Creative but unfaithful

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2009)

Beowulf is a magical piece of literature. And it's a good idea to keep some of the Anglo-Saxon original text. The director tries all he can to make the setting and costumes and psyche of these people realistic for the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ when Denmark was still believing in the Nordic Gods, Odin first of all, and before the arrival of Christianity at the beginning, after its arrival at the end. Interesting too to change the tale slightly to make the two half into one logic, the second half being the sequence of the first. Interesting too to use the magic of these old days and hence have some supernatural beings and events. It is true Grendel, his mother and the dragon were supernatural alright. But instead of making explicit the references to the giants and pre-human species surviving in total exclusion, instead of making explicit the reference to the runes brought to human beings by Odin himself, the director chooses a sexual line, from beginning to end. Then the monster is the son of the local Danish king and the mother who does not have a name but is a gorgeous woman disguising some kind of witch, a sorceress who has little difficulty mesmerizing the local king with promises of power into providing her with a son who will eventually be the scourge of the country and will have to be killed. Hence Grendel is the "son" of the local king when Beowulf arrives in Denmark and the dragon will be the "son" of Beowulf himself. He will kill Grendel, then tame the mother by giving her a son, and finally kill that very son, the dragon. This addition kills something in the tale. Beowulf is the obvious Christianization of traditional Nordic tales and sagas in Anglo-Saxon territory in the seventh to ninth centuries. This is present in the film, but the sexual dimension of these monsters goes against this Christianization since it states that every generation will have to live under the menace of a monster produced by the fornication of the previous king with the supernatural woman, as if such pagan facts could survive in front of the Christian faith. This rewriting of the tale is thus for a modern audience, what's more for a young audience. This is quite clear in the electronic and computer game conception of the fights. And this young audience does not care for all these religious things, including Christianity, and they can very easily imagine Christ having dinner with a dragon and being served by some unicorn. Dropping that dimension of believing and even faith that the saga originally had transforms the story into some kind of post-modern fantasy for a world that does not believe in anything and where believing has been transformed into some kind of personal private matter whereas it was a public communion with the whole society through its common rites and fears and hopes. Then the end of the film is the promise of a third monster, whereas the end of the saga was a final stop to the existence of all monsters.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID