Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth in Robert Eggers’ The Northman Photo: Universal Pictures
Until the glorious and gnarly Viking revenge odyssey, The Northman, reaches its Gates of Hell finale – a stunningly composed scene in which two naked, bestial and bloodthirsty men lunge at the edges of an active volcano and snarl at – you You might be wondering how many movies you’ve seen to get to this point in director Robert Eggers’ violent fever dream. The answer is too many to count.
In other words, The Northman is an uncompromising, non-stop adventure that deals everything, everywhere, all at once. From Icelandic family tales to Norse legends to supernatural myths, Eggers plays with the rich material at his disposal with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that is both disarming and awe-inspiring. His approach feels a bit like he knows it’s his only chance to make a film that should become – or at least could become – one of the greatest examples of its kind, a Shakespearean drama wrapped in Norse revenge . He demonstrates that commendable (if not overzealous) commitment in every detail of the 136-minute epic, including spilled guts, sliced human flesh and spliced corpses, as well as in a bestial performance from Swedish heartthrob Alexander Skarsgård, who toned his muscular mass, to play the merciless, score-calculating Prince Amleth.
B
The Northman
Pour
Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Bjork, Willem Dafoe
Availability
Theatrical release on April 22nd
As a child in the fictional island kingdom of Hrafnsey, Amleth’s warrior king father, Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke, in one brief but memorable part), inaugurates his son as the future ruler of his tribe in a psychedelic ceremony in which the mad-eyed Heimir the Fool (a demented Willem Dafoe). Amleth’s uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang) soon after murders his father and kidnaps his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman, in an ever-growing part of the escalating wrath). But as Amleth grows into adulthood, he has long forgotten his vows to avenge his father and save his mother, instead consuming himself as a Viking, ravaging defenseless Slavic villages.
Ultimately, it is the prophetess Seeress (Björk, who makes her first on-screen appearance unrelated to Matthew Barney since Dancer In The Dark) who reminds Amleth of his family mission, prompting him to join the Slavic slaves on the ship where he meets his romantic and intellectual partner, the icy seductive Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy). After the film’s only silent moment – a brilliant coital scene between himself and Olga – Amleth invades his uncle’s farm and begins to uncover deeper truths behind his father’s murder. A series of high-profile drama ensues between mother and son as Kidman and Skarsgård stage the most bizarre Big Little Lies reunion imaginable.
At least from an ambition standpoint, Eggers’ dedication is paying off in heaps. The Northman offers a lot to enjoy, which is a lot of film. It includes both see-it-to-believe-it “fuck yeah!” Cruelty in its 10th-century tale and the kind of historical and mythical attention to detail that can be expected from Eggers, the A24-backed indie-genre virtuoso of The Witch and The Lighthouse, when he first appears in a $90 million sandbox. Regardless of its financial return, this award for a highly original film feels like good news in an industry that too often only opens up to spandex-clad superheroes and existing intellectual property.
That fact alone makes The Northman a rarity worth embracing, even if Eggers’ third feature film – arguably his “most commercial” yet – doesn’t strike as clear an emotional chord as the atmospherically insidious The Witch or the claustrophobic madness of The Lighthouse. Here he hides the film’s beating heart behind Craig Lathrop’s original, meticulously textured production design and Jarin Blaschke’s hallucinogenic cinematography, which features anything but raw materials that repeatedly produce impeccably choreographed set pieces shot in unabashedly lengthy takes. By comparison, the simplified script by Eggers and Swedish poet and writer Sjón (Lamb) avoids going too deep into the untamed urges of its characters, while its story taps into the same well that Shakespeare drew on for Hamlet.
What also doesn’t help is Eggers’ unwavering, full-throttle maximalism, an approach that ties unflatteringly into two other otherwise top-notch films currently in theaters: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s aforementioned multiverse family fun Everything Everywhere All At Once and Michael Bay’s old-school action film Ambulance. One wonders if this trend toward cinematic excess is an artistic act of disobedience to the uniformity of franchises, or simply a reaction to filmmakers (and much less viewers) being locked in their homes for over two years.
Regardless, The Northman is still a lot of fun scene after scene, even without a strong continuous line connecting them all. While the film lacks a well-acted emotional register, it achieves an elemental, opulent atmosphere that bisects the difference between Braveheart and Gladiator, or perhaps The Revenant and The Lion King. Meanwhile, Eggers and Sjón add a light, giggly touch to the dialogue, which infuses the film’s heavy visuals with confident humor.
Consequently, Eggers’ immersive approach and stylistic flair creates one wild, applause-worthy fight scene after another, reminding viewers why he is one of the most unique visual artists working today. While The Northman isn’t his best film, it’s probably his best, bringing absolutely everything to the screen on the largest scale to tell the most brutal and beautiful story.