A Viking prince devises an elaborative plan to avenge his father’s murderer.
Vicious, challenging, and visually compelling! Whoever follows Robert Eggers’ films The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019) knows he’s famous for surrealistic acting, expressionistic photography, protracted shots, and idiosyncratic vernacular. And The Northman is no exception.
The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that Eggers worked meticulously with historians and archaeologists to visualise medieval Scandinavian legends, namely Amleth. And if you are aware of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, I’m sure you can put two and two together. The Northman is Eggers’ first studio-level film, and, reading the interviews he gave, one can tell that it is not the film he initially had in mind, but its final cut is not a result he is disappointed with either. That old story in Hollywood’s book and how studios always interfere with creative processes.
Even though it is not easy to write or speak it, the dialect used will not blow your socks off like it did in his previous films. The reason is that the gore and the violence take the torch and lead your senses to a medieval spectacle where the slaughter of men, women, and children was the way to resolve differences and show superiority. While the film represents a specific historical era and should serve as a reminder that civilisation has evolved, today’s far-right perceived it as a reminder that this is how things should be. Maybe, let them be the reminder that comparing two totally different eras and peoples is a historical fallacy, and their way of thinking is a representative example of unfathomably bottomless buffoonery.
Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and all the rest of the cast give stupendous performances! Give it a go; it is a unique cinematic experience you will not regret!
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!
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