Ads and trailers for The Northman suggest a ferocious Viking epic. There are scenes of intense action, some staged against dramatic backdrops, that will please those who find most mainstream action films too tame. While director and co-screenwriter Robert Eggers has a bigger budget and recognizable stars, he has not abandoned the sensibilities that made The Witch and The Lighthouse popular among genre aficionados. Parts of The Northman can be deliberate, even ponderous, because Eggers trusts his audience to be curious about his revisionist approach to Norse mythology. Unfortunately, sometimes that trust can be naïve or misguided.
You may recall that Amleth, the hero of The Northman, is an inspiration for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Both stories share the same basic structure: Amleth is a boy when his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang) murders his father (Ethan Hawke), then marries his mother Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). Time passes, then Alexander Skarsgård plays Amleth as a man, a warrior with a boundless desire for vengeance. The simple structure allows Eggers and his co-writer, the Icelandic poet Sjón, to delve into values and structure of medieval society in northern Europe. There are hallucinatory scenes that suggest literal transformation and a complicated sense of honor are what motivate Amleth and his father (shortly before his death, he expresses his desire to die on a battlefield). Since Amleth receives visits from multiple spirits, Eggers complicates the revenge tale. It is not enough to kill Fjölnir; he must do it properly.
In order to bide his time, the film has a long middle act where he effectively shares Hamlet’s propensity for indecision. Upon learning his uncle’s whereabouts, Amleth poses as a slave and is sold into Fjölnir’s custody. He does not escape and raise an army, and before he begins terrorizing his captors, there are long stretches where we wait and wait for something to happen. He must obtain a proper weapon, for example, and he strikes up a romance with Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), a fellow slave. Without the context of the Amleth legend of Eggers’ other films, this narrative slowdown is a bait and switch. There is only one major battle scene – impressively staged to appear as a single shot – and most of the other (infrequent) action deals in abstraction, not careful choreography.
When the film drags, at least Eggers explores the concept of slavery and toxic masculinity in intriguing ways. Skarsgård is in peak physical condition, a hulking warrior, but how is it that others see him as less than human? Eggers suggest it comes from a need to “other” someone, a reminder that over a millennium ago, the concept of whiteness was a political one. The Northman is not exactly a funny film, yet the incongruity of Amleth’s slave status leads to some gallows comedy, like when he must participate in a brutal game – something like a cross between rugby and lacrosse – for the amusement of Fjölnir and another lord. Amleth accepts each indignity because it brings him closer to his goal, and the frequent supernatural scenes assure us he does not forget his desire for a glorious afterlife. Or are those otherworldly visits from witches (Björk) and ghosts (Willem Dafoe) only in Amleth’s mind? Eggers keeps that ambiguous, although our personal interpretation has no effect on how he feels about them.
Amleth is not exactly a subtle character. There is a part where he participates in a chant by a fire, all meant to amp up his adrenaline before battle, and Skarsgård’s commitment to animalistic rage is almost frightening. It is a physically demanding performance, which is a clever way to set up the most surprising scene, where Amleth finally confronts his mother. At this point, we have mostly seen her from afar. To his surprise and ours, Gudrún’s is not a mere prisoner. She needles Amleth’s simplistic morality – admittedly low-hanging fruit, as he is a Viking – and asserts modern ideas he has no choice but to reject. It is a smart complication of a typical revenge tale, with added subtext because Skarsgård and Kidman once played husband and wife on HBO’s Big Little Lies.
After all the plotting and patience, Amleth finally gets what he wants. The climactic battle scene is practically primordial: it unfolds against an erupting volcano, with both men completely nude. It is satisfying as spectacle, but Eggers and Sjón add Shakespearean levels of irony. Thanks to the fate of Olga and his mother, Amleth’s choice is more complicated than he intended, while Fjölnir has his own reasons for vengeance. It is thrilling to see a strong filmmaker at his peak form, achieving a kind of feeling and attitude that can normally be found only by listening to certain kinds of heavy metal music. Like The Revenant, another recent historical revenge epic, there is a vicious thriller in The Northman that is stuck in an art film. His attempt to juxtapose ambition with cinematic bloodlust is not always successful, but when it works, the savagery on display can be breathtaking.
Photo courtesy of Focus Features
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