SCREENINGS: BEOWULF 3D

Beowulf has gotten a bad rap. For at least half a century, high
school students were forced to recite stanzas from the historic,
epic poem in “Olde English.” The results were often embarrassing
for both the hapless “volunteer” and the rest of the class. But at
the dawn of this new millennium, Seamus Heaney (Irish author and
winner of the Nobel Prize for literature), did something quite
incredible. He created a modern translation of Beowulf in verse,
and the result is an enthralling story which reads like this:
“The fortunes of war favoured Hrothgar. 
Friends and kinsmen flocked to his ranks, 
young followers, a force that grew 
to be a mighty army. So his mind turned 
to hall-building: he handed down orders 
for men to work on a great mead-hall 
meant to be a wonder of the world forever; 
it would be his throne-room and there he would dispense 
his God-given goods to young and old…
 And soon it stood there, 
finished and ready, in full view, 
the hall of halls. Heorot was the name 
he had settled on it.” 
Robert Zemekis begins his computer-generated, 3-D movie version
of “Beowulf” just as the aging and quite drunk King Hrothgar
(voiced by Anthony Hopkins) is celebrating the completion of his
great new mead-hall. Wearing only an untied bed sheet, he toasts
his warrior thanes, and his Queen, Wealthow (voiced by Robin Wright
Penn), and tosses bits of captured loot to those who aren’t too
busy having sex or being too drunk to notice. The singing and
carousing gets even louder as a huge cauldron of mead is consumed,
and the sound travels across the Danish moors to the darkest,
deepest, mountain cavern where Grendel the Giant (Voiced by Crispin
Glover), is driven to rage by the noise from his thoughtless
neighbors.
The door to Heorot is blown off its hinges, crushing several
thanes and impaling others with splinters the size of fence posts.
Every torch and fire is immediately extinguished by the blast, and
as people strike iron and flint to spark a flame, Grendel’s
fearsome howl fills them with the sound of their doom. In the dim
light, the scaly, rotting-fleshed, wailing-voiced, pain-fueled,
12-foot tall giant enters the hall. In short order, he makes the
assignment of a PG-13 rating (which was already in question with
all the nudity and rutting going on) absolutely nonsensical. People
are gruesomely torn in half before our eyes, and since it is 3-D,
the limbs that are ripped off, the bloody stumps peppering the air,
and the dead, bleeding bodies used by Grendel as weapons to club
other victims to a pulp all seem to swoosh by our heads. And then
he spies the beautiful queen cowering behind a chair. We know she
is next, but, will Grendel slay her or abduct her to his foul lair?
We never learn the giant’s intent, for his attention is diverted by
Hrothgar displaying why he is king as he stands tall at the front
of the hall and demands that the giant: “Fight me.” Grendel
inexplicably chooses instead to leave the blood soaked mead hall
and return to his home. “Burn the dead,” Hrothgar orders. “And seal
Heorot forever.”
Word of Grendel’s rampage and Hrothgar’s calamity quickly
travels across the sea to the ear of Beowulf (voiced by Ray
Winstone), and the self-proclaimed hero turns his Viking ship
towards the coast of Denmark, to offer himself as a slayer of
giants. 
But does this all work as a movie? When King Hrothgar and his
thanes first appear on screen, you recognize Anthony Hopkin’s voice
and face, and wonder why he isn’t a live actor. The animation was
achieved using Hopkins acting out the scene in a “motion capture”
suit (like Andy Serkis did for his Golum character in “Lord of the
Rings”), but when you see the rendering of Queen Wealthow, you
really wonder why we aren’t seeing a live, flesh and blood Robin
Wright Penn instead of a woodenly animated replica that looks
amazingly like Princess Fiona from the “Shrek” movies. Later on,
when Grendel arrives, you realize that this repulsive monster has
nothing in common physically with Crispin Glover, so, you ask
yourself, why wasn’t he put into the scenes like Golum was in
LOTR? 
Which brings me to the ludicrous PG-13 rating. Animated films
(think Bugs Bunny and Roger Rabbit here) have been allowed to
display a broad range of physical mayhem and still maintain a
rating aimed at a younger audience and the makers of “Beowulf”
capitalized on this. But, for the film’s integrity, it should be an
R and then the animators wouldn’t have needed to be coy in their
depiction of human bodies. As we learned in high school (at least
those of us who deciphered the secret), Beowulf stripped himself
naked and weaponless to fight Grendel. There are even references to
how the display of his manly attributes proved that rumors about
Viking prows (and prowess) were indeed true. But in this movie,
Zemekis and his animators used the “Austin Powers” approach to full
frontal nudity by sticking props in the way to cover the “naughty
bits.” This results in a tittering audience reacting to the
cover-ups instead of focusing on the manic bare-knuckle battle
between Beowulf and Grendel. And then there’s the Angelina Jolie
face and voice on the shape-shifting Grendel’s mother. She seduces
Beowulf wearing only a shimmering gold and white oil, but when she
stands and faces us, she is as sexless as a naked Barbie doll. Come
on people, let’s be real.
On the positive side, the 3-D works very well in this film (And
I suggest that this is the only way you should see it- the IMAX
version being the most complete experience). And the story, which
has survived countless retellings over the past 1400+ years, is a
very good one. 
Final analysis, go see it, wear the glasses, and keep them as a
souvenir of the movie that jump started the 3-D, CG revolution-an
obvious work-in-progress, signaling even better things to come.
Comments?  E’mail gi*********@co*****.net.
Hear Gil’s radio show “Cinema Toast” Thursday mornings at
9:30 or KRSH-FM, 95.9.