Product: Beowulf (1999)
Rating: 2.0
What a waste!
Here is a film about one great story of the European cultural heritage, and with an actor (Christopher Lambert) that excels in that kind (he was great in the movies Highlander.) I had high expectations, and as the movie is very disappointing I can not give it more than 2 stars. The dialogues are poor, there is no depth anywhere in the film, the music is awfully terrible and ugly (pop / techno...), the ugly fighters (their look, etc.) do not belong to the dark ages or the Medieval times but to Mad Max, the castle (seen on the skyline) looks like a crazy, top-down castle (should I say postmodern, or à la Picasso?) the mother of the monster really acts like a porn-star (I really thought I was watching a porn-movie during the sex sequences), etc. all cheap stuff poorly combined together.And the mythic, religious, metaphysical dimension of the tale is not explored, not given any depth in the film. Think by contrast of the richness with which John Boorman expresses the pagan worldview in Excalibur (e. g. when Arthur sees insects moving on the earth while Merlin sleeps, etc. to illustrate the pagan view that the Earth has a soul) (and Excalibur had gorgious music, Wagner and Orff's Carmina Burana, etc.) By contrast to Excalibur, the materialist version of the Arthurian legend (the one featuring Sean Connery, I even forgot the name of the movie) is very poor, no match. But here we have the opposite : the mythical version (Beowulf), which should have been very rich, is much below the materialist version, Crichton's The 13th Warrior, (where the monster turns out to be no monster, but man-made) which, inspite of its poor editing, is still much more enjoyable (but also bloody) than Beowulf.And I even much prefer Disney's great viking movie for children, Stevenson's The Island at the Top of the World to a film like this Beowulf. Do not expect here more than one of those (cheap) B-movies that feature a monster, or you may be very disappointed as I am. I hope someone will attempt someday to make another film that will do justice to the tale.