Buttercup Redeem Me
Beowulf (2007)
directed by Robert Zemeckis
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Motion capture remains the most condescending way to dare your audience not to laugh at the dead-eyed mugs on screen - Zemeckis is a kind of bully in that regard - but a movie this expensive is always more than just its director's single-minded intentions, and Beowulf's technicians clearly read the same Usborne Viking and Norse mythology primers that I loved and re-read as a kid. Those silly faces aside, it's a beautiful movie, full of great scale. Like worthier animated films, Beowulf offers sights that live-action can't: a tracking shot from a mead hall, over a mountain, and into the woods; the supernatural suddenness with which a roomful of torches are extinguished, and the immediate impression of a merciless winter wailing at the door; dragons on the ramparts; the ocean washing over a corpse in shallow surf, with the meditative rhythm that only animated water can find.
I didn't expect it. I wanted to hate it, but everything old in Beowulf - the land, the artifacts, the stories - rang true. But it's like watching the bunting at an inauguration; better when it's Barack and not W., and the director of Forrest Gump - let's face it - will always be a Republican.
directed by Robert Zemeckis
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Motion capture remains the most condescending way to dare your audience not to laugh at the dead-eyed mugs on screen - Zemeckis is a kind of bully in that regard - but a movie this expensive is always more than just its director's single-minded intentions, and Beowulf's technicians clearly read the same Usborne Viking and Norse mythology primers that I loved and re-read as a kid. Those silly faces aside, it's a beautiful movie, full of great scale. Like worthier animated films, Beowulf offers sights that live-action can't: a tracking shot from a mead hall, over a mountain, and into the woods; the supernatural suddenness with which a roomful of torches are extinguished, and the immediate impression of a merciless winter wailing at the door; dragons on the ramparts; the ocean washing over a corpse in shallow surf, with the meditative rhythm that only animated water can find.
I didn't expect it. I wanted to hate it, but everything old in Beowulf - the land, the artifacts, the stories - rang true. But it's like watching the bunting at an inauguration; better when it's Barack and not W., and the director of Forrest Gump - let's face it - will always be a Republican.
posted by NPK at 4:45 PM
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