After the critical successes of The Witch and The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers tries to tragedy and thirst for revenge. A perilous exercise when you know how much cinema has broken teeth many times on vendetta stories. Sombrement entitled The Northman, this feature film divides into the cinematographic landscape by sometimes drawing on the blockbuster, sometimes in the independent roots of the director. An esoteric Viking drama, Shakespeare's mirror, dazzling by its technique and execution rather than its depth.
Revenge in the skin
While the young prince Amleth has just become a Man following a trying shamanic ritual, his father is brutally murdered before his eyes. The village is looted and ransacked. Forced to flee to survive, the young man took the sea and vowed to avenge his own. The screen swiped and we were propelled 20 years later. Amleth took over the hair of the beast and seems to have followed a path similar to his torturers.
For whom knows the rivet of vengeance, The Northman Follows a full route to the generic. From paternal loss to intrafamilial treason, The Northman borrows all the forms of the genre, never looking on the background to reverse the formula and surprise its audience. Literally animated by this unique horizon and under the grip of a bestial trance – not so metaphorical – Amleth participates in rallies of Slavic villages with his Berserkir brothers.
The first sequence of action is a lesson of realization with a sequence plan without any hook. The choreography is performed with fluidity and precision. The Northman, by its black aesthetic, does not suffer from any time dead. An enemy javelin launched and immediately received with one hand by the imposing Alexander Skarsgård (Amleth) shall be returned in extremis to the consignor. On the other hand, the villagers suffer Viking fury, while the camera passes the relay from one warrior to another. The actor took a gargantu training six days a week with no less than twenty meals a day. So many ingested calories and energy spent that translate into the depth of his abdominal barrier. A work of titan that had already known the actor during his preparation for his interpretation in the Tarzan of the David Yates.
« I am Amleth the Bear-Wolf, son of King Aurvandill. The War Raven. And I. Am. His. Revenge! »
The result here is up to the representations of Viking folklore with the stereotypes we know. The arched shoulders, half-man, half-beast, initially hermetic to sweetness and bloodthirsty, Amleth will release her mortifying impulses until she embodies revenge itself. Between myth and reality, the film is launched like a video game of the 1990s with its trials and levels that sequence, loading times less.
Paradoxically, The Northman reminds as much of the iconic Conan le Barbare as the playwright Shakespeare. Robbert Eggers chose a literary style based on the image of the author. The Tragedy of Macbeth of the Joel Cohen for his allegorical dialogues.
Amleth Ragnarök
This is the singularity of Robert Eggers' film. The Northman is technically implacable with staging impulses transfigured by the many passages of witchcraft. Robbert Eggers clearly wanted to represent Vikings from another perspective. By embarking the spectator at the heart of the processions, one sometimes takes a view at the first person with wide planes on the faces of possessed sorcerers, in full incantation or mystical delirium. Special mention to the performance of Willem Dafoe which leads waltz with an unparalleled charism during a brief episode. If these scenes are a frank success, just like the fighting, The Northman Unfortunately abdicates on the emotional field.
The motivations of the character remain cryptic, while Amleth could accomplish his destiny many times. The other protagonists almost act as PNJ. Rare are dialogues with other slaves, mutic and too often « oblivionesques » with the exception of Olga with whom Amleth will have a more intimate relationship. Most of the time, the hero solocates on Viking culture that would legitimize his quest for revenge. No real contradictor until the evolution of Olga (Anya Taylor Joy) in the last third of the film. There was probably to dig on the side of this female character who had already played in The Witch the same director or more recently in the very friendly Last Night in Soho.
Because of his manicheism and because of strings too often exploited in cinema, The Northman He can't breathe the tragic breath he's trying to produce. The character of the mother (played by Nicole Kidman) does not take, due to a seen and reviewed profile. Weared by the coldness of the North, it is also difficult to join the character of Amleth for the spectator. Too predictable in their structure, even the final outcome and fight seem artificially shipped, despite a high-flying realization and a prophetic tone that flies.
« And will you also enjoy the moment when you must choose between kinness for your skin or hat for your enemies? »
If this apocalyptic duel is certainly one of the most aesthetics that it has been given to us to see since the peplum 300 of the Zack Snyder – slowing down less – something is missing from the formula. It's beautiful but cold like an iceberg, despite the shedding of lava that erupts Icelandic volcanoes during the final joute. This desolation landscape seems to lead us to an end of the world worthy of Ragnarök, the last stage before Valhalla.
Yet, even this violence does not succeed in moving us, as if it did not adhere to the viewer or more, despite the rawness of the scenes. It is finally without enthusiasm that we witness the final confrontation. By way of comparison, even if it is a completely different register, the struggle to kill between Adam Driver and Matt Damon in The Last Duel (read our critical) had more fabric with an endless suspense and a febrile viewer at each blow of sword.
Perhaps we should have given ourselves the opportunity (and the time) to attach ourselves to the character to invest the spectator. The scenes are fast-paced, without allowing time to catch our breath. The tragedy is based on a fatal and inevitable destiny of a hero driven by passion rather than reason, but Robbert Eggers' film does not germinate terror or pity on Amleth. The Northman is a very beautiful box that lacks balance and empathy to enlist us in this murderous madness. We want to love or hate each other, to fear the death of loved one.
The Northman remains a technical feat: an unequal but salutary film thanks to its strength and its uncompromising proposal. A work that burys the axe of war with the great blockbuster show and still reminds us that Hollywood might very well have had another face, more swept, but that would have had the merit of betraying the will of those who dare. A cinematic chimera to see in the cinema to measure the work done behind the camera. The Northman is an additional crossing step before the sequels of video games Hellblade and God Of War, which also draw heavily from northern mythology.
You made me want to look at him. 🙂
Really the 4k Ultra HD!!! 🙂
[...] seems to be that of discord for the current young generation of genre cinema. Robert Eggers' The Northman has been critical and spectators, and Beau is afraid – after the [...]
[...] The Northman, Shakespeare and Ragnar are on a boat... by KillerS7ven [...]