The northman

Robert Eggers is unquestionably one of the most interesting directors working today, and deserves all the money that studios are willing to give him. Yet his films are not what one would call…accessible.  Jampacked with a Kubrickian level of commitment to period-specific details, authentic (or at least, authentic-sounding) dialogue, and elements of the supernatural, his movies come with a steep learning curve. At the same time, they also generously reward those viewers who are patient enough to see his tales through to the end.  This is evident in the box office grosses thus far for The Northman.  Though it had a disappointing opening ($12 million against a budget that’s reported to be in the $70-90 million range), the film actually did better on Monday, taking in $1,093,350, ahead of the latest entries in the Sonic the Hedgehog and Fantastic Beasts franchises.  This would suggest excellent word of mouth for this jaw-droppingly beautiful, violent historical epic which represents a seamless progression from his previous films, combining the narrative heft of The Witch with the hallucinatory fever dream elements of The Lighthouse.

If The Northman’s plot beats sound familiar—a prince is forced into a life-long quest for revenge after his uncle kills his father and weds his mother—that’s because it’s based on an Old Norse poem from the 10th century, which also inspired William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” What differentiates this particular take, however, is Eggers’ commitment to brutal realism and authenticity, along with a flair for visual poetry. The film opens on a shot of a dormant volcano (which serves the same dramatic function as Chekhov’s gun) as we are transported into the story of Amleth (played first by Oscar Novak, then by Alexander Skarsgard).  The cinematography is drably beautiful, as the characters and their world are covered in a layer of mud and grime which almost never leaves them. Shades of muted grays permeate the film, punctuated occasionally by striking visuals—a nighttime swordfight backlit by volcanic magma; a hallucinatory vision of a Valkyrie on a white horse; and so on, often portrayed in fluid, kinetic tracking shots.

While the plot itself is fairly standard (until the third act, that is—more on that later), the viewers’ attention is drawn largely to the dialogue, which is largely in English but with elaborate syntax and dense use of proper nouns.  I genuinely don’t know how viewers understand this dialogue without captioning—I used the CaptiView system as always, and was grateful for it.  The delightfully complicated dialogue is akin to foreign-language poetry, and should serve as no surprise to fans of Eggers’ earlier work. (One of my favorite lines in cinema is when the patriarch in The Witch intones, “What went we into this wilderness to find?” The line is delivered very early in the film and lets you know that you are in for a decidedly off-kilter viewing experience.)

As a filmgoer, I often focus my attention on the acting because it so often makes or breaks the story. Eggers, however, is not really what one would call an ‘actor’s director.’ (One could make a case for The Lighthouse, which has very little plot and essentially just lets Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson chew the scenery for two hours.)  Looking back on The Witch, for instance, one doesn’t necessarily think of, say, Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance.  Not that it wasn’t excellent, but much like The Northman, you admire the attention to detail, the atmosphere, the gloom. Each of his films is a meticulously constructed puzzle, and the actors’ performances are largely in service of the overall plot and the themes.  This is in contrast to, say, Ari Aster, one of Eggers’ contemporaries, and a director whose career trajectory has been similarly timed. While I’m not the hugest Aster fan (I maintain that Hereditary and Midsommar are unoriginal and wildly overrated), he does give his actors more room to breathe and sink their teeth into the characters. When you’re delivering lines like “I am Amleth the Bear-Wolf! Son of King Aurvandil War-Raven! And I am his vengeance!,” there’s only so much wiggle room to leave your mark on a role. (Amusing side note: Eggers reportedly had to tone down the dialogue after audiences were left confused in test screenings. Fingers crossed he releases a Director’s Cut in the future.)

As such, the performances here are merely one element among many in the film.  Skarsgard gives an admirably committed, if unmemorable, performance.  (I’m still mystified why directors keep casting him. Much like Joel Kinnaman, another blandly beautiful blonde, there’s not much there there beneath the chiseled exterior.) He certainly nails the physicality. In a standout scene featuring a Berserker raid, the camera follows him in a masterful tracking shot as his character stalks a village and cuts down his enemies one by one. Ethan Hawke as his father Aurvandil has a brief but effective role, suffused with paternal warmth. Taylor-Joy, an Eggers stalwart, turns in a solid performance as a slave who appears to be wise beyond her years, but sadly isn’t given much to do.  Claes Bang, as Amleth’s traitorous uncle Fjolnir, is arguably the most successful at overcoming the limitations of his character’s dialogue, communicating volumes with a glance, a pause.  At a pivotal moment in the climactic battle sequence, Bang’e eyes are suddenly tinged with such aching regret and pain that you find yourself wanting to spend more time with his tragic, misunderstood villain. The one actor who gets to really sink their teeth into a meaty role is Nicole Kidman as Amleth’s cunning mother Gudrun. [Note: the rest of this review involves a moderate SPOILER ALERT.] In the third act, she delivers a wildly entertaining monologue which has a dual function—it lets her chew the scenery, and it completely upends the narrative.

Up until this point, the story is serviceable and predictable.  Without spoiling things too much, this third act development sharply calls into question the nobility and romance of Amleth’s mission. He learns that life is not as black and white as he would like it to be, and that he may not be the hero.  There may not even be a hero. Life is not the fairy tale he would like it to be.  This development also calls into question all the rituals and mythology that many of the Viking characters hold so dear.  What’s the point of it all? Are these characters just self-soothing, or is there really a supernatural element to all this? Much like his earlier films, Eggers leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether or not there really is a witch, or a mermaid, or Norse gods, or if it’s all just humans unwilling to acknowledge their own cruelty. However this is Eggers’ first film in which he so directly casts doubt on his hero’s journey.  The filmmaker appears to be holding a mirror up to his own filmmaking process as well, interrogating his own commitment to telling these elaborate fairy tales.  The choices that Amleth makes from this point on are exciting and dramatically revitalize the film.  Further, by acknowledging the messiness and ambiguity of reality, Eggers cleverly gives his hero (and by extension, himself) permission to continue telling these stories, while at the same time giving us, the audience, permission to continue enjoying them—hopefully for many, many years to come.