THE NORTHMAN
****
Director: Robert Eggers
Screenwriters: Robert Eggers and Sjón
Principal cast:
Alexander Skarsgård
Ethan Hawke
Nicole Kidman
Claes Bang
Anya Taylor-Joy
Willem Dafoe
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 136 mins.
Australian release date: 21 April 2022.
One of Robert Eggars’ signature motifs in the two feature films he’s made to date is the inclusion of scenes that are hallucinatory, brought on either through agents like alcohol (The Lighthouse) or naturally arising from dreams and visions (The Witch). Now, in his new movie The Northman, he has taken this one step further and gone positively psychedelic, this time via the use of psychotropic plants and mushrooms. These hallucinations occur regularly throughout the movie and are important drivers of the drama in this ancient story. Eggers and his co-writer Sjón have taken the ancient legend of Amleth (from which Shakespeare derived his play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; hint: remove the ‘h’ from the end of Amleth and place it at the front and voila!) and combined it with elements of Icelandic sagas and Norse myths, thus creating a thoroughly original screenplay that is a realistic look at life in the time of the Vikings. Eggers is a stickler for historic detail, too, so he employed the services of Neil Price, a British archaeology professor who specialises in the Viking Age, to advise on The Northman. Price explains that, “The Amleth story emerged from the legendary end of things as opposed to the family sagas, and the screenwriters understood the difference. One of the first things that Robert said to me was that I should think of this as a movie based on a Legendary saga - the fantasy element was important to him. As he did in his other movies, the magical and visionary aspects of the story can be interpreted by the viewer as actually happening, or as states of mind.”
Beginning in AD895, we see King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) sailing home from battle and reuniting with his wife Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) and young son Amleth (Oscar Novak). He’s injured and weary and decides to pass on some of some of his responsibilities to the boy, so he and his son undergo a hallucinogenic experience overseen by Heimir (Willem Dafoe) that will initiate Amleth into the tribe’s mysteries. The following morning, as they emerge from the ceremony, they are ambushed by Aurvandill’s brother, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), and the king is murdered while Amleth escapes. This isn’t a spoiler – the scene is used prominently in the trailer marketing the film. As the boy flees the village, he sees his mother taken captive by his uncle and he swears revenge, vowing, “I will avenge you father, I will save you mother, I will kill you Fjölnir.” The next time we see Amleth (now Alexander Skarsgård), it’s almost two decades later and he has transformed into a hulking, wolf skin-wearing berserker, a kind of super warrior, and he and his fellows are mercilessly attacking a Slav village in eastern Europe. It’s there that he encounters a seeress (Björk) who reminds him of his oath of revenge, so he disguises himself as a slave and sets out to find Fjölnir and Gudrún and avenge his father’s murder.
The Northman sprang from an idea by Skarsgård, who nurtured it for about 10 years before meeting Eggers and deciding that he would make the perfect director of the film. Being a Swede, the actor had grown up immersed in the Viking sagas and he dreamt of making a movie that would legitimately illustrate their way of life. Neil Price puts it this way, “This is by far the most accurate depiction of the Viking Age I’ve ever seen. I was on set during pre-production when they were in the process of bringing all of this to life and I found it overwhelming - I’ve never seen this level of attention to detail in an historical film before.” And what a brutal, rugged life it was but certainly not one without culture: religion, music, poetry, and the visual arts were important parts of Viking existence. The cast is impressive but Skarsgård towers above his co-stars simply because of his physical presence. He really bulked up for this part and spends a lot of his screen time with his chest on display - and why not? If you had a body like that, you’d want to show it off too. Kidman is also very good, although her accent does tend to wander around the North countries a bit. Is it Scottish, Danish, Irish, Icelandic or all of the above at once?
Eggers has assembled his usual crew for The Northman, so most of the key creatives have worked with him on both his previous films and their familiarity with the director and their colleagues shows in the slickness of the production. Much of the movie was filmed in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in starkly beautiful terrain. The look is foreboding and many scenes could almost be black-and-white, so drained of colour are they, having been shot in cold, wet and overcast conditions. The score is terrific; it’s fascinating and intriguing and draws on ancient music for its inspiration. And did I mention that Eggers’ film is very, very violent. All in all, this is a mythic and hallucinogenic experience, yet one that is historically accurate in its design. Forget all those Viking series you’ve grown up with on TV. If you want to see what life was really like in the Viking Age, go and see The Northman.
Screenwriters: Robert Eggers and Sjón
Principal cast:
Alexander Skarsgård
Ethan Hawke
Nicole Kidman
Claes Bang
Anya Taylor-Joy
Willem Dafoe
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 136 mins.
Australian release date: 21 April 2022.
One of Robert Eggars’ signature motifs in the two feature films he’s made to date is the inclusion of scenes that are hallucinatory, brought on either through agents like alcohol (The Lighthouse) or naturally arising from dreams and visions (The Witch). Now, in his new movie The Northman, he has taken this one step further and gone positively psychedelic, this time via the use of psychotropic plants and mushrooms. These hallucinations occur regularly throughout the movie and are important drivers of the drama in this ancient story. Eggers and his co-writer Sjón have taken the ancient legend of Amleth (from which Shakespeare derived his play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; hint: remove the ‘h’ from the end of Amleth and place it at the front and voila!) and combined it with elements of Icelandic sagas and Norse myths, thus creating a thoroughly original screenplay that is a realistic look at life in the time of the Vikings. Eggers is a stickler for historic detail, too, so he employed the services of Neil Price, a British archaeology professor who specialises in the Viking Age, to advise on The Northman. Price explains that, “The Amleth story emerged from the legendary end of things as opposed to the family sagas, and the screenwriters understood the difference. One of the first things that Robert said to me was that I should think of this as a movie based on a Legendary saga - the fantasy element was important to him. As he did in his other movies, the magical and visionary aspects of the story can be interpreted by the viewer as actually happening, or as states of mind.”
Beginning in AD895, we see King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) sailing home from battle and reuniting with his wife Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) and young son Amleth (Oscar Novak). He’s injured and weary and decides to pass on some of some of his responsibilities to the boy, so he and his son undergo a hallucinogenic experience overseen by Heimir (Willem Dafoe) that will initiate Amleth into the tribe’s mysteries. The following morning, as they emerge from the ceremony, they are ambushed by Aurvandill’s brother, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), and the king is murdered while Amleth escapes. This isn’t a spoiler – the scene is used prominently in the trailer marketing the film. As the boy flees the village, he sees his mother taken captive by his uncle and he swears revenge, vowing, “I will avenge you father, I will save you mother, I will kill you Fjölnir.” The next time we see Amleth (now Alexander Skarsgård), it’s almost two decades later and he has transformed into a hulking, wolf skin-wearing berserker, a kind of super warrior, and he and his fellows are mercilessly attacking a Slav village in eastern Europe. It’s there that he encounters a seeress (Björk) who reminds him of his oath of revenge, so he disguises himself as a slave and sets out to find Fjölnir and Gudrún and avenge his father’s murder.
The Northman sprang from an idea by Skarsgård, who nurtured it for about 10 years before meeting Eggers and deciding that he would make the perfect director of the film. Being a Swede, the actor had grown up immersed in the Viking sagas and he dreamt of making a movie that would legitimately illustrate their way of life. Neil Price puts it this way, “This is by far the most accurate depiction of the Viking Age I’ve ever seen. I was on set during pre-production when they were in the process of bringing all of this to life and I found it overwhelming - I’ve never seen this level of attention to detail in an historical film before.” And what a brutal, rugged life it was but certainly not one without culture: religion, music, poetry, and the visual arts were important parts of Viking existence. The cast is impressive but Skarsgård towers above his co-stars simply because of his physical presence. He really bulked up for this part and spends a lot of his screen time with his chest on display - and why not? If you had a body like that, you’d want to show it off too. Kidman is also very good, although her accent does tend to wander around the North countries a bit. Is it Scottish, Danish, Irish, Icelandic or all of the above at once?
Eggers has assembled his usual crew for The Northman, so most of the key creatives have worked with him on both his previous films and their familiarity with the director and their colleagues shows in the slickness of the production. Much of the movie was filmed in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in starkly beautiful terrain. The look is foreboding and many scenes could almost be black-and-white, so drained of colour are they, having been shot in cold, wet and overcast conditions. The score is terrific; it’s fascinating and intriguing and draws on ancient music for its inspiration. And did I mention that Eggers’ film is very, very violent. All in all, this is a mythic and hallucinogenic experience, yet one that is historically accurate in its design. Forget all those Viking series you’ve grown up with on TV. If you want to see what life was really like in the Viking Age, go and see The Northman.