Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/20/07
According to media reports,
a good 20% of the theaters showing Beowulf across the US are doing
so in the revolutionary new RealD digital 3-D format. What this means
is that 80% of the people seeing Robert Zemeckis's latest experiment in
motion capture animation are really getting screwed. Don't get me
wrong, this adaptation of the oldest known adventure story has its' moments,
and a darkly cynical take on the material that gives the final third surprising
heft. But the story here is RealD, which makes an OK animated feature
into an unforgettable cinematic breakthrough.
Anybody who's ever had an
ancient literature class can tell the story along with me if they like:
King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) has built the greatest Mead Hall in all
the land to celebrate the greatness of his warriors. But on one particularly
debaucherous night, the Hall is attacked by a revoltingly misshapen monster
called Grendel (Crispin Hellion Glover, who I can just imagine introducing
himself as “Crispin H. Glover, the H is for Hellion”), who routs the men
but will not lay a hand on the King. Enter the great hero Beowulf
(Ray Winstone) who, along with his right-hand man Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson)
and a band of excessively merry men, travel the world in search of Glory.
The King has offered half his gold for the defeat of Grendel, and Beowulf
delivers, at the cost of many lives. But a fateful journey to the
beast's lair brings him face-to-face with the creature's Mother (Angelina
Jolie), a shape-shifting seductress who has an offer for The Great Hero...
Splitting the difference
between its' ancient source material and futuristic presentation, Beowulf
is nothing if not a movie of its' time, taking the original tale of Superhuman
Heroism and undercutting it with doubt and cynicism at every turn.
Beowulf, Zemeckis and his writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery argue, is
not a man of heroic virtue, but a selfish narcissist who seeks Glory at
the expense of all else. The most interesting part of the story is
that there's very little in Gaiman and Avery's adaptation that breaks from
the original text... as long as you assume you can't trust anything Beowulf
tells the other characters. Starting with the notion of a hero with
feet of clay, the writers take aim at a larger target: the inherently
corrupting nature of power. To me, Grendel's Mother is Political
Power Incarnate, offering those who lie down with her all the power and
glory they might desire, but in the process spawning a demon which is certain
to bring down pain and suffering upon their subjects. All dark and
moody stuff, and perhaps that's why Beowulf sometimes seems a bit
adrift. Before it really focuses in on the cost of the new King's
deal, it's a heroic story without heroism.
There's also the fact that
while Gaiman and Avery's hearts might lie in their parlor game of literary
revisionism, Zemeckis is once again a kid playing with all the toys a 150
million dollar budget will buy. First, there's his long-term love
of motion-capture animation and its' potential for allowing actors to inhabit
characters that age, mutate and just generally don't resemble them in any
way. Jury's still out on that one: like their Polar Express
counterparts, the Beowulf characters don't seem particularly human,
especially around the eyes. It's funny, though, how it varies from
actor to actor, with Wright-Penn and Malkovich sporting the most distant,
unfocused stares while Jolie and Gleeson have fairly realistic peepers.
The characters' movements, for all they were “motion-captured” also don't
quite have the fluidity of real human bodies, and the whole thing most
resembles a really high-end video game. I've no doubt the Forrest
Gump auteur, who's pretty much given up on conventional movies in favor
of this long-term experiment, will keep trying to work out the kinks.
But then comes the good stuff:
my first experience with the RealD technology which probably won't transform
moviegoing the way, say, color and sound did (who wants to wear those glasses
to a romantic comedy?), but certainly represents a comparable technological
leap. Zemeckis uses it for all it's worth, vividly reveling in the
ultra-detailed surfaces, reflections and textures it makes possible along
with the standard “Comin' at Ya!” 3-D moments. Grendel is a sight
to behold, possibly the most ooey-gooey creature ever committed to film
(he's basically a giant humanoid pustule) and Zemeckis doesn't back down
from any fluid he can think to wring out of any part of the slimy mass.
He makes wonderful use of the reflective quality of the water in Grendel's
lair, the only place we ever get a look at his Mother's true form:
the water effects in general are top notch. And all the extra dimension
makes the climactic battle between King Beowulf and one of the all-time
great movie dragons a breathless show-stopper. And yes, I did feel
a slight “thwacking” sensation when one of the branches that slams into
Beowulf as he's dragged beneath the flying beast smacks directly in the
camera. And characters pointing their swords and spears directly
into my face never quite got old. Even when the plot drags, it's
always fun to let your eyes wander around the frame and see just how deep
that third dimension really runs. As for Jolie, she's a special effect
all her own, and the sexiest movie actress ever is the perfect choice to
embody multiple kinds of temptation.
I'd be remiss if I didn't
mention that parents looking to take their kids to experience the 3-D thrill
ride should take note that Beowulf is pretty much the most R-rated
PG-13 movie yet: blood and gore (albeit of the animated variety)
flow freely, often to trippy 3-D effect, there may be more bare backsides
than all previous PG-13 movies combined, and the sexual attitudes of Beowulf
and his men are, shall we say, unreconstructed. At times, Zemeckis
lets the rowdiness of his spectacle get away from him, as with a lengthy
sequence where Beowulf battles Grendel in the nude and is conveniently
obscured by random objects a la Austin Powers, and a few unintentional
double-entendres that are real howlers (amazingly every single person at
my showing seemed to think the same thing at the same time during a certain
line about how men came from far and wide to taste of the King's mead...),
leaving the audience to laugh at rather than with the movie.
I'd imagine the 2-D version
of Beowulf is probably a dead heat between its' storytelling and
visual strengths and the yet-perfected nature of the motion capture technology
and the odd mixture of sophomoric and thoughtful elements. But Beowulf
3-D is just too darn amazing to look at to ever get too bogged down
in anything that's actually happening in it: the story is more than
good enough to get us from one remarkable sight to the next. And
there IS something resonant about using the iconic story of heroism to
make a statement about our flagging belief in the concept. It's just
hard to see with a spear two inches from my nose. |
