The Northman (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

It's unlike anything you've ever seen before. Well, mostly. Taken from the medieval myth that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Northman is a rare film that feels completely timeless even while pushing modern boundaries of what is cinematically possible. Beautiful and challenging, it reminds us why we culturally carry these far-removed stories with us and revitalize them time and again. In director Robert Eggers's masterful hands, both the film and its audience are in for a soul-shaping artistic experience. Prepare yourself for this one; everything may not be "perfect," but as so few films are this well-crafted, I'm just going to love a lot on it right now. Plus, there are precious few real epics for adults anymore, and this one checks all the damn boxes and then some!

Eggers is not interested in American folklore this time, but in Scandinavian legend, and he approaches this differently; less time seems to have been spent on perfecting any kind of authentic dialogue, as he painstakingly endured in his feminist frontier fright fest or his neurotic nautical nightmare, and more time carefully constructing the right look and feel for a culture none of us really knows much about. Aesthetically and thematically, the closest things I can compare this to would be The Revenant and The Green Knight, in terms of mythic worldbuilding and of course the plot itself. And, as we might imagine from his previous work, he is adept at including psychological torment, atmospheric dread, and sequences of dreamlike weirdness that are always ambiguous and memorable. The difference here is that the scale is huge, as opposed to his two earlier chamber pieces.

Mythology is weird, even when the drama is profoundly human. Enter Amleth (a sinfully muscular Alexander Skarsgård doing great work), an angry warrior prince determined to reclaim his kingdom, throne, mother, and honor. Years earlier, his uncle Fjölnir  (Claes Bang) murdered Amleth's father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) before taking the queen (Nicole Kidman) as his own wife. Amleth escaped the massacre as a young boy and swore vengeance. The skipped years of his adolescence and young adulthood have turned him into a one-man army, a Viking berserker on the verge of becoming a wolf or bear in the vast, unforgiving landscapes of their homeland (his tribe of roving warriors are all too content to howl at the moon while dancing naked by a bonfire). While raiding a village, he meets a witch who reminds him of his former home, stoking the fires of revenge and sending him on his way before disappearing into thin air.

Here, the overarching concerns are for deconstructing patriarchal structures and questioning traditional masculinities, but there is ample room for the age-old questions about family loyalty and the dubious folly of revenge. In this kill-or-be-killed world on the earliest edges of civilization, the characters aren't really much more than animals in their desires and actions, and consequences are vague at best, unless it ends in plentiful bloodshed. But, as with any myth, there are lots of considerations along the way, including the role of this witch (and her inciting incident) as well as a "he-witch" or shaman (played by Björk) later; there are considerations of the king's fool or jester Heimir (Willem Dafoe), who the uncle also kills but who returns, in a sense, later to aid Amleth. Other considerations: Queen Gudrun has had a new child with Fjölnir and we never really know where her loyalties lie or why; Amleth's paramour Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a slave and witch of sorts herself, and she seems eager for Fjölnir's blood independently of Amleth, so is she a Lady Macbeth suddenly hungry for blood or is she a dutiful wife, or something in between? These are only basic concerns -- ones, you might notice, that easily cross over into the territory of Shakespearean criticism, proof that new adaptations don't have to (and shouldn't) answer the big literary mysteries -- but showcase the broad range of interpretive and artistic paths into appreciating this film.

Eggers and his team -- especially his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke -- lean heavily into their most daring instincts, pushing for long tracking shots often, usually during an attack or raid. Moments like these reminded me keenly of Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant, in which there is an almost immeasurable amount of care and precision and craft in so many people, in such a tightly constructed set, perfectly executing their jobs to create a wholly believable and absorbing world in the middle of absolute chaos. It's the very best form of theatre. The fires they set on village huts are the campfires to which we draw close and attempt to shut out the cold and dark; unfortunately, these fires are violent and bloody and perhaps more horrifying than what lies in the cold darkness. But even as the film draws attention to itself as film -- even the landscapes are utterly gobsmacking -- it enhances itself with subtle effects, such as the bluish family tree that Amleth imagines rising from his heart and showing his various relatives (and offspring). Scenes like this, underscored by brooding, synthetic music, reminded me of David Lowery's The Green Knight (bolstered by the power of myth), though this movie is quite emotionally removed from that masterpiece, seemingly eager to thrive in pain and violence rather than hope or peace. Indeed, after the film ended, I felt little other than exhaustion. Satisfaction, to be sure, and lots of joy for various elements, but it's a brutal two-and-a-half hours of greed and lust and revenge.