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movie review - Beowulf

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is an animated telling of the 1500+ year-old-epic by the same name. Beowulf is a mighty hero (shown in the opening sequence swimming from southern Sweden to Denmark) who arrives at the hall of a king with a problem. There is a terrible demon plaguing the kingdom, a malformed and vicious thing called Grendel. In exchange for riches and power in the kingdom, Beowulf is charged with slaying the demon. Which he does. However he's then seduced by the demon's mother. This sets up a series of events that will culminate in the ruin of virtually everyone in the thing.

This is my first encounter with this story, and I found the tale engrossing - it's human-scale and captures the sense of antiquity quite well. The animation was done by motion-capture, so it's all a bit Uncanny Valley, like a lengthy unskippable segment from a video game and in fact already seems a bit dated. The story and dialog etc are sound as you would expect from writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. It was the nuanced and compelling story that had me overlook the limitations of the medium.

Recommended.