by Foster Harlfinger, Contributing Writer
The Northman, the first large-budget Viking feature in years, cares not if its audience makes it through the film having had an enjoyable experience in the typical Hollywood sense. This is a film whose fiery grasp reaches deep within your core, revealing a primal and previously untapped urge to unleash a barbaric yawp, the likes of which would make Dead Poets Society’s John Keating proud.
The film’s chilly commencement witnesses the arrival of King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), whose post-war return is awaited by his wife, the conspicuously reserved Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), and his wholly admiring child, Prince Amleth (10-year-old Oscar Novak). Not long after a visceral coming-of-age ritual for young Amleth in which he promises to avenge his father in the event of his death, Amleth finds himself fatherless after witnessing his own uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), ambush and subsequently murder King Aurvandil in blood-spattered fashion. Thus begins Amleth’s inexorable plight of brutal and unrelenting revenge.
Audience members won’t soon forget Amleth’s unforgettable mantra: “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” Should the premise and character dynamics sound familiar, The Northman acts as an adaptation of the 13th century Scandinavian legend of Amleth. Take the final letter of Amleth’s name, bring it around to the front, and it will come as no surprise that the legend acted as the direct inspiration for a little-known play called Hamlet. The impact of this story in all its many forms has been felt across literature and cinema for decades, from Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well to Disney’s The Lion King. In spite of The Northman’s often unconventional delivery, this refreshingly straightforward story will ensure that audience members never lose track of the central journey of our protagonist.
After an effectively placed time jump, Amleth finds himself traveling with a band of Viking berserkers, whose savage introduction will go down as the most memorable depiction of on-screen brutality in years. One hesitates to use the word crowd-pleasing to describe The Northman, particularly given the way Amleth’s morally questionable arc subverts the typical Hero’s Journey, but needless to say, the moments of violence and action hit hard. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when your exceptionally determined protagonist is now portrayed by the absolute beast of a man known as Alexander Skarsgård, who completely bodies this role in a career-best performance worthy of serious awards consideration.
Though The Northman slows down considerably in the middle portions of its runtime, partly due to a somewhat underdeveloped romance with Slavic sorceress Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), the film never goes more than 10 minutes without a moment of jaw-dropping action, mysticism, or unique character drama. Beyond acting legends like Hawke and Kidman, whose juicy roles certainly warrant the name recognition their casting provides, the film is littered with wonderfully far-out moments of Viking mysticism, namely those delivered the reliably eccentric Willem Dafoe and singer-songwriter Björk, who manages to steal the show in her sole scene of the film.
Speaking of Viking mysticism, what sets The Northman apart from your standard revenge flick is its depiction of Norse religion and mythology as fact. From Björk’s haunting depiction of an eyeless Seeress to the stunning beauty of a Valkyrie guiding a fallen soldier to the celestial gates of Valhalla, Eggers and co-writer Sjón’s commitment to Viking rituals and spirituality makes for a truly out-of-body experience in the best possible sense.
It will come as no surprise to those familiar with Eggers’ previous works, but it bears mentioning regardless: The Northman’s obsessive dedication to historical accuracy when it comes to dialogue, costumes, sets, and period-accurate rituals is immaculate. According to Skarsgård, Eggers and company arranged for Fjölnir’s farm to be made using a very particular sort of wood laid atop grass which was planted a full year before filming. When shooting one unforgettable sequence in which Fjölnir’s camp lays a fallen Viking to rest, Eggers and Sjón directly based its depiction on a 922 A.D. description of a Viking funeral written by Arab traveler Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. Perhaps most notably, to ensure that audience members could follow the film’s densely written dialogue following several unsuccessful test screenings, Eggers and Sjón re-wrote key lines of dialogue after filming had already occurred. To accomplish this, Eggers and Sjón had to match newly written lines of dialogue to the lip-movements of their actors from a previous iteration of the script, all while ensuring that the script remains authentic to the Viking culture of the late 9th and early 10th centuries. One can sympathize with Eggers when he described post-production for The Northman as “the most painful process of my life.”
As much credit as Eggers and Sjón deserve for their awe-inspiring commitment to delivering a Viking film as stunningly beautiful and well-crafted as The Northman, Focus Features deserves recognition for their willingness to provide such an audacious endeavor with a sizable budget that fell between $70 and $90 million. Nowadays, unless a film is based on an already existing and marketable property or directed by household names like Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg, it can be a struggle for films to be given the budgets they require. When visionary directors like Eggers are given the freedom to materialize their visions on-screen, the results speak for themselves, and whichever Focus Features executives are responsible for giving Eggers such a remarkable budget deserve to be promoted.
Score: 9/10
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