The Northman (2022)
Movie rating: 10/10
With each new film he makes, Robert Eggers solidifies his status as the most talented director working today. Eggers’s debut The Witch (2015) was my favourite horror movie of the last decade. His equally impressive follow-up, The Lighthouse (2019), was the best psychological horror film since The Shining. Now Eggers has delivered a full-throated Viking epic in the form of The Northman, which stakes an early claim as the best movie of 2022.
The Northman retells the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, best known as the direct inspiration for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. As a boy, young Viking prince Amleth witnesses the murder of his father King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) by Aurvandil’s ambitious brother Fjölnir, who also weds the slain king’s wife Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). Driven into exile, Amleth (played as an adult by Alexander Skarsgård) plots his return to avenge his father’s death.
To start with a disclaimer, I should note that I am probably this movie’s ideal target audience. Robert Eggers is my favourite director of the moment, and I have enjoyed much of the cast in their previous work. As a history buff and a fan of both heavy metal and folk music, a blood-and-thunder Viking epic was always going to be right up my alley.
Let’s get one thing clear: this movie is not for everyone. Some may object to the gore and violence, or be put off by the bizarre imagery and rituals. Actors behave like animals. The film depicts a barbaric period in human history with plenty of dirt, mud, blood and guts. But if a film is going to explore that subject, I prefer it to do so with this kind of honesty and frankness. Life for most people in medieval Europe was indeed, to use Thomas Hobbes’s famous expression, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Like modern war films, the realism of this brutality makes the film’s chosen narrative more impactful.
For me this movie delivered on all fronts. Eggers continues to prove himself a master of visual storytelling. His painterly eye offers memorable and breathtaking images throughout. The plot itself is very basic, but I took no issue with that. This is a film that speaks to very primal human experiences, which is part of the function of myth and legend. Eggers does manage to throw in some twists: a shocking reveal about one major character was something I did not see coming.
The cinematography is stunning, with impressive natural landscapes shot in the U.K. and Iceland, and solitary ships atop the stormy North Atlantic. Eggers offers solid action in a variety of settings: a berserker attack on a village in the land of the Rus, a brutal round of the Norse ball game knattleikr, battles with undead creatures, and a climactic duel in a hellish, fiery landscape. What George Lucas was trying to achieve with his climactic lightsaber duel in Revenge of the Sith, Robert Eggers achieves here by giving it real weight and drama.
The movie boasts a terrific cast who all deliver solid performances. Skarsgård ably carries the film. Anya Taylor-Joy—who has had a long working relationship with Eggers, stretching back to her memorable screen debut in The Witch—continues to be a highlight in anything she appears in. Having just finished watching Moon Knight, I enjoyed seeing Ethan Hawke in the king/father role, while Nicole Kidman’s performance is worth watching just for the venomous relish she provides in one key scene. Claes Bang offers a multifaceted turn as Fjölnir, a character who proves to have more layers than we might expect.
Costumes, production design, and music are all stellar in bringing the medieval setting of the film to life. Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough’s score is especially worthy of praise, using archaic folk instruments to create an otherworldly experience that reflects the film’s straddling of history and Norse mythology. I purchased a copy of the soundtrack to download even before I had left the theatre, which is about as high a compliment I can offer for film music.
Thematically, I think the movie ends up being more complex than one might assume given the plot. Revenge is one of the most common motivations for lead characters in action films, which typically end the same way: hero defeats villain, saves the day, roll credits. The Northman begins like many of those films: I’m not the first one to observe that the plot has many similarities to Conan the Barbarian. But the way Eggers’s film unfolds suggests that revenge is not worth it, that ultimately everyone ends up losing. It’s a counterintuitive message for the Viking culture the film depicts, in which avenging wrongs through violence was key to a Norseman’s honour. That kind of thoughtfulness helps this film transcend what on the surface is a simple revenge story, and is part of what makes it so effective. Highly recommended.