Catullus64
2022-05-04, 11:28 AM
Went to see Robert Eggers' latest film, The Northman, in theaters last night. I adored this film to pieces, so I'm gonna gush about it here for a bit.
The Northman is the story of Amleth, a Nordic prince in the ninth century who, as a child, sees his uncle Fjollir kill his father the king, and abduct his mother. As a grown-up marauder, he learns that said uncle has been banished to Iceland, taking the hero's mother and younger brother along with him, giving him a chance to pursue his long-delayed revenge. The movie that follows involves prophecies, communion with the dead, magic swords, ancient tombs guarded by undead warriors, midnight raids, human sacrifice, hallucinogenic visions, field hockey, sex, love, and betrayals. It also ends with a duel in a volcano (not as big a spoiler as it sounds, since said duel is prophesied about ten minutes into the movie). If that description doesn't already have you buying tickets, this movie probably isn't for you.
Don't think from that description that it's a fun-for-the-whole-family adventure romp, though, it definitely earns its R-rating. It's a warts-and-all-with-extra-warts portrayal of a historical society, and it's got blood, guts, and nudity aplenty. But it's not just exploitation-grade thrills, it's a movie with real substance, see the What I Loved tab for more information on that.
The spoilers in the above tab are pretty light, very little you wouldn't pick up from the trailers or the first 10 minutes of the movie. But there are bigger spoilers from here on in.
Firstly, this is just a gorgeous movie. I'm usually not a huge fan of historical films where everybody dresses in browns and greys and is covered in mud all the time, but most of the film is actually quite nice to look at. It knows when to use saturated colors in key moments, even though most of the film is in a muted palette; the landscapes of Ireland and Iceland are wonderfully photographed and worked into the geography of the scenes. Many indoor sequences do a great job of making you feel like you're in a world where fire is the only source of nighttime light, and a dim, smoky one at that. And some scenes, like Amleth's battle with the barrow-wight or some of the night scenes, actually make good use of a nigh-monochrome color scheme.
I'm not a cinematography buff by any measure, but even I could tell that this movie was masterfully shot and edited. It's replete with these sharp, inhumanly graceful camera movements and intense long takes that build such a palpable intensity. The shots will often add dread, suspense, and even humor by artfully revealing new information, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly. This may sound pretentious, but I almost think the camera in this film works kind of like the narrator of a mythic saga, moving dispassionately and all-knowingly across space and time. Editor Louise Ford and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke deserve all the awards.
Wonderful cast, each of whom is bringing something really good to the table. A lot of people are going to be talking about the performances of Anya Taylor-Joy (the hero's lover), Ethan Hawke (the murdered king), Nicole Kidman (the hero's mother), and rightly so, for all of these actors give performances capable of both quiet nuance and mythic bombast. Kidman in particular really gets to show off, and thus I forgive her for the cheesy AMC promo she delivers at the start of the movies these days. You also get Willem Dafoe giving his characteristic 150% in the brief role of a jester and shaman. I think many will undersell the performance of Alexander Skarsgard as the hero Amleth, because his character is mostly drawn in the two colors of grim determination and screaming blood-fury. But he manages to infuse these two emotions with a wonderful sense of raw emotion and vulnerability, as well as warmth in his scenes with Taylor-Joy. That kind of humanity is essential when you have a hero as brutal and harsh as this one. As the film goes on, you also start to get a similarly rich performance out of Fjollir, the villain of the piece played by a Danish actor named Claes Bang.
In terms of the script and story, it's refreshing to get a historical-fantasy film that neither shies away from fantastical weirdness, nor feels the need to couch it in ironic self-aware camp. The film does play around with the reality of some of its more out-there sequences, suggesting some of them to be the result of superstitions and hallucinogens, but it's got such a charge of the otherworldly that you can't help but take the fantasy seriously all the same. It also presents a particularly nasty and unromantic picture of viking life and culture, without ever feeling preachy or moralizing; it very much presents a complex and lived-in world full of supernatural and human dangers. Fans of Robert Eggers' two previous directorial credits, The Lighthouse and The Witch, will feel right at home (in a deeply disturbing way). Hey, I just realized all three of this guy's films have the same title structure!
Like the story Hamlet which draws upon the same mythic source, it's a story that is deeply troubled by its main subject of blood revenge: both the suffering inflicted on those who get caught in the crossfire (usually women and children), and the psychological damage inflicted on the men (and it is always men) who carry it out. How well the film ultimately addresses these problems begins to shade into some of its weaknesses, see below.
On a more animal level, the film has some really excellent action sequences, which are expertly choreographed but still feel messy and brutal. Also, Alexander Skarsgard and Anya Taylor-Joy are two very beautiful human beings, and this movie lets you see... quite a lot of them. :smallwink:
While I enjoyed the film's challenging and thoughtful script, I don't think it actually dealt with its central problem in a particularly satisfying way. In the end, I'm not sure it really made Amleth's choice to pursue his revenge instead of staying with Olga and his children seem like the right one, even though it clearly wants that to seem the case with him receiving dying visions of Valhalla. I've heard the director isn't completely satisfied with the cut of the film that hit theaters, so I'd be really keen to see what got cut. At two hours fifteen minutes, the film feels either slightly too long, or slightly too short.
In terms of historical fidelity (which I try to avoid nitpicking overmuch), it did in places fall into the "medieval people wore grey and were always covered in mud" aesthetic that pervades so many films about the period. But at other times, it has people in well-made, brightly colored outfits appropriate to the period. As far as buildings, weapons, ships, and other props, it mostly seemed attractive to look at, and nothing stuck in my amateur eye as egregiously ahistorical, except for those elements which were more obviously fantastical.
Getting into really small nitpicks here, but I found the title-cards which establish time, location, and chapters to be unnecessary and intrusive. There's plenty of context in the film itself to work out the passage of time and distance without them.
What drew me in to this film was twofold: firstly, discovering that this movie shares a director with 2019's The Lighthouse, which I loved, and some comparisons I saw in reviews with last year's excellent mythic adventure The Green Knight. The comparisons to that latter film are both apt and misleading in different respects.
The Northman definitely bears some comparison to The Green Knight on paper. Both are European fantasy-mythic dramas absolutely drenched in surreal atmosphere and rich imagery. Both of them are gorgeously shot and boast phenomenal casts. Both films occupy similar thematic territory, being tales about men grappling with the brutal demands of their particular culture of warrior-masculinity, albeit of very different kinds. The real difference between the films is in details of tone, performance, and emphasis. The Green Knight was, true to its source material, a mythic morality play. The Northman is an epic saga, and with that comes a greater emphasis on spectacle, action, and playing its fantastical elements much straighter. I think that The Green Knight is overall the stronger, smarter picture, but The Northman is also more animally satisfying and sensually spectacular. I love them both, but they are very different experiences.
The Northman is the story of Amleth, a Nordic prince in the ninth century who, as a child, sees his uncle Fjollir kill his father the king, and abduct his mother. As a grown-up marauder, he learns that said uncle has been banished to Iceland, taking the hero's mother and younger brother along with him, giving him a chance to pursue his long-delayed revenge. The movie that follows involves prophecies, communion with the dead, magic swords, ancient tombs guarded by undead warriors, midnight raids, human sacrifice, hallucinogenic visions, field hockey, sex, love, and betrayals. It also ends with a duel in a volcano (not as big a spoiler as it sounds, since said duel is prophesied about ten minutes into the movie). If that description doesn't already have you buying tickets, this movie probably isn't for you.
Don't think from that description that it's a fun-for-the-whole-family adventure romp, though, it definitely earns its R-rating. It's a warts-and-all-with-extra-warts portrayal of a historical society, and it's got blood, guts, and nudity aplenty. But it's not just exploitation-grade thrills, it's a movie with real substance, see the What I Loved tab for more information on that.
The spoilers in the above tab are pretty light, very little you wouldn't pick up from the trailers or the first 10 minutes of the movie. But there are bigger spoilers from here on in.
Firstly, this is just a gorgeous movie. I'm usually not a huge fan of historical films where everybody dresses in browns and greys and is covered in mud all the time, but most of the film is actually quite nice to look at. It knows when to use saturated colors in key moments, even though most of the film is in a muted palette; the landscapes of Ireland and Iceland are wonderfully photographed and worked into the geography of the scenes. Many indoor sequences do a great job of making you feel like you're in a world where fire is the only source of nighttime light, and a dim, smoky one at that. And some scenes, like Amleth's battle with the barrow-wight or some of the night scenes, actually make good use of a nigh-monochrome color scheme.
I'm not a cinematography buff by any measure, but even I could tell that this movie was masterfully shot and edited. It's replete with these sharp, inhumanly graceful camera movements and intense long takes that build such a palpable intensity. The shots will often add dread, suspense, and even humor by artfully revealing new information, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly. This may sound pretentious, but I almost think the camera in this film works kind of like the narrator of a mythic saga, moving dispassionately and all-knowingly across space and time. Editor Louise Ford and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke deserve all the awards.
Wonderful cast, each of whom is bringing something really good to the table. A lot of people are going to be talking about the performances of Anya Taylor-Joy (the hero's lover), Ethan Hawke (the murdered king), Nicole Kidman (the hero's mother), and rightly so, for all of these actors give performances capable of both quiet nuance and mythic bombast. Kidman in particular really gets to show off, and thus I forgive her for the cheesy AMC promo she delivers at the start of the movies these days. You also get Willem Dafoe giving his characteristic 150% in the brief role of a jester and shaman. I think many will undersell the performance of Alexander Skarsgard as the hero Amleth, because his character is mostly drawn in the two colors of grim determination and screaming blood-fury. But he manages to infuse these two emotions with a wonderful sense of raw emotion and vulnerability, as well as warmth in his scenes with Taylor-Joy. That kind of humanity is essential when you have a hero as brutal and harsh as this one. As the film goes on, you also start to get a similarly rich performance out of Fjollir, the villain of the piece played by a Danish actor named Claes Bang.
In terms of the script and story, it's refreshing to get a historical-fantasy film that neither shies away from fantastical weirdness, nor feels the need to couch it in ironic self-aware camp. The film does play around with the reality of some of its more out-there sequences, suggesting some of them to be the result of superstitions and hallucinogens, but it's got such a charge of the otherworldly that you can't help but take the fantasy seriously all the same. It also presents a particularly nasty and unromantic picture of viking life and culture, without ever feeling preachy or moralizing; it very much presents a complex and lived-in world full of supernatural and human dangers. Fans of Robert Eggers' two previous directorial credits, The Lighthouse and The Witch, will feel right at home (in a deeply disturbing way). Hey, I just realized all three of this guy's films have the same title structure!
Like the story Hamlet which draws upon the same mythic source, it's a story that is deeply troubled by its main subject of blood revenge: both the suffering inflicted on those who get caught in the crossfire (usually women and children), and the psychological damage inflicted on the men (and it is always men) who carry it out. How well the film ultimately addresses these problems begins to shade into some of its weaknesses, see below.
On a more animal level, the film has some really excellent action sequences, which are expertly choreographed but still feel messy and brutal. Also, Alexander Skarsgard and Anya Taylor-Joy are two very beautiful human beings, and this movie lets you see... quite a lot of them. :smallwink:
While I enjoyed the film's challenging and thoughtful script, I don't think it actually dealt with its central problem in a particularly satisfying way. In the end, I'm not sure it really made Amleth's choice to pursue his revenge instead of staying with Olga and his children seem like the right one, even though it clearly wants that to seem the case with him receiving dying visions of Valhalla. I've heard the director isn't completely satisfied with the cut of the film that hit theaters, so I'd be really keen to see what got cut. At two hours fifteen minutes, the film feels either slightly too long, or slightly too short.
In terms of historical fidelity (which I try to avoid nitpicking overmuch), it did in places fall into the "medieval people wore grey and were always covered in mud" aesthetic that pervades so many films about the period. But at other times, it has people in well-made, brightly colored outfits appropriate to the period. As far as buildings, weapons, ships, and other props, it mostly seemed attractive to look at, and nothing stuck in my amateur eye as egregiously ahistorical, except for those elements which were more obviously fantastical.
Getting into really small nitpicks here, but I found the title-cards which establish time, location, and chapters to be unnecessary and intrusive. There's plenty of context in the film itself to work out the passage of time and distance without them.
What drew me in to this film was twofold: firstly, discovering that this movie shares a director with 2019's The Lighthouse, which I loved, and some comparisons I saw in reviews with last year's excellent mythic adventure The Green Knight. The comparisons to that latter film are both apt and misleading in different respects.
The Northman definitely bears some comparison to The Green Knight on paper. Both are European fantasy-mythic dramas absolutely drenched in surreal atmosphere and rich imagery. Both of them are gorgeously shot and boast phenomenal casts. Both films occupy similar thematic territory, being tales about men grappling with the brutal demands of their particular culture of warrior-masculinity, albeit of very different kinds. The real difference between the films is in details of tone, performance, and emphasis. The Green Knight was, true to its source material, a mythic morality play. The Northman is an epic saga, and with that comes a greater emphasis on spectacle, action, and playing its fantastical elements much straighter. I think that The Green Knight is overall the stronger, smarter picture, but The Northman is also more animally satisfying and sensually spectacular. I love them both, but they are very different experiences.