The Northman (2022 | USA | 138 minutes | Robert Eggers)
Hark! Abandon expectations of logic and expedience all who pass through theater gates this weekend for the Northman. Indeed, Robert Eggers is back with another sprawling folktale drawn from days of yore, delving deeper into the past’s shadowy legends than ever before. With the help of Icelandic poet Sjón, the director who explored the dark forces and menacing sheep of an early America in the VVitch and the madness that befell men who crossed the wrong seagull while tending the Lighthouse, Eggers has returned with a tale of Viking vengeance. Even moreso than usual, ‘tis a realm where the veil between reality and the supernatural remains especially porous. I, for one, will never be mad about a wildly creative artist getting a bunch of money to realize their specific visions, and that’s exactly what Eggers does over more than two gnarly sprawling hours in a deep dive into gray Nordic psychedelia.
We begin in a monochrome realm where long-plundering fathers return to their grim seaside kingdoms after seasons away bearing treasures and seeping gut wounds. This King, played with Swedish Chef intonations by a grizzled Ethan Hawke turns his first homecoming attentions not on his wife, Nicole Kidman, who keeps her cards close to the corset, but instead on the son who has creeped into early adolescence in his absence. Their bonding activities include a visit to the court fool’s (Willem Dafoe) sweaty firelit lair for late night role play involving flatulent inner wolves and swearing oddly-specific oaths while under the influence of mind-expanding plant medicines.
If the young prince’s name, Amleth, sounds awfully similar to a certain Shakespearean hero who seeks revenge against his uncle for the throne-seizing murder of his father and marriage of his mother, well, that’s no accident. Indeed, the Bard took inspiration from the Sagas, and Eggers draws inspiration from both in crafting his tale. In the short order allowed by cutting the story with title cards to mark the passage of time and distance, young innocent Amleth has fled a kingdom overtaken by his calculating uncle (Claes Bang, always clever), grown into Alexander Skarsgård, and taken up berserker pillaging with a roving band of mercenaries across the sea in the Lands of Rus. It’s there in an unflinching depiction, that we witness the intense violence and human consequences of what happens when a bunch of men who’ve convinced themselves they are possessed by wild animals show up to take everything from an unsuspecting village.
It’s also here, amid the ashes of the ruin that he wrought that the older, stronger, object of pure vengeance receives yet-another incredibly specific prophesy. This time it’s from Bjork, bedecked in black feathers, folk wisdom, and with sparkly parting gifts. Soon after, an update about his uncle’s recent misfortunes motivates Amleth to abandon his life of successful reaving to return, undercover amongst a ship of enslaved captured villagers (including an “earth witch” played by always otherworldly Anya Taylor-Joy), to accomplish his long-promised revenge on a forsaken island.
Eggers stages their arrival and trek across Iceland like a landing on an alien planet. Led from barren shores to the perma-mossy farmland of hobbit huts nestled among rolling hills, the landscape, painstakingly constructed sets, and ominous volcano smoldering in the background set the stage for unfurling madness. Exquisite weatherbeaten production design of homesteads, castles, and relics suggest realms that have regularly changed custody over centuries of squabbling minor kings, carved by human hands, worn by time, and permeated by the power of true believers. With Taylor-Joy as his silent co-conspirator and love interest, Skarsgård portrays the dogged single-mindedness of a grown man who harbors the mindset of an angry teen still hellbent on vengeance.
His sneaking around under glorious moonlit nights finds him consorting with animal spirit guides, confronting magical challenges involving even more prophesies and fated swords, and constructing a plot. By day, he climbs the ranks of the servants and wins favor for his strength and prowess in a spectacularly brutal sporting event that finds men charging each other, dodging blows to the head, and trying to move a rock through a goalpost all for the honor of the wealthy patrons who revel in their injuries (some ancient traditions persist). And, like, the stories from which Eggers and Sjón take inspiration, our hero’s stunted perspective causes him to overlook quite a bit palace intrigue that will prove inconvenient to his adolescent understanding of the world.
A nuanced perspective would have spared us the mind-altering endgame that consumes the final bloody act, and what fan of dark folktales wants a tidy and reasonable settlement among its protagonists when banquets of blood are on offer? At its heart, this is a story of the enduring ability of humans, isolated and enduring months in darkness, to be overtaken by ambitions and petty jealousies and make sense of them with stories.
Eggers is a master of filming faces by firelight and the breathtaking extended finale avails itself of the madness that overtakes men in the dark of night. Joining the canon of films reliant on the mind-altering properties of hand-foraged local fungi, we’re treated to scenes of firelit funeral practices, gruesome battles, blood magic, and fantastical visions fit for blacklight posters in 1970s basements. All the actors bring their best attempts at Nordic trills to their accent work and commit deeply to what could have been ridiculous stereotypes while still avoiding potential pitfall of comedic self-seriousness. Sure, these tales have something to say about masculinity, legacy, duty, and betrayal and we get all of that.
However, its most forceful and enduring arguments are (1) if you’re going to make your actors get into peak condition to play Viking legends there’s no need to hide their bodies under plates of mystical armor because (2) the final fight in Revenge of the Sith didn’t have enough gore or nudity. From start to symphonic finish, it’s a brilliantly executed invigoration of centuries’ old stories, all the better for indulging its creator’s commitment to keeping movies weird.
The Northman arrives in theaters on April 22nd
Images courtesy Focus Features