Review: The Northman goes south
The multiplex is on the verge of extinction. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these low-ceilinged, forlorn depositories that one still finds (for now) in unhappy shopping plazas were en route to becoming things of the past — vestiges of the blockbuster era, patiently awaiting their unceremonious demise with the weary resignation of lame dogs or tired thoroughbreds.
As I drove through the cheery spring day that coincided with my plans to see The Northman — a new Viking epic from writer-director Robert Eggers — it struck me as perverse that I was opting out of fresh lilac and vivid green buds for the drab, faded amenities of Spotlight Cinemas. My arrival inside the auditorium did nothing to dispel this instinct: I was the only one there, with nothing but torn seats, caution tape, and vicious horror movie trailers to keep me company. I skulked among shadowed rows of seats, unwilling to recline, and ultimately positioned myself in the aisle, standing against the wall (I prayed that the dull brown stains splattered across it were from Pepsi or Bosco chocolate syrup), with my phone’s flashlight serving as deflection in case any monsters descended from the screen.
This was how I watched the first twenty-five minutes of The Northman, a movie of rapacious and meaningless violence, before deciding to forfeit my eight-dollar ticket and skedaddle. Nothing could induce me to further sacrifice nature’s full burst of life for the sake of something so deprived of fecundity or grace. I exited a room that was as wrecked as its featured presentation, and returned to sunlight.
Set late in the first millennium, A.D., the film begins with King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) returning home from far-flung pillages to his pigtailed queen, Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), and mop-haired son, Amleth (Oscar Novak). He presents the boy with a necklace — telling him that it belonged to “another prince.” Yet daddy is a little put off by sonny boy’s naïve smile as he dons the trinket, and confides to his hot-to-trot wife (it’s been months since they shared a bed, but the king has a festering wound on his gut) that it’s time the boy were enlightened to the ways of the world.
To that end, Aurvandill and his jester (Willem Dafoe) bring the boy to an underground chamber where they act like wolves — howling, farting (“Ah! I smell a clever pupil!”) and shouting handy credos at him over a pit of fire: “Become wise enough to be a fool!” “It is women who know the mysteries of men!” “Should I fall by the enemy’s hand, you must avenge me or forever live in shame!” And so on.
The prince emerges from this debauchery in pretty good shape, but then, sadly, his father is promptly decapitated by an evil half-breed uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang). The uncle then declares himself king, captures Gudrún, and pulls the ancient bad-guy-bad-move of letting any rightful heirs escape by boat. And as he rows, Amleth blinks through his bangs and chants:
I will avenge you, father! I will save you, mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!
Kid, I would expect no less.
Aside from the violence, which is appalling yet a given, what’s most disarming about the first scenes of The Northman is how little I cared about them. A lot of low, gravelly voices talk about low, grave things, with no dimension or perspective to back up what they’re saying. Mr. Hawke, Ms. Kidman and the rest are assigned titles, nothing else, as their scenes unfold in strikingly rote fashion — as though Robert Eggers were already tired of this story, past the point of wishing to explore it.
It’s a revealing duality: thin humanity bracketed by ostentatious carnality. Would Mr. Eggers feel so at liberty to revel in the sanguine contents of these chilly Scandinavian bodies if he’d made their occupants more personable, more alive? Isn’t it necessary that they come across as two-dimensional, if we are to participate in the spectacle of their destruction?
After escaping his uncle, Amleth grows up to be played by Alexander Skarsgård. He still acts like a wolf, only now he does so alongside a group of beserkers — i.e., warriors who fight with unusual ferocity. They attack a village, and it was at the conclusion of this sequence that I left the theater. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke exposits the attack with two lengthy shots: the first follows Amleth and his cohorts as they climb over the fortress wall and take hatchets to the limbs of local men; the second unfolds after the attack, as they usher most of the women and children into a thatched-roof shack, then set the structure ablaze.
In between the hacking and the burning, there’s a brief shot that’s designed to play for laughs: a group of the beserkers — standing, bent over or leaning against a building — as they wheeze from exhaustion. Ha!, the joke goes. They’re all exhausted after murdering and raping everyone in the village!
I feel somewhat at a loss, finding myself in a position where I must point out the obvious, wholly irresponsible nature of this film. Atrocities of human warfare are not valid as ornaments for movie theater screens, nor as setups for irreverent punchlines; one has only to look to present-day Ukraine or Palestine to recognize that militaristic or guerrilla assaults are traumatic not only for those who experience them, but for who those merely learn about them. To indulge in elaborate tableaus of other people’s anguish is not ethical or artistic, let alone entertaining.
Graphic content is often a cover for lack of creative insight, and, indeed, I see this film as an instance of bloated budget getting in the way of good storytelling. Robert Eggers’ two previous films — The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (‘19) — were each made with significantly smaller budgets and a greater, more incisive regard for character and environment. With The Northman, all the writer-director’s energy has been funneled into coordinating massive production values and intricate money shots. Eggers has generated an impeccable visual product, but at its core are hackneyed sentiments that could’ve been regurgitated from any number of fables about a son avenging his father’s death: Hamlet, Batman, The Princess Bride, etc.
If American cinema continues to insist on an excess of gore, then perhaps it deserves a slap on the wrist or two. The multiplexes will survive if we can foster a sustainable, integrated type of movie that centers on sentiments of community — not aggravate our already entrenched, wrathful feelings of alienation. Because if that is the type of story that we’re telling, and consuming, why would we want to leave home to engage with it? People will go to the movies again once they start to feel at home there.
