Academic's review of Beowulf

'Beowulf' always evolving; MU professor finds epic's retelling on film different but entertaining
DUANE DUDEK
16 November 2007
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

That director Robert Zemeckis' new digitally animated film of "Beowulf" bears little resemblance to the epic poem goes without saying.

But such reinvention has helped keep the poem alive, said Tim Machan, professor of English at Marquette University.

"Beowulf" is the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language, and "remaking it . . . to a personal vision is in a lot of ways consistent to the original atmosphere that produced" it, said Machan, a specialist in medieval language and literature.

The written version of "Beowulf," by an anonymous author, dates back about 1,000 years, and that account was drawn from oral versions of the same tale dating back 500 years before that.

"And the thing about an oral composition is that it doesn't have a fixed form. The poem gets reinvented every time it's told," Machan said.

It is the story of a hero named Beowulf who defeats a monster and his mother. It is written in "a form of English" that "sounds and reads very much like old German," Machan said. Composed when England was overrun by the Vikings, it "talks about how a proud people need to . . . have heroes to overcome monsters."

"Whoever wrote it was almost nostalgic back to a moment when . . . this warrior culture was able to dominate," Machan said.

In an e-mail after seeing a preview of the movie, which opens today, Machan wrote that the film "really does change the story." In the film, the mother is "a seductress," while in the poem, "she's a simple monster." Also, neither monster speaks. The film compromises Beowulf's integrity, "and that change . . . really transforms the poem." Still, he wrote, "I liked it as entertainment (and) thought the visual effects, the technology, was terrific."