Talk about your most embarrassing moments. I’m sitting at Gameworks in downtown Seattle coming down for a moment from the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) than whom decides to call me? Beowulf and Grendel director Sturla Gunnarsson, politely checking in to ask me if I was still planning on coming by the W Hotel to interview him that afternoon.

Talk about your major oops with a capital ‘O.’ Take it from me, this is not exactly the way to make a good impression. That said, long story short I managed to get to the W within about ten minutes or so, met Gunnarsson in the SIFF press office (with the plethora of publicists giggling at me under they breath) and was let into an empty meeting room so I could still get a few minutes with the filmmaker before he had to leave for his next engagement.

Who knew almost forty-five minutes later the two of us would still be talking, discussing in every imaginable way the director’s adaptation of the classic 9th century Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf. Adapted by screenwriter Andrew Rai Berzins for the silver screen, Beowulf and Grendel has proven to be a massive success in Canada, and after its debut at SIFF it makes its American theatrical debut tonight at Seattle’s Varsity Theater deep in the heart of the University of Washington neighborhood.

The following are excerpts from my interview with Gunnarsson, and let me just be the first to tell him thank you, apologize one more time and thank my lucky stars the guy didn’t decide to go up to his hotel room and leave me standing in the lobby looking like an idiot.

Sara Michelle Fetters: So, your film has sold out both its showing at this year’s film festival. That has to be a nice feeling.

Sturla Gunnarsson: It is. This film has created a real following. We’ve had a very good theatrical run in Canada, I think it has been playing for about twelve weeks now. And, I don’t know, it’s definitely very nice. I think [Gerald] Butler has a strong following, and that definitely helps, and the film has developed into a bit of a word-of-mouth phenomenon. So, yet, it is nice.

But all the film festivals it goes to it sells out. I was just with it in Sarasota and there were people there all the way from the Virgin Islands, Washington, DC, Maine, who came all the way to Florida to see it. Hopefully it’s got enough legs to keep it up once it goes into general release.

SMF: One thing I noticed right off while watching this is that there is no CGI in this at all. That’s more than a bit odd in this day and age, especially for a period fantasy film such as this one.

SG: It’s CGI free zone.

SMF: That’s a great way to put it.

It struck me, though, how nice it was to see a film where nothing ever took you out of the manufactured 9^th century reality of the tale. That could not have been easy, however. How difficult was it to make an entire picture without CGI?

SG: I wanted it to be that way, though. I like CGI well enough and everyone likes a good spectacle, but I find that I am not emotionally engaged. I wanted to make a film that was bound by the laws of gravity, by what is believably possible. So when a guy gets whacked they get whacked; when they’re hanging off the side of the cliff they’re actually hanging off the side of a cliff.

It sort of fit the theme. What we wanted to do was take this hero myth and move it back into the natural world, to put a human face – a human dimension – to the epic. So it sort of fits, right, because Grendel isn’t like the spawn of Caine or some mythological monster, he’s a guy from down in the valley who happens to look a little different.

The original idea was to use as little CGI as possible. Then, once we started figuring it out, it became a case of trying to erase that idea and doing [the picture] with no CGI. Nick Dudman did all our creature stuff with Grendel and he’s the guy who’s just done the Harry Potter films and he’s really skilled. He liked that idea a lot, kind of like we were allowing him to go back to a place he used to live a long time ago. So it all really ended up coming from him, because the thing about Grendel is that it’s the character. It’s all about building the creature from the actor.

SMF: I was really struck by how human Grendel is.

SG: [Screenwriter] Andrew [Rai Berzins] has always been fascinated by Sasquatch lore, so a lot of what he created was based on the various legends surrounding the Sasquatch. It’s like the scene where Grendel pees on the Mead Hall. Whenever someone tells you a Sasquatch tale there’s always a moment where the creature marks its territory, a point where it pisses on the f**king house, and Andrew made sure to bring that to the movie.

But, seriously, we were looking to get away from that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ paradigm. We needed to get into a more humanistic understanding what heroism really is. Making Grendel, in turn, more human allows us to do that.

SMF: As part of that, I think at the beginning it could be said that Beowulf is almost a hero lost. He really has nothing to do.

SG: I think there’s a real truth to that. You know, he’s looking for adventures, he’s already ‘The Man,’ right? So there is this myth around him, the expectation around him, but there are no great adventures anymore for him to endure. And this doesn’t sit well with him. I think [Beowulf] is more thoughtful than the people around him give him credit for.

SMF: I got the feeling that he would have rather sat on the beach talking to the fisherman than having to be the guy to go across the see and face some vicious troll. He seems more at peace and joyous there than he did at the realization of having to do his job. Sitting with the fisherman, he seemed as happy as clam.

SG: But boastful, right? He still had to make sure the fisherman knew who he was.

SMF: True.

SG: What Andrew did while writing was to create a guy who was a reluctant hero. It’s a very revisionist take on the myth. He’s built this whole thing up to where what should be this great moment of triumph is actually a moment of tragic sorrow.

For Beowulf, too. When he finally does confront Grendel he understands that he has know beef with him, and he in turn has no beef with Grendel, and all he wishes is that he could go away. But he can’t, right? He’s stuck. He has to be the hero. His roll is cast. It’s his destiny.

SMF: When they finally do get into this battle neither one of them wants to engage in, does the bloodlust takeover for Beowulf? Is this how he is able to attempt to complete his quest and get past the realization Grendel doesn’t deserve to die?

SG: I don’t know. [Beowulf] says to the fisherman, listening to him talk about bezerkers and the like, that he actually doesn’t get that mad. And I think that’s true. He’s a professional. If anything, his heart rate probably goes down a little bit and he ends up getting very focused. He does what he has to do. I didn’t see any time during the battle where we would have, would want to have, any sort of bloodlust to kick in. When the battle is joined, he’s doing what he has to do. For Beowulf it’s a job.