When his father (Ethan Hawke) is slain and his mother (Nicole Kidman) kidnapped, berserker-prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) is fated to wreak vengeance upon his tormentors in Robert Eggers’ 10th century saga.
★★★★★
‘I will avenge you father. I will save you mother. I will kill you Fjölnir.’ So says the young prince Amleth, rowing desperately into the sea following the untimely decapitation of his father by his uncle’s sword. It’s a mantra he repeats throughout the film, a ritualistic chant to keep him on the offal-laden path laid down for him by the Norns of fate, and one which forms the cold-iron core to a story stuffed with as many visions of intestinal celestials as authentic Viking longboats. Because, despite its crunchy battle scenes and gung-ho treatment of its characters’ appendages, at The Northman’s heart lies a story just as concerned with the spiritual as the physical, and what starts as the archetypal set-up to a classic revenge tale becomes a thoughtful rumination on masculinity and belief in prophecy.
There’s little time for the slow-burning tension of Eggers’ previous work. From its opening moments The Northman seems intent to grab its audience by the face and catapult them through its story at breakneck speed. The score—all booming drums, strings and massive-sounding horns—constantly builds to a crescendo before sailing fearlessly beyond it, with the film more than happy to follow suit. It’s a pace which in other hands could prove exhausting, but in this wonderfully deranged recreation of the 10th century world the fusion of action and hallucinogenic spectacle feels bizarrely authentic in its portrayal of the Viking worldview.
Eggers and his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke make the most of the story’s expanded scope and scale, the duo’s trademark long takes translating into some breathtakingly propulsive fight sequences. At night the film becomes almost monochromatic, adding an eerie visual quality to the otherworldly happenings which accompany it. Against this claustrophobic intimacy, the rumbling clouds of the Irish countryside (standing in for a pre-nationhood Iceland) perfectly captures a society brutalised as much by the natural world as by each other.
Of course, in classic Eggers’ style, there’s plenty of brutalising going round. It’s a good job, then, that the cast are universally game. Alexander Skarsgård’s remarkably un-showy Amleth takes the brunt of the inclement conditions, but even when not submerged in freezing water or bodily fluids his character has little of the charm or even likeability of a typical cinematic revenge-seeker. Behind his hulking frame and stony eyes, he seems less of a man and more a force of nature, a ghost of muscle and sinew obsessed by a rigid adherence to his fate.
Claes Bang, meanwhile, brings a refreshing complexity to the hero’s backstabbing uncle, and Willem Dafoe clearly takes great pleasure in channelling his The Lighthouse character into fool/supernatural seer Heimir. Björk makes a welcome return to the screen as an eyeless, feathered seeress. She’s very Björk. Full credit has to go, though, to Nicole Kidman, whose turn as Amleth’s mother Queen Gudrún borders on the operatic. She and the rest of the cast spit Eggers’ and co-writer Sjón’s era-appropriate dialogue like Shakespeare, flawlessly selling a world which on the page could seem too outlandish to ever feel believable.
By the time the credits roll on The Northman, Amleth’s mantra has morphed into something quite different. His goals hampered by fate and circumstance, he limps to the end of his prophesised journey, bruised and bloody. The film, however, shows no signs of fatigue. Barrelling from moment to moment with the stamina of a Viking berserker, the story at its close more than lives up to its promise at the start. Handing an indie-darling director a cheque for a $70 million blockbuster was always going to be risky, but this time it has bought a bonafide masterpiece.
The Verdict
An adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride from start to finish, The Northman takes all Eggers’ filmmaking identity and marries it with a studio blockbuster to create a truly unique beast in modern cinema.
Words by James Harvey
The Northman is in cinemas April 15
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