Beautiful but Flawed

Rating: 4/10 (24 January 2008)

Visually this film is stunning. More than once I had to remind myself that what I was looking at was not real actors caught on film but a CGI interpretation. It's difficult to purvey this feeling as either a negative or a positive one: on the one hand I cannot see the point in producing CGI if what the filmmaker's goal is realism of reality. CGI in film is of course appropriate when trying to achieve fantastical creatures and set pieces (which are of course inherently unrealistic) but in Beowulf each actor's face, verbal, and non-verbal performance are recreated in CGI verbatim. This I cannot fathom  why recreate what is already there, in the flesh and far more believable? On the other hand there is a sense of true wonder when in a handful of scenes you are genuinely fooled into thinking that what you are looking at is not CGI, but live action film. You are left with no choice but to marvel at the technical and artistic achievements. However, the illusion is inevitably shattered when you begin to pick up on some of the unrealistic lighting, dodgy physics and for some reason: gesticulation (wooden puppets spring to mind). It's really hard to understand what was being attempted with this film: genuine realism (then why recreate the actors in CGI?), complete fantasy immersion (then why are some scenes so tangible?), or (as I suspect) purely an exercise in what is possible with modern CGI.
The pace of the story itself is about right with a good balance of character development and plot enhancement. Anthony Hopkins puts in a decent performance as Hrothgar and John Malkovich as Unferth is suitably sinister. Ray Winstone is, well, Ray (WYSIWYG) Winstone. Angelina Jolie makes a brief and scantily-clad appearance as Grendel's Mother although at times I found it very difficult understanding the dialogue between Grendel (Crispin Glover) and Grendel's Mother due to some very obscure accents. It's difficult to discredit the physical acting because although it is clear that the original actors did perform physically I suspect that much was lost in the CGI transformation.
Unfortunately this movie's biggest flaw is the story itself. I appreciate that when interpreting the written media to film some degree of poetic licence is required, but why do so many filmmakers blatantly disregard original source material unnecessarily? Beowulf does present the key protagonists, and the first half of the film is fairly accurate but the second half is wildly aloof in its interpretation of the original text.
That said, overall the film is beautiful and should be applauded for what has been achieved but for the time being you are left feeling that this technique of story telling should be confined to games. Incidentally, I felt the same about The Polar Express, although that film was aimed at a far less mature audienceor was it?