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The Northman review – Robert Eggers’s ambitious, preposterous Viking epic
Understatement is not on the menu as Alexander Skarsgård scorches through a mission of bloody vengeance in this oddly plodding Scandi saga
The American director Robert Eggers established himself as a singular cinematic voice with the chilling 17th-century “New England Folktale” The Witch, and followed it up with The Lighthouse, an immersive dream of mermaids and murder. Both movies had an atmosphere you could taste, and made virtues of their relatively low budgets, conjuring expansive worlds from meagre resources.
Enter The Northman, a Viking epic, its budget reportedly in excess of $70m, that comes on like a head-smashing mashup of Beowulf, Hamlet (Eggers and Shakespeare share a Scandinavian legend source) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, told in growly tones that are more Dark Knight than Green Knight. Co-written with Icelandic poet Sjón, and described by Eggers as an attempt to make “the definitive Viking movie”, it’s as ambitious as it is preposterous and, at times, ponderous – filled with garbled epithets about vengeance and fate that are whispered, muttered, or blood-curdlingly yelled. This is a story of children “born of savagery”, in which tormented men spurn happiness to dive into icy waters in search of a fight, while mothers-to-be howl like banshees at the gods; a story with chapters that take place “Years Later”, and that lead us to “The Gates of Hell”. Understatement is not on the menu.
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