The Northman review: A vivid Viking history, rendered in grime and gore

The Witch The Lighthouse Robert Eggers is many different things. He’s a meticulous craftsman with an eye for striking compositions. He’s a bearded hipster in a Carhartt jacket. If Facebook commenters are to be believed, he’s an “elevated horror” bogeyman who represents everything that’s wrong with the genre today. But above all that, he’s a history nerd. Eggers is the type of person who reads medieval Icelandic literature for fun — which is exactly how his latest project, the bloody Viking revenge saga The NorthmanIt was born.

The film’s press notes describe it as a painstakingly researched deep dive into the Viking lifestyle and worldview, backed by archaeologists and historians. But the experience of watching it isn’t nearly so dry and lofty. It feels more like an actual heavy-metal movie, with a testosterone-fueled mix of blood, fire, screaming and nudity. This is fueled by hate and hallucinatory rituals.

As is always the case in Eggers’ films, the line between belief in the supernatural and actual supernatural events is open to individual interpretation. But the characters have no doubt that the dead walk in the shadows, men can be possessed by wolves, and Valkyries will come to escort them to Valhalla if they’re lucky enough to die in battle. This is a movie where a wizard casts a spell using pieces cut off of Willem Dafoe’s severed, dessicated head, and Björk appears with a crown of wheat and the fates of men spun between her fingers.

Foto by Focus Features

Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth, son of a warrior-monarch known as the Raven King (Ethan Hawke). In childhood, Amleth witnesses his father’s murder at the hands of his uncle Fjölnir (Cleas Bang), and dedicates his life to revenge. The Shakespearan parallels grow deeper when Fjölnir marries his brother’s wife, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), who turns out to be a better Lady Macbeth than anyone in the Scottish play. As an adult, Amleth discovers this by following rumors to Iceland, where Fjölnir and his men have reinvented themselves as sheep farmers after losing their stolen kingdom to mightier Norwegian marauders. There, Amleth disguises himself as a slave and embarks on a campaign of guerilla warfare with the help of Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), a Slavic witch who is also enslaved on Fjölnir’s land. Amleth has the assistance of ravens who occasionally appear to remind him of his family’s injustice.

The violence that follows (and precedes) Amleth’s arrival in Iceland is gory and graphic, and Eggers films Viking raids on humble villages in impressively choreographed tracking shots that glide through the blood, mud, and gurgling death rattles of dozens of sackcloth-clad extras. The dialogue similarly blends savagery with bombast: One character chokes out a death curse, promising to plague his killer until “a flaming vengeance gorges on your flesh.” Another optimistically tells a friend, “together we will rage on the battlefield of corpses.” Place all this against the majestic Icelandic landscape and an aural backdrop of booming drums and deep bass chants that roll in like a thunderstorm, and the effect is appropriately awe-inspiring.

The scene in which Amleth beats a man with his head, although it is unlikely that this was historically needed, nevertheless the display of brutality throughout the film. The Northman isn’t entirely gratuitous. Viking culture placed great emphasis on dominance through brute force: At one point, a character refers to becoming a “graybeard” — i.e., living long enough for your hair to turn white — as a shameful fate that’s worse than death. This culture of subjugation is manifested as the constant threat of sexual violence for women (Ebers thankfully keeps this offscreen). This contrasts with a more modern narrative thread, questioning whether Amleth’s revenge plot is ultimately a futile and misguided gesture.

Foto by Focus Features

Amleth and Eggers decide, without going into detail, to follow the culturally correct route. Although this concludes the story, it does not reveal a flaw. The Northman that makes it less resonant than Eggers’ debut film, The Witch. The film looked into whether witchcraft was responsible for women being persecuted like Thomasin, also played by Taylor Joy. This thread is also present in this film, but Eggers appears to have more fun with the wild hunt than contemplating its implications.

And, ultimately, the deeper themes you choose to include. The Northman’s script are drowned out by the beating of feral drums, and washed away in a river of carnage, culminating in a grimy naked swordfight in a field of lava, as repeatedly promised by prophecy throughout the film. But although the film ends up as a shallow rumination on revenge and single-minded dominance, it’s hard to beat as spectacle. History can be exciting and captivating. The NorthmanThis is almost as exciting as the gateway drugs.

The NorthmanOn April 22, the film will make its North American debut in theaters.