Directed by:
Robert EggersCinematography:
Jarin BlaschkeCast:
Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Gustav Lindh, Willem Dafoe, Phill Martin, Eldar Skar, Olwen Fouéré, Edgar Abram (more)VOD (1)
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From visionary director Robert Eggers comes The Northman, an action-filled epic that follows a young Viking prince on his quest to avenge his father's murder. (Universal Pictures US)
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Phenomenal! The Northman is an instant favourite of mine, the movie of the year, the best Viking movie, and quite possibly the best revenge movie all rolled into one! After the intimate The Witch and The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers delivers his first big-budget film for 90 million USD and it's the very definition of Art meets Spectacle. Eggers is awesome, what he can do with a bigger budget is unreal and I'm very curious to see if he chooses horror next time or tries something else – without a doubt, Wan, Peele, Eggers, and Aster are the new Cronenberg, Carpenter, Raimi, and Craven. The Northman grabbed me by the balls from the first minute and held them for the entire 140 minutes runtime, only letting them go during the closing credits – it's been a long time since I've forgotten to breathe, lost track of time, forgotten my name, and magically transported myself to the absolute unknown of abstraction. A transcendent Viking experience that is second to none. Vikings feels like an appetizer compared to The Northman. The Last Kingdom, which was my previous favourite not only of Vikings but of the historical genre in general, has now been dethroned by The Northman. (The Northman even has a touch of LoTR in certain scenes). The Northman is divided into several chapters where we follow Alexander Skarsgård (in the role of a lifetime!!) as he plots his fateful revenge for the death of his father. Revenge has never tasted sweeter. The acting is without a doubt riveting and Oscar-worthy. The tricky Nicole Kidman is solid, Skarsgård is of course the devil, Anya Taylor-Joy only confirms her position as the best young actress of our time, and Claes Bang is a badass as it should be. The film has breathtaking audiovisuals (Dune comes across as kitsch compared to this), it has a very haunting atmosphere, and, most importantly I believed everything Eggers presented (I believe he studied a lot of material), but filming life in that era so realistically, hats off to him. The magical-witch-mystical rituals with an almost horror touch were downright divine (preparing a son for the position of future king, WOW!), and of course there are Valkyries and the best cinematically depicted entrance to Valhalla! When it came to the action, that's where my jaw dropped (I want to re-watch every single scene). Admittedly, there's no proper epic battle (the Christians are completely ignored) and Skarsgård hunts or less solo in stealth mode, but it's properly raw, brutal, uncompromising and dark to the core. There's quite possibly the best gut out scene ever, and the scene where they build a sort of Viking symbol out of various limbs, heads and bodies, almost had me screaming in the cinema. To my supreme satisfaction, I would of course take another half hour and include maybe the conquest of Paris or Mercia or a naval battle, but that's too much to ask of Eggers. Either way I'm ready to go see the film again and I'm looking forward to a second screening tremendously. Story 4/5. Action 5/5, Humor 1/5, Violence 5/5, Fun 5/5 Music 5/5, Visuals 5/5, Atmosphere 5/5, Suspense 5/5, Emotion 4/5, Actors 5/5. 10/10.
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Eggers doesn’t get in a hurry and he gets off on the symbolism of the numerous dream sequences, but he never finds the time to explain and depict the key twists in the protagonist’s decisions in proportion to their importance. This is due either to unfortunate editing or to the screenplay by a filmmaker who knows how to do a lot of things, except for the most important thing, which is to tell the story in a dramaturgically complex way and to work sensitively with its motifs. The Northman entertained me with its spirit of a bloodthirsty wolf, visuals, distinctive cinematic world and cruelty of the likes that we don’t see in the current mainstream due to its incorrectness. But the more time that passes since I saw it, the more I see it rather as a boldly presented B-movie with embarrassing content than as an “art-house epic”.
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An animalistic raw Hamlet revenge fest that takes a considerable step back after a riveting opening half hour. Not necessarily to a worse film, no, but to a different one. For me it's a shame, it looked better in the first part, and in the second, it has too much competition with many similarly conceived films. Either way, there's no need to worry, even the more audience-friendly Eggers is still enough of a maverick with a vision that's not for everyone. Though they could (and should) have avoided that “Snyder look” at the end.
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The Witch remains my favourite, but I definitely enjoyed The Northman more than the overrated The Lighthouse. In the first half, I believed I would give it a full rating. It’s harsh, stylish and in the raid on the village scene, Alexander Skarsgård is a true “animal”. What I enjoyed the most were the shamanic rituals and the mythical scenes, balancing between hallucination/dream and the supernatural. But in the end, I have to deduct a point for something Eggers tried for the first time in this film, which didn’t convince me much: normal, positive human emotions; love, to be more specific. The Witch and The Lighthouse didn’t have anything positive, but here there’s a rather important story arc (between Skarsgård and Taylor-Joy) built on love, and, in my opinion, it doesn’t work at all. So much so, in fact, that until the last moment I was convinced that the infatuation on one side or the other (or both sides) was just a ruse that would result in some evil twist.
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Eggers’s take on Hamlet conceived as Conan the Barbarian with a bit of Norse mythology thrown in. This also describes the reason that The Northman is fascinating and why, at the same time, it doesn’t achieve the aura of revelation like the director’s previous two films. Whereas The Witch and The Lighthouse were supremely distinctive and original works, The Northman remains a variation on a familiar story. Therefore, viewers may be less absorbed in the narrative and less impressed by the wow effect that they would get from watching something essentially new and more aware of the finesse of execution and adaptive shifts. On the other hand, Eggers’s formalistic signature – from the well-thought-out long shots to the expressive design – is awe-inspiring in and of itself. The film also successfully evokes intense physical experiences by drawing viewers into a world of pagan mythology and merciless brutality. Eggers has stripped Hamlet of its Shakespearean literal insight into the protagonist, but that doesn’t mean that he has dispensed with its tragic or even topical elements. The fatal flaw of his Prince Amleth does not consist in the character’s indecision or any other character trait. Eggers bases his narrative on the contrast between personal will and supposed predestination, which he reveals as an extended arm of the patriarchy as a system of hereditary egocentrism built on self-destructive ideals of masculinity. These are motifs that Eggers had already explored in his previous films, though it is necessary to recognise that he depicted them there in more dreadful and disturbing outlines.
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