Beowulf (2007)

Genre

Action adventure

Production year

2007

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Male actors

Ray WinstoneAnthony HopkinsJohn MalkovichCrispin Glover

» The hero and the spell of the dark Feminine

by Eivind Figenschau Skjellum

Historic origins of the poem

Beowulf is the computer animated heroic epic based on the famous and lengthy thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon poem by the same name. It is a classic story, set in Sweden and Denmark, of heroes and kings, brave warriors, terrible monsters, and beautiful women.

I have not read this poem, but while preparing this piece, I have read about it. The poem dates from between the 8th and the 11th century. It is penned by two scribes, probably from a Christian scriptorium, and it is therefore thought that it may have been adapted for decency in the transcribation process. It is clear that the story is part fact, part fiction: Hrothgar, the king of the Danes whom Beowulf comes in aid of, really lived in the region of current-day Denmark in the early 6th century and the mead hall Heorot which is attacked by the terrible monster Grendel has been found in an archeological dig. Indeed the poem has been very helpful for historians in understanding the world from whence it originates.

So it is with Beowulf as it is with most myths and legends, the boundaries between fact and fiction are fluid, and create a field of uncertainty that entice us to start speculation about the lore of this ancient world, the age of heroes and monsters.

An ancient classic is adapted for modern audiences

If you haven’t previous encounters with the story, it is the heroic saga of Beowulf’s liberation of the Danes from the terrible grip of the monster Grendel and his demon mother. Script writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary have with director Robert Zemeckis taken liberties in their adaptation of the poem, tightening and adapting the plot for the big screen. It is this adaptation I will deal with from here on out.

The film portrays Beowulf as a mighty and fearless warrior, with a group of loyal men at his command, the thanes, who are prepared to follow him to the gates of hell. Beowulf is a powerful warrior, and an inspiring leader, but he has a weakness – he hungers for glory. Now, this is a theme we will recognize from a movie previously featured on Masculinity Movies, namely Patton. We recognized then that one of General Patton’s main downfalls was exactly this hunger for glory, and that movie ended on the note that “all glory is fleeting”. We also remember that the hunger for glory is a feature of the hero archetype, which is the last rung on the ladder of boyhood in the KWML system.

While Beowulf is clearly a man’s man, he is according to the KWML archetypes still a boy. When the mighty Beowulf lands on the shores of Denmark and is approached by a Dane who foresees no less than their death in their pursuit of Grendel and the gold which Hrothgar has put on Grendel’s head, Beowulf pompously states “If we die, it will be for glory and not for gold.” Boys die for glory (which is nothing other than the desire to be loved and admired by many people), while men die (if they must) in service of those they love. I think this is something that should be contemplated, as we so often do things to manipulate others to like us, which is exactly what we shouldn’t do if we seek true happiness and power. We make others truly love us by loyally serving them.

The spell of the dark Feminine

While Beowulf’s lust for glory is dangerous, it is his weakness in relation to the Feminine that is his downfall. We see the first signs of the spell the Feminine weaves on Beowulf when he first encounters the beautiful Wealthow, Hrothgar’s enthralling wife. Wealthow, as the movie portrays her, is a deep and mature woman, way ahead of the rest of the Danes in her own personal evolution. We see this in the sorrow and resignation she feels as she witnesses the hedonistic debauchery in Herodot in the movie’s opening scene.

This is a deep woman who wants to be seen and felt for her depth, not for her surface beauty. Imagine how painful it is that not a single person in her life can provide her with that recognition of her deep feminine core. Then imagine what it would feel like for a deep woman in today’s world to always encounter shallow men who desire her only for surface appearance, and imagine her infinite suffering. Would you not like to offer her more?

Wealthow is a fascinating woman at the light end of the spectrum of the Feminine. Beowulf is enthralled, on his knees in worship when she sings her song of heroes:

Just wait though wide he may roam
Always a hero comes home
He goes where no one has gone
But always a hero comes home

Wealthow communicates through the song that she will be at home waiting patiently for the man who deserves her. There is no weakness in her words, just love and a desire to serve the Masculine. She is just the woman Beowulf desires, but does he deserve her? Is he, in a sense, man enough? King Hrothgar wasn’t, evidenced through his seduction by Grendel’s mother. Grendel, we will find, is Hrothgar’s son.

Now Wealthow cannot live with the fact that this female demon creature, which can be seen as representative of the dark side of the Feminine, has such power over her husband. Hrothgar “entered” a demon, so how can he enter her? Will that put her on the same standing as a creature of hell? As I read the film, I think there is more to her refusal to grant Hrothgar a human heir than his infidelity, there is also the fact the Wealthow is uncomfortable with the dark side of her Feminine. This is the case with most women – they are more comfortable on one end of the spectrum than the other.

But it is also the case with men, and both Hrothgar and Beowulf are more comfortable with the light side of the Feminine. That side they can handle, because it is fair, loving, beautiful and radiant, whereas the dark Feminine is unpredictable and dangerous and leaves them helpless. This, I believe, is what Wealthow recognizes in Hrothgar, and eventually also Beowulf – faced with the dark Feminine, they become unreliable and untrustworthy, completely spellbound and seduced beyond their mind, into the murky waters of their subconscious.

If they were men enough, they would come to recognize the positive side of the dark side of the Feminine in Wealthow, and coax it out of here with love, so as to release much of her inner pain. Understand that most women who are more comfortable on the light end of the spectrum often internalizes a lot of hurt (the darkness projects inwards as opposed to outwards), and it is a man’s job to help her externalize it through taking her lovingly into the dark side of the spectrum. This is scary and challenging, and requires a man to be in integrity with himself, lest the chaos of the dark feminine capture him and convince him that he has done wrong. After his seducation, Hrothgar has lost integrity – that is part of his curse – and there is the understated sadness on the part of Wealthow at discovering that even her dragonslaying husband loses himself completely when faced with the dark Feminine. It’s even more challenging because this darkness is something Wealthow herself doesn’t possess to a large extent, which is her curse, and it cannot be lifted due to her man’s lack of integrity.

Grendel and his mother

Beowulf, of course, kills Grendel in a display a macho manliness and with typical immodesty. The monster Grendel, a scared and pathetic creature, is a mama’s boy who seems to carry resentment at not having had a father in his life. As the monster tries to flee, Beowulf traps it and screams in bloodlust, as the monster inquires about his identity:

I’m ripper, tearer, slasher, gouger. I’m the teeth in the darkness, the talons in the night. Mine is strength and lust and power. I am Beowulf!!

In David Deida terms, this is clearly a display of 1st stage machoism, and in KWML terms, it is closely aligned with displays of heroism. If you’re not familiar with these terms yet, know that they mean there is immaturity here. Now, it is possible that Beowulf “becomes the devil of Heorot” to serve his men in a mature way, like Remington became the “devil of Tsavo” in the Ghost and the Darkness, but it seems unlikely. So it seems here that Beowulf yet again shows vulnerability to desires for glory and excessive displays of power, even bloodlust. The primal aggression that we see Beowulf channel on occasion is, however, mandatory in the life of any mature man that wishes to serve the world fully. There is great power here, power necessary for escaping the grasp of the Feminine, which is the spell that captures the boy. For the man who has moved on from heroism into the realms of the mature man, this aggression exists as a dormant but ever-present potential, and makes him shine with natural authority, for he can back up his values with power in the unlikely even that he must. It is what we call “connecting with our balls”, and brings solidity to a man who is otherwise like a leaf on the wind, changing direction to whatever captures his attention in the moment.

Grendel’s mother responds with grief and anger at her son’s death by killing off all of Beowulf’s brave thanes in the dark of night. Wiglaf is spared, because he is away checking on their ship. Now, Hrothgar must face up to his stain of shame from many years ago, when he conceived Grendel with the demon mother, and Beowulf must go a-monster hunting yet again.

He fails. Grendel’s mother is a shapeshifter and can take human form. Beowulf arrives at her lair only to find a deeply sexy and seductive creature, given life by Angelina Jolie, and she knows how to get a hero to his knees: Tempt him with ideas of grandeur, with royal aspirations, power and glory, and then feminine sexuality, the greatest threat against any Hero. She is striking at all of the weak points of the Hero archetype, and Beowulf loses himself, just as he did with the dark mermaid that appeared after he slaid several sea monsters in a flashback scene earlier. The Feminine is not a problem to be solved or a monster to be killed, so the tools of the Hero fail him, and the unexplored parts of his psyche envelop him and pull him down into dark and unchartered waters.

The sins of the fathers

Beowulf returns to Heorot and Hrothgar realizes what fate has befallen him. He presses Beowulf for the truth, yet doesn’t get it – Beowulf is still too shocked from what has happened and the way in which he responded to it. Beowulf has lost his honor to his main weakness – the dark Feminine – and now the curse of Hrothgar has been passed to him. Hrothgar throws himself from the battlements and Beowulf is crowned king, and gets his Wealthow. His wish of royal aspirations and a lovely queen have come true, but at a tremendous price.

Many years later, Beowulf is an old an broken king. He is one who, he says with despair, “died many years ago, when I was young”. The mature Masculine lives to serve. The hero, on the other hand, lives to serve himself. This reality has caught up with Beowulf, and there is great mourning in him for his past ways. Still, he has not found a way to lift the curse, and not anyone with whom he can confide. Not Wiglaf (who won’t listen to the truth) and not his wife (because their relationship is built on secrets).

But any curse that goes unconfronted will eventually catch up with you, in life or in death. For Beowulf, the time is ripe, and a dragon shows up in his kingdom. Beowulf understands what has happened when Ulferth, once Hrothgar’s main advisor, now the kingdom’s priest, arrives scorched within the castle ramparts and tells him how his family has been slain and the last thing he heard was “the sins of the fathers”. The fathers, we understand, are Hrothgar and Beowulf, brave warriors, but fallible in their inability to confront the truth of what they’ve done.

Slaying the dragon

We may have noted the strong presence of dragon symbology in the film up to this point, particularly in the royal dragon horn and the art on the royal crown. Hrothgar claims that the horn became his after he killed the dragon Fafnir, and much of his personal mythos and power base is founded on this story. Now there is the eerie sense that everything is as it was and a circle has been completed – Beowulf is a disillusioned and weary king, once a great hero, whose power base is built on half-truths. He is king, but for all the wrong reasons, much like was probably the case with Hrothgar. There is a lineage extending from Hrothgar to Beowulf, a lineage of brave yet flawed warriors, broken by their own inability to break free of their own personal story, their curse.

So now that a dragon shows up to torment Beowulf, there is the strong sense that his and Hrothgar’s stories are somehow connected, in their shared strengths and weaknesses, and at both having conceived a bastard son with the same demon mother.

The dragon is the most powerful creature human legends have created, and the fight between dragon and human symbolizes the fight between man and nature, which is the fight between the Masculine and the Feminine. The Hero who slays the dragon is symbolic of the boy who lifts the spell of the Feminine from his life through taking the Hero archetype to its ultimate conclusion. Free from attachment to Mother, he is finally enable to serve the Feminine in a mature way. And then, the Feminine, even the darkest of it, holds no more power over him.

Beowulf has finally reached maturity, some years too late. As he prepares for the showdown with the dragon, this time in service of those he loves, he looks at Wealthow, suspecting it is the last time he is to be graced by her wise and gentle eyes. She knows everything of course, but still has a softness for him. Beowulf admits before he leaves:

I have always loved you. Keep a memory of me, not as a king or a hero….but as a man…fallible and flawed.

His aspiratons to grandeur are now gone, truth and love now on his mind. He rides to confront the demon mother, and finds that she is out for blood. She sends their dragon son after him and after a ferocious battle, he slays the creature, his own son and guilt, and they both plummet to the ground. Beowulf lies mortally wounded next to the dead body of his son (shapeshifted post mortem back to humanoid form) while waves are lapping their legs. He says goodbye to his son, who shines with the colour of gold like his mother, and as the glowing body is washed out to sea, there is genuine sorrow in Beowulf’s eyes. He has lost his only child. There is the sense here that when a father has too much guilt weighing on his conscience, relationship with his son becomes impossible, and the heart-rending truth of such separation comes clear only on the doorsteps of death.

“There’s no time for lies,” Beowulf pleads as Wiglaf arrives but stops him yet again from revealing the truth after so many years of secrecy. “Do you hear her? Grendel’s mother? My son’s mother!,” Beowulf begs of him. “You killed Grendel’s mother, many years ago. They sing of it,” Wiglaf responds. But a deathbed is no time for lies as Beowulf points out. And since the time of death is uncertain, there is never a time for lies. When the lie that has haunted him for a lifetime is shed, Beowulf dies, on the beach where his son lay, as the last of the heroes.

Beowulf’s body sails out to sea, and the she-demon descends on him. She is victorious, yet she mourns him in her own way. There is the question here, as she looks deeply and seductively into Wiglaf’s eyes, whether he, now King, is strong enough to withstand the threat of her deep, dark feminine sexuality. As I examine Wiglaf, I see much to indicate that he is. There is evidence of this prior to the battle with Grendel when he admonishes his fellow thanes to not blur their head with women and fornication before a major battle. Beowulf may have been a greater Hero, but Wiglaf was the greater man, and should have been king in the first place.

Conclusion

Beowulf is the story about heroes who would be kings, and the challenges they face when they realize that the duties as King are of an entirely different calibre to those of the ego-driven hero. It is also a story about male companionship and loyalty among warriors, which is the very positive aspect Beowulf brings to the table. But more than anything, it is a story about the tremendous power the Feminine, mainly the dark Feminine, wields over the man who doesn’t maintain perfect integrity and who hasn’t yet dedicated himself fully to serving others. When Beowulf finally realized that this was what his life should have been about, it was too late. But now that Beowulf has helped us realize this for us, we can make sure not to make the same mistakes.

That means, in real life terms, no more lies, maintain perfect integrity, work through and transcend the desire for glory and heroics, and then set up base on the throne of mature masculinity, in service of the kingdom – the people whom you love.

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