Beowulf & Grendel [DVD] [2005] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Why this movie has been ill criticized by many critics and plain movie goers is a mistery to me. I know that many complaints come from the fact that this is not a faithful adaptation of the epic poem. But first of all, it's been said many times that a movie should be judge by its merits alone (movies have a hard time translating the emotions and content of a book or a story anyway) and I don't see any problem with making a movie just inspired in a legend, if it is well done.

This is the case with B&G. First of all, in spite of not having special effects, or CGI's, or big sets, it never looks cheap. The landscapes of Iceland are its best asset, because of their beauty and their quality and look of a legendary place. The costumes add authenticity too.

The acting is very good, specially Stellan Skarsgard as the tormented King Hrothgar and Sarah Poley (as usual) as Selma the Witch, with Gerald Butler (Leonidas, from "300")providing an acceptable charaterization of the hero (which by the way is far from being a super-hero, and more down to earth).

The movie hasn't forgotten completely that some fantasy, legend or myth must remain in the story, but its approach is that all those legends must have had a human origin, magnificated and made mythical by the passing of time and oral tradition. And for me, this is a plus: it provides a human background to the story, and keeps it human for the most part. That may be a shock for many: if you expect a typical legendary monster movie, you won't find it here. Neither will you find a non-stop action movie "300" style. B&G is more drama than action. It's funny, but that's the reason why this movie is SO different from BEOWULF, the 2007 Hollywood movie; even though they are about the same story, the result is different.

I'm afraid to say that as a commercial product, the movie has some hollywod-esque concessions (constant cursing -somehow justified by the director and crew in their commentary-, the obligatory romance). But those are minor flaws, and I don't think that will affect you appreciation of the movie, once you have the proper frame of mind to watch it.

NOW ABOUT THE BLU RAY: I've read that the transfer has been criticized by some. The fact is that in daylight scenes this tranfer is as good looking as any I've seen. Believe me, the grandeur of the landscapes is reason alone to own this movie in Blu Ray. The mountains, the waterfalls, the beaches...make me wanna be there.

It's the nightime scenes that look a little ordinary, just standard, closer to a plain DVD. But I wouldn't put the whole blame in the quality of the transfer; it is that those scenes have been filmed with just the neccesary light. Is this a flaw? I don't think so. It provides more authenticity.

But yes, there is a particular scene (a dialogue between Beowulf and Hrothgar) that isn't even a nightime scene, in which the quality is very low, and that is because of the transfer and the original print: it looks stained and with a constant flashing. (That flashing is present also in another early daytime scene -when little Grendel is seen running in the beach-, but is less perceptible). But these are no reasons to dismiss the Blu Ray as a bad product, because most of the movie look pristine and very clear and detailed.

As for extras, well, this is the part in which the Blu Ray will leave you wanting. There's a commentary, which is said to be done "by the director and screenwriter" but that in fact includes a couple of more people, and that is very entertaining and informative -and is very insistent about this movie being made the old fashion way, little computer help). There is also "storyboard comparisons", and some trailers. The DVD version of the movie has more extras and that's something that I will never understand: do they really expect us to buy the DVD also just because it has more material in it?. Come on, be fair, and include the same material in the blu ray release !. This is what made me downgrade my rating.

The audio track is Dolby Digital, plus a PCM option. The dolby track is very good, just check a couple of scenes near a waterfall, or near the ocean and you will hear the water all around you. It also provides a good enhancement of the music during the movie. The feature only has ENGLISH subtitles.

So, if you loved this movie, there's no reason you shouldn't own this blu ray. If you have a blu ray player, this is a good movie to own. There's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy the story (I repeat, as long as you don't expect a faithfull retelling of the old poem, or an action-packed movie) but anyway, the Iceland landscapes won't let you regret it.

Those who have criticised this film for its storyline have obviously never read the Old English poem on which it is based (no it isn't a saga!). Of all the film versions this is the one the comes closest to creating a coherent film out of something that is virtually unfilmable in its original form. The reviewer who wanted great battle scenes should be aware that there are no battle scenes in the original 'Beowulf'! Instead the makers very sensibly chose to omit the last third of the epic poem and therefore avoided the clunky shift to fifty years on, where an aged Beowulf fights the dragon in his homeland - which has never successfully been done. By focusing on the personal conflict between Beowulf and Grendel this film is more of a coherent unit than any other film version (if you want to see how truly awful things could have got, go find a copy of the Christopher Lambert film which is bad beyond belief).
Instead we have a film that has attempted to bring the central characters to life in the same way that the 'Lord of the Rings' films approached such characters as Aragorn - by making them more not less human. The alternative approach of going the CGI way may make for some interesting visuals, but does nothing for making the characters understandable. Gerard Butler does a great job of bringing out a hero that is approachable to a modern audience and holds the film together. Moreoever, the whole look of the film fits the period that is being recreated.
That said, it does have its flaws - the biggest being the witch Selma, who is a totally new creation. But then translating a 1200 year old poem to the modern screen is bound to need some changes! For the Tolkein fans out there this film at least gives some idea of why the original was such an influence on Tolkein in his own writing. No it isn't 'Lord of the Rings', but of all the film versions this one where at least it is possible to see the connection.

"I slept with a witch. That's gotta be bad. I put my thing in a witch. It was a while back..." "Oh Beowulf, it's a ******** troll. Maybe someone looked at it the wrong way." "I know, I look like walrus ****."

Another costume turkey flung upon an unsuspecting and utterly disinterested world in the wake of The Lord of the Rings' success, Beowulf and Grendel is a curious beast and a far less interesting spin on the original than either Outlander or the undervalued The 13th Warrior. On one level it wants to be a revisionist `reimagining' of the epic poem, yet the budget seems to run out on a daily basis leaving sequences an odd mixture of impressively shot footage and scenes almost inept enough to be from a Robbie Moffat fillum, as if it was made by a director with a half-thought out vision he didn't have the ability to bring properly to the screen. If anything it feels like it was made by two completely different directors at extreme opposite ends of the skills scale with two completely different visions (not beyond the realms of possibility in a film boasting 14 credited producers), the casting a similarly odd mixture of good actors who should know better (Stellan Skarsgard, Sarah Polley, Eddie Marsan) roped in by what seems like a bunch of blokes from a Scottish rugby team who pooled together their bonuses to make a film for a lark, one of whom is taking it way too seriously and overacting in the genuine belief that this is his starmaking role (step forward Gerard Butler, the man who would be Connery but just comes across like a young Shouty Shouty Brian Blessed).

It doesn't help that far from a monstrous incarnation of all the evils plaguing man and society that must be destroyed, this Grendel goes from laughably bearded infant to what looks like a Glaswegian cage-fighter and is now the true victim of the tale, in the process diminishing Beowulf's heroism and making him part of the problem rather than the solution. Worse, despite a good feel for the genuinely stunning landscapes, it all too often comes down to a fight over a hut where Beowulf really doesn't do much anyway.

If this were an essay on the poem it would get an easy F for its almost complete inability to understand what the source material is about, but changing the substance of the original to its polar opposite - pagan religion good, Christianity a bit of a giggle, Grendel the oppressed minority, Beowulf discovering his inner New Man and the odd bit of political correct guilt tripping thrown in for bad measure - is the least of its sins. It's not the easiest of epic poems to read in any translation, let alone adapt, so changes are the price of a screen adaptation. The trouble is they're so odd and often absurd, more unintentional comedy than magical realism, the sort of mixture of off the wall philosophising and pulp plotting Ed Wood might have turned out if he'd had a bigger budget and a decent second unit cameraman.

The f-ing and blinding interlaced with 50s-style heroic direlogue is increasingly comic. There are odd non-sequiters, like the hand that reaches out of a fjord to grab at Beowulf which goes completely uncommented on, or Eddie Marsan's Oirish priest suddenly foaming at the mouth and falling over for no apparent reason as if the last page of the scene never turned up and they had to do something, anything to end it. And then there's the bizarre clash of accents, albeit on broadly tribal grounds (Scots for the Geats, Scandanavian for the Danes). It seems a bit unfair to single out Sarah Polley for her undisguised Canadian accent if she wasn't just so out of place in the whole thing as the whore-turned-witch. Giving her dialogue like "No thought of my ****, then?" only aggravates matters long before it turns out she had a one-night stand with Grendel and has a little monster of her own.

Sometimes the humor is dry and sly enough to pass but at times it's positively Monty Pythonic: you keep on waiting for Philip Whitchurch's deeply unimpressed fisherman to start talking about strange women lying in ponds distributing swords being no basis for a system of government or thinking that Skarsgard and Marsan have been possessed by Graham Chapman and Terry Jones when the subject of Christianity is raised - "Christ, eh? Heard of him. He ever have much luck with trolls?" "Oi'm ov da fort dat dey nivva crossed parffs."

Ending on a would-be post-modern note with one character dismissing the evolving `bastardized' poem as excrement, the claim might have carried more weight if this film wasn't simply a runnier version of the same.