Change Your Image
antblogger
Reviews
Beowulf (2007)
Regarding the Movie's Relationship to the Original
I love the Beowulf in its original form (by which i mean the original plot-line since all I can read are translations); however, I understand why the writer changed it. In the original, Beowulf has no inner-conflict. He is supremely confident, goes into battle ready to die, and so on. He makes no moral choice except to choose glory and honor. Thus, he only faces external foes which don't make for high drama, so they had Beowulf choose the demon and glory over the queen and domesticity to have the hero make a moral choice that he'd later reap a terrible consequence. The message of the real Beowulf is the pagan emptiness, the pathos of lost glory and old age compared with the Christian hope of eternal life, of which Beowulf has no inkling.
Interestingly, in the story the conflict is in the narrator who is clearly a Christian of some kind whose relating this very pagan tale. His conflict between Beowulf's world and the Christian perspective in which he writes is incorporated in the story though I thought unnecessarily.
All in all, I thought the movie failed to create a compelling drama. It ended up being mostly smoke and noise.
The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell (2006)
good for some
The storywritten and directed by and starring Kevin Wheatleymeanders, jumps around, and pretty much confuses people and probably pisses off more. The characters fight, eat other people, struggle against and abuse one another; indeed, few lovely virtues exist in this depiction of the American future. But there is a guiding light, a journey, the quest to create a New America that pulls the protagonist along his path, and the strange characters, the wry humor, the clever filming, and adequate acting make the quest enjoyable for those of us ready for something outside the prepackaged, three-part, half-digested films you see all the time.
It pulls on mythology including immortal beings akin to the Greek gods controlling fire though in this case they control a radio tower, a mystical seer who sees the future, and the archetypal tale of brothers competing for power. I'm not gonna lie, I like films that allude to the great works of literature, that include the vast collective unconscious in their scope, but this film is so obvious about it, I'm afraid it loses some of it's "intelligencia" points, which is just as well. There is a bit of violence, but it's stylized after graphic novels, so even the most gruesome scenes never make one cringe in the same way a Terentino film can. BPonTH holds the attention, causes a few double-takes and ultimately feels worth the Ritalin-esquire ride.