BEOWULF AND GRENDEL
The Beowulf story-line is popular these days. In 1999, a fantasy version was made with Christopher Lambert as Beowulf, and another version with Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie is due out in November 2007. But the film I have been watching - I have seen it twice and followed it better the second time (I think I was too busy enjoying the glorious Icelandic senery the first time) - is the 2005 Canada, UK, Iceland co-production, Beowulf and Grendel, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, with Gerard Butler as Beowulf.
If the 1999 version was fantasy, then this one is the version firmly based on legend - the might-have-been, the possibly-could-have-been (like witches and ghosts and trolls) as opposed to the totally fantastic - and it is therefore welcome on this site, which has since the outset welcomed the supernatural but rejected fantasy.
There are no monsters, no special effects.
There is a troll, Grendel, alone in the world and with only one purpose in life: to avenge his murdered father by killing as many Danes as he can lay his hands on. He has nothing against the Geats (Beowulf's people - played by Scots in this film) or the Celts (there is an Irish Christian monk in the village, attempting to convert everybody), and nothing against the king, who spared Grendel's life once when he was still a boy.
There is a beautiful witch (Selma played by Sarah Pollen) who sympathises with Grendel - indeed she bears his child.
And there is Grendel's dead mother, who lives on "undead" in the sea, a kind of cross between an ageing mermaid and a vampire, though she can come out, and does, to wreak vengeance when her son is finally slain. This part was played stunningly by Elva Osk Olafsdottir (the fight between her and Beowulf is one of the highlights of the film); I couldn' find any pictures of her in this role, though there are some of her in a film called The Sea, which looks interesting. In that film too she plays some kind of underwater role! (Grendel's mother is played by Angelina Jolie in the new production of Beowulf, though apparently only as a voice-over: seems we are back to special effects again as Hollywood reaserts itself.)
Don't wait for the new version, then. See this one, if you haven't yet done so. I loved it.
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Note also the documentary Wrath of Gods, the story behind the film, which I haven't managed to see but which I know won the Best Documentary Feature Award at the Oxford Film Festival this year (2007).
JM
