Like Eggers’ previous work, The Northman is a ruthless epic of old-world mayhem that draws on the Icelandic Sagas and a broader library of violent pulp entertainment. Its grubby environmental realism is offset with glowing supernatural visions of sorcery, Viking funeral rites and nude sword fights.
The film stars an extremely ripped Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth, a man on a one-track mind of vengeance. As with his other movies, Eggers dived deep into period research (a New Yorker profile claims he might have made “the most accurate Viking movie ever”).
The Story
A young Viking prince seeks revenge after his family is killed and his father’s killer usurps the throne. It’s a rote tale of violence and betrayal that you’ve probably heard before, but director Robert Eggers elevates the story with his largest budget yet and a cast led by an extremely ripped Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Claes Bang, and Bjork.
Eggers uses a variety of aesthetics to evoke this mythical world and create a feeling of realism and magic. He rejects stylish modern crutches like handheld cameras during the action and instead lingers on earthy battle sequences slippery with mud and blood, while also incorporating dreamlike visions of witches and Valkyries.
This meld of a large-scale epic action movie and a slow burn character drama is what makes The Northman so unique and memorable. The film’s ferocious performances (especially from Skarsgard) are balanced by visible pain and trauma, and its exploration of the cycle of violence is both disturbing and beautiful. A psychedelic trip on the grandest scale, The Northman is a true feast for the senses.
The Cast
Director Robert Eggers spent a lot of time and energy getting Viking details right in The Northman. He even hired a Viking expert to ensure that his work was authentic. Unfortunately, this fervor for accuracy can be distracting, as it often draws attention to itself rather than the film’s substance and pleasures.
The film stars Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth, the Viking prince who models Hamlet in many ways. Skarsgard began working on the film more than 10 years ago and gives a remarkable performance, full of unabashed badassery. He is backed by Anya Taylor-Joy, Claes Bang, Willem Dafoe, and a large supporting cast including Icelandic actor Hafthor Julius Bjornsson (who played Gregor Clegane on Game of Thrones).
While The Northman is a violent, nihilistic film about the cycle of violence, it also explores the burden that masculinity places on those who live by its code. Its combination of a large budget and epic scale with a slow-burn character drama makes it an incredibly unique and entertaining movie. This is a must-see for fans of gangster movies and action movies.
The Visuals
Robert Eggers, who let his freak flag fly with A24 on his previous movies The Witch and The Lighthouse, focuses more on showing than telling with The Northman. This ruthless tale of a Viking prince hellbent on revenge is both a feast for the eyes and a case study in destructive masculinity. The film stars an insanely ripped Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth, who’s on a quest for revenge that’s both bloody and lustful. It’s also one of the most exciting and entertaining action movies in recent memory.
The movie draws on Icelandic sagas, the Conan adventures, and a little Hamlet to present Amleth’s vengeful journey in a way that’s both brutal and epic. It’s also a tale of entwined bloodlines that never feels either romantic or reductive, and — despite the entrails strewn around and severed limbs everywhere — doesn’t feel like a historical drama at all. Instead, it feels like a rough draft of the world to come, and that’s what makes it so powerful. It’s teenage cinema with a ferocity and violence that are both intense and utterly unapologetic.
The Action
Director Robert Eggers shows he’s a master of visual action with his grizzly Viking tale of bloody revenge. He and Icelandic novelist Sjon have meticulously researched the past for this movie, and the New Yorker even claims that The Northman might be the most historically accurate Viking film ever made.
But for all its scholarly verisimilitude, the movie feels intrinsically adolescent: a symphony of old-world mayhem that might have been designed as an opera of teenaged Beavis and Butthead. The movie’s swooping long takes of cliff-top fortresses, dangerous headlands, and fecund landscapes are breathtaking to behold. But the movie’s focus on fashioning its female characters as adolescent fantasy objects robs them of their power.
Fortunately, Alexander Skarsgard as the wolfish berserker of this story is an unqualified triumph. His grunting, raging bellows are how the old Norse fable of a prince en route to Valhalla is supposed to feel. But The Northman isn’t the same kind of movie as the freaky artisanal horror that put Eggers on the map, nor does it have enough interesting plot twists to distinguish itself from generic revenge fare.
The Plot
As much as The Northman may look like a head-smashing mashup of Beowulf, Hamlet (it shares a Scandinavian legend source with Shakespeare), and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, the movie is far more than an exercise in Viking bloodshed. The film is about the endless cycle of violence and the perverse traps that masculinity can set for its own soul.
The screenplay co-written by Eggers and Icelandic poet Sjon is a ruthless saga of betrayal, revenge, and the immutability of fate. It’s also a darkly mystical journey into the realm of Norse mythology and sorcery. From earthy battle sequences dripping with mud to a vision of the flaring cosmos, this is a world ruled by primal instincts and a belief in fate.
Like the other films Eggers has made, this is a boldly epic and intensely gritty saga of betrayal, murder, revenge, and the inescapable pull of fate. But it’s also a film that takes its time to reach its inevitable conclusion, demonstrating how long and slow the path to vengeance can be. And when it does, the payoff is a brutal and beautiful feast for the eyes.