Kymm Zuckert oohs and aahs Robert Eggers' The Northman (2022, co-wri/dir Robert Eggers, USA)
“I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!”
Last June I went to a sneak preview of The Northman, and signed one million things saying that I would not let a single word regarding this film pass my locked lips until it opened, and now it finally has!
Of course, I am writing this having seen it again, what with the fact that I didn’t make any notes at the time, so there are plenty of things I don’t remember being in the film that may well have been there, but the special effects were not finished, so some scenes I saw were incomplete.
For instance there’s one big battle scene where a guy‘s face was covered with motion capture dots, and I wondered why? Ten months later my curiosity is answered, it is because the character has no nose, and though Robert Eggers is very much into reality in his films, he doesn’t go quite so far as to permanently maim his actors. Much appreciated by SAG-AFTRA, one has no doubt.
I also remembered the exact point when I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back, and realized why the ending was a trifle opaque back ten months ago, as I missed a major plot point! Glad I had the opportunity to rectify that.
So, if you saw The VVitch (have) and/or The Lighthouse (haven’t, but want to), you know that Eggers loves sinking deep down deep into a really specific time and place, making it as real as possible what they wore, how they spoke, how people related to each other, and, very specifically, what kind of supernatural occurrences might take place. The VVitch was set in the 1620s in New England, The Lighthouse was the 1890s also in New England, and now we have The Northman, both longer ago and farther away, in 10th century Iceland with the Vikings.
This is the story of young Amleth (Oscar Novak as a child, later Alexander Skarsgård), whose father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke, a previous film Hamlet), comes home from off Viking-ing, and everything seems to be swell involving King Dad and Queen Mom/Gundrún (Nicole Kidman), until wicked Uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), the King’s bastard brother, does some…well, see Hamlet for that plot point, and Amleth runs off, vowing to avenge his father someday.
When we see Amleth later, all grown up into the Skarsgård that he became, he is a Berserker, part of a tribe of killers and raiders, but he is still a good guy and the hero, because this is a time of killing and raiding, and a Viking’s gotta do what a Viking’s gotta do. Life is profoundly cheap, and if you cannot kill or outwit, you probably end up as a slave. Amleth randomly hears of where his uncle and mother have ended up, in Iceland, after losing the kingdom, and heads there himself, with revenge running ice-cold through his veins.
Along the way he meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), and they fall in love, somehow in this terrible world of death and blood and cruelty. But he cannot swerve from the path he chose as a child, he must fulfill his destiny.
I find it difficult to believe, but must admit, that I did not notice the first time I saw this film that it is totally based on Hamlet. The main character is literally called Amleth, and the main bones of the story are identical! How did I not see? I’m assuming I was distracted by the various beheadings.
Interestingly, though, I found on IMDb that actually it’s the other way around, The Northman isn’t based on Hamlet, Hamlet is based on The Northman! Mind blown! Apparently this is an adaptation of the saga of Amleth, written down in 1200, but from earlier oral traditions, and Shakespeare, the great magpie of plots, based Hamlet on it. So it is churlish for some reviewers to complain that it’s too Hamlet-y, when actually Hamlet is too Amleth-y, if you want to get down to brass tacks about it.
The film is extremely violent, and does not turn away from it. I don’t mean that it is gratuitously violent, it’s about Vikings, they had very few tea parties, you have to expect a fairly large number of bloodbaths. But it is not for the squeamish or faint of heart.
It’s all mostly in English, with the occasional burst of Old Norse by everyone, seemingly spoken well. It all seemed right to me, a person who has zero knowledge of Old Norse, until right at the end, when Alexander Skarsgård does a whole lot of yelling in Old Norse and I was like, okay, now THAT is what it’s supposed to sound like. Also, it was suuuper sexy, so heads up to the peeps who might like a naked, ripped Viking streaked in dirt and speaking Old Norse, it’s a fine moment of motion picture history right there.
The performances are excellent all around, I heard a review that said when Nicole Kidman shows up, it’s like, what is this giant movie star doing here? But I think she slots in beautifully as a woman who does what she has to in this time and place.
Skarsgård is perfection, of course, both at the violence and action, and also at the feeling and emotion of a person brought up to not show feelings or emotion, and of the child still there in the man’s super ripped body.
I adore Anya Taylor-Joy just in general principles, I love how her amazing face is so timeless that you can stick her in any film in any era, Last Night in Soho/The Queen’s Gambit (1960s), The VVitch (17th century), Emma (19th century, or even Split and Glass (present day), and you are like, yep, that’s what they looked like back then. Of course, having the perfect look is no good beyond photographs if one cannot believably portray what a person from that time would be like, and she always gives entirely lived-in performances, Olga of the Birch Forest being no exception.
I would recommend, though, that anybody who wants to see this should definitely try to see it on the big screen, because the cinematography and the vistas are spectacular. There are many shots of huge expanses with tiny people at the bottom edge of the screen that are just breathtaking.
And in an aside, if you would like to see this movie but as a sitcom, I highly recommend the Norwegian series Norsemen, which they shot both in Norwegian and in English, so you can watch it in English not dubbed! It is both very authentically about Vikings but also hilarious, and it makes for a great contrast with the pitch black darkness of The Northman.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog