Film Review: The Northman is full of blood and thunder
Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth and Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga in director Robert Eggers’ Viking epic The Northman
The blood and thunder of Norse mythology is given its full due in Robert Eggers’ (16s), which stars Alexander Skarsgård.
He plays Prince Amleth, a Viking warrior who vows to avenge the murder of his father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke), by his uncle, Fjolnir the Brotherless (Claes Bang), a villain who compounds his regicide by marrying Amleth’s mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman).
Set in Iceland in the early ninth century, has the same basic plot as Shakespeare’s but Eggers, who co-writes the script with the Icelandic novelist Sjón, is far more interested in slings and arrows (and swords and axes, etc.) than he is in monologues meditating on the nature of outrageous fortune. Amleth’s world is one of ice and filth, mud and blood, and especially blood: there’s gore by the bucketload here, along with all manner of stabbings, hackings and decapitations.
Alexander Skarsgård is superbly cast as the avenging Amleth, a great, hulking savage — ‘a beast clad in man-flesh’ — who is never happier than when he is ankle-deep in his enemy’s intestines, and there’s strong support from Claes Bang, Nicole Kidman and Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the enchantress Olga of the Birch Forest.
Beautifully shot by Jarin Blaschke, who has a canny eye for foregrounding the mayhem against a backdrop of bleak, freezing wilderness, the film is an absorbing blend of elements from classical mythology, with witches, magical swords, epic journeys and doom-laden prophecies all playing their part.
(cinema release)
