Courtesy New Regency Productions
Despite jumping on the social medias last week to bemoan lack of interest in yet another entry in the seemingly never-ending onslaught of viking-based entertainment of late, I found myself at Violet Crown alongside the other beardos to see The Northman from The VVitch director Robert Eggers. Eggers sure makes pretty movies, and if you don’t believe that, please see The Lighthouse immediately, for it is a masterpiece. Eggers’ works are generally dense-adjacent, symbolist films wherein folks are undone by obsession and wherein toxic masculinity turns men into something inhuman while the people around them—or they themselves—suffer horrible fates. He also likes taking his sweet damn time and never shies away from ugly violence. These aren’t new concepts by any means, though the juxtaposition of gorgeous cinematography and even more gorgeous backdrops against spilled blood and the dark motivations of man don’t hurt the timeless messaging.
In The Northman, Alexander Skarsgård plays a viking—a berserker, no less (Google it)—who sets out with vengeance on his mind but then, like, also finds a little bit of love along the way. It’s a little bit Hamlet (Skarsgård’s dude’s name is even Amleth), a little bit Lez Miz-meets-Oedipus, a little bit Count of Monte Cristo and a whole lot of hard to watch. Seems Amleth’s kingly dad (Ethan Hawke) got got by his brother (Claes Bang), who also kidnapped the queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), leading to decades of festering resentment turned to seriously creative ideas for face-stabbing. When Amleth does indeed catch up to his dear old uncle with a little help from a Norn (a Norse fate-making witch kind of deity) played by Björk, it’s off to Iceland for clobberin’ time; a simple plan right up until he develops the hots for an enslaved Russian named Olga (the ever-impressive Anya Taylor-Joy who is in every movie ever made) and a little bit of a hallucination issue. Even so, Amleth believes himself fated to succeed, and no amount of beatings, bloodsport, cave monsters or shitty family mechanics are going to stop him.
Skarsgård feels borderline silly with his massive, hulking muscles and his hunched gait and broad shoulders glistening in the overcast Icelandic wild. Taylor-Joy grounds his character in better motivations than hate, though, and it seems she doesn’t know how to act poorly. Bang makes an imposing enough villain, though he’s really more of a presence or cipher for evil, and we don’t learn what drives him until way later. It isn’t self-generated. Kidman (who played Skarsgård’s wife in HBO’s Big Little Lies but here plays his mother because fuck Hollywood) turns in one of the better performances of her career, however, which kind of deflates the moments she isn’t onscreen, at least in the later bits wherein she emerges as a more powerful creature than seemed possible.
Moviegoers will likely take The Northman’s ending any number of ways, but hopefully we come to a point of understanding how even getting the things over which we’ve obsessed doesn’t always mean it feels good—or is good for those around us. Someplace in there, find reasons to dislike white supremacy even more than you already should, and also some satisfying homage to other shocking films (no spoilers, though). The payoff, however, does not particularly satisfy, though that’s kind of the point.
7
+Beautifully shot; not boring
-We done with vikings yet?
The Northman
Directed by Eggers
With Skarsgård, Kidman, Bang and Taylor-Joy
Violet Crown, R, 136 min.
