12.16.2007
Bashing Beowulf
[Posted 2:51 PM by Alexander Nazaryan]
However, I would urge any detractors of the film to read this optimistic assessment from the Times of London, which points out that the movie does in fact capture much of the terror of the original and is “in touch with the critical debate about the poem.” In his groundbreaking 2001 translation, Seamus Heaney attempted to distill the poem’s “overall power to haunt”; the director Robert Zemeckis, at his best, also recreates the candle-lit, mead-soaked interior of Heorot and the snowy vistas, buffered by the cold northern seas, where the monster Grendel roamed. I also found the depiction of Christianity’s growing influence on heathen Nordic tribes a brave thematic choice to hit upon for a movie so obviously targeted to general audiences.
My day job is teaching English at a classical high school, and I recently took some of my students to see the film. They were skeptical at first, having spent a month perusing the Heaney version and listening to Old English recitations, but found it ultimately compelling for the same reasons as the Times reviewer.