I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjolnir.
If you’ve followed the posts I’ve made for very long, then you know the very, very special place I have in my heart for the twisted, gnarly and deeply unsettling films of Robert Eggers. I’m a huge fan of both The Witch and The Lighthouse. So, I went into The Northman with high hopes, even though there were factors I found somewhat concerning: the sheer amount of money the film cost and the resulting certainty that a major studio would, for the first time, have final say on an Eggers film was most concerning, but so was the presence of Alexander Skarsgard, an actor I’d never liked in anything before. Well, luckily my concerns were mostly for naught and I ended up really loving The Northman. It is still my least favorite of the Eggers’ three films and it’s definitely his most conventional, but I still really loved it. And, yes, I’m aware that I’m saying a movie where Viking Ethan Hawke and Viking Willem Dafoe have a farting contest is “conventional.” With Eggers, these things are a sliding scale.
The conventional element is the basic outline of the story, which is a prototypical revenge tale, quite literally. It’s the tale of Prince Amleth and his increasingly gruesome quest for revenge when his uncle murders Amleth’s father and makes off with Amleth’s mother. It is, of course, the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, though the stories are still substantially different in ways outside the very basic inciting incidents. For one thing, there’s not a soliloquy to be found here; Skarsgard’s Amleth is a hulking brute of a man, a blunt instrument, a beast and he’s not given to talking a whole lot, which is fine because he says everything he needs to say with his intense glares and taut body language. Skarsgard is, in fact, absolutely fantastic in this movie and, given the performance he gave in 2023 in Infinity Pool, it’s safe to say that he’s an actor that has rehabilitated himself in my eyes and I can’t wait to see what he does next. He’s scary in this movie, dealing out extreme violence without a blink, with a dead-eyed ferocity that makes him feel like an absolutely realistic depiction of a Viking berserker. You completely understand the terror a soldier or a villager would feel when this guy starts running at you with an ax and there’s a fantastic scene of the berserkers pillaging a village that has a long singleshot take that’s just brilliant.
The rest of the cast is also fantastic. I’m not typically a fan of Claes Bang, but I think he’s very good here as the villainous uncle, Fjolnir. Anya Taylor-Joy brings about the only element of lightness and humanity to the proceedings as a captive slave that forms a close connection with Skarsgard’s Amleth; it should be said that at one point, she poisons several people and does conspire with Amleth in several gruesome murders, so when I say she brings lightness and humanity, again, it’s relative. Nicole Kidman is really fantastic as the kidnapped mother; there’s a scene late in the movie where she confronts Amleth where she genuinely does some things I’ve never seen her do before. She’s probably genuinely giving her best performance here. Willem Dafoe is underused here, but between this and The Lighthouse, I think it’s probably safe to say that he’s the actor who best understands Eggers and the tone he’s sometimes going for.
I do want to address a couple of criticisms, not because I think they’re particularly valid or because I want to amplify them, but because they’re really avenues to getting into some of the things I really loved about the movie. I’ve seen some criticisms of the extremely simple nature of the story and it definitely is a story that is very predictable in its broad strokes and its characters are very broadly drawn and it’s a classic tale of revenge. That’s all true, but I think to some degree the film needed a level of simplicity in order for Eggers to be able to really show off on top of it. I’m not sure the visual style of this movie could sustain a super-complicated plot, if you know what I mean. I also think there is some overselling of the simplicity of the movie; there is one twist that came very late in the movie that I really didn’t see coming and I liked the fact that Amleth’s plan for vengeance involved engaging in psychological warfare against his uncle’s settlement, using their fear against them and committing murders by night and by stealth initially. That’s more compelling and interesting than if he’d just stormed in, sword swinging.
The other criticism involves the brutality of the movie and the fact that Amleth is really a monstrous character. Does this movie have any characters to really root for? I’m going to say Taylor-Joy’s Olga is the only character that doesn’t feel entirely monstrous; she’s doing bad things in some ways, but she’s also a captured slave. She’s the only character in this film who hasn’t chosen to be where they are and she’s the only one who seems to have any real hope for the future.
But I think this is all fine. I don’t think we need to root for Amleth in order for this movie to work. Is Eggers getting at something deeper here? Maybe all he’s doing is just telling a brutally violent, visually stunning revenge story and, if that is all there is to The Northman, I’ll defend it. I’m on board with the movie, even if that’s all it is. But I think it is more than that. I think it’s an exploration of what happens inside a culture when it’s as centered on, not just death, but violent death as the Viking culture of this time period was. It permeates everything. There’s not a rite of passage in the human lifespan that isn’t “celebrated” with copious blood letting. The religion explicitly rewards only death that is violent. Even the ”games” are bone-crackingly brutal. In a society like this, what even is a “hero?” Amleth is easily as psychopathic as anyone else in this story. Is it the justice of his cause that makes him a hero? But the movie also wonders just how just his cause really is. Was Amleth’s father really a good king and a good man? No, certainly not. Was he better, at least, than Fjolnir? He was, and I think this is the crux of the issue, to only one person, to Amleth, who saw him through the eyes of a son.
But I think one of the boldnesses of the film is to present Amleth as he would have been and to present him without judgment as what he would have been. There isn’t a drop of modern morality or modern philosophy to be found in this film and when it comes to historical films, that’s darn rare because it’s darn hard to do. I think Eggers has maybe done it as well as it’s ever been done and it’s part of what makes the film so bracing and shocking.
Anyway, I’ve gone on for almost two pages about this brilliant, shocking, stunning movie and that’s probably long enough for now. This review might be longer than all of Amleth’s lines strung together. Regardless, while The Northman may be my least favorite of Eggers’ three films, it’s still damn near perfect and a movie that just rains hellfire on the viewer. It’s an intense and gripping film and one I absolutely love. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Eggers’ weakest film is his most conventional, but still a masterpiece, a visually stunning, incredibly compelling story of gruesome vengeance, bolstered by great performances. 4 stars.