Beowulf updated for 21st century

The other day, I noticed a bookshop with a whole section devoted to what are called graphic novels, narratives told in visual rather than verbal terms extended comics, really, but with a degree more sophistication and wit. Ray Bradbury wrote about books without words in Fahrenheit 451, where the need to read had disappeared from society. But graphic novels do some things words cannot, and this film is the visual equivalent of a graphic novel.

The ideas are simplified and focused in ways that words cannot manage and regular film avoids.

It is all done by machines. Computers with memory banks smaller than mine, in a process called motion capture, are able to take live action, minimalise the movement, redraw the figures and their behaviour, and put on the screen an advanced version of the animation which made Shrek.

Mostly it works, but there are moments when they haven't got it right. Eyes, for example, often look as unfocused as a blind man looking at the source of a sound, arms sometimes appear foreshortened, people run like Tom Cruise with arthritis, and the subtlety of expression on even the blandest of live faces disappears in CG close ups.

But getting to the essence of an idea is important, and this film is about great ideas. German expressionism knew that, and in early icons like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and WH Murnau's Nosferatu, the power of the film lies in its ability to focus the mind of the viewer through images.

That is also the case with the animation in Beowulf, that ancient Nordic saga of heroic derring do where the heroic Beowulf defeats the monstrous man slayer Grendel, and finds the real meaning of hubris.

Said techniques have produced some great characters: Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, seen first in his mead hall during a right royal roister where he is wearing nothing but a robe which on occasion displays a smooth Hopkins bum. It is the first indication that this film may be called Beowulf, and the key driver may be Beowulf's attempts to rid Heothgar's kingdom of the curse which is the monster Grendel and his even more deadly demonic mother, but it bears little tonal resemblance to the ancient saga.

This Beowulf is suddenly PC. Heroism is flawed. The hero is scarcely distinguishable from the villain. The fawning underminer of Beowulf's reputation, Unferth, so well played by John Malkovich, turns into a Christian ascetic, and the battle between good and evil could be used by any fundamentalist Christian church as a battle between Christ and the devil.

Even the remorselessly evil Grendel, comforted by his mother's tentacle and lullaby as he dies, has the audience thinking that he is really another misunderstood young man in need of counselling. Oh, and don't look too hard for the naughty bits on Beowulf's Beckham-like body. They are discreetly hidden behind arms or swords big swords, mind.

But despite the departures, and it is, to be sure, a long time since I have read the epic poem, there are some great battles, great carousing, and general good old stoush stuff which make it hugely entertaining.

- © Fairfax NZ News