Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon epic poem and the first major work of English literature. It tells of Beowulf the Geat sailing to Daneland to vanquish the troll Grendel, who is raking havoc at the court of Dane king Hrothgar. After Beowulf defeats Grendel by cutting off his arm, Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her child. Beowulf kills her too and returns to Geatland. He rules peacefully for decades before he is fatally wounded when slaying a dragon. This movie is Icelandic director Sturla Gunnarsson’s take on the poem. It is by no means a faithful depiction of its content (the film takes great liberties with the source material and the third part of the story is completely missing), but rather a spiritual tale about the flipside of being a hero.

From the start, Beowulf & Grendel (B&G) deviates from the poem, making us privy to the foundation of Grendel’s anger. It goes on to study ancestral clan-life, depict a polytheist society on the cusp of Christianity (old magic versus new magic), and clarify what humanisation of the enemy does to a hero. And therein lies (part of) the problem: B&G tries to be too many things at once. It is a small film, with a pleasantly “indie” feel. But that same charming “indie” vibe, results in a movie that has clearly bitten off more than it can chew.

Because of all the liberties that are taken with the poem, B&G does not do much to explain the events at hand. Without any knowledge of the main story, it may even be hard to follow (leaving one to wonder just who that woman is who comes to collect Grendel’s arm). B&G looks behind the heroics, at the spiritual side of fighting and slaying. It aims to give insight into the protagonist’s dilemma: how does one marry being a champion to being a scrupulous human being. To bring this across, B&G adds a multitude of new characters (like Sarah Polley’s witch) and this further muddles the narrative. One could argue that the Beowulf poem should not be translated to the screen at all, the source-text being unfit to flesh an entire movie out of, and in that respect, Gunnarsson’s angle (where the two main battles are sparingly touched upon in favour of Beowulf’s internal struggle) is a more interesting one. But at the same time B&G is too poorly executed for his perspective to work.

The cast of talented actors (Gerard Butler, Stellan Skarsgärd, Sarah Polley and Eddie Marsan among them) is overdirected. Particularly in the crowd- and battle scenes they are way overdoing it, giving performances that would suit the theatre but not the intimate blow-up of a movie-screen. This must have been a deliberate directorial choice, because I have seen all of these actors doing delicate and detailed work; I know for a fact that they can deliver better than this. Only in the smaller scenes does the acting calm down, giving the actors room to develop their character and escape the stereotype (except for Skarsgärd who is over the top all the time). The best performances come from two Icelandic actors; Steinun Olina Thorsteinsdottir is great as the Dane queen. And Ingvar Sigurdsson not only captures Grendel’s loneliness and misery perfectly, he does so with hardly any words at his disposal. Grendel mainly utters guttural sounds and it is a tribute to the actor playing him, that we nonetheless never question Grendel’s humanity.

Mind you, Sigurdsson may have had it easy. Because the language in Andrew Rai Berzins’ script is awkward, making the actors’ work even more difficult. The dialogue is a blend of old and new idiom; sentences are of old-language construction and phrasing, but have contemporary words mixed in. This gives the lines a manufactured and insincere feel, further alienating the viewer from the message that Gunnarsson is trying to get across.

B&G is therefore at its best when it is silent. Gunnarsson has made the treeless landscape of Iceland a separate character and integral part of the film. The magnificent desolation of the land, with its waterfalls, mountains and glaciers (the film was shot at Skogafoss, Hofn and Vik), creates a beautiful atmosphere. Gunnarsson may be crap with his actors, but he does know his way around a camera, generating a perfect background for the story he wants to tell.

Too bad therefore that all of the elements of B&G combined, only add up to a mediocre film that is unable to rise to its good intentions and great basic premise.