolie).
This begins a great adventure, but it also begins a great tragedy. Beowulf is a mixed bag of emotions and feelings. It is a rousing epic, and a heart-breaking tragedy all at the same time. It will also leave the viewer with mixed feelings. One has to admire Beowulf; there has never been a film that looked like this. Visually it is one of the most amazing films of 2007, rivaled only by 300. The actors in the film cannot simply be called voice actors; they are so much more. In most every scene, when you see a character move, you are watching the actual actor's movement. That is the inventiveness of motion-capture filmmaking, a process that animates around the actual actors every movement. The actors really gave great all-around performances that had to be immensely challenging to give.
On the down side, the film lacks in the creative department. The story is especially disappointing as Zemeckis and the writing team (Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery) too often drifted away from the original work. For example, they almost completely took out the religious aspects of "Beowulf." In the epic poem, the Danes have recently embraced Christianity, and they look not only to their known pagan gods, but also to the Christian God for help with Grendel. In the film, their dependence lies only with the pagan Norse gods. The only exception is that of character Unferth (John Malkovich), who fully embraces the Christian God. There are many examples of this throughout the film, and anyone familiar with the poem will notice these things and resent the movie for leaving them out. All in all, I would say see this movie under two conditions: either wait for DVD or see it Imax 3-D. Seeing it in Imax 3-D is a lot of fun, otherwise, wait for the DVD.
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