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The Northman review – Robert Eggers’ brutal vision of vengeance and violence
Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Björk and Anya Taylor-Joy feature in a mesmerisingly outrageous take on the Norse myth that inspired Hamlet
Robert Eggers has created the Scandi noir to end all Scandi noirs: an atavistic revenge horror based on the Old Norse legend of Amleth, a young nobleman intent on bloody payback against the uncle who murdered his father and married his widowed mother; it’s the tale that inspired Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
Among its many acts of hysterical violence, this film chops off the first syllable of Hamlet’s indecision; it hacks away the Elizabethan melancholy and existential hesitation that Shakespeare grafted on to his anguished hero, and turns him into a single-minded warrior who is very buff and roars with neck tendons flaring like peacock feathers. He is a loincloth-wearing, wolf’s-head-sporting guy who frankly isn’t that fussed about being or not being … or only in the sense that the former applies to him and the latter to his enemies.
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