The Northman: Film Review (No Spoilers)
Gloriously grim, "The Northman" revels in blood and vengeance as it careens through a world inhabited by strange magics and dark Norse gods.
If violence isn’t your cup of tea, and by ‘violence’ I mean graphic decapitations, skewerings and disembowelments, then you may want to avoid The Northman. That said, it is a good movie—a very good movie . . . but it’s not designed to appeal to everybody. Director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) has fired up his weird sensibilities to create a visual and visceral feast of rage worthy of a true berserker.
The Northman is built to be a product of the same environment that created the Norse culture and mythology: a barren world of fire and ice where survival often required acts of violence. It’s a big, unashamedly theatrical production determined to follow the hero’s journey all the way to its end regardless of what fate the gods choose for him. It is Vikings on steroids. It is MacBeth turned up to eleven.
The great Viking hero is Amleth and the muscled, looming Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, The Stand) plays the character to his savage hilt while still supplying him with humanity in his moments of sadness, reflection and uncertainty. Amleth even finds a romantic partner in a sorceress called Olga of the Burning Forest, played with burning intensity by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit, Peaky Blinders).
The all-star cast is rounded out with fine performances by Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrun, Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, Claes Bang as Fjölnir the Brotherless, Björk as the Seeress and a wizened and grumbly Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandil War-Raven.
If you’re game to stomach the brawling action and fountains of blood, you’ll be rewarded with the engaging tale of a warrior who lives only to avenge the wrongs done unto him and his family. The Northman is bound by the tunnel vision of a revenge story but Eggers generates unpredictable twists and turns to keep the viewer deliciously off-balance much of the time.
The hero knows not his fate and neither do we but, unexpectedly, the hero is changed.
Eggers ladles undead kings, magically forged swords, volcanoes, Valkyries, ravens and shadowy Nordic gods (Odin makes an appearance) into the boiling cauldron of his narrative. He seasons it with darkness, fire and blood. Toss in the Norse world tree Yggdrasil, Bifröst and the gates of Valhalla and a legend is born.
This is what Eggers is doing in The Northman—he’s documenting the birth of a legend. His relentlessly dark story of Amleth’s revenge is at times haphazard in its structure and intentionally so, because his tale takes on the sometimes arbitrary and contradictory nature of Norse myth (and all myths) in order to achieve the desired result.
The Northman succeeds in proving that Norse legend building is a messy, violent business. It’s fascinating, but it’s not for everybody.
MOVIE RATING: 8.6 out of 10
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