11:01 AM he: did you go see the movie?
| 5 minutes |
11:07 AM me: Yuck
he: hm?
me: Beowulf?
he: I liked beowulf.
11:08 AM me: !
he: I thought it was a really reasonable interpretation of the poem.
me: hrm
he: It clearly wasn't letter for letter accurate, but it was very entertaining, and I think it got enough things right.
11:10 AM me: I don't. I found it kind of flagrantly simplistic, and the artificial symmetry Gaiman imposed on the original sort of misses the whole point
he: What's the whole point?
11:11 AM me: A whole point, maybe: just the way the saga follows Beowulf through his life into his old age; his life doesn't take on some overall narrative poignancy because, well, it's a life
His demons don't inevitably, cinematically, come back to haunt him
11:13 AM me: And his legacy certainly doesn't continue -- his problem at some level is the fact that he chooses a life of accomplishment, of saga-making (which is well-done in the movie)
11:14 AM But he chooses it participating in human bond-forming -- he never takes a queen or even, it would seem, a lover
He specifically says he wants to avoid this when he's at Heorot
me: There are whole intricacies of heirdom and marriage going on there
11:15 AM me: Which Beowulf comments on, and which he opts out of -- though it could get him the kingdom of Denmark
11:16 AM me: But he foresees -- accurately -- the fact that drama with marrying off Hrothgar's daughter will cause enough drama to take the kingdom down
A drama that is reflected in the scop's tale of Finn and Hengest
I could understand Gaiman's desire to cut back the backstory for practical reasons.
11:17 AM
me: But it seems to me impractical to then refill the empty space with insipid moralistic fluff
he: I keep hearing insipid moralistic fluff, but I didn't get that impression from it at all.
me: "What is a monster, *really*? You're as much of a monster as I am..." Blah blah blah.
11:18 AM We get it. We've been getting it.
he: I don't find a little editorializing from the scriptwriter to be that offensive.
me: "What is a hero? No one is really perfect. Everyone has their secrets."
me: That's not a little editorializing. Those statements became the engine for the entire plot.
They were the entire plot.
11:19 AM
me: They were what drove the action.
he: I mean, I can't imagine how you could make an authentic Beowulf in a movie.
me: Authenticism is not my worry.
11:20 AM I think it would be silly to try to include everything, or shoot at some imagined historical accuracy in a saga that was never terribly concerned with it in the first place.
11:21 AM
me: But the fluff, the new drama with Wealtheow and the random concubine, etc etc... This seemed like an entirely unrelated and overly moralistic story
About pat statements like the ones I made above
me: Which are no longer all that moving
me: A story created on the skeleton of that moralistic story and then dressed n the drag of Beowulf
11:22 AM me: Any element drawn from the actual saga could easily be removed without doing much damage to the core of the story Gaiman created
And as good (?) of a writer as Gaiman is, he pales in comparison to the Beowulf poet
I've only read American Gods, but...
It seems that the man doesn't really have the whole subtlety thing down
11:23 AM And that
is what I have to say about that
I think I shall post my part of this conversation to my blog.
By the way, I am blogging again.
he: Fair enough.
yay.
me: Effective two nights ago.
he: Somewhere new?
me: Yes.
he: whereabouts?
me: Let me post this, then I'll link you.
11:24 AM he: fair enough.
me: I got a call from a student who I was reader for two years ago
I'd happened to exchange numbers with him because he said at that point that he was interested in grad school
11:26 AM And he says "Hey, man, I'm stuck on this paper -- I'm still below the limit and I don't know what to do."
he: heh
11:27 AM me: And, a bit taken aback as he'd kiind of jumped into things after not having been in touch for years, I decide to just work my comp mojo and start talking him through the paper
he: sweet.
me: It took him maybe about five minutes into that to realize that he'd called the wrong Matt
And he thought he was talking to a classmate
he: sweet
me: But he decided I'd probably given him better advice anyway
11:28 AM he: that's pretty awesome.
me: Yeah, I enjoyed it
he: excellent.
fucking cold.
damnit.
11:29 AM me: Yeah, I don't envy you
Our apartment holds in the cold really well
Nice in the summer
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