Sherry Chandler » Beowulf coming soon to your local multiplex
Beowulf coming soon to your local multiplex
and your opera house. From the NYTimes:
…and coming next year a full-length $70 million “Beowulf,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, with a screenplay by Neil Gaiman, using the same computer technology as “Polar Express.” The cast includes Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar and an inspired choice for Grendel’s mother, that terrifying embodiment of the maternal instinct gone amok, Angelina Jolie.
An action movie of sorts, “Beowulf & Grendel,” directed by Sturla Gunnarsson and starring Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgard, Ingvar Sigurdsson and Sarah Polley, opens in New York on Friday. And an operatic version is coming to Lincoln Center later this month: “Grendel,” directed by Julie Taymor, with a score by her companion, Elliot Goldenthal, and a libretto by J. D. McClatchy that is a sort of spinoff of a spinoff, based on John Gardner’s 1971 novel of the same title.
I am admirer of Neil Gaiman’s work, though I like him best in collaboration with Terry Pratchett (as in Good Omens), but Angelina Jolie? Well, it’s animated so I guess we’ll not get to see those injected lips. It’s an interesting way to picture Grendel’s dam, nevertheless.
I’m glad to see Charles McGrath give a little nod to Seamus Heaney’s great “Beowulf” translation, but he lays the blame for this resurgence of interest in “Beowulf” mostly on J. R. R. Tolkien:
Some of the recent popularity of “Beowulf” surely derives from Seamus Heaney’s splendid translation into contemporary English, which became a surprising best seller in 2000, but even more compelling, to filmmakers at least, is the box office success of the “Lord of the Rings” movies, which have “Beowulf” embedded in their DNA. J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, taught Old English at Oxford and was one of the first scholars to pay attention to “Beowulf” for its genuine literary merit and not just because it was a way station in the development of our language
We’ll see whether “Beowulf” comes to the screen any more comfortably than did Lord of the Rings. For that blockbuster, they took a great road/quest novel and cut pretty much directly to the blood and gore. It will be interesting (or not) to see how the movies do a poem without the poetry.
I’ll have to say I have a little more hope for the opera. I really liked John Gardner’s Grendel, though I have friends who were offended by its sexism and violence, and at least this effort does have include the work of a poet, J. D. McClatchy.
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