Beowulf: A Film in Poetry

[Eadgifu the Fair]

Beowulf: A Film in Poetry
By Eadgifu the Fair

It's inspired some pretty dodgy comics as well.

Beowulf has the dubious honour of being (to my knowledge) the only Old English poem to get itself three film adaptations – one of which contains Angelina Jolie spattered with strategic gold paint – and one for TV.

All of these, based on a quick Wikipedia check by yours truly, stray pretty far from the source material. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it might be odd in light of what I want to talk about: the fact that Beowulf itself, the poem, is very like a film already. 

As a disclaimer: I know nothing about films, other than having watched a lot of them, and have never watched any of the film adaptations of Beowulf. All quotes are taken from Jack's student edition of Beowulf: the translations are my own.[/size]

The Opening Credits

Beowulf doesn't start with Beowulf himself: it starts with Scyld Scefing, a character from the distant past who never appears again, the founder of the Danish dynasty. The poem sketches out the deeds of some of the Danes' most glorious kings, culminating in the building of the magnificent hall Heorot by Hrothgar. We're shown Scyld's funeral: his body is sent out to sea in a royal ship, and we're told this is also how he arrived in Denmark as a boy, laden with treasures and entirely alone.

The scene is set – this story is about heroism, and here is how the Danes demonstrated it, and here is how it led to the building of Heorot, glorious and ill-fated.

Hwæt, wē Gār-Dena in geārdagum,
þēodcyninga þrym gefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Lo, we have heard of the glory of the kings
of the Spear-Danes in former days,
how the princes performed courage.

But there's a foreboding note in the fact that the poem begins with a funeral. An oddly symmetrical funeral, at that: from the sea Scyld came and to the sea he returns. In other words, we've been shown what glory looks like, but we've also been shown how it must eventually fall, how it blooms and withers in cycles.

I bring this up because during one seminar, I daydreamed about how I'd start a Beowulf film if I were writing and directing it, only to realise the poem had done all the work for me. Everything I've just described fits together beautifully into opening credits. Picture it: the crashing sea, the gold-laden ship, the king's body... and a ghostly ship making its way over the waves, bearing a young boy to shore. The story's background is sketched out for us, and the mood is set, as surely as if it came with a soundtrack.

Sketching in dialogue

Even when Beowulf himself appears in the poem, we don't learn his name immediately: he is simply Higelāces þegn, Hygelac's liegeman. We see him set out on his journey to Denmark and explain his purpose to the Danish coastguard without ever revealing who he is. It's not until he reaches Hrothgar's court that he says Bēowulf is mīn nama, to Hrothgar's herald. The herald then goes to tell Hrothgar who is at his gates, and Hrothgar immediately places Beowulf as the son of an old friend. God must have sent Beowulf to them, he says, because hē þrītiges/ manna mægencræft on his mundgripe/ heaþorōf hæbbe ('he, brave in battle, has the strength of thirty men in his hand-grip'). Incidentally, in Grendel's first attack on Heorot, he slew thirty men...

This is very neat storytelling: the details are filled in for us as we go, and they're slotted in exactly as they should be, as Beowulf progresses from coast to court and must observe the courtesies. His place in the story is explained by Hrothgar, the man best placed to know who he is – including his family – and how he fits into the situation. (By the by, knowing his family is important: the exile in The Wanderer laments that he cannot find anyone who knows of his own kindred, and the story here is establishing that Beowulf, far from being an exile, is a hero and an honoured guest.)

But it's also very film-like! It's making us experience the narrative rather than following it. Compare it with a fairy tale, or with the Four Branches (for those who saw my last article), which begin with formulae like 'Pwyll was lord of Dyfed'. Revealing the situation through dialogue is a staple of films that centre on personal drama.

This isn't the only time we see this: when Grendel's mother comes to take vengeance, we don't find out anything about the thegn she kills until Hrothgar laments his death to Beowulf, calling him Æschere... mīn rūnwita ond mīn rǣdbora ('my confidant and advisor'). Again, we get the exposition in the most fitting place in the narrative and in the mouth of the one best placed to know.

Much later in the poem, we find out that Beowulf's lord, Hygelac, was the last of three brothers, and the other two were killed – one by the other. We discover this through Beowulf's monologue as he – now king of the Geats – thinks about the situations in which it is impossible to avenge loved ones, after his final foe, a dragon, has burned his hall to the ground. Him was geōmor sefa,/ wǣfre ond wælfūs ('His heart was sad, restless and death-ready')... This comes in the second half of the poem, in which we start to see the darker history of the Geats and of how Beowulf became king, his kinsmen fallen in war. Speech (albeit monologue rather than dialogue) sets out the background for us, right when it's most emotionally resonant.

Flashbacks

The Beowulf-poet seems to have been fond of revealing past events much later in the story, because they pull this trick a lot. Sometimes they do it in narration, as they do with Hygelac's death in battle, which we don't hear the details of until after we know Beowulf is king. Much  more often, though, they do it through dialogue or a song within the story. We learn the origins of the Swedish-Geatish wars (which now threaten to overwhelm the Geats) after Beowulf's death, as a messenger foretells doom to his people; we hear about the feud of Finnsburh, in which the Danish princess Hildeburh loses husband, son and brother, through a song Hrothgar's scop sings to entertain men at a celebratory feast.

Many of these flashbacks are there to evoke atmosphere, fill in important story details, or act as omens for the future, and might work better on paper than on screen. But some work exactly the way a film flashback ought to. When Beowulf arrives at Hrothgar's court, he's challenged by another warrior, Unferth, who attempts to embarrass him by telling everyone about the time Beowulf, young and foolhardy, lost a swimming match. Beowulf matches wits with Unferth and gives his own side of the story. In his version, he and his friend Breca rowed out together but were struck by a storm. Breca eventually managed to swim to shore, while Beowulf was attacked by water-monsters and fought them off with his sword. Beowulf is proving that he can take on a dangerous task and survive, even when storms try to throw him off course – but he's also providing an important parallel for his fight with Grendel's mother, who drags him to the bottom of her mere as he tries to fend off attacks by water-monsters, and who is eventually killed by a sword. In fact, the poem calls her a brimwylf ('sea-she-wolf') and merewīf mihtig ('mighty sea-woman'). So being good underwater is pretty essential...

Beowulf's description of his sea adventure is very visual:

Đā wit ætsomne on sǣ wǣron
fīf nihta fyrst oþþæt unc flōd tōdrāf,
wado weallende, wedera cealdost,
nipende niht, ond norþanwind
heaðogrim ondhwearf; hrēo wǣron ȳþa.

Then we two were together on the sea
for the space of five nights until a flood drove us apart,
surging waters, coldest of weather,
night growing dark, and the north wind,
battle-fierce, turned against us; the waves were fierce.

As you read his account you can almost see him, struggling against the waves, gasping for breath in the icy wind, fending off sea-monsters right and left.  In a film, this would be a perfect moment for Beowulf's dialogue to turn into overhead narration, as we saw his younger self tossed by the waves, contending with the storm – a promise of what was to come in his fight against a merewīf mihtig.

Camera work

I owe this particular point to Alain Renoir, who first made it in 1962. Renoir suggested that the oral poet who speaks their poetry aloud must make their audience visualise the action at a rapid pace: that is to say, their words must do the same work that the images of a film do. They must make what is happening appear to their audience, as if real. For this to happen they must take advantage of all the tricks that a camera has – different angles, panning, different types of shot.

The best example of this is Grendel's final journey to Heorot and his fight with Beowulf there:

Cōm on wanre niht
scrīdan sceadugenga. Scēotend swǣfon,
þā þæt hornreced healdan scoldon,
ealle būton ānum...

ac hē wæccende wrāþum on andan
bād bolgenmōd beadwa geþinges.

The shadow-goer came gliding
in dark night. Warriors slept,
those who had to hold that gabled hall,
all except one...

but he, watching, awaited enraged,
in hostile anger, for the outcome of the fighting.

Renoir analysed these lines as first a 'long exterior shot', dimly showing a danger approaching Heorot; then a 'medium interior shot' panning across the sleeping warriors within, his prey; and finally a close-up on Beowulf, the only man capable of saving them. Once it's pointed out, it's very easy to imagine.

Grendel himself is described in various terms as he comes closer and closer to the hall. We never truly find out what Grendel is through the whole course of the poem, though we know he is related to ogres, trolls and elves. He's capable of thought and perhaps even of loneliness – he is drawn to Heorot initially because he is, in Tolkien's words, 'maddened by the sound of harps', joys he can never share in. This makes it easy for the poet to have him verbally shape-shift. Initially he is a sceadugenga who comes scrīþan, the same verb used for the movement of clouds, as if he himself is darkness and mist descending on Heorot. Then he is a manscaða, a ravager; finally he is a rinc, a warrior. This deliberate ambiguity would be a problem for an action film, but for a horror film, clever camera angles could arrange that we never quite see enough of Grendel to know what he is – making the terror he inspires all the more effective. 

And the camera work doesn't stop as we enter the fight: all the description is short phrases, two half-lines at most, and they focus hugely on body parts. Take for instance the moment when Beowulf rips Grendel's arm off:

Līcsār gebād
atol ǣglǣca; him on eaxle wearð
syndolh sweatol, seonowe onsprungon,
burston banlocan.

The terrible fierce one
suffered body-pain; on his arm
a mortal wound became visible, sinews sprang apart,
muscles burst.

This is a fairly common technique in Old English poetry for descriptions of battles – you'll find it in The Battle of Maldon, for a start – but in film terms, what we're seeing is rapid-fire close-up shots, keeping the action moving and punchy. (In fact, this scene isn't just punchy, it's jarring, and the focus on damage to the body is unusual for Old English battle scenes: it's meant to be monstrous. Interestingly, a similar technique is used to describe the funeral of Hildeburh's brother and son at Finnsburh, with heads melting and wounds bursting open – a sign that something is very wrong, and the feud isn't over yet.)

I could go on. This is a poem over 3000 lines long, and there's a lot of material to talk about – but I think at this point I'll leave you to it. Who knows, maybe this'll inspire someone to make a Beowulf film where Grendel's mother isn't unnecessarily sexualised! We live in hope.



Further reading

Jack, G., ed., Beowulf: A Student Edition (Oxford, 1994)

O'Brien O'Keeffe, K., 'Beowulf, Lines 702b–836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human', Texas Studies in Literature and Language 23 (1981), 484–94

Renoir, A., 'Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 63 (1962), 154–67

Tolkien, J. R. R., 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics', Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936), 45 - 95