Posts Tagged with Sturla Gunnarsson

Feature Friday: Jón Gustafsson’s Wrath of Gods

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Wrath of Gods

 Filmmaking is never easy. But when a perfect storm of financial and weather trouble hit Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel, the production took on a heroic scale that rivalled the plot of the movie itself. Jón Gustafsson brought it to life in his documentary Wrath of Gods.

 

Terry Gilliam once attempted to film an adaptation of Don Quixote. It was a notoriously difficult shoot. Lead actor Jean Rochefort suffered an injury that removed him from the production and floods destroyed sets and equipment, among other problems. The film was never finished — though it became the subject of a famous documentary, Lost in La Mancha.

Sturla Gunnarsson may know how Gilliam felt.

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Feature Friday: Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel

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If you haven’t heard of Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel, released in 2005, don’t confuse it with the mo-cap movie that came out years later. This version, starring Gerard Butler as Beowulf, is a more primal take on movie-making, with much of the atmosphere coming from the Icelandic locations. The difficulties posed by the weather, among other things, were epic; that story is told in the documentary Wrath of Gods, which I plan to post about soon.

For now, read what Canadian filmmaker Gunnarrsson had to say about shooting in his homeland.

 

Where two cultures merge

Iceland-born director brings Anglo-Saxon epic to his homeland

Beowulf & Grendel
Beowulf & Grendel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sturla Gunnarson is bringing an ancient hero to life in the wilds of Iceland. The Icelandic-Canadian filmmaker is helming a international production of Beowulf and Grendel, starring Gerard Butler and Ingvar Sigurdsson.

Beowulf, a poem written in Anglo-Saxon, is believed to be one of the oldest extant works of English literature. Ironically, none of its characters are English. The plot centres on the struggles of a Scandinavian warrior, Beowulf, against the monster Grendel.

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Hunting monsters: Criminal Minds as Beowulf

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Modern cop drama investigative teams: for when you need someone to metaphorically rip a monster’s arm off.

We never get tired of hearing about Beowulf.

No, I’m not talking about the actual Geatish hero or the eponymous poem in Anglo-Saxon, or even the attempts at movie versions in recent years (I haven’t seen the one with Angelina Jolie, though if that’s the only one you know, check out Sturla Gunnarsson‘s original take on the story in Beowulf & Grendel with Gerard Butler and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson).  I’m mainly interested in the basic trope of Specialist Warriors From Away Swoop in to Deal With Monster.

It’s the basis for most of the hunting-the-psycho cop shows out there, in particular Criminal Minds.

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