I feel like The Northman would be the favorite movie of Dethklok, the fictional metal band from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse. The Northman is a Shakespearean epic that could come off deeply silly without a solid filmmaker’s vision (and a sufficient budget) to carry it. But Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) creates an other-worldly atmosphere of danger and dread that prevents the operatic nature from tipping into Conan-like cheese. (And, hey, I love Conan the Barbarian, partly because of the cheese.)
Some filmmakers start with a story that they need to tell, and others have images in their head which they need to put on the screen. I think Eggers had the latter. There are many frames of the movie that could hang in a museum, or be air-brushed onto the side of a van. The sets, production design, and costumes are all fantastic and match the epic scope. I’m not qualified to say whether the accents and behavior are historically accurate, but they are immersive. Eggers reportedly co-wrote the screenplay with an Icelandic poet, and they based it on ancient folk tales from those lands. I’m sure Björk, who plays a spooky seer in the film, did her part to bring the true flavor of Iceland. But this isn’t intended to be a historical drama; it’s a myth captured as a hallucination.
The plot is an epic tale of betrayal and revenge, and like many epics, you’re told what is going to happen before it does, so there’s few surprises, even if you haven’t seen this type of movie before. The world of The Northman includes the supernatural, and the characters are bound to the fates spun for them by the Norns. And so I’m tempted to spoil the final major scene in the film (but I won’t), because a simple description of it would probably tell you all you need to know about whether or not you would enjoy the movie.
The reason the movie would fascinate Dethklok is not the plot or the Norse mythology, but the brutality! Yes, there’s the brutal combat you would expect in a Viking movie, but the film goes beyond that with Grand Guignol tapestries of violence and dismemberment. There’s a bit where the lead character says that he’s living a nightmare, but then explains that the nightmare isn’t his. It’s that of the people he has sworn revenge on. It could become cartoonish, except the tone is held so well by Eggers with his innovative camerawork that you are pulled into this nightmare.
The cast is all up to the challenge, with Alexander Skarsgård and Claes Bang both having withering intensity. Nicole Kidman gets to let loose in her later scenes and Willem Dafoe is wonderful in his very limited screen time. I wish Anna Taylor-Joy was given a bit more to do. Her character of Olga of the Birch Forest communes with the earth spirits, making an interesting contrast to the Odin-worshipping, sword-swinging Vikings. But soon she gets entangled with Skarsgård’s fate and doesn’t really get her own story. (Oh, you men.) But this is a movie, not eight seasons of Game of Thrones, so although the film sets up a complete world for its background, we don’t have time (2 hours, 16 minutes) to explore every corner.
If we believe in Roger Ebert’s statement that what’s important isn’t what a movie is about, but how it is about it, then we appreciate an ancient folktale being brought to us through the eyes of a visionary director. “The Northman” is worth watching as a dark, enveloping mythological epic.
Das Fressen 