Arrgh! Rrrowr!
Robert Eggers outdoes himself with his deliriously brutal, trippy, filthy, nearly perfect Norse Epic.
The Northman
Director: Robert Eggers • Writer: Sjón, Robert Eggers
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Gustav Lindh, Elliott Rose, Eldar Skar, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Björk, Ralph Ineson
USA • 2hrs 17mins
Opens Hong Kong August 11 • IIB
Grade: A
In The Northman, Alexander Skarsgård lumbers across the screen as Amleth, a warrior on a spitting, growling, bloody rampage during a stint with a band of marauders. No one survives an encounter with him, a giant hunched hulk of muscle; he and his pagan raiders rival 300 for sheer volume of abs on display. He’s almost admirable in his single-minded focus on avenging his murdered father, rescuing his captive mother, and killing his duplicitous uncle. Swedish actor Skarsgård is clearly (slightly terrifyingly) in his element, leaning into his Nordic roots and milking them for all they’re worth in director Robert Eggers’ third feature. Eggers lays out all the mythic weirdness and supernatural mystery he did in his first two films for another story about human frailty, but this time he has US$75 million to play with. And he makes the most of it.
As he did in 2015’s The Witch and The Lighthouse (2019), Eggers wraps a recognisable story in a historical genre pic: the former horror, a relatable tale of misogynistic intolerance fuelled by religious fervor set in Puritan America, the latter a gothic psychothriller, and an exploration of madness in a pair of “wickies” isolated in a 19th century New England lighthouse. Both films were visual feasts, almost expressionistic in their imagery and the work of a single creative vision – a rare and wonderful thing. The Northman takes it up a notch: this is an auteur-based big budget epic with an indie art house vibe about cycles of violence and proto-toxic masculinity rooted in misguided concepts of honour. With buckets of blood, some seriously, “Oh… damn!” moments and a few WTFs thrown in for good measure.
Erm… Hamlet?
Based on the medieval Scandinavian legend that Shakespeare used as the basis for Hamlet, The Northman begins late in the 9th century with King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke in another great, fiery late-career turn) returning to his kingdom, injured, and his wife, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). His brush with death leads him to the decision to prepare his son and heir Amleth for the throne, so the two spend a night on a psychotic vision quest, howling like wolves and tracing the family tree through blood. On the way home, Aurvandil’s bastard brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang, The Square) kills the king, razes the kingdom to the ground, and sends Amleth into exile. Years later, now a muscle-bound, ruthless berserker, Amleth finds out the poor peasants he’s just conquered are bound for slavery under Fjölnir the Brotherless. He hides among the human chattel and away we go.
As plot heavy as the film is, Eggers and co-writer, Icelandic poet and frequent Björk collaborator Sjón, avoid both unwieldiness and lethargy, pacing it just this side of deliberate. Ironcially the narrative is simple: boy gets betrayed, boys grows up angry, boys seeks revenge. It’s in the little details between the Big Moments that Eggers and Sjón find the real story. When Amleth meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Queen’s Gambit, The New Mutants), he’s faced with a normalcy he’s never known, and reveals the central conflict: Pursue his vengeance or put down his hatchet and run away with Olga? Still, those Big Moments are boggling, all set to an incredibly evocative score by first-timers (!) Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough, and captured with luscious, earthy, photography by Eggers’ regular DOP Jarin Blaschke (currently shooting M Night Shyamalan’s next film, if you want to talk signature stylists). This is how you shoot darkness (lookin’ at you, Game of Thrones).
Wow, no blood
Though Eggers’ technical mastery matches his thematics, nothing would be as effective as it is without a cast that goes all-in, one that worries not for the camera catching their bad side and dedicated to frothing and bellowing on command. That may make it sound like The Northman is all OTT white people lunacy. It is, but there’s a calibrated nuance to the mania, particularly from Kidman, whose manipulative and equally ambiguous Gudrún is some of her best work in years. Gertrude should be so conniving. However, a special mention should go out to Bang, who shades Fjölnir with a weary kind of resignation and hard-earned wisdom that suggests he’s so over all the brutality. It injects the film with a hint of philosophical tension that makes Amleth’s sudden turn (the films’s most significant head-scratcher) a bit more understandable. Eggers completists will be glad to know He Of Cinema’s Greatest Voice, Ralph Ineson (who featured in David Lowery’s The Green Knight, which rivals this for singular director vision – see it), puts in an appearance, as do Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool and – fuck, yeah! – Björk as the Seeress, adding a touch of unpredictability The Northman doesn’t need. — DEK
more norse, please
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