The North­man

Some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Ice­land. A trau­ma­tised princeling with a mop of blonde hair grows into a mad-eyed Viking Berserk­er; the feared bear-war­riors who ran­sacked their way across the ancient North. His treach­er­ous uncle plays the role of steely-eyed sheep farmer and some­time priest, an ocean away from the king­dom for which he mur­dered his own brother.

A young witch, stolen away from her ances­tral lands in the birch for­est, plots a qui­eter vengeance on her cap­tors – her kin are wild mys­tics of the woods, who see the future with a preter­nat­ur­al clar­i­ty. Sinewy branch­es from the tree of fate con­nect these indi­vid­u­als, against the des­o­late plains of old Scan­di­navia, where men and mon­sters look the same under the pale glow of the moon.

After the folk­loric thrills of The Witch and Beck­et­t­ian grotesque of The Light­house, Robert Eggers’ third fea­ture film may have ben­e­fit­ted from a bump in bud­get and scale (here he part­ners with Uni­ver­sal, rather than A24) but any con­cerns about whether or not this shift from indie to block­buster might have sti­fled his cre­ativ­i­ty are quick­ly dismissed.

With­in 10 min­utes of The North­man begin­ning, Willem Dafoe’s Heimir the Fool is leap­ing around a cer­e­mo­ni­al fire and Ethan Hawke (the ill-fat­ed King Aur­vandil War-Raven) is bark­ing like a mad dog. A feel­ing of relief sets in – this is the idio­syn­crat­ic Eggers we know and love. The long­boat slow­ly drifts out onto volatile waters.

At its heart, The North­man is a tale as old as time. It has its ori­gins in Scan­di­na­vian folk­lore: the sto­ry of Amleth can be traced back to the 13^th cen­tu­ry text­book, the Prose Edda, from which much con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ing of Old Norse cul­ture and mythol­o­gy stems.

The details vary, but the crux is the same. After his father is usurped by his uncle, Amleth swears revenge, and every­thing goes south from there onwards (if this all sounds a lit­tle famil­iar, it’s because William Shake­speare brought the sto­ry to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in Ham­let some 300 years lat­er). But with every folk­tale the same rings true – the story’s in the telling.

Team­ing up with Ice­landic author and poet Sjón for The Northman’s lyri­cal, fre­quent­ly dis­ori­en­tat­ing script, Eggers con­jures a world where the lines between real­i­ty and the super­nat­ur­al do not exist. The Old Gods and their whims are revered and feared in equal mea­sure, while beasts of the for­est pos­sess a curi­ous­ly human under­stand­ing of the world. This mag­i­cal realm is inhab­it­ed by humans who know they are but play­things for capri­cious forces beyond their understanding.

The ten­sion comes in decid­ing what to do with this infor­ma­tion. For reluc­tant hero Amleth (Alexan­der Skars­gård) vengeance comes at a price he nev­er ques­tioned until fate inter­vened, bring­ing him to Olga of the Birch For­est (Anya Tay­lor-Joy) who proves an invalu­able ally as he draws clos­er to aveng­ing his father, sav­ing his moth­er (Nicole Kid­man), and killing his uncle, Fjöl­nir (Claes Bang).

Liv­ing as we do in an unfor­tu­nate age of block­buster homo­gene­ity, it feels nov­el to watch a film that feels like a coher­ent, con­sid­ered vision. The North­man is a tes­ta­ment to the art of film­mak­ing, from the rough-hewn huts where our hero spends his time plot­ting to the vis­cer­al squelch of mud and blood.

It’s a film with fin­ger­prints all over it; one that has been craft­ed rather than man­u­fac­tured, and rewatch­es reveal a chance to rev­el in its sharp­ness; a scene in which Amleth seeks the coun­sel of a blind Seer­ess (the incom­pa­ra­ble Björk) teems with intri­cate set and cos­tume details, while a vio­lent game of Knat­tleikr – a Viking cross between lacrosse and rug­by – proves more adren­a­line-induc­ing than any CGI spe­cial of recent years.

There’s all the vio­lence one might expect from a Viking block­buster, but this is tem­pered by moments of soft­ness, reveal­ing a ref­er­ence for this much-mythol­o­gised cul­ture which extends beyond the ideas loot­ed for pop cul­ture use in the past.

The deft­ness of Eggers’ direc­tion and cre­ative team is matched by the gus­to of his per­form­ers. Skars­gård – an excel­lent actor who has large­ly flown under the radar out­side of his nefar­i­ous role as Nicole Kidman’s abu­sive hus­band on HBO series Big Lit­tle Lies – devel­oped the project along­side Eggers, and this might well be the role he was born to play.

The tac­i­turn Amleth com­mu­ni­cates most­ly through brute force, and while Skars­gård cer­tain­ly has the impos­ing Viking phys­i­cal­i­ty down, there’s also some­thing deeply vul­ner­a­ble about his per­for­mance, a sug­ges­tion that Amleth’s all-con­sum­ing desire for vengeance has kept him in a state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment, no more world­ly than he was as a boy awed by the return of his bat­tle-scarred father. It’s a del­i­cate bal­ance to strike, but Skars­gård makes it look effort­less; the soft­ness that slith­ers in when he shares scenes with Tay­lor-Joy and Kid­man makes him all the more compelling.

Fac­ing off against him is Claes Bang as the sim­i­lar­ly sto­ic Fjöl­nir, whose ini­tial vil­lainy gives way to some­thing more piti­ful as the sto­ry unfolds, while Kid­man deliv­ers a delight­ful­ly devi­ous turn as Queen Gudrún. It has felt as if Kid­man has been phon­ing it in a lit­tle late­ly (see Being the Ricar­dos, The Prom, Bomb­shell) but The North­man allows Unhinged Kid­man to slip through, a lit­tle rem­i­nis­cent of her under­rat­ed per­for­mance in To Die For.

This proves a suit­able foil for Anya Tay­lor-Joy, who plays the ethe­re­al witch of the woods that offers Amleth a pos­si­ble shot at sal­va­tion. She is fast becom­ing one of our more beguil­ing screen pres­ences, and more than holds her own in this star­ry cast while pro­vid­ing one of the most mem­o­rable moments involv­ing peri­od blood in a dark con­fronta­tion with Fjölnir.

In the truest sense of the word, this is a spec­ta­cle: cin­e­ma as the­atre, on a scale com­pa­ra­ble to the likes of Glad­i­a­tor or Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on. For all its action and sear­ing set­pieces, there’s a sol­id emo­tion­al core – while The North­man real­ly focus­es on the age-old ques­tion of what we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for love or revenge, it’s also a pon­tif­i­ca­tion on self-mythol­o­gis­ing and the lim­its of des­tiny, with plen­ty of twists and tricks up its sleeve. Sjón feels like an inspired choice of col­lab­o­ra­tor for Eggers, adding a mys­ti­cal lyri­cism to the script, though of course it main­tains Eggers’ imp­ish sense of humour. Per­haps that is what feels most impres­sive of all; how tru­ly this is a Robert Eggers film, delight­ful­ly strange and off-kil­ter as his pre­vi­ous work.

It feels easy to bemoan the cur­rent state of cin­e­ma, with the dom­i­nance of titles based on pre-exist­ing IP (which, if you want to get tech­ni­cal, The North­man is, but only just) and a slow slide towards tent­pole films that lack any per­son­al­i­ty in their style or script, instead serv­ing as a means to hope­ful­ly estab­lish the next link in a nev­er-end­ing Con­tent chain. But when watch­ing a film like The North­man – glo­ri­ous­ly loud and vast in con­cep­tion and exe­cu­tion – a glim­mer of hope for the future exists.

We can still have films that are bold and beau­ti­ful and trans­portive; there are unques­tion­ably film­mak­ers work­ing today with the vision and dri­ve to pull it off. The ques­tion is – with Eggers him­self speak­ing on the dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing a film with such intense edi­to­r­i­al over­sight, and the grad­ual merg­ing of stu­dios to the point it feels like a monop­oly is inevitable – how long must we wait for the next one?

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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