BEOWULF AND GRENDEL (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Sturla Gunnarson's take on the medieval poem "Beowulf" is never less than diverting, not least thanks to the film's gorgeous cinematography of the stark but beautiful Icelandic locations. It's deliberately an inversion of the moral certainties of the poem, wherein Evil is identical with physical monstrosity. The script's take might have been influenced by John Gardner's 1971 book GRENDEL, which told the Beowulf story from the POV of the monstrous titular man-slayer.                                                                     

   BEOWULF is constructed much like the sort of mystery in which the audience sees a crime committed and then watches to find out how and when the hero will dope out the truth. Twenty years before the story proper, the Danish king Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) leads some of his men to chase down a petty thief, a big hairy man whom the Danes consider to be a "troll." The big man flees the hunters in the company of his young son Grendel, but when they are both cornered on a cliffside, the father orders his son to hide in a crevice. The "troll" then faces the Danes and is killed by their arrows. Hrothgar spies the hiding boy but does not reveal his presence.                                                   

  Grendel grows into a savage beast-man (Ingvar Sigurdsson), and finally initiates a war against his father's slayers, killing twenty men in the king's mead-hall. Hrothgar is now old and befuddled, and he half suspects the origins of the killer. News of the murders reaches the tribe of the Geats, and their great hero Beowulf (Gerard Butler) journeys to Denmark with his retinue of warriors. Unlike the hero of the poem, this Beowulf is intensely curious as to the origins of Grendel. He's perplexed that the savage man simply avoids fighting with the Geats, while continuing his crusade against the men of Hrothgar.                                        

A new character, a witch named Selma (Sarah Polley), provides some of the answers to Beowulf's questions: that Grendel refuses to engage with the Geats because they, unlike the Geats, have done him no harm. It's strongly suggested that Selma's claim to witchy powers is a pretense to give her some immunity from attacks by brutish men, for she tells Beowulf that she was forced into prostitution by evil slavers before setting up her witch-hut. She, as much as Grendel (who rather clumsily raped her at one point, but in ignorance of his crime), is an outcast from the rude Scandinavian society that recognizes only physical strength as a virtue.                                                                                                                                                                                                            Even after Hrothgar confesses his past offenses against Grendel, Beowulf remains committed to ending the savage's rampage. In the poem the hero is mighty enough to rip the monster-man's arm from his body, but since no one here possesses supernatural powers, this Beowulf sets a mechanical trap that tears off Grendel's limb. Dying, Grendel flees to the sea, where his body is claimed by his mother, billed as "The Sea Hag." Later, when the prideful Danes hang up Grendel's arm as a trophy, the Hag emerges at night, kills various warriors, and steals the arm as well. Beowulf pursues the hag to an underground cave, and the monstrous woman, who possesses fangs and great strength, almost kills the hero. Beowulf only triumphs (slightly as in the poem) because he acquires a sword from the Hag's treasure-trove and kills her with it. Though the script isn't able to assert the true nature of the Hag and her son without breaking out of its own continuity, I think it's implied that both are offshoots from humankind, whom the primitive tribesmen mistake for "trolls." The tone of BEOWULF is uniformly dour, and the warriors' limited knowledge about the world's nature provides some dramatic moments. But as a whole this Grendel-sympathetic take on the poem is just fair in terms of its symbolic discourse.