Beowulf (2007)

 

There have been a number of film adaptations of the story of Beowulf, and it’s not hard to see why.  It’s not only the first written English story, it’s a compelling story about heroism, sacrifice, and the battle against evil.  It also gives a film great excuses to put all kinds of cool monsters on the screen.  So I thought I would spend some time this year reviewing all the versions I can get my hands on.  I already did The 13th Warrior some time ago, so I will kick off here with what I think is the very worst version ever done: the 2007 disaster directed by Robert Zemeckis.

The first thing to really deal with is how much talent there is involved in this movie, and how it was all so deliberately and criminally wasted.  Ray Winstone is not exactly A-List, but at the time he was on a high, having starred in movies like King Arthur and Cold Mountain.  There was a feeling that he was on his way up, rather than what ended up happening, which was his sidestep into character acting, where he has remained.  You also have Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Brendan Gleeson, and Robin Wright among others.  Many of these actors (like Jolie and Malkovich) were such hot properties at the time they bordered on radioactive, so it remains even more mystifying how they ended up in this turd.

The biggest misstep is Zemeckis’s decision to render this all in CG, using the motion-capture technology he’d pioneered in Polar Express a few years earlier, which I think we can all agree looks like ass.  There were people impressed by it then, but oh boy it has not aged well, and it makes this movie look like a video game cutscene on a PS2.  Zemeckis is an odd filmmaker, with genuinely good work in his resume, like the Back to the Future trilogy and Romancing the Stone.  But he is too-often seduced by the lure of fancy technology, producing showy but empty crap like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and Contact.

The other mistakes made here are legion, and more than a little ridiculous.  The look of Beowulf himself is supposed to be based on Jesus – no I am not kidding about that.  Why Jesus would look like a towering Viking warrior is not explained, but I would guess the reason rhymes with “shmacism”.  The characters all look like they have been glazed over with some kind of putty, and the artifacts of the 3-D technology means everything looks smeary and dark, with as much stuff as possible poking out at you.

The art design is a criminal mess, as Grendel – the coolest monster in fiction – resembles a massive, parboiled fetus that just isn’t interesting or pleasant to look at.  The dragon at the end is a depressingly boring design that looks like one rejected from a Harry Potter movie.  Angeline Jolie plays Grendel’s mother, and rather than the ogress we would expect, she is basically a sweaty, naked Angelina Jolie covered in golden slime, wielding a 14-foot prehensile braid and equipped with built-in stiletto heels.  I only wish I was kidding.

This brings us to the weirdly sexual themes worked into the story where they did not exist before.  We first have Beowulf depicted as battling Grendel in the nude – only this is a PG-13 movie, so we can’t be allowed to see Beowulf’s dong flapping around, so they make sure there is always something in the way in the foreground so we don’t.  This just reminds one of the same gag in Austin Powers, and renders one of the most iconic confrontations in fiction unintentionally comical.

There is lots of commentary on Beowulf having a huge cock, lest we forget that he is supposed to be the “physical ideal” – you know, like Jesus.  He goes to confront Grendel’s Mother, and rather than fight, she seduces him.  See, Grendel is supposedly Hrothgar’s son, and he is all grody and fucked-up looking because Hrothgar gave her weak, sad, old-man sperm.  She wants Beowulf’s super-manchowder, and she gets it in a scene where she literally strokes and caresses his sword until it melts into silvery goo that gushes over her thigh and drips down to her stiletto-heeled feet.  No, I am not making that up.  This plot idea makes the dragon Beowulf’s son, thus not only obliterating the Platonic ideas that fueled the original, but making this just another stupid Hollywood movie about Daddy Issues.

So Beowulf kills Grendel in the nude in a scene that makes it really seem like he is just murdering a handicapped person, and then he doesn’t kill Grendel’s Mother but fucks her and they have a dragon-baby, who looks boring and comes to kill him for some reason and then he kills it but he dies – at least they got that right.  But then that leaves Mama Jolie unharmed and ready to pump out another monster baby for the next hero who comes along.  It all makes complete hash of the story’s themes and ideas without replacing them with anything compelling.

It’s just a mess.  So much talent wasted among the cast, so much money spent on technology that just makes it look worse than if they had filmed it practically with the money they had available.  This movie cost $150 million and it looks like some mockbuster from the Ukraine, the quality of the CG is so terrible.  The script is bad, (and let’s not forget that Neil Gaiman worked on this) the performances are bad, and the characterization is almost nonexistent.  Then you have the bizarre sexual focus of the story just adding a degree of sleaziness that brings the whole thing down, and it all adds up to a movie that I bet a lot of the participants wish had never been made.  I know I do.

Blood Oaths

 

The dawn revealed a desolate shore, and Jaya stood on a jagged grip of rock and looked out over the horizons now closed to her.  The storm had passed and left the seas slow and uneasy, waves crossing and shifting with the uncertain winds, and nowhere was there the sign of any other living human form.  The strands was littered with the tide-mark of the sea-weeds, and there were scraps of driftwood as well as pieces of her shattered ship, the wracked boards jutting from the sand like ribs.

Here and there she saw the wash of the waters disturbed by lumps that did not stir, and she knew them to be corpses.  She had walked one to the other, seeing the faces of her Ekwa, and one of the former slaves, but no sign of Dhatun, nor of Bastar.  She was not certain which one she had most hoped to find alive, and that troubled her.

To the far south the sky was a wall of smoke, billowing high into the blue, a dark shadow across the limits of her sight.  Here and there she saw the flickers of the lightning that reached between the pillar of smoke and the mountain, but the island itself was far beyond her vision.  Streaks of darkness painted the air above her, but she had come a long way from the reach of the volcano.

She found her sword among the tide-pools and took it up, washed by the sea.  She carried it above the tide-mark and scrubbed it with sand to dry it.  The sheath was still on its cord about her waist, but she would have to let it dry before she used it.  She found a hard piece of black stone and sharpened the bright steel, glad of the craft that had made it in another age.

Now she found herself returned to the islands where her ancestors had ruled, and she looked inland, seeking some sign.  This was no small island, for north of her the land rose up in green folds higher and higher, and at the limits of her sight were the snow-touched peaks of mountains like she had never seen.  All was hazy with distance, lit by the golden rising sun, and she hungered for the name of this place, for the piece of her history she now stood upon with bare feet.

First she must find fresh water, and so she set out to the west.  To the east the land was rocky and forbidding, so she took the easier path.  The shore was wide and white, and crabs scuttled from her shadow as she set the sun behind her and followed it.  Along the shore until she could find a stream, and then she would start inland.  Along a waterway she would find what people there were, and they might tell her where she had landed.

She carried her sword ready, thinking on her lost ship, and on the dagger face of Lozonarre, so close to her, so near to her final stroke, and yet he had escaped her.  She had drawn blood from his leg, and now his face, next time, she would let out his life entire.

ARAVT

One of the better side effects of the streaming age is that all these different services – desperate to attract subscribers and starving for content – often provide wider access for foreign films that otherwise would never have been seen outside their homeland.  Streaming on Prime, Aravt is a Mongolian film – and by that I mean an actual Mongolian film – not just a film about Mongols.  This was made by Mongols, starring Mongols, and was shot in actual Mongolia, providing a degree of authenticity and verisimilitude that is a pleasure to see just by itself.

Set in the 12th century, during the reign of Genghis Khan, this is a story about a unit of soldiers – an aravt or what is sometimes called an arban.  This was the most basic unit of Mongol military organization, consisting of ten men who lived and fought and rode together.  Ten aravts made a zuun, ten zuuns made a mingghan of a thousand men, and ten mingghans made a tumen, sometimes called an ordu, from which comes the word “horde”.

So rather than a story about massive armies clashing on the battlefield, this is more like a squad-level movie, where the aravt is sent off to find a renowned physician to deal with a spreading plague on the orders of Genghis Khan – though neither said plague nor the khan are shown onscreen.  The rest of the tale consists of them trying to carry out their mission in the face of the menace of a rival clan, recently defeated by the Khan, who are still rebellious and determined to fight.

The cinematography is first-rate, and they take great advantage of the vast, primal landscape of Mongolia, while not restricting themselves to open steppe.  We see hills and forests and foggy mornings, as well as the sweep of distant mountains and the endless horizons.  The costuming is pretty much flawless, and while the prop weapons don’t always look the best, they are better than what we usually get in films like this.

The cast is actually quite good, and despite it sometimes being difficult to tell actors apart under their very similar outfits, everybody does good work here.  The spoken Mongolian adds yet another layer of authenticity to this, and even if the subtitles are sometimes not great, actual mongols speaking actual Mongolian, riding real steppe ponies across the genuine Mongolian steppe is still a thing to see.

The pacing of the movie is the part most likely not to sit well with a Western audience, as the script is slow, and sometimes is a bit of a slog.  The film spends a lot of time developing the characters, but sometimes you are wishing for a bit of action rather than yet another fireside conversation.  The movie is surprisingly talky, and rather than a story with action peppered along the way, it is mostly building up to a big, final battle.

Once said battle arrives, then the film shows off some rather good choreography, with a lot of visceral impact.  It’s not a very bloody battle, and what blood there is, is mostly CG, which looks a bit rough.  The riding and stunts are really good though, making the battle exciting even if the action is not always as clear as it could be.  The script suffers from a case of there being too many factions and too many characters with their own agendas, and sometimes you can’t tell what people are doing or where, and you see plot elements introduced that never really pay off.  That might be a result of editing, as the cutting can be choppy in places.  Important things happen and you don’t see who did them, and they don’t seem to be given enough weight.

Anyone interested in Mongol history should check this out, as the degree of accuracy is off the charts compared to what you usually get in movies about the Mongol Empire.  Also, it is cool to see a story set in this time and place that is not about Genghis Khan himself, and not about some massive invasion or huge stakes.  This is much more the kind of plot you use for a Sword & Sorcery story, as it is a small group of men pitted against both the environment and implacable enemies, all in a quest to satisfy honor and seeking death before disgrace.