Spoiler Alert: This post discusses the Beowulf storyline. So be warned if you don't want to know any of the details before you see the movie.
The story of Beowulf is an ancient one. In fact, it's purportedly "the oldest extant poem in a modern European language" according to the Signet Classic in my library. Nobody knows who wrote it or even when, although most seem to place the writing between the eighth and tenth centuries. And it is set somewhere between the fifth and seventh centuries.
You've probably heard that the movie is animated, but it's far from the cartoons you remember watching on Saturday mornings. At times, the animation is so good that you forget you are watching animation. In my opinion, the animation in the first few minutes of the movie isn't nearly as good as it is in the rest of the movie, but maybe it just took me a few minutes to adjust to it. Once I did, I got lost in the story.
I bought the book six or seven months ago, but I haven't read it yet. According to a reviewer for the USA Today, it "couldn't be less faithful to the original epic poem" which is sort of disappointing, but I'm still intrigued enough to read the book.
The movie opens with a Danish kingdom under siege by a monster named Grendel. We find out later that the monster is the son of the king, who gave into a beautiful temptress (played by a digitalized version of Angelina Jolie), who in reality is a monster. And isn't temptation just like that? It's couched in beauty, with promises of ultimate fulfillment, only to haunt a person later.
Beowulf arrives from "across the sea" and kills Grendel. When he goes back to kill Grendel's mother to rid the land of the curse, he too falls to the temptress. After the king takes his life, Beowulf becomes king, but he finds himself in the same situation that the first king did--tormented by a monster that he fathered. Only this time, the monster, in the form of a dragon, is bigger and more ferocious. And isn't that just like sin? The longer it continues, the bigger it gets, and the harder it becomes to conquer.
Beowulf is burdened heavily with his wrong doing. Eventually he knows that he must kill the monster. After a mighty battle, he does just that, but he loses his own life in the process. And again, isn't sin just like that. Eventually it leads to death.
The next king, who knows what has happened, is faced with the same dilemma when the temptress comes calling again. The movie ends with the king sitting on the fence. I don't know if the book ends in a different way, but I thought this was a brilliant way to end the movie. It left the viewer with a very real question to ponder.
For me, it took me far beyond the land of make believe and it made me think about my own fallen condition. While that's never a pleasant thing to contemplate, it is a necessary exercise on occasion. And I love the fact that a movie brought me to that place.
