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The Northman Movie Review

The Northman is a 2022 epic historical film directed by Robert Eggers and starring Alexander Skarsgard. It is an expectedly artistic, singular vision from this meticulous filmmaker.

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“Hate begets hate“

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The plot follows Amleth, a Viking prince who sets out on a quest to avenge the murder of his father. In the historical context, Vikings were pretty much the Northern European equivalent of the Incas. While the latter were given an action-driven spectacle in the form of Gibson’s ‘Apocalypto’, the former in this project received a different treatment.

Yes, the film has its action scenes, and those are superbly executed and thrilling, though too brutal, but the marketing was misleading in this instance. Although Warner Bros. made him cut a lot of the more obscure and artistic parts of the film, Eggers can’t help being Eggers, and the end result is still a picture that most regular moviegoers just would not gravitate toward.

But as a big Eggers fan, I loved it myself. We have never really gotten a genuine Viking picture and this confident young director changed that by giving us this extremely historically accurate, meticulously detailed and transportive period piece that will make you hate the Vikings instead of romanticize them. They are these ruthless, insanely animalistic pagans who pillage villagers, murder innocent people and kill even their own family in this never-ending quest for power.

Obviously, this meticulous attention to detail did lead to one setback and that is the realistic portrayal of violence. None of it was too hard to believe and all of it was accurate, but still a couple of scenes were too much to stomach in their needless graphic representation. With that being said, if you are in the right frame of mind, you will be able to get past that as I did, and weirdly enough I found some of the violent moments rather funny the same as I found its overly ornate dialogue in a movie that is oddly humorous and self-aware at times.

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It was Skarsgard’s dream to be a Viking in a film some day and it has now finally come true for him. The result is his career-best performance where he put the most of his attention and raw talent. Some of the protagonist’s moments are downright tragic in a Shakespearean fatalistic element. Shakespeare did base his famous Hamlet on this legendary Amleth, but he civilized the character by making him endure existential crisis. This version, however, has no such qualms. He is consumed by revenge and brutally animalistic to the point of no return.

Nicole Kidman is also terrific and the twist about her character I did expect, but when it arrived it was gloriously twisty and dark and oh so believable. Everybody here is a villain in a story with no proper heroes, which is a treatment that the Vikings thoroughly deserve. Ethan Hawke’s performance is the weakest of the bunch, but Anya Taylor-Joy was terrific as the Slavic love interest.

The Northman benefits from Eggers’ staggering attention to detail. His directing is marvelous as always, but the employment of Old Norse as well as Old Slavic languages really led a lot of authenticity to the picture. The same goes for the cinematography. It was shot in Northern Ireland, but it looks very much like actual Iceland in a truly impressive feat of location shooting. The sets are incredible, the costumes are great and the editing is also excellent. The movie functions as a Shakespearean tragedy due to its fatalistic narrative and overwhelming use of poetic dialogue, but it is also very mythic in its elements of sorcery, prophecies and Vikings’ spiritual beliefs. It’s an artistic exercise in genre-bending storytelling that really worked.

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