'The Northman' dives deep, delivers visceral thrills

Tell me a tale of the past, and I'll often spot what you're saying about the present.

The first two "Godfather" films ostensibly chronicle the ascendance of the Mafia in American culture in the 20th century, but they're as much about our country questioning its faith in its own institutions in the wake of Watergate.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas created Indiana Jones and "Star Wars" as tributes to the Saturday morning adventure movie serials they grew up with, but they prophesied how their fellow baby boomers' tastes would feed a nostalgia-hound movement in entertainment that emerged during President Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America."

And the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe has arguably been about applying a layer of self-aware snark and contemporary meta-commentary to superhero, sci-fi and fantasy storytelling tropes.

All of which makes co-writer and director Robert Eggers' "The Northman" something special indeed, because it neither winks at its audience, nor does it attempt to impress them with its affected seriousness.

When clever folks such as comic book writer Grant Morrison tout superheroes as modern Greek myths, they're overlooking the profound dissonance in values between the two, because even the most downbeat of American superheroes bear some residual trace of the can-do, go-getter spirit of the genre's largely jingoistic origins.

By contrast, most Greek myths qualify as tragedies by the pampered standards of today, as do most Norse and Germanic myths, because they share in common a conviction that fate is a fixed fact, and even if your fate bodes ill, for you or your loved ones, you must still march forward to meet it on its terms, not yours.

Eggers uses the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, which Shakespeare swiped for "Hamlet," as the basis for "The Northman," which opens with Amleth as a boy, witnessing the slaying of his father, the king (Ethan Hawke, in the midst of a career resurgence), by his uncle (Claes Bang), who usurps his brother's throne.

Amleth escapes to mold himself into a beast of a man as an adult (Alexander Skarsgård), so he can avenge his father, kill his uncle and rescue his mother (Nicole Kidman), and yes, because this film draws from the same inspiration as "Hamlet," there's a mother-son scene where things get predictably freaky in a V.C. Andrews way.

But if the rest of this film was as predictable, then "The Northman" would be little more than "Conan the Barbarian" or "Gladiator" as directed by Terrence Malick or Darren Aronofsky.

Aside from its fascinatingly otherworldly female side characters, including Björk as a blind seeress and Anya Taylor-Joy as the Slavic sorceress Olga, who's way more Wanda Maximoff than Ophelia, what stands out about the character drama of "The Northman" is that it's primarily between men who are so deliberately primitive that they almost qualify as proto-hominid.

When Amleth is still a boy, we see his father and the king's jester (Willem Dafoe) initiating him into manhood by having all three men emulate wild dogs, as they consume hallucinogens to induce visions.

Likewise, after Amleth has grown into manhood in his adoptive warrior tribe, we see them working themselves into a frenzy during the night as their shaman talks about them abandoning their humanity, before they engage in combat the following morning wearing wolf pelts like second skins.

Whenever Amleth fights, he and his opponents bellow and snarl like animals at each other, and even though Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's most indecisive characters, Amleth's moments of questioning his path are rare and brief.

If Eggers had invested "The Northman" with more modern morals, we might see Amleth conflicted over the collateral damage his quest for vengeance could wreak upon the new family his mother has started with his uncle, including his two half-brothers, but that degree of supposedly "civilized" compassion and introspection would not realistically be part of the character makeup of a prophecy-guided Viking berserker circa 900 A.D., so Eggers expends no effort in making Amleth appealing to modern audiences, Skarsgård's perfectly white, straight teeth notwithstanding.

By the end, all you're left with is two bare-chested, blood-covered dudes yelling wordlessly at each other as they swing their swords through literally hellish flames, their reactions fully feral - in case I'm not being clear enough, this is an enthusiastic compliment - and the only conclusion the film offers is to judge Amleth's actions according to his own theology.

"The Northman" is a magnetically uncompromising film that nonetheless allows you to bask in its lush, dreamlike yet earthy atmosphere.

If you need a film to play in the background during your next Dungeons & Dragons campaign, this and "The Green Knight" allow you to give Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptations a much-needed breather.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]