The Northman: A Moody, Assured Viking Opera

There's an old Viking proverb that goes something like this: better a brief spell of honour than a long rule of shame. In many ways, this saying seems to perfectly sum up the tale that Robert Eggers's 2022 Viking action drama The Northman is trying to tell. This movie isn't complicated by any stretch of the imagination. Conversely, it's about as simplistic a story as can possibly be written, and though that may come across as a criticism to some, I swear that it's honestly not a bad thing. The movie's about a Viking warrior named Amleth - a man who sacrifices comfort in the name of honor - who swears vengeance on his uncle Fjölnir - a man who sacrifices honor in the name of safety - after the murder of Amleth's father at the hands of Fjölnir. That's pretty much it, and because for a long time, since Hollywood has seemed to be under a weird spell that mandates that a good movie needs to be complicated, I'm all ears to hear a simple revenge story told well.

I love the moody aesthetic of this movie. Given his overwhelmingly dark filmography, I think that Robert Eggers may have some unresolved emotional problems he needs to work out, but at least he puts these theoretical issues to good use in his movies. The use of practical sets and locations in The Northman is thorough, the emphasis on performance all-encompassing. Eggers seems to be to moody movies what chocolate is to marshmallows. They complement each other perfectly, and wherever one is, the other is surely not far behind.

The performances in this movie, most notably from Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy, are very unique, occasionally mystical, and incredibly intense. Some complained about detecting an air of overacting from the cast, but I have to disagree. The Northman has the poetic and mystical quality of a story stuck somewhere in between Hollywood and opera, and I thought the performances fit what the movie was trying to do extremely well. The Northman possesses an almost feral quality at times, digging deep into the unapologetically raw and blatantly uncomfortable, refusing to pull punches where other movies would have relented long before.

The Northman is about the furthest thing from a complicated movie, and I actually appreciated this, at least for the most part. It's a simple story with a simple premise told incredibly well with the help of some obvious technical prowess, and even when I was mostly able to tell what was going to happen in the movie from a mile away, it commanded my attention all the way through. Part of this was due to the fact that The Northman isn't afraid to dabble in the mystical aspects of Viking culture in the slightest. It runs the risk of blending in with other Norse fantasy movies by not grounding itself entirely in reality, and yet it conversely carves out exciting new paths by choosing to touch on mythology. It's certainly not the movie I was expecting it to be. It's not a storm-the-beaches war story so much as it is a battle of wits between Amleth and Fjölnir. And while once again, I can't exactly say that the movie's unpredictable on the level of narrative, it's undeniably gripping all the way throughout, drawing you in and seducing you in ways that even other fantasy movies cannot. Eggers seems to be something of a modern-day Edgar Allen Poe, down to the seemingly poetic prose with which he pens his movies. And in a world full of corporate writing where a lot of creative minds get turned into John Does, I'm down for a Poe or two.

In a lot of ways, I wish that more movies were like The Northman. In others, if that were the case, I would no longer be able to call this movie unique, and that would make me incredibly sad. The story it tells is a simplistic one, but the way it tells it is nothing short of utterly spectacular. Amleth and the rest of the cast in this movie aren't the most three-dimensional characters of all time, but they're played with such unapologetic poetry and intensity, a combination of which I haven't seen replicated to this level in any other movie. The visuals of The Northman are striking, managing to carve out a niche of their own in a world where movies have unfortunately been relegated to the role and function of "let's do the same, safe thing that's always worked but just a little bit different." I also appreciate that this movie is utterly unrelenting. It's visceral and often surprisingly dark, but dark and visceral aren't used merely as flavors by Eggers here. No, the very heart of The Northman is oppressively dark, and with this darkness comes a mature tone as well as a spattering of strong violence and occasional sex and nudity that will surely gatekeep some. But mark my words: this isn't just any other movie. The Northman is a rare and wholehearted commitment to a tone, a movie of the type that Hollywood has rarely seen before. Cinematic Valhalla must await it and other films like it that would dare to be different in a culture that, even if it wouldn't want to admit it, is pressuring movies from all sides to be the same.

The Northman - 8/10

Jeremiah 1:14-19