Something, you might say, is rotten in Hrafnsey
— even if we have the sense that such rituals are
the lifeblood of this culture.
It quickly turns for the worse. The brother of
Aurvandil, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), cuts the throat
of the king, assumes control and drags Gudrún
off on his shoulders to take as his wife. Young
Amleth — “just a puppy,” his mom had called
him — flees in a rowboat on an empty sea,
vowing his revenge.
Where are we, exactly? Smack in the middle
of the Scandinavian legend that inspired
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” But in this Viking
ur-“Hamlet” (Eggers penned the script with
Icelandic poet Sjón) there’s no existential hand-
wringing for Amleth over duty and fate. He lives
for vengeance. When we next see him, he’s a
ferocious and muscle-bound marauder — “a
beast, cloaked in man-flesh” — who would snap
most stage-bound Hamlets like a twig. Amleth
(a bulked up Alexander Skarsgård) is less likely
to soliloquize with a skull than sever one from
someone’s body.
Once he’s had his fill doing mean Viking stuff
(there’s a beautifully and brutally staged raid of
a Slavic village), Amleth brands himself a slave
and slips onto a boat headed for Iceland, where
Fjölnir has moved his kingdom to a verdant
grassy hillside. Among the workers there is Anya
Taylor-Joy, a veteran of “The Witch.” With justice
tantalizing close, Amleth takes up arms against a
sea of troubles.
There’s great method but not enough madness
in “The Northman,” Eggers’ third and easily
most ambitious film. With historical rigor
and aged atmospheres, Eggers has already