The so-called photorealistic animaton that failed with Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within and succeeded with Polar Express is now showing us another glimpse of a peculiar yet somewhat depressing cinematic future. Said glimpse comes courtesy of Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis’ ambitiously camp and, as of yet the, most popcorn-friendly rendition of the Old English epic, which few students remember with any fondness. Zemeckis takes further the technology and work ethic that reaped dividends on Polar Express and comes up with something that is easy to admire, but not so easy to enthusiastically embrace. The gambit to use digital dead ringers for familiar actors allows sidesteping of the issue of marrying real and computer-generated images, but for now the protagonists still look like mechanised wax figures or early versions of the humanoid robots in Artificial Intelligence. The trick of showing an animated nude Angelina Jolie has also caught the ratings boards by surprise and will probably have the film’s gross receipts doubled by a crowd of enthusiastic 13-year-olds.
Watching this technical and visual wonder of a movie is a thousand times more fun than reading the heroic poem and the surprising thing is that it makes much more sense storywise. The credit for that goes to writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary (Quentin Tarantino’s collaborator on Pulp Fiction), who add a healthy dose of human weakness to the boringly heroic titular protagonist. The latter barks repeatedly “I am Beowulf” lest we forget and comfortably gets the message across thanks to the booming voice of Ray Winstone, who also provides a lose starting point for the Beowulf’s looks (I fear Winston does not have those six-pack abs nor the sculpted hairless body straight out of a Mr Olympia contest). Beowulf lusts for glory and is game for a bare-hands (and bare-body) deathmatch with monster Grendel who repeatedly spoils the mead-drinking parties of Danish King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins). Said contest to the death is a gory and bloody marvel of camera pirouettes keeping Beowulf’s manly attributes hidden, which would have made Austin Powers proud. The camera, however, does not shy away from the sight of Beowulf ripping Grendel’s arm. The event enrages the monster’s mother (Jolie) who is hell bent on revenge and uses her powers of seduction to reveal our hero as less than noble. The sight of a digital nude Angelina in high-heeled feet, sporting a tail and dripping gold is one to remember as is the final vertigo-inducing battle sequence with a dive-bombing dragon.
Everything is cheerfully over the top: the women, both good and bad, are as if taken from a beauty pageant staged in heaven, the king is indisputably regal, the monster is monstrous beyond meaning, the hero is heroic beyond description, the sidekick kicks butt from all sides. The film is indeed a sight to behold and would be loved by the same audiences that made the action porn 300 a spectacular hit. Beowulf tries the same tongue-in-cheek solemnity, which made the experience of 300 worthwhile for all who could appreciate it. It does not get there entirely, as a digital tongue in a digital cheek lacks the enjoyment of the real thing, but the movie deserves a full A for ambition. And for the tantalising promise that the next digital nude beauty will be even better than the real thing.
