The Northman - Movie Review (9/10)

Robert Eggers’ latest at once feels like his most restrained work yet, but also his most ambitious, and the weaknesses and strengths of the film emerge squarely from the conflict between these two different approaches. The studio had to return its $90 million investment as best as it could (and probably won’t, it seems), but though this introduction makes it sound quite gloomy, I don’t think the movie was a disappointment in any capacity. Quite the contrary: I deeply enjoyed this mushroom fueled mythology-rich Viking revenge epic, and it only strengthened my belief in Eggers as one of the strongest directors to emerge in the last decade who, if everything goes right, has a long and masterful career ahead (please make Nosferatu!).

The Northman is director Robert Eggers and poet Sjón’s portrayal of the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, a displaced prince on the search for revenge after his uncle (Fjölnir) kills his father (Aurvandil) and captures his mother (Gudrún) (you might recognize the tale from Shakespeare’s adaption, Hamlet). This is Egger’s most “traditional” film in terms of plot, as in there is actually a story being told that is succent and easy to follow and adheres to recognizable plot structures. As such, this is his most accessible feature, as even its dialogue, though maintaining some historic tint, is clearly understood. But that doesn’t mean his touch is missing – so many times the film diverges from the “real” to explore Scandinavian myth, to deal with matters of magic and fate, to explore the deep culture that these peoples practiced daily.

This is one of the major aspects Eggers is constantly praised for, yet it cannot be emphasized enough that no matter the period or genre, he is always fully committed to the bit. Most creatives would not balk at modernizing certain elements or taking easy routes out but not him – almost everything is as accurate as it possibly can be, and even in that he manages to weave in his lore and stories. In an article with the New Yorker, Eggers explains that one of Gudrún’s headpiece was an actual one of Finnish origin, and as such, he imagined it be something the king brought home to his wife from one of his adventures. No one (except, maybe, like a historian) would have ever picked up on that, but that little snippet is there in the film. A headpiece with a story. Eggers treats the supernatural and mythology of the film with the same level of attention and sincerity. His depictions of these forces of nature serve never as a break from his reality, but are reality themselves, and because the film is so convinced of this the audience cannot help but accept it as well.

Eggers’ style of filmmaking also evolves in this film dramatically. Collaborating again with “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” veterans Jarin Blaschke (cinematographer) and Louise Ford (editor), the film uses its big budget to truly push this feature towards a grander scale, both at the story and filmmaking level. Eggers has been persistent on using only a single camera when filming his scenes, which means they require greater planning and coordination to match the work achieved through typical coverage filming. This is truer on this bigger scale, but the cast and crew take this challenge and run with it. The film is filled to the brim with these long-drawn-out single take shots that features multiple characters and set elements. This is foremost observable in the berserker raid scene, where the camera begins outside a settlement and tracks Amleth and his fellow raiders up a wooden wall and down into the village and around it, capturing the tenseness and brutality as the camera refuses to give us even a second to relax just like the characters who have been suddenly caught up in a life-or-death scenario. This brilliance carries onto another one of my favourite scenes, where Amleth must retrieve a magical sword from a reawakened corpse, and the entire encounter is captured singularly inside of a Viking boat buried under the ground with the moon shining through the hole that Amleth dropped in from. Its pure brilliance. The color and texture of the film is also damp and grey, reflecting the harshness of these characters, while occasionally flaring into a brilliance of red or blue depending on the emotions that overload the characters.

Similarly awesome work is done by the sound and music teams, that perfectly capsulate every moment with these echoey otherworldly strings and voices that transport you to another world, a mix of real and magical. The theater shook and sung with the strikes of the characters blades and many times overwhelmed my ears almost as if it grabbed my head and forced me to pay attention. The production team also brilliantly captures the look of the film, with special instructions by Eggers not to rely on modern depictions of the Vikings but rather draw inspirations from the real-life artifacts discovered of the period. These beautiful pieces of weaponry and clothing elevate the look of the picture, and the locations these characters inhabit shine with the same level of polish and attention.

Though Eggers’ direction plays a hugely important role in the quality of the film, the film is also loaded with fantastic performances. Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth is a bestial leading man whose hulking size makes the warrior’s inhuman strength completely believable. Some have described his performance as emotion-less, but the sadness and anger portrayed in his scratchy booming voice and his quiet, love-curious looks towards Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) will tell you otherwise. Speaking of, Anya Taylor-Joy knocks it out again with another witch-ly performance in her second collaboration with Eggers. For most of the middle, its her tempering of Amleth that provides a budding emotional core to the film as the story beats take shape, and her ability to embody the voice of the character and deliver a heartful performance is on full display here. A monologue near the end of the film really captures her talent. Ethan Hawke also is fantastic here as the short lived Aurvandil whose soft spoken, yet stern go as the Viking chieftain immediately connects with the viewer despite his inevitable fate. These opening scenes go quickly, but the work he does at the beginning, and in instilling within Amleth the principles of revenge and death, echoes through till the end. But, I believe, though all these performances are incredible and elevate the film to a greater level, its Nicole Kidman who really steals the show. She captures the underlying anger of the character and mixes it with her quiet cunning, culminating in a bone-chilling revelatory monologue that flips the film on its head partway through.

There might be a bit of story spoilers in this section, so discretion is advised. I think the way the entire tale pans out is quite brilliant and I really enjoyed the world that Eggers and Sjón and the team conjured up. This is a brutal, depressing time and place to live with death, destruction, and slavery around any corner. And the film doesn’t shy away from capturing these elements of the Viking life. So often do works of literature revitalize the image of Vikings as these fun-loving adventurers that drunk and fought, but these were also a brutal people that raped and plundered the coasts of Britain, Ireland, and mainland Europe for more than a century. At the beginning, we meet Amleth as a child as he learns from his father the meaning of being a warrior as that who seeks vengeance for wrongs against him or dies trying. As the death of his father and his escape immediately follows this, we are pulled in to sympathize with him and hope to see him fulfill his words: “I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!”. But the next we see him, he is a grown man, both in age and size, and he’s part of a group of warrior-bandits that mascaraed as wolf-men in campfire rituals. This really emphasizes their animalist nature, which is quickly shown in their plunder and destruction of a Rus village, something which Amleth takes major part in. So, following immediately a scene sympathizing him is a story beat that again alienates him, and brings his morality into question. And through this juxtaposition we are quickly taught that in this world, there are no heroes and no villains. It also reveals the harshness of the world itself, as we are left to fill in the missing chunk of Amleth’s adolescence, to question the ugly forces that drove that young boy to become this “bear-wolf”. This moral complication of our supposed hero continues throughout the story as he slowly unfolds his vengeance upon Fjölnir and his family, and by the end, as they have their final duel, upon the volcanic backdrop, it becomes hard to figure out which is which. But a warriors life bestows a warrior’s end, and the cyclical nature of vengeance is closed only by the complete decimation of one’s blood that leaves little for the hero that end its.

In the end, as I said at the beginning, there are parts of this picture that feel limited by the nature of its production and the world of cinema its releasing into. But at the same time, Eggers unleashes an unfiltered depiction of Viking life that does much to complicate modern depictions of the people and brings a unique take on the somewhat tired tale. The story, the characters, the world, the camera, the sound, all are tied together in fulfilling a singular goal, and all this makes Eggers truly worthy of the title of a “visionary” that is so emptily attached to many today. I give “The Northman” a 9/10.