Beowulf is a retelling of the oldest English poem still in existence, a thousand years old. Beowulf is a Scandinavian hero, played by Ray Winston, but the whole cast are filmed in Motion Capture, like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, where their movements and expressions are filmed and then digitalised - and changed, so Ray looks 8 inches taller and 25 years younger, and fit.
Ancient warriors such as Beowulf wanted to find fame and immortality through their strength and courage, killing their enemies, be they in human or dragon shape. Their glory lasted for as long as the bards sang of their exploits. Beowulf is up for that. He’s on the glory trail and comes to the rescue of an old Danish king, Hrothgar, whose halls are being attacked by a man-eating monster, Grendel. Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, and when his dragon-mother takes revenge on Beowulf’s men he goes to her lair to kill her too. Grendels’ mother is a shape-shifting golden dragon, played by Angelina Joilie, who needs no digitalisation to make her look gorgeous and glamorous. Glamour is something Beowulf knows all about; he has the glamour of a hero about him. But the word glamour once meant the power to bewitch. And within her cave Beowulf is bewitched and seduced by Grendel’s mother, now in the shape of a gilded water-nymph, and by the fame, riches and the immortality she promises him. We are told that old king Hrothgar had given into the same temptation years before, and the monster Grendel is actually his child, a hideous grotesque, filled with the rage of the child rejected and unloved by his father. The old king needs this monster to die. So Beowulf is recruited, but then he falls into the same golden honey trap.
The new script is co-written by Neil Gaiman, who also co-wrote Stardust. But Stardust was confectionary; this is rather more substantial. J R R Tolkien was an expert on this kind of literature, and the new script changes the old story, picking up on J R R Tolkien’s insight that it is all about fathers and sons. Here two sons are betrayed by their fathers at the very moment of their conception, the first by the old King, and then Beowulf, who also fathers a child by the golden dragon. The time comes when he too has to face his misbegotten offspring.
The new film can be seen in 3D, and 3D is oddly appropriate, because a third dimension has been added to the old style saga by its Christian author. Although it’s set in the pagan 6th Century the poem was actually written by an English Christian, some 400 years later. So the 3rd dimension added to the pagan saga is the Christian view of how to be a human. In the film we are told that the Christian God doesn’t want us to achieve immortality by strength, courage and violence. Not to be a heroes, but rather to be willing to die, if necessary, as martyrs. Being a martyr is much less fun than being a hero, its true, but the Christian promise is not fame, but real eternal life.
In the film Beowulf’s final act is to try to end the cycle of betrayal and death by killing the dragon-child he conceived with Grendel’s mother, even thought he knows it will cost him his life. So has Beowulf himself become some kind of martyr? Perhaps; but as the film closes his best friend and successor is also being tempted as the golden girl, Grendel’s mother, invites him to join her in the sea.
In the ancient Christian world the sea was the home of chaos, and gold was symbolic of the fading glory of the world. In Seamus Heaney’s translation of the poem, at Beowulf’s funeral his gold is buried gold under gravel, gone to earth/ as useless to men now as it ever was.
So is this just an ancient legend? Or has it something to say to today? Why not, we are no different. We are all tempted. Grendel’s mother, Mephistopheles, Satan, The Father of Lies, The 0% interest rate, fame, wealth, celebrity, we give our tempters many names. But they are all shape shifters, seducers, skilful liars, offering us what we want rather than what we need, and stealing our souls in return. Sleeping with monsters still begets only monsters.
Eric Fromm was a psychoanalyst. In one of his books, called To Have or To Be. Fromm said that the pagan heroes’ achievements are measured by what they have, the trophies of victory, the gold and sex, fame, glory and glamour. But the truly human being, the three dimensional kind, is measured by who they are, by the essence of their being, by the degree to which they share in that which is real and true and eternal, rather than illusory, false and temporal. It takes more courage to be than to have.
So the tragedy of Beowulf shows us the hollowness of those false promises. His story is ancient, but the worship of possessions and fame and glamour, still rules today. And Christians are called to choose to live real three-dimensional lives, lived in the light of Christ, who was no pagan hero. He had nothing, he gave everything, and he was everything.
