Is it too soon to talk about go-to themes and styles where director Robert Eggers is concerned? He has, after all, only made three features to date; who knows, he could head somewhere very different next time he works. A comedy musical perhaps. But, let’s indulge ourselves here and look at what he does seem to enjoy. Remote, hostile landscapes; historical settings; isolated groups of people; the interplay of destiny and choice, and hints of supernaturalism, which still retain an air of uncertainty. These elements run through The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019) and – despite ostensibly opting for a Viking epic, these shape The Northman (2022), too. This isn’t really a Viking epic as a lot of audiences might expect, although it has more than its share of blood and iron: it’s a far more brooding film, intimate in fact, where the worlds of men and magic overlap, leading one another. In this sense, it’s probably a closer facsimile of how the warriors and settlers of the Viking Age saw their world than other stories we may have seen on film, as well as – in some ways – an obvious choice for Eggers.
The plot itself is simple enough – and reads as rather accessible, perhaps more so than The Witch (and certainly more so than The Lighthouse, which tested this reviewer to the limits). The plot is based loosely on part of the Gesta Danorum, which itself inspired Hamlet. Young prince Amleth is heir to a small kingdom, where he lives with his mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). The return of his father gives him cause for celebration, though his father is alarmed by how childish Amleth remains; he therefore makes it his business to educate him, taking him through rituals which will assure his son of his place in the great tree of kings. This is all the more pressing, as the King has returned from raiding with a vicious wound which he fears will kill him, depriving him of an honourable death. ‘Plan for the worst, hope for the best’ is the motto of the day – and it’s all in good time, as King Aurvandil (Ethan bloody Hawke!) is almost instantly overthrown by his scheming brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who orders the princeling executed.
The boy escapes however, Arya Stark-like in his repeated avowals of revenge, rowing desperately out to sea where it seems he’s picked up by other Vikings, on their way to settle the land of the Rus. He is raised by them, trained by them and, as a grown man and a fierce Berserker, he begins to give further thought to his destiny. An opportunity presents itself after his clan plunders a village, kidnapping a number of Slavs; Amleth (the picturesque Alexander Skarsgård) decides to smuggle himself to his uncle’s current abode in a settlement on Iceland, disguised as a Slavic slave. On the journey, he develops a closeness with another slave, a Slav girl known as Olga of the Birch Trees (Anya Taylor-Joy), one of several of the witches and magicians who shape his actions. When they arrive in Iceland, Amleth is unrecognisable to his mother or uncle, though further trance-like, magical experiences convince him he is on the right path. Is it that clear, though? The film goes on to disrupt some of these expectations, and it lingers on Amleth’s predicament as he slowly attempts to unpick the small Icelandic community where it seems his only family has moved on, perfectly contentedly, without him.
This is where the film differs quite significantly from many other Viking stories told on film; it pauses to consider this man’s trauma, in ways which are normally ignored to get straight to the battle scenes. Consider films such as Pathfinder (2007): the Vikings here, whilst terrific fun to watch, are all but two-dimensional, and barely act like thinking and feeling men at all. Other films of a similar persuasion treat their Viking characters as a means to an end, mainly able to fight and bleed until they finally keel over. Eggers has made something much more thoughtful, though without lacking for scenes of incredibly gruesome gore. If The Northman is similar to anything else, then it’s Valhalla Rising (2009), which also manages to balance violence against its introspection, albeit with a similar predilection for spilled intestines and for landscapes which would ably kill you through exposure, never mind anything else. But the trauma is not Amleth’s alone: other characters have their share, and deal with it in ways their own, even where this subverts character arcs which may have seemed pretty clear-cut.
This is the film’s greatest strength, this choice to explore how trauma operates, whilst retaining the mad fantasy elements playing out elsewhere. Although she was talking about a time around four hundred years ahead of the world of the film, historian Barbara Tuchmann has commented that so many European movers and shakers, kings and princes, acted in the erratic, cruel, incomprehensible ways they did because they were unnurtured, unloved, often traumatised and abused adolescents with something to prove. It rings true here: Amleth is motivated by the unhappy life he has led up until this point, and seeks salvation in the only way he has been taught to expect it. In this respect, although he is our hero, he’s ambiguous, particularly when he discovers certain truths. It keeps the film engaging, for even where there are lulls in the action (at well over two hours, of course there are lulls) there are motivations to consider. Throw in a whack of altered states, dreams and witchcraft, which the film often does, and the time moves on pretty steadily overall. Relationships between men and women are also explored through magic, as well as through largely-understated appraisals of their power play. Performances are solid, too, keeping moments of happiness rather rare. The film also does an excellent job of portraying the mud, cold and grim practicalities for Northern European settlers in this early Medieval period, in a film which is borderline monochrome on so many occasions: it’s a gloomy, sparse world.
The Northman is a serious prospect with serious players, a tale of revenge slowed down and explored through elements of horror as well as historical fantasy. It’s certainly a spectacle, for all its slower moments, but a largely effective and successful spectacle: by the time the credits roll, it’s hard not to be utterly swept away by it.