Interesting comment from Sturla Gunnarsson, director of Beowulf & Grendel (which screens tonight and Tuesday afternoon as part of the Vancouver film festival), in today’s Vancouver Sun:
Gunnarrsson says he’s more nervous about the screening than he was during the shoot. A tall, Nordic, rugged man who gives off waves of calmness despite his case of opening night jitters, Gunnarsson said he drew nothing but creative energy from the harsh landscape.
“I felt so profoundly alive, I began to understand the whole pagan tradition because every element has its own language, its own mystery, its own power. How could they not seem godlike?” he says.
“This story survived the ages … It was lost for more than 500 years, then found, half burnt in the middle of a barn. It remains because it’s the cornerstone of the hero myth, and takes it back to the pagan roots — where heroes were allowed to be flawed. It’s only once you get into the monotheistic universe that heroes are suddenly expected to be perfect,” says Gunnarsson.
This may or may not tie in to what I said last week about how the film “does its part to deconstruct the mythmaking process and the demonization of enemy beasts, and to blame at least part of the mythmaking process on Christianity.” I think it almost certainly ties in to one of the very last bits of dialogue in the film. But I am not so sure that it ties in to, say, the Judeo-Christian scriptures, where many of the heroes do indeed look rather flawed.
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