Film Review: The Northman
Robert Eggers’ blood-soaked revenge epic, The Northman, is one of the best movies of the year
Following The Witch and The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers completes his cinematic hat trick by stamping his stylish verve upon a violent, metal as hell revenge odyssey. Breathing new life into sword and sorcery, The Northman returns Hamlet back to its Nordic roots with an epic scope, a bigger budget, and a thirstier bloodlust. Powerful visuals and searing performances combine with atavistic, otherworldly details for one of the best films of 2022 so far. Minor spoilers ahead…
Whether it’s the demonic tenet of living deliciously, the madness of isolation, or the driving lust for vengeance, elemental human forces and primal fury - both knowable and ineffable - are at the center of Robert Eggers’ works. His first two meagerly-budgeted features, the astounding The Witch and the feverishly unhinged The Lighthouse, revel in rich period details and blistering imagery, delivering harrowing tales of ascetic (and supernatural) struggle. Eggers’ latest movie, The Northman, continues to pull the same threads of its predecessors with its magnitudes-larger budget and scope, detonating the director’s filmmaking to a whole new level. Maintaining his meticulous, arresting artistry, Eggers constructs a sweeping tale of laser-focused retribution, woven into the alien tapestry of ancient Nordic myth.
Unfurling the Scandinavian legend that begat Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Northman tells the simple story of a man consumed by revenge. King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) is murdered by his own brother (Claes Bang), and his young prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) watches helplessly as his beloved father’s head is cleft from his body. Usurping the throne and marrying Amleth’s mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), Fjölnir - now Fjölnir the Brotherless - dispatches his helmed warriors to finish off the fledgling heir, but the boy escapes via rowboat, vowing revenge and chanting the mantra that will follow him for the rest of his days: “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” In The Northman, the the path of vengeance is long, arduous, and roundabout, but the fires of rage stoke an ever-hot thirst for revenge in Amleth, now a grown man (Alexander Skarsgård).
“Maintaining his meticulous, arresting artistry, [Robert] Eggers constructs a sweeping tale of laser-focused retribution, woven into the alien tapestry of ancient Nordic myth.
“You must choose between kindness for your kin, and hatred for your enemies.” With words imparted from an encounter with a He-Witch (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson), The Northman flirts with Amleth’s interiority, teasing an inner conflict pitting bloodlust against introspection, but admirably enough, Eggers’ script - co-written with Icelandic poet Sjón (2021’s Lamb) - rejects such modern sentimentalities: Amleth’s vengeful terminus is fated, even after he falls in love with Olga of the Birch Forest (a sublime Anya Taylor-Joy), a Slavic sorceress who aids him with his quest. There’s a purity of purpose within the walls of The Northman, where every decision wholly informs an unquenchable desire for retaliation; utilizing his berserker upbringing to hone his body for a singular, bloody purpose, Amleth - steeled with rage and sinew - journeys to exact his revenge upon his traitorous uncle, and everything else is just a distraction. The temptation of a mundane farmer’s life flits about the story’s periphery, especially when a blind seeress (Björk) reveals that Fjölnir himself has been overthrown into a humbled station of exile, but even then the die is already cast for Amleth and the only purpose he has known his entire life. This is not a sword-to-plowshares story.
Robert Eggers’ maniacal attention to period details unspooled transportive, intimately terrifying cinema with both The Witch and The Lighthouse. And now with The Northman, he scales up his deeply-researched visions to newly massive proportions, sprinkling its cold-steel warfare with ethereal imagery that would feel utterly alien if you didn’t know how deftly it was excavated from actual history. An atavistic coming-of-age ritual finds Amleth and his father ululating like animals; a moonlit duel with a draugr zombie wrests a fabled runeblade from its skeletal altar; a glass-eyed valkyrie with carved teeth screeches upon a flying mount; and visions of a vast, cosmically tendriled tree conveys a long bloodline of warrior kings; The Northman plays out like the fables of last year’s The Green Knight with a guided missile attached, combining illusory phantasmagoria with focused and determined bloodshed. If esoteric fever dreams aren’t your jam, you needn’t worry - there’s plenty of straight-laced action to drink in. Eggers, with his DP of choice Jarin Blaschke, cuts a nasty swath of brutality through The Northman: ugly eviscerations, gruesome tableaus, and volcano-top duels are just a few of the film’s visceral pleasures, all captured with sweeping camerawork and precise long takes.
“There’s a purity of purpose within the walls of The Northman, where every decision wholly informs an unquenchable desire for retaliation.”
The Northman is full of fiery performances. Alexander Skarsgård is note-perfect as the tunnel-visioned berserker killer, and Nicole Kidman - still queen of the soul-baring monologue - throws the biggest gut punch of the film. Even Claes Bang’s fratricidal Fjölnir is tinged with a surprising sadness: A usurper marked for death with no crown or throne, you almost feel bad for the guy. The most disarming performance, however, belongs to Anya Taylor-Joy, radiating self-possession and remarkable depth with her limited screen time. Filling in the cracks and fissures of humanity in the wake of the era’s sanguine carnage, Taylor-Joy is almost supernaturally adept at throwing weight behind her defiant glances, tender softness, and wounded prayers; despite her fleeting presence, it’s nigh impossible to envision any other young actress in the role.
A straight shot of cold-dished vengeance, The Northman delivers brutal melees and a mesmerizing hypnosis through olde mythology. Where Hamlet soliliquies through his pained quest for justice, Amleth suffers no such pretensions: Trudging through dirt, snow, and magma, there is only one destination for his blade, with no recourse and no battle for the soul. The most single-minded revenge flick in recent memory, The Northman speaks volumes about the cost of violence…by barely mentioning it at all. A rain of metal, blood, and ash wrapped in a one way ticket to Valhalla, Eggers - in true Viking fashion - leaves no room for interrogation, only fatalistic exhilaration.
