Photo ©Universal Pictures
The Northman
The Northman
Draped in multiple bead strands and wearing a crown of wheat stalks, Björk plays the role of the Seeress in The Northman. She reminds the protagonist, Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), that he cannot evade the governing force among Vikings, Fate. His own fate is to avenge the murder of his father by slaying the murderer, his uncle. One of Odin’s ravens looks Amleth in the eye as if to say, “She’s right, you know.”
How appropriate that Iceland’s biggest music star should play a role—a bit part but pivotal—in a film whose concluding chapters transpire in Iceland. The Northman begins in Scandinavia and travels down the Russian waterways in those marvelous longboats before hopping a slave ship bound for the Viking outpost on Iceland where Amleth’s uncle (Danish actor Claes Bang) took refuge with his retinue and his new wife. She happens to be Amleth’s mother and his father’s widow, Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman).
The Northman is Hamlet with a perverse twist. It’s also a sword and sorcery epic with Conan the Barbarian-like archaic dialogue. Writer-director Robert Eggers introduced himself with a remarkable pair of psychological horror films, The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), that made the most of their budgetary constraints. The Northman was given a bigger budget and as a result, the studio (with their dumb-as-dirt focus groups) interfered, insisting on recuts. The end product is long and tricked up with garishly farfetched computer-generated special effects. Portions of The Northman look absolutely preposterous.
However, there is something profound that extrudes from the crummy CGI and speaks for what must have the inspiration for Eggers and his cowriter, Icelandic poet (and Björk collaborator) Sjón: the dark shamanism at the root of warrior culture. During rituals conducted under Odin’s watchful carved visage, Amleth and his kin draw energy and berserker fury for war (and contact sports) from the wild animal within, that base material of humankind that civilization tries to transcend, tame or channel. The rising up of the howling mammal in our nature, the chest-pounding primate, turns Amleth, his companions and his foes into predators.
There is (too) much animalistic grunting and clanking of swords, plenty of skull-crushing killing, as Viking savages run amok across Russia in the film’s middle scenes and engage in climactic struggles in Iceland toward the saga’s end. Literally blood thirsty, Amleth and his cast of axe and sword-wielders bring nothing to mind as much as the current senseless slaughter of Ukraine. Mark this (yes, the characters talk like that), humankind hasn’t changed that much since the ninth century of The Northman.
The Northman opens Thursday, April 21 at the Downer Theater.
