Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 17 minutes
Director: Robert Eggers
Quick Impressions:
I’ve grown to love Robert Eggers movies. Granted, I’ve only seen three. (I guess he’s only directed three.) But I’m already at the point where I’ll gladly pay to see any movie he makes. I just like his work. My husband and I first took notice of Eggers when we started hearing about The Lighthouse. We sought it out in the theater because we were hopeful that Willem Dafoe might get an Oscar nomination (and also curious about Robert Pattinson’s ability to play Batman). We both loved the film. Who can resist that long, convoluted, exhausting curse by Willem Dafoe? (Certainly not our family! We joke about it constantly. Even my six-year-old joins in these jokes, and he hasn’t seen the movie!)
Plus over the course of that Oscar season, I got really obsessed with Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography (and so I was thrilled when he did get an Oscar nomination). I read several interviews with Blashscke in which he explained his choices, and I kept thinking, “I didn’t even know choices like that had to be made! I definitely would have made the wrong choice. I didn’t know there was a choice!” His description of his process was fascinating, and I’m always impressed when people get such captivating results with natural light. (I prefer natural light, too, not because I know anything about photography, but because my own pictures look better when I don’t use a flash. I wouldn’t know how to photograph the inside of a dark, creepy lighthouse, though.)
Then when my sister visited for Christmas in 2020, and I let her pick a Christmas movie for everyone to watch, she chose The VVitch. (I guess she made the right choice. We all liked it.) She and I don’t always have the same taste in movies, but the films of Robert Eggers are a rare area of overlap. She’s a historian and absolutely loves his use of period dialogue. Also we both like witches (and the taste of butter, I guess). (She used to eat sticks of it right through the box. Strangers would come up to us in the grocery store and tell my mother, “Your baby is eating that butter.”)
I haven’t been giving movies much thought for the past several weeks. The days have been getting away from me, and a strange creeping paranoia has kept me from wanting to share my thoughts about anything anywhere (which I combat by sharing all my thoughts everywhere because that makes as much sense as anything else I do).
When I saw there was a new(ish) Robert Eggers movie out, I decided instantly, “Oh yes, we’ll go see that.” I knew nothing else about it. (I’m not doing well keeping up with movies. This has already been out for weeks! I’ve been unsure and just trying not to do anything too decisive. As long as you don’t do anything, you can’t do anything too awful, right?)
As my husband was buying tickets today, he noticed, “Ooh! Willem Dafoe is in this movie.” Of course! “And Anya Taylor-Joy!” Makes sense. “And Nicole Kidman.” I didn’t know about that, but she fits right in. The only star whose name I was surprised to hear was Björk (not because she doesn’t seem like a natural fit but because I don’t see her in that many movies).
At the end of the film tonight, I suddenly realized, “Wait! When was Björk in that movie?”
Then I laughed at myself. “Did you think she’d be wearing a swan costume, Sarah?” (It’s very stupid, but I always expect Björk to be dressed as a swan.) Then I realized, “Oh, she must have been the witch.” Yes. The end credits confirmed it. She’s the seeress. (I found that kind of funny, too, because her costume does have bird-like elements.)
The Good:
The Northman is so entertaining. I never expected it to be so compelling and easy to watch. For one thing, it’s not as weird and disturbing as The VVitch and The Lighthouse.
I kept wondering about that, too. There are plenty of very trippy elements. Why don’t I find this disturbing? I kept asking myself.
Then I realized, Oh it’s because it takes place in a pagan society whose customs I’m not entirely familiar with. I don’t have any sense of what should be happening, so whatever happens, I just go with it.
I’m swept up in a giddy rush of moral relativism, eating popcorn and assuming with a shrug, “Okay, in this society, you go into a trance and bark and fart with your father to become a man, and you’ve got to behead some horses sometimes, and touching blood makes you have Dune-like visions of your family tree, and there’s this Mustafar area not too far from the haunted sword temple, and ravens are magic (when aren’t they?), and sometimes you kiss your mom, and who among us hasn’t spent a few years zoned out aimlessly murdering people when we’re in this story?”
When the world you know doesn’t behave as you expect, it’s rather unsettling. But in a world you don’t know, anything goes! As I watched, nothing seemed too surreal or creepy because the setting is unfamiliar to me, so my only concept of normal (within the world of that story) was the events that did happen on screen.
I should note, of course, that I have no idea how accurately the film depicts its setting. I know Eggers usually pulls large swaths of dialogue for his films right out of period sources, but I haven’t yet researched the evolution of this particular story.
The only thing I could really tell by watching was that The Northman is almost certainly based on one of the sources Shakespeare used for Hamlet. I had to look it up at home because my husband didn’t know what I was talking about and neither did I. This is an adaptation (probably a liberal one) of parts of Gesta Danorum (The Danish History) by Saxo Grammaticus. (This story appears to take place in Iceland, though. There are lots of clues about this—the very prominent volcano, the participation of Björk, the identity of Eggers’s co-writer, Sjón, the filming location listed in the end credits.)
I don’t know much about the source material. (I do vaguely remember a presentation in a medieval lit class in grad school about Havelok the Dane. That’s not relevant, and most of what I remember about that was a friend in grad school (who gave the presentation) complaining that the library was pestering her to return certain books (which she needed for her dissertation) in case someone else might need to use them. “Who?” she demanded, exasperated. “Please, tell me. Who? Who is clamoring so intently for these books about Havelok the Dane?”)
But you don’t need to know anything about Danish literature, Old English literature, Viking literature, or even Norse mythology to see some proto-Hamlet type elements lurking in the plot. (For one thing, the protagonist’s name is Amleth, and his father the king is murdered by his usurping uncle who then marries his mother.) (Well, I guess that’s basically all the things.)
The story here is so compelling. It’s not complex at all. It’s a simple revenge plot, and the action begins immediately and never lets up. Right away, we’re pulled into this highly atmospheric storybook world where we learn the rules as we go.
I appreciated the immersiveness because I had been trapped in my head all day and not in a very good state of mind. The film was an excellent distraction. The action unfolding on screen is so captivating. I’m always impressed when someone so successfully tells a story relying heavily on visual and sensory elements. (I always use words. I love photography and painting, but I don’t know how to tell a story without words.) The movie does use words, too, of course, but watching it, I felt like I had fallen into a storybook. It’s very visual and emotional. There’s a raw urgency to everything that happens onscreen. Everything the characters experience is so primal. Copious amounts of exposition or verbal plot development aren’t needed.
What’s nice, though (at least for me) is that though images, actions, and feelings drive the story, it’s not overladen with mind-numbing action sequences. (Sometimes I get a bit lost in long action sequences. My brain goes into overload trying to keep up and just stops registering what’s going on.) Besides its unsurprising similarities to Eggers’s other films, The Northman also reminds me a bit of the film Midsommar. (It lacks that film’s more shocking gruesome violence and post-orgiastic-naked-flight/bear burning-emotiveness.) (How do you even describe Midsommar just using normal words?) But I still kept thinking of that film at moments while watching this one, and Ari Aster is thanked at the end of the credits.
“I don’t want to go to Iceland,” I decided at the end of the movie (eliciting a laugh from my husband) as if the whole thing had been an Icelandic tourism ad, and the purpose of watching through to the end was to find the answer to that deathly important question.
“I don’t think it would be like that,” he said.
“Well they would have volcanos,” I said.
“You could avoid the volcanos,” he assured me.
“If you go to Iceland and avoid the volcanos,” I said emphatically, “you’re doing it wrong. The volcanos make Iceland.”
“Literally,” he agreed.
When we got home, I asked the kids, “What if we moved to Iceland?” (because apparently I wasn’t as dead set against it as I let on).
My son was against it. “Remember how I’ve told you being in our house gives me a special feeling?” he reminded me pointedly.
“It gives me a special feeling, too,” my daughter declared, “and that feeling is despair.” (She cracks me up.)
Anyway, we’re not moving to Iceland, but this film does have some gorgeous visuals (not surprising since Jarin Blashke is the cinematographer again). What I really love is the meticulousness of the dwellings (that straw roof and the natural lighting used inside, even at night).
It also has a fantastic cast. Ethan Hawke sneaks in there at the beginning. (I didn’t remember my husband calling out his name while perusing the cast list, so I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen to Amleth’s father. (I found Oscar Novak, the child actor briefly playing young Amleth quite compelling in that role.) Alexander Skarsgård is quite good as the adult Amleth, too.
Anya Taylor-Joy’s character adds an interesting dimension to the story.
Claes Bang is not an actor I’m very familiar with, but he brings a fittingly sinister gravitas to the villainous uncle. (At moments I found this character quite compelling, almost sympathetic, which is bizarre considering that he routinely rapes and murders people.) Why is it that I found him so sympathetic near the end of the film? (It’s probably because I pitied him.)
Nicole Kidman plays the most interesting character. (Well, I find her interesting simply because of the last thing she says.) (Well no, she’s interesting before that. I spend a good chunk of the movie trying to figure out if we were supposed to assume realistic complexity in the character and read her behavior as stemming from trauma, or if she was just supposed to belong to the sort of unthinking fantasy that makes it easier for a man to pick a side and be a hero.)
Gustav Lindh is weirdly compelling as the uncle’s weirdly compelling (yet obviously limited and often unpleasant) older son. Elliot Rose is good as the younger son, too.
Best Scene:
There’s a strange (very Hamlety) discovery scene fairly late in the film between Gudrún (Kidman) and Amleth. This scene filled me with questions because it introduces the possibility of complexity into what is (up to this point) a fairly straight-forward, simple story. Most of the time, the plot is driven by two motives, survival and revenge. At this point, though, it becomes hard to tell what is going on with this character and what she is trying to achieve.
Best Action Sequence:
I like that horrible game. (That is pretty violent, now that I think about it. Maybe I didn’t notice because I swept up in the violence. There’s a very welcoming energy to this whole thing, like this eerily compelling, “You want the release of violence and madness, don’t you? Come into this world. Come further in. Come closer.”)
Best Scene Visually:
I love the scenes featuring Willem Dafoe, Björk, and that other guy with Willem Dafoe’s head. (I’m pretty sure his name is Ingvar Siguardsson.) This linked encounters with witches/the divine are fascinating to me. I love magic, and I’m always interested in systems of faith and ways of framing encounters with divinity. These linked witch encounters made me think of The Green Knight, a little bit. (There’s a similar vibe. It’s not that different from Joel Coen’s Macbeth either.) This is a good time to be a witch on film, I guess.
The Negatives:
I got kind of tired of seeing the very prominent volcano. It had such a mystical quality to it. It kept making me think of The Tree of Life, Revenge of the Sith, and even (weirdly) Dune. (I think the last one is just because I’m reading the Dune series with my daughter. One late image of the volcano suddenly made me whisper inside my mind, “Jacurutu!” (I don’t even know what Jacurutu is yet. Everyone’s just constantly talking about it at the beginning of this third Dune book.)
Of course, despite the fact that I always felt like the volcano was overkill, the image of it does stick in my mind even now.
I also wish I could watch Nicole Kidman’s final scene again. I heard only her very last words clearly, but I think she said something softly just before that I couldn’t make out. (My husband was no help there. He’s hard of hearing and didn’t hear her say anything at all.)
From my point of view, there’s little fault to find here. The Northman is immediately compelling with immersive imagery, engaging performances, captivating cinematography, and simple story that’s easy to follow. It’s entertaining and highly distracting.
I do find myself wondering how much of the rituals and ceremonies we see on screen are real. How much real culture is being shown to us here, and what exactly is being fabricated for the film? Since I know nothing about the era, I’m genuinely curious. Eggers usually does a lot of historical research, but this setting is much more Other than his usual settings. How much is history and how much is fantasy? I’ll have to do some research now to find out. Just watching the movie doesn’t give me that answer.
I liked the movie, though. As soon as we started watching, I thought, “Derrick will probably like this.” (That’s my husband.) “He always has epic, cataclysmic dreams about the end of the world.” (I mean at night when he’s sleeping, not like aspirations.) Meanwhile, I keep dreaming about A) Dead relatives being alive, then refusing to leave after I remember they’re dead B) Random people telling me I should kill myself. So between the two of us, we’re perfectly primed to watch and enjoy this film. The Northman really is the stuff of our dreams.
Overall:
The Northman is extremely entertaining and seems more wide-audience-friendly than the other two films by Robert Eggers that I’ve seen. It’s a bit like Hamlet mashed up with the Mustafar sequences of Revenge of the Sith with some ravens and witches and evocative ceremonies thrown in for good measure. There are some graphic images, so it’s not for children, but it’s very accessible, a compelling, engaging story of revenge set in a beautiful landscape. If what you’re looking for is entertainment, you’ll find it in The Northman.