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Hey, anyone else remember that period when Robert Zemeckis vowed to only to make films utilising motion capture? That was kinda weird, right? I mean, his intentions to preserve pure acting performances and utterly free up directorial choices without the hassle of blocking or basic physics make sense on paper, but the box office performance of his three-film, motion capture era seemed to prove that audiences much preferred human actors in real settings – or at least they did until Avatar came out…
However, while both The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol both seemed to be experiments designed to use the uncanny valley to freak people put (those dead-eyed kids in Express still chill me to the bone), I’ve always found the middle film, Beowulf, legitimately fascinating.
As an attempt to wrangle the old English poem into a state of the art, fantasy actioner, Zemeckis seems to be having a bit of boorish fun at the expense of Germanic legend and modern action tropes, and the result is a motion capture experience that shows actual signs of life under that glossy, digital exterior.
In Denmark, in the year 507, the boisterous King Hrothgar demands that celebrations ensue after the completion of his brand new mead hall, however, unbeknownst to anyone, the sounds of drunken revelry reverberate through the forests and mountains until it painfully hits the supersenstive ear drum of a misshapen creature named Grendal. In an attempt to file an angry noise complaint, Grendal’s rampage leaves many dead and the mead hall shut lest they disturb the deformed demon again. However, while there seems to be something strange going on between Hrothgar and Grendal, that doesn’t stop the old king from summoning Geatish warrior, Beowulf, and his band of loyal soldiers to vanquish the monster.
Supremely confident, loaded with tales of bravado and packing abs you could chop firewood on, Beowulf not only seems eager to battle with Grendal, but looks like he wouldn’t mind wrestling with the young Queen Wealtheow too; but after luring Grendal back to the mead hall by throwing another party, Beowulf fights the beast (in the nude, no less) and emerges victorious as the creature scurries away fatally wounded – but has Beowulf only gone and made the situation worse?
You see, something seems to be rotten in the state of Denmark (apologies to Shakespeare) and the origins of Grendal seem to be entwined with King Hrothgar. Worse yet, when Grendal’s mother offers bloody retaliation to her son’s mauling, Beowulf sets out to end the demonic bloodline once and for all. But soon the monster slayer discovers that the seductive creature that birthed Grendal has a proposal for him that’ll have both glorious advantages and serious ramifications for decades to come.
So, I suppose the first question one should ask is how has Beowulf aged in terms of it technological breakthroughs? Well, not amazingly, if I’m being honest, but it certainly didn’t spawn the host of soulless child sleep paralysis demons that The Polar Express did. That uncanny valley feeling strangely returns when any smooth-featured women enter the frame, such as Robin Wright’s Queen, or Alison Lohman’s bit on the side, and Zemeckis’ habit of including long, swooshing, impossible shots in action scenes are admittedly cool, but feels too much like you’re watching a video game being played by someone else rather than a $150 million dollar movie directed by the man who made Back To The Future. Things grow ever more surreal thanks to the various avatars mostly bearing likenesses of the actors portraying them and in some cases – such as the off-putting digital homunculus resembles John Malkovich – they prove to be more unnerving than the monsters; however, the more grizzled or stylised the character models become, the easier it is to accept them. Both Anthony Hopkins’ boozy, overweight King and Brendon Gleeson’s loyal right hand man, to the eponymous monster slayer himself find that sweet spot between CGI fantasy and reality, with the best of all proving to be Ray Winstone’s Beowulf.
I’d imagine the entire point of Zemeckis insisting that the boon of digital filmmaking is unlimited freedom to allow anyone to play anything and not be encumbered by the restrictions of reality, is fully realised here thanks to the then-50 year-old Winstone being able to play a man half his age who is also built like a Hemsworth. Obviously the actor never got an action movie phase in his career (unless you count cracking a skull with a pool ball in a sock in Scum), but watching his avatar engage in all sorts of daring do, while that distinctive voice booms from his diaphragm proves to a wonderful experience.
The fact that Beowulf also seems to be cockney (“I’m here to kill your mon-stah!”) only adds to the absurdly rugged feel the movie is striving for – and while Zemeckis is hardly a filmmaker known for restraint, it’s stunning to see how far the filmmaker is willing to push that age rating in order to deliver a surprisingly hard-edged fantasy film that goes just as hard as Alan Silvestri’s muscular score.
Not only does the energetic virtual camera strain to find ways to obscure some of the more extreme violence (Crispin Glover’s animalistic Grendal twists victims like grotesque Rubick’s Cubes), but it also works overtime to camouflage some overt nudity. Angelina Jolie’s seductive, sans-clothes shapeshifter is draped with optimally positioned drips of liquid gold to cover her non-existant modesty, and a sequence that sees Beowulf brawl with Grendal in his birthday suit takes almost Austin Powers-style lengths to shield us from seeing his own “mon-stah“. Add this to the fact that virtually every other character is either drunk, horny as fuck, or frequently both, it gives the film a fascinating kind of “family friendly” edge to the likes of John Milius’ famously brutal Conan The Barbarian.
Of course, when the film isn’t making parents sweat, it’s indulging in some gargantuan-sized action sequences, such as a climactic battle with a huge, golden dragon. But again, some of those digital drawbacks rear their head once more when some of the action feels like it lacks weight. However, we can forgive Beowulf for it faults mainly because compared to Zemeckis’ other attempts, the sex and violence helps it play more like some sort of intriguing experiment in filmmaking, rather than an accidently unsettling Christmas movie. While the visuals have inevitably dated with age, the fact that the medium allowed actors to experiment with ages and forms beyond their own actually stands as a fairly intriguing filmmaking tool.
While admittedly flawed when taken as a straight fantasy, Beowulf nevertheless proves to be rather fascinating when you pile up the facts behind its inception. After all, adaptations of a 1,300 year-old poems filmed by experimental, state-of-the-art means, featuring all-star casts covered in body markers, and loaded with a surprising about of sex and violence don’t come about every day, and something as aggressively weird as this truly needs to be appreciated – despite the fact it was hardly a box office mon-stah.
Where to watch Beowulf: