A movie calling itself by that name just came out. No, I haven’t seen it, so this isn’t about that, nor about the new statistics coming out claiming people read less and bemoaning movies made into books. Actually, written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary and directed by Robert Zemeckis, I’m willing to bet it will turn out pretty good though the motion capture thing is still creepy. All this is beside the point.
The point is, a suggestion you read the epic poem (in translation, but if you want to go for learning Old English, be my guest). Not a should. Shoulds are for boring things like exercise and cleaning out the refrigerator. Anything that gets labeled a classic (and that means anything still worth reading at least 50 years later) comes with big shoulds, whatever the reason it is still worth reading. Beowulf for example is a fun read for anyone who likes horror. I’ll give the movie credit that they have probably sexed it up far more than the original, however with that PG-13 rating, they must have really toned down the gore.
Because it is clear the people who wrote the poem were familiar with death in all its bloody incarnations and thought it was good entertainment. There are lovely descriptions of all manner of deaths and dismemberments. To begin with, Beowulf comes in, announces he will fight Grendel, and then goes about describing his horrible demise if he loses the fight. He then tells everyone not to mourn him and then they all go off to feast. There is quite a bit of feasting and during the various feasts some minstrels play songs about great wars and deaths of heroes in gory detail. (I might try this at my next dinner party.) If you are solely interested in the plot you can skip these side excursions into song, but they are highly amusing (okay, my husband thought I was a little sick reading these bits aloud and giggling, but I liked them).
What I find interesting is how the name ‘classic’ changes things. People who would never go for Saw IV will read Beowulf because it is a classic. I wonder what they make of it. Or people who do go see Hostel will skip Beowulf for the same reasons (I am, of course, assuming types here). So I suggest reading the epic poem. The translation by Seamus Heaney is recommended. If it is any further inducement, Beowulf is also short. My edition is 213 pages long and as it is the bilingual edition, you only read every other page. After that, if you are still in a bloody minded mood, try Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus or Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. After all, they are classics.
UNP blog 
Beowulf the poem–mmm, delicious. The pleasure of the poem is performing it aloud–how could a movie ever capture that? In the same way, the Lord of the Rings movies were good, but the pleasure of the books are the songs and side stories and Tolkien’s voice.
Leighanna,
I went to see Beowulf and it left something to be desired. I kept trying to think back to the text and getting frustrated. I kept telling myself, “It’s an adaptation, made by Hollywood and in turn Hollywoodized.” But I missed the fierceness of Grendel’s mother from the poem. I think the transformation (mutation?) of her character made the film a little sexist.
–DeEee
Hey Ryan,
That is exactly why books will never die. There is no way a movie can capture an author’s voice. And the LOtR folk tried to fit as many songs and side stories as they possibly could but in the end, there was only so much they could do with a movie.
Interesting that you bring in Tolkien. I meant to mention in my post that Tolkien wrote papers on Beowulf and completely changed the way we look at this poem. Anyone who loves Tolkien will enjoy reading Beowulf for the sudden moments of familiarity. This was one of his inspirations.
Dee,
I will have to see it this weekend, and I’m not going to argue the sexism. I think it reflects what scares us now, or at least what we think of as bad–which is sex. The only modern counterparts to Grendel’s mother that I can think of are Pamela Voorhees of Friday the 13th who avenges her son’s death and Mrs. Loomis in Scream 2, also avenging her son’s death. Neither of them have very big parts (as I remember, it’s been awhile). If you look at the evil women it almost always has to do with sex. (Female sexuality is apparently terrifying.)
Carmilla, Julia in the Hellraiser films, Species, nearly anything with Barbara Steele who wonderfully said, “The women that I played were usually very powerful women and they suffered for it. You saw these powerful women–usually adultresses, full of lust and greed, playing out all this repressed stuff–and then in the end I always seemed to get it.” Even in Ginger Snaps, which is nearly a feminist horror film, the sexual one is the werewolf. The good girl is virginal. And yes, Sidney in Scream does get laid, but she never uses that sexual power.
So it seems they have “modernized” Grendel’s mother, for good or bad. It points out the inherent sexism of a lot of the portrayals of women in general–especially within speculative movies. (Books are getting better as there are a lot more women writing them.)