Hal Kitchen
The last decade seems to have brought forth a new holy trinity in American prestige horror cinema. In one corner, we have the social front with Jordan Peele, political, satirical and engaged with the world of today, in another we have Ari Aster, psychological, picking through our relationships and at our emotional needs, and in the third corner, we have Robert Eggers, looking to the past, stretching into the sublime.
Now, I’m a little skeptical of the “saviors of horror” narrative around these three, getting praised to high heaven and dressed in brand new emperor’s attire by A24 bros who use the term “elevated horror”. Their reputations rest on a very slim and somewhat hit or miss collective catalogue, and their movies often leave me a bit dissatisfied. However, I’ll admit, the ambition is never lacking and their films are always interesting, if only in the debates one can have around whether or not they’re actually any good, and Robert Eggers is so far probably my favourite of the trio, with The Northman now making him three for three.
That said though, I do think The Northman is the weakest of Eggers’ films, and it does mark the point at which the faint background issues I’ve had with his work have wormed their way into the foreground. If someone had asked me why I wasn’t quite aboard the hype train for The VVitch (still probably the best movie any of these three have made) or The Lighthouse, I would’ve struggled to answer, because they always left enough room for the benefit of doubt. Even if on paper, they’re quite straightforward tales, they’re very good at suggesting there’s more going on than there is. With The Northman though, I’m calling Eggers’s bluff. I don’t think there’s much going on under the surface here and it’s starting to make me fear there never was.
We’ve not had many Viking movies, and the ones we have had haven’t been very good. Valhalla Rising is probably this film’s closest compatriot in terms of aspiration, and maybe I’m just showing favoritism when I say it doesn’t come close to measuring up to that movie. The film this most reminded me of was Dune, another film trying so hard to be impressive that it forgets to actually be interesting. Maybe you disagree with me on that, and you’re welcome to. It’s probably as good an insight into what this film is like as I can give: if you liked Dune, you’ll probably like this. I didn’t and although I enjoyed The Northman considerably more, that might be simply because this movie does at least tell a complete story, and I didn’t walk out feeling like I’d just watched a three-hour-long teaser.
The Northman is a very traditional revenge story. Boy loses Dad, Mum gets kidnapped. Boy becomes Man, Man comes home to kill Dad’s killer and rescue Mum. However, Man meets Woman and has to choose between living well as the best revenge and the regular kind of revenge. The kind with axes and war crimes. It’s more or less Hamlet, though more tonally akin to Macbeth if it were from the point of view of Malcolm. Young prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) dotes on his father Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), but when his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang) sets his designs on Aurvandil’s throne and queen (Nicole Kidman), Amleth is sent into flight. During his exile, he becomes a fearsome warrior (Alexander Skarsgard), and returns to take his vengeance on Fjolnir, meeting a beautiful Russian peasant (Anya Taylor-Joy) en route.
Clearly a considerable portion of the film’s budget went into securing that international cast. If I were Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson I’d feel pretty peeved that after giving such powerhouse performances in Eggers’s breakthrough, I’d found myself shunted into background roles in favor of Hollywood A-listers like Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke. Maybe this was something the studio mandated, refusing to finance such an ambitious romp without some big draw names attached. If so, they certainly got their wish, with brief appearances also from Willem Dafoe as a licensed fool-cum-shaman and from living legend Bjork as a blind seer.
Having gone to such lengths to secure such an illustrious cast, it’s a shame they don’t have much more to do than roar and gnash their teeth at one another. The film consists primarily of action scenes that unfold mostly in one take apiece, and scenes of rural paranoia that feel like they’re trying to recreate the intense claustrophobic atmosphere of The VVitch. The film’s standout scenes are whenever there’s a feverish vision or ritual, or otherwise a brush with the sublime and supernatural. There’s a smoke-hole scene early on, a couple of visions of the ride to Valhalla, a conversation with a desiccated head and a funeral sequence straight out of a nightmare. These scenes look magnificent, displaying the commitment of the cast and the insane world of death-worship the characters inhabit and which motivates their every action. However, scenes like this are having to move heaven and earth to make this redundant reiteration of formulaic revenge tropes feel necessary, fresh, and vital.
Even the action scenes don’t feel exciting, having neither a sense of finesse and raw power nor a convincing sense of tooth and nail danger. The depressingly enduring vogue for filming action scenes in overlong travelling shots is refusing to die and here robs each of the battle scenes of a sense of pace, speed or danger, or even a lumbering sense of tragic inevitability. It just gives you a good long look at the extras pulling their punches or swinging at nothing so our antihero can pull off the win. With the possible exception of the last one, which at least takes place in a sick arena, the fight scenes are the dullest moments of The Northman and that’s a sorry state of affairs.
As far as character drama goes, you’d be looking in the wrong place, although you might be forgiven for doing so since the film devotes so much time to the psychology of its world and characters. The most interesting character is probably Kidman’s Queen Gudrun, who is a ruthless and chaotic enigma, such that one can hardly imagine her new marriage engendering the peaceful equilibrium Amleth’s return supposedly interrupts. Skarsgard lacks the sense of wounded pride and deep in his bones anger that the part requires and is simply about ten years too old. We’re not told how much time has elapsed since his exile, but a more vulnerable youthfulness would’ve given the role an easy sense of tragedy it seems to lack here. He’s just not a compelling antihero and feels like a one-note power fantasy rather than the protagonist of a tale of misplaced pride and tragic vengeance.
People have discussed the inconsistent accents a lot and this is one place I’ll stake my flag firmly on the film’s side. It’s acknowledged several times that these characters have come from all over the north sea: Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Iceland. It’s a slaving empire that has taken captures from all over, so the fact no two people sound like they’re from the same place is an entirely justified and necessary component of the film’s plot. Maybe you find some of the more cod accents unconvincing and distracting, but it would be a shame if that kind of surface-level criticism dominated the conversation around The Northman. There’s a backlash against every movie of any kind of success these days and if we let that argument be the standard bearer for “The Northman isn’t totally rad, actually!” then we make straw men of ourselves. There are deeper and more nuanced issues why you or I might not have thoroughly enjoyed our time with this movie.
There are also a lot of reasons why you might. Although its thematic waters might run no deeper than the average Marvel movie, and even if it doesn’t quite deliver on its promised spectacle, it’s still refreshing to see a period epic like this on the big screen in 2022. It’s novel to see a movie go this hard and still make the rounds and plaudits to Eggers and company for not playing it safe. Even if the story they chose to go all in on wasn’t exactly a winner, who can look at even a single frame of this movie and not totally believe that everyone put their all into it? Even if I don’t love The Northman, I really, really wanted to and part of me still does. There are really good things in it and if some gnarly imagery and hardcore male on male action is further up your street than it is mine, I can safely predict you’ll have a blast with this.
