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Skarsgard: Go Vikings!
REVIEW
REVIEW
A Viking saga for the ages,
or just a Saturday afternoon
DaDs! Planning a motorcycle
trip anytime soon with your sons?
Mom staying behind because she has
“stuff to do”? Vroom—don’t walk—to
the nearest cinema showing Robert
Eggers’ The Northman, a visually re-
splendent Viking saga enfolding re-
venge, ideals of familial duty, and awe-
some silver jewelry. Eggers co-wrote
the film with the Icelandic poet and
novelist Sjón, with an eye toward cap-
turing old Norse culture as a rich re-
pository of art, poetry, and spiritual
beliefs. Other contributions to his-
tory include tests of manhood involv-
ing farting and belching. The Vikings
were complicated people.
The story opens in the early
10th century in the British Isles, where
fresh-faced 10-year-old Prince Amleth
(Oscar Novak) is destined to suc-
ceed his father King Aurvandil (Ethan
Hawke). But Aurvandil’s trouble-
making brother Fjolnir (Claes Bang)
wreaks murderous havoc on that plan,
carrying Amleth’s mother Gudrun off
like a prize. (She’s played by Nicole
Kidman, in a marvelous crimped mane
à la Studio 54.) Young Amleth escapes
the violence, vowing revenge, and
after growing into the beefy form of
Alexander Skarsgard, sets out to get it.
He also makes sweet love to saucy
enslaved girl Olga of the Birch For-
est (Anya Taylor-Joy), and has a hal-
lucinatory meeting with a blind seer
(Björk) who urges him not to stray
from his mission. Eggers, too, takes
his mission seriously, at times fulfill-
ing it with unintentionally comical
solemnity. “Your sword is long!” ex-
claims one of the Viking womenfolk as
she gazes upon Amleth’s ancestral iron
weapon. Still, there’s always some-
thing to look at in this cracked mag-
isterial landscape of moss and mud
and angry volcanoes. The Northman,
whether you approach it as legitimate
folklore or as a testosterone- fueled
Saturday- afternoon lark, speaks to
the 10-year-old boy in all of us, with a
loud and mighty Viking burp. —s.Z.
PETITE MAMAN: NEON; THE NORTHMAN: FOCUS FEATURES
