Three Readings of Two "Beowulfs"

I recently decided I wanted to revisit the epic poem Beowulf, which I read many years ago after listening to a Great Courses lecture about it.  The lecture was from Grant Voth's "The History of World Literature" series, and he laid out three different ways to think of Beowulf, saying:

The poem, like all good poems, like all good literature, can support a variety of readings, and it's one of the ways in which good literature, over and over again, can still provoke discussion and thought because there are so many ways that it can be read.

These three readings really stuck with me and they were top of mind as I, now older and wiser, tackled Beowulf again.  After my re-read I decided to watch the mostly forgotten and not particularly well received 2007 film adaptation and see what of Voth's readings, if any, could be applied to it.

I thoroughly enjoyed both the poem and the film, and I think the latter is a really ambitious and interesting adaptation.

So... off we go.

Note:  I read Howell D. Chickering, Jr. translation and all quotes from the poem are from that version.

Background

That we even have Beowulf is kind of a miracle.  It is known from only one manuscript which was discovered by the English scholar and collector Lawrence Nowell in 1563.  It eventually made its way into the library of Sir Robert Cotton, who, per Professor Renee Trilling "was in the process of amassing the most valuable private library of manuscripts ever assembled."  Beowulf was almost lost before it was even translated into modern English when a fire ravaged Cotton's collection in the Ashburnham House library in London in 1731.

It was damaged but survived and was translated in the 19th Century.

It's a pretty fast paced and relatively short poem at about 100 pages.

A Speedrun of Old English

The Beowulf manuscript was written down around 1000 CE in the West Saxon dialect of Old English.  Old English is the language of the Danish Angles and the German Saxons who settled in England from the 5th to 7th Century.  It is not intelligible to modern English speakers and it sounds more like German or Dutch.

The opening of Beowulf in Old English sounds something like this:

As Written	Phonetic
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas.	What Way-gar Deh-nah  en Yair-dar-gen Thay-ohd koo-nin-gah  Thrim-yah Free-non who thah ethellingas  aya-lin frem-e-don Oft Shield Shaving  Shay-ah-thenah threy-ah-tin Moh-nee-gum Mah-ike-thim May-oh de-set-lah oft tey-ah ex-so-deh ay-ort-las.

Old English may not be intelligible to English speakers but it is a direct ancestor of modern English.  It was a highly inflected language with both nouns and verbs changing their endings depending on their gender or their grammatical function in the sentence.  Modern English doesn't really do this.  The word "cat" is always "cat" regardless of whether it's the subject or object of a sentence or whether it's male or female.

Some of English's quirks are due to its inheritance from Old English, like the pluralization of "mouse" being "mice."  (Old English nouns change their endings when pluralized.)   Or take words like "knee" or "knight" which are from Old English where the "k" was pronounced.  (That sound was eventually dropped from the pronunciation, but not the spelling.)

The alphabet for Old English has some letters that modern English doesn't and there are some words that do sound like their English counterparts, like path (aka "pæð"), three (aka "þrīe") or book (aka "bōc").

Authorship

While scholars are pretty confident about when the surviving Beowulf manuscript was written, that's about all anyone is certain about.

Thomas Noble, in the Great Courses lecture series "Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition" says:

We have absolutely no idea who wrote this book.  There's not even any point speculating on it. We have only educated guesses as to when it was written. I think we can say that until a generation or so ago, there was a broad consensus that the poem was written in the 8th century, or composed or put together in something like its present form.

Slowly, but surely that consensus is moving forward. I think probably most people now would say maybe 9th century, possibly early 10th century, but the fact of the matter is that we cannot actually say for sure when this poem was written.

The identity of the person who wrote the surviving manuscript is also unknown.

I'll touch on this a bit later but Beowulf has a lot of Christian imagery and language in it, and there's some debate about whether this aspect was part of the original oral composition or was added later, perhaps by the almost certainly Christian scribe who wrote the poem down in 1000 CE.

Old English Poetry

Old English poetry uses very different metrical and sonic techniques than modern English poetry.  Renee Trilling, in her course "Old English Literature: Language as History," explains it better than I ever could:

[T]wo verses make up a full line of poetry, called a long line. The first verse is called the A verse, and the second verse is called the B verse. The two verses are joined by a caesura, or metrical pause, which is represented in printed text by a few blank spaces. So each line of old English poetry is made up of four major stresses divided into two verses, or half lines. This is the basic metrical form for old English poetry.

Now, poetry is all about sound, and the oral qualities of Old English verse set it apart from modern English poetry in a number of crucial ways. For one thing, it rarely uses rhyme as a poetic device. Instead, Old English poetry uses alliterative meter, rhythmical patterns that rely on metrical stress emphasized with alliteration.

The alliterative syllable is consistent across an individual long line but different lines may alliterate on a different sound.  You can easily hear this in lines 3 and 4 of the Beowulf passage I quoted earlier, where line 3's alliteration is on the sound "Sh" and 4's is on "M":

As Written	Phonetic
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah	Oft Shield Shaving Shay-ah-thenah threy-ah-tin Moh-nee-gum Mah-ike-thim May-oh de-set-lah oft tey-ah

The pervasive alliteration means that Beowulf, and I suspect most Old English poetry, uses a lot of creative synonyms so the same object can be used in verses with different alliterative emphasis.  A lot of these are compound words called "kennings."   So the sea might be called the "whale-road" or the "swan-road," a shield might be a "war-board," the sun might be the "world-candle," etc.  My personal favorite kenning is when Beowulf the character "unlocks his word-hoard," as in, "talks."

Beowulf the poem also uses a lot of understatement like when it ends the terrifying describing of the lake where Grendel's mother lives with "That was no good place" or how Beowulf later sums up their brutal battle with "With no small trouble I returned with my life."

A Plot Summary of Beowulf

The plot of Beowulf is straightforward in the broad strokes and is structured around three big fights.  The first is Beowulf's battle with Grendel, the rampaging monster that has terrorized the Dane's mead-hall for years, the second is his hard won fight with Grendel's mother after she comes to avenge her son, and then after a time skip the third is the now much older Beowulf's fight against a dragon ravaging his kingdom.  Beowulf slays the dragon but then succumbs to its venom and dies.

The plot has some digressions where a character or a bard, known in Old English as a "scop," will tell a story to assembled listeners.  Some of these involve real historical figures, some others Germanic legends, and a lot of them are pretty obscure, though the poem's intended audience no doubt understood the references.

The Tone

I'd say overall the tone of the poem is kind of gloomy and bleak.  There are victories of good over evil but none of them are permanent and the characters all know this.  There's moments of ominous suspense, like the build-up to the fight with Grendel, or the aforementioned description of the lake in the lead up to the battle with Grendel's mother.

After the time skip to Beowulf as an old king, the poem takes on an elegiac tone.  He feels old and you can feel the chill of age in his bones, his fading if still prodigious strength, and the inevitability of his eventual defeat.

This bleakness is no doubt a result of the rough and pessimistic cultural milieu the poem comes from.  This is a violent society in a very harsh environment.  Monsters aside, the poem spends a not insignificant amount of time describing endemic violence and blood feuds.  Life is pretty close to what Hobbes described as the primal state of nature, "a war of all against all" and an existence that is "nasty, brutish, and short."  This pessimism is reflected in Scandinavian mythology in general; after all, in the final battle of Ragnarok, the gods lose.

This grim perspective is not just subtext In the poem.  The Danish king Hrothgar says to Beowulf:

Turn not to pride, O brave champion!

Your fame lives now, in one strong time.

Soon in their turn sickness or war

will break your strength, or the grip of fire,

overwhelming wave, or sword's swing,

a thrown spear, or hateful old age;

the lights will darken that were your eyes.

Death overcomes you all at once, warrior. (1761-1768)

In the world of Beowulf the only thing that lasts is your name, and even then only if you've dared all to give people a reason to remember it.  Beowulf the character explicitly lays out this ethos a few times in the poem, like in this line:

Each of us must come

to the end of his life: let him who may

win fame before death. That is the best

memorial for a man after he is gone. (1386-1389)

Or this:

His own strength he trusted,

the strength of his hand-grip.  So must a man,

if he thinks at battle to gain any name,

a long-living fame, care nothing for life. (1534-1536)

The Writing

In addition to, at times, evoking a great the sense of atmosphere as I mentioned above, the writing also has some really powerful and visceral descriptive passages.  Like this section from the end of Beowulf's fight with Grendel"

The terrible creature

took a body wound there; a gaping tear

opened in his shoulder; tendons popped,

muscle slipped the bone. Glory in battle

was given to Beowulf; Grendel fled,

wounded, death-sick, under marshy hills

to his joyless den; with that huge wound

he knew for certain his life had ended,

the sum of his days. (815-823)

Or this, shortly after:

There the lake water boiled with blood,

terrible surgings, a murky swirl

of hot dark ooze, deep sword-blood;

death-fated, he hid joyless in the fen,

his dark stronghold, till he gave up life,

his heathen soul; there Hell received him. (847-852)

Three Readings of the Poem

The readings themselves are:

1. The Cosmic Reading

The cosmic reading was articulated by J.R.R. Tolkien who, in addition to being an author, was a linguist, professor, and Old English scholar.

As Voth says:

In Tolkien's vision, humans create little tiny circles of light. Hrothgar's mead hall is one of those little circles of light. And inside each one of those circles, there is laughter, there is music, there is fellowship.  But just outside those little circles are all of the forces that want to destroy it. ... And so in some ways, building a mead hall, like the one that Hrothgar builds, actually calls Grendel into existence.  Create something human, and the hostile universe will try to destroy it.

...

That means that the entire arc of northern mythology is gloomy, and there are no ultimate winners. There are only glorious or inglorious defeats.

Renee Trilling picks up on this idea as well, saying:

The fight between Beowulf and Grendel then becomes a symbolic battle between the forces of civilization, of order, of security, and stability, and the threat of chaos and evil that exists outside society's borders.  Grendel's attacks are not just a clear and present danger to the people of Horthgar's kingdom. They represent an existential threat to the very fabric of human civilization, and that, in the end, is what Beowulf is really defending. The existence of civilization.

I think this cosmic reading is really interesting even though, or maybe because, it is so depressing.  I'm a sucker for existential dread and cosmic horror.

2.  The Social Reading

From Voth again:

A second reading, and this one is suggested by John McGalliard and Lee Patterson, who are the editors of the text in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, they see the poem as a kind of meditation on the futility of tribal warfare and the Germanic love of fighting. Most of the digressions, and all of them that can be accurately identified, are about inter-tribal feuds, most of which end badly. ...  In this reading, the monsters are not symbols of a hostile universe as they were for Tolkien, but of a kind of social sickness that pervades the whole culture. They can be killed. You can kill an individual monster, but the violence will simply go on.

You can find support for this one all through the poem.  Even the opening lines, which describes King Hrothgar's great grandfather Scyld Scefing, talk about how the good king raided other people, took their stuff and accepted tribute from them in a protection racket.  In this world, a good king is good because he defeats people and distributes plunder, meaning good kingship is tied into the society's endemic violence

That violence is a looming threat throughout.  After Beowulf's death, his thane Wiglaf gloomily predicts the end of the Geats, since their strong leader is dead:

That is the feud, the hatred of tribes,

war-lust of men, for which I [expect]

the Swedish people will seek us out

in a new battle, after they have heard

that our lord is lifeless, he who once held

the hoard and kingdom against all enemies

after the death of the brave Scyldings,

worked in courage for the good of the nation. (2999-3006)

Another thing to note is that in the digressions about blood feuds, all the unfamiliar names from complicated family trees and the myriad of patronymics make it hard for a modern reader to keep the characters in them straight.  This likely wasn't an issue for the original audience but to a modern it emphasizes the social sickness reading.  It doesn't really matter who stole what or who betrayed who; the cycle of violence will continue tomorrow, no matter who is perpetuating it today.

3.  The Communal Christian Reading

The last reading Voth discusses is by the American scholar John Niles:

He sees the poem sort of permeated with Christian values, the ones that Tolkien found only on the margins. ... The reason why Niles finds these Christian values important is that he sees the poem's concerns as that of community. which accounts for the emphasis, he thinks, on   and ceremonial speeches, and gifts, gift exchanges, all those things which fill up this poem.

So for Niles, the poem is not about heroism, per se, but about what leaders need to do in order to and how they need to act in order to hold society together. Courage and fortitude, and the desire for fame, can all be helpful to a leader, but they can also be destructive of society if they're used for selfish reasons instead of for communal ones. God allots all gifts to humans.

Here where he sees the Christian values as permeating this poem. God allots all kinds of life and all gifts to human beings, and we all have those lives on loan. A man can be gifted with strength or skill, but unless it's used for the common good, it's an affliction to others.

While the Christian language of this poem is so obvious that even a casual skim will find it, I think its ties to Niles's "communal good" idea is more oblique than anything in the other two readings.  I do think this is an interesting framework to think about the poem with but, for me, it's the one that required the deepest digging.

I don't think any of these three readings are necessarily mutually exclusive or the definitive way to read the poem but rather are interesting lenses to apply and think about the text through.

And now, on to the film adaptation...

The Film

I'm going to spoil this and, weirdly for an adaptation of a poem we've had for more than 200 years, there actually is stuff to spoil.

Background

Beowulf is an animated 2007 film directed by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Cast Away, Contact, among many others.)  It was written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary and stars Ray Winstone as Beowulf, Robin Wright as Wealtheow, Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar, and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's Mother.

It was filmed using the same motion capture technique as Zemeckis's The Polar Express.  It got mixed reviews and per Wikipedia it grossed about $196 million against a $150 million budget.  I have no idea how much was spent on marketing but I would guess that box office gross put it somewhere between "financial disappointment" and "bomb."

The film has an interesting aesthetic, given the fully CGI characters which actually look pretty good, though obviously not lifelike.  It looks way better than Polar Express, which came out 3 years earlier and had animation that I found very off putting.  Beowulf is a little uncanny, for sure, but there's no dead eyed wax people here.  The faces are pretty expressive and detailed with the spark of life in the eyes, though sometimes when characters speak the lip motions are a little off.  Your mileage may vary but I didn't find it distracting.

This is a grim story in a world very different from our own so having some uncanniness kind of heightens the alienness and the dark fantasy aspect.  Also, the monsters probably would have been rather unconvincing and distracting if they were digitally dropped in to a fully live action film; as it stands they match the aesthetic and fit in well.  Grendel's mother is sort of unnaturally smooth, but that's clearly an aesthetic choice to set her apart from everyone else.

The character models all look like their actors except for Beowulf who honestly looks more like Sean Bean than Ray Winstone.

The Story Changes

I really like this movie and I think it makes really interesting choices but It must be said that it's not a one to one adaptation of the poem, despite having the same macro structure.  This is a subversive take on Beowulf, though maybe not as much as it first appears if looked at in light of the poem's ethos of desiring fame and McGalliard and Patterson's social sickness reading.

All the departures feel purposeful rather than like fumbles which probably isn't surprising given Gaiman's involvement.  He has been revealed to be a lot of bad things lately but he is an excellent writer and from his work on, say, Sandman, it's clear he knows his shit about literature and history.

There's really two big plot departures in the film.

The first is that Beowulf, rather than killing Grendel's mother, makes a deal with her.  She says:

A man like you could own the greatest tale ever sung. Your story would live on when everything now alive is dust. Beowulf.  It has been a long time since a man has come to visit me. ... You took a son from me.  Give me a son, brave thane.  Stay with me. Love me. Love me and I shall weave you riches beyond imagination. I shall make you the greatest king that ever lived.

He returns to Herot and tells everyone that he killed her.  So the poem Beowulf is the legend that film Beowulf's people sing of him, not the truth of the events.  This kind of deception in the service of winning fame is prefigured when Beowulf earlier tells the tale of his swimming race with Brecca, where he lost because he was killing sea monsters.

The story Beowulf is telling the people of Herot is not quite what we're seeing in the flashback where the final sea monster he claims to have slain is shown to be a beautiful mermaid who is perhaps about to seduce him.  Also, after Beowulf says he killed 9 sea monsters during the race, Wiglaf says under his breath that "Last time it were three."

I think this change is an interesting way to not only portray a bleak worldview where life sucks so the only goal is to try to get people to remember your name but also to tie it directly into a character choice.  It also fits especially well given that film Beowulf is a far more complex person than poem Beowulf, who is mostly just an archetype.  Beowulf is, after all, described in the poem as a man "most eager for fame," and the more morally grey and realistic film protagonist is willing to make a bad choice to attain it.

The deal with Grendel's mother also leads into the second change which is that Grendel is Hrothgar's son, conceived after he made a similar deal with Grendel's mother, and the dragon that ravages the land at the end is Beowulf's son by her.  This ties into the social sickness reading of the poem where the monsters represent the cycles of endemic violence in Scandinavian society.

In the film, the choices of the men in charge directly lead to the repeated cycles of monster attacks no less than the constant raiding for fame and riches leads to repeated cycles of blood feuds and retribution in the poem.  If the monsters represent societal violence, making them the children of the kings is a neat metaphor.

I like that this change also hits on this line from Wiglaf in the poem:

"Often many earls must suffer misery

through the will of one, as we do now." (3077-3078)

The deal cycle in the film, where Grendel's mother promises ascendence and fame, is symbolized by a golden drinking horn.  Beowulf receives the horn from Hrothgar after defeating Grendel, and gives it back to Grendel's mother when they consummate their deal.  She tells him he will be king as long as the horn stays in her keeping.   Decades later, a servant finds it on the moors and returns it to Beowulf just before the dragon attacks.  When he sees that the horn is back, Beowulf knows his time is almost up.

The poem has this line from Hrothgar:

Then it finally happens, the body decays,

his life-house fails him, only a loan;

death-doomed, he falls. Another succeeds him,

reckless, unmourning, gives out his gifts,

the noble's old treasures; heeds not, nor fears. (1753-1757)

The film's horn is a loan, just like a person's strength, and after it comes due there will be another person to pick it up, just like Hrothgar says in the poem.

I think the deals with Grendel's mother make a good structural girder for the film.  They tie directly to the desire of men for riches and glory which, again, is a very important force in Beowulf, and they link the film's three battles together in a direct causal chain.

In the poem, the dragon's awakening happens through random chance.  It had been slumbering under the earth for three hundred years, a nascent landmine from a hostile universe.  This randomness is more in line with the cosmic reading of the text but I think for a film, especially one that has personalized the conflicts, it would have been a little unsatisfying.

Beowulf the Character

As I mentioned above, Beowulf as a character is more complicated in the film, to good effect.  He has insecurities, he makes mistakes, he doesn't always tell the truth, and we even see him afraid, something that doesn't really happen in the poem.

I really like how the film handles old Beowulf.  You feel his age and weariness and, perhaps like all old men, he laments the decisions of his younger self.  After the time skip we see Beowulf and Wiglaf overseeing a battle with invading Frisians who are eager to gain fame by killing the now legendary king.

Beowulf says to his old friend:

We men are the monsters now.  The time of heroes is dead, Wiglaf.  The Christ God has killed it, leaving humankind with nothing but weeping martyrs, fear and shame.

I like that this is theoretically Beowulf making social commentary but is pretty clearly also  projection.  This is before the horn is returned to him and his surety of his own invincibility is coupled with a deep regret over how he achieved it and what it implies about heroism.

His regret is made explicit later on the beach when he faces the last Frisian.  He dismounts, drops his sword, takes off his armor, exposes his chest to the man's axe and says:

Well, kill me! Do it! Kill me! Kill me!

When the terrified man refuses, Beowulf says exhaustedly:

You know why you can't kill me, my friend? 'Cause I died many, many years ago when I was young.

The film really captures the elegiac tone of the end of of the poem.

For his part, film Beowulf does try to break the cycle.  He doesn't hide from his dragon/son and wait for some young hero to come fix it, which would then put that hero in the crosshairs of Grendel's mother and start the cycle over.  That is what Hrothgar did and probably what whoever fathered the dragon that young Hrothgar slew years before the film's events did.

Beowulf even rejects the fame at all costs ethos of his youth when he tells his queen Wealtheow to:

Keep a memory of me, not as a king or a hero, but as a man, fallible and flawed.

Yeah, this movie gave Beowulf a character arc.  Good stuff.

Did Beowulf succeed?  The film ends with Wiglaf on the beach watching Beowulf's funeral ship burn.  He looks down to see the golden horn in the sand and then sees Grendel's mother in the water, beckoning him.  Does he make a deal or break the cycle?

The movie ends without answering.

Christianity

Niles's view of Beowulf as being an intrinsically Christian work is not present at all in the film, though Christianity does come up in some interesting ways.

The characters in the poem are sure of the Christian God's Providence.  Hrothgar says of Beowulf:

Holy God

in the fullness of mercy has sent him to us (381-382)

And regarding Grendel, he says:

Yet God may easily

Stop the mad deeds of the foolhardy ravager (478-479)

Hrothgar is pagan in the film, and says things like "Odin willing."  The film's Danes sacrifice to Odin and Heimdall for deliverance but this isn't a backslide like it is in the poem.  They are aware of Christianity but have not converted, with Unferth asking if they should also sacrifice to the Roman God Christ Jesus as well.  Hrothgar demurs saying:

The gods will do nothing for us that we will not do for ourselves.

(That line is reconfextualized later when you realize that it is his actions that have brought the suffering on them.)

After the time skip Christianity has a foothold at Herot.  Unferth has converted, the town has a church, and they annually sing the Heliand which is a Germanic epic version of the life of Jesus.

It is in this environment that Beowulf and Wiglaf lament how the Christ God has killed the time of heroes.  I like how the film manages to convey a subtle paradigm shift, one that contributes to the feeling that an old world is giving way to a new one.

A Brief Sidebar - An Historian Goes to the Movies

While poking around the internet I stumbled on a very negative review of the film by a medieval historian and teacher using the handle "Aelarsen" titled 'Beowulf: Shame on You Neil Gaiman" from the blog "An Historian Goes to the Movies."

I think this review is interesting because I disagree with a lot of it but I think it's a good faith bad review from someone passionate about the source material.  The tone's a little strident, with Aelarsen saying the film is "perhaps the worst adaptation of a piece of medieval literature I’ve ever read [sic], and Neil Gaiman, who is normally a great storyteller as Sandman demonstrates, ought to be embarrassed that he wrote it."

(Gaiman has a lot to be embarrassed about lately but I don't think this film is one of those things.)

Aelarsen seems deeply offended at the changes to Beowulf and Hrothgar, saying:

The central problem is that instead of presenting Hrothgar and Beowulf as great heroes, which is exactly who they are in the poem, the film offers us two decidedly unheroic liars.

The film definitely does that, I just don't think that it's prime facie a problem.  On some level I think this is a disagreement over what an adaptation should be.  This film is, indeed, a very deconstructionist take.  But is that a bad thing?

As I said in my piece on Bram Stoker's Dracula "You can make a good movie that's not a faithful adaptation of the source material.  You can make a bad movie that is."

Aelarsen's review seems firmly on the side of "this is a bad movie because it's an unfaithful adaptation" and that's more of a philosophical argument that I don't agree with.

Personally, I think this is a good movie, but is it an unfaithful adaptation?  ... Yes?  But I also think there's enough continuity with some of the themes and atmosphere of the original poem that I would also say "...No?"

For example, Aelarsen criticizes the film because:

[Beowulf and Hrothgar's] glory is purchased with the future slaughter of their own men because their pretended triumphs lay the foundations for the future crisis that will ruin them and wreak havoc on their people.

Which is a true statement about the film.  But I think MacGalliard and Patterson would agree that that's what the poem's "heroic" kings do with their blood feuds and retributions and raiding.

The poem, as I quote above, literally says:

"Often many earls must suffer misery

through the will of one, as we do now." (3077-3078)

The review also has a long section on misogyny in the film which, again, I think is argued in good faith but I think is based on a different read of the framing than I had.  Aelarsen interprets Queen Wealtheow being essentially gifted to Beowulf after Hrothgar's death as the film using the misogynist trope of making a female character just a prize to be awarded to the hero.

But to me, the fact that the men are intentionally portrayed as such shitbags implies that the film is being condemnatory here, not just of the characters but of their society.  In the poem Wealtheow was gifted to Hrothgar as peace offering between tribes.  This doesn't seem that different to me.

Aelarsen goes on to say this:

But that beautiful prize turns out to be a viper that gradually poisons him by refusing to have sex with him  ... When you combine Wealtheow and Mother as images of femininity, we’re left with a view that women are simply destructive to men.

I think that first part is kind of a wild thing to say about Wealtheow and is really stretching the text of the film.  I also don't really agree that the film is framing women as destructive temptresses either.  I interpreted it that Beowulf chose the Mother's bargain because he calculated that it was a way to achieve famed immortality, not because he was overcome by lust.

Bluntly I don't think the film is trying to get Beowulf and Hrothgar off the hook by saying they were helpless before the destructive women. To me it seemed pretty clear that the film blames the men.

The review itself criticizes the film for making Beowulf and Hrothgar weak and dishonest but that would seem to run counter to the idea that the film is also saying it's primarily the women's fault.  The conflict and drama in the story happen because Hrothgar and Beowulf make bad decisions.  They aren't tricked and Beowulf at least is a capable man and no naive simpleton.

The review uses the word "emasculation" a lot, which always sets my spidey-sense off that I might be dealing with a fragile man projecting anger and insecurity onto women.  I am not alone either, as someone in the blog's comment section called the author an incel.

I absolutely think that commenter is wrong. In the blog's About Me section Aelarsen says he is both a gay man and an avowed feminist and the misogynist tropes he criticizes are very real and pervasive in mass media.  I understand why this film set his spidey-sense off and it's important to be vigilant and aware of what a piece of media might be implying, either on purpose or by accident.  As I said I think Aelarsen is making a good faith argument I'm just not convinced that the female characters are framed in a way that supports his interpretation.

I think the review just has some unfortunate vocabulary overlap with fragile incels who feel emasculated by a woman existing or chafe at a man not always being a strong power fantasy.  The "how dare you make this man weak" kind of thing.

If you've seen the movie, read the review for yourself and see what you think.  It's worth reading.

Gallimaufry

• Thomas Noble notes that::

There is one interesting point to be made here. Beowulf never appears anywhere else in the literature of Anglo Saxon England or of the Germanic peoples.  Other figures who appear in the poem of Beowulf do appear elsewhere. but not Beowulf himself.

This, along with how close this story was to being lost forever, makes this line from the poem pretty ironic:

Your glorious name

is raised on high over every nation,

Beowulf my friend, your fame spreads far (1703-1705)

• I really like the film's design of Grendel as a misshapen but almost childlike creature.  The singing of his father's mead hall causes him immense physical pain and he sobs as he attacks Herot.  The music when Grendel first confronts Hrothgar is almost tragic.

• On a pedantic personal note, I get really irked when people say that Shakespeare is in "Old English."  When I hear people say that I think "that "o" better be lowercase, son."

• The film shows hostility between the Geats and Danes at Herot which I think is a nice detail.  The poem makes it clear that inter-tribal violence is always on the verge of breaking out.

• In the poem, I like how the difficulty progression of the three fights can be read as a metaphor for aging.  Beowulf handles Grendel relatively easily.  His battle with Grendel's mother is much more difficult and the dragon kills him.

• Film Grendel speaks Old English to his mother.  It's untranslated but I'm pretty sure I heard him say the words "Hrothgar" and "fæder" (i.e. "father) just before he died. This happens before Grendel's parentage is unambiguously revealed to the audience.  A neat touch.

• Film Unferth shouting "the sins of the father!" multiple times after relaying the dragon's message to Beowulf was a bit too on the nose.  Like yeah man, I know. I've been watching the movie.

• I like how apocalyptic the dragon's arrival feels in the poem:

The visitor began to spew fire-flakes,

burn the bright halls; the glow rose high,

a horror everywhere. The fiery terror

left nothing alive wherever it flew.

Throughout the night sky the burnings were visible,

cruelest warfare, known near and far;

the Geatish people saw how the burner

had raided and hurt them. He flew back to the hoard,

the mysterious hall, just before day.

His flames had set fire to men and their houses;

he trusted his barrow, its deep walls,

his strength in fire; his trust was to fail. (2312 - 2323)

• My weirdest literary take is that the fantastic TV show Hannibal (2013-2015) reminds me of Beowulf, specifically the cosmic reading of the poem.  It is an extremely bleak show that really sits in the consequence of all the violence and it makes the killers feel like a distorting, corrosive force to both society and humanity itself.  And there's always another monster.  The FBI may catch one killer but another will be along soon.  Similar to Beowulf, the show has a gloomy futility to it.

Like Voth said:

[T]here are no ultimate winners. There are only glorious or inglorious defeats.

Hannibal even has its own Ragnarok of sorts in the Season 2 finale when all the good guys take their best shot at stopping Hannibal Lecter... and lose.

Conclusion

I would recommend both Beowulf the poem and Beowulf the film though I do think the film's subversive elements are more effective if you've recently read the poem.  Of the three readings I've talked about, the film is most in line with MacGalliard and Patterson's social sickness one and I think it's a creative and interesting take.

I think Beowulf would be a hard poem to do a really faithful adaptation of while making a good movie, or at least a movie with much depth.  So much of what makes the poem thought provoking would be kind of hard to convey on film and there's a much higher suspension of disbelief built into an epic poem like, as just one example, a much higher tolerance for archetypal characters talking in long prepared speeches.

If pared down to just the three battles, the plot would be relatively easy to directly translate to film but a lot would be lost in that approach and I think you'd just end up with a Watchmen (2009) style adaptation: one that on the surface looks right but doesn't feel like the source material.

(Side note: I don't mind Watchmen (2009) as a film but I think it's a bad adaptation of Alan Moore's comic.)

Happy reading and happy watching.  Be the kindest to your men, the best to your people, but maybe skip being the most eager for fame.

-m