'The Northman' review: Bold, brutal, and yet underwhelming

Ready for the arthouse version of a Viking epic? Since his feature film debut, writer/director Robert Eggers has been gathering critical acclaim for his esoteric spin on genre. With 2015’s The Witch, he brought dread-filled atmosphere and accents as thick as molasses to folk horror. With The Lighthouse, black-and-white cinematography collided with madcap machismo for a tale of men and mermaids unlike had been seen before. Now, with The Northman, Eggers explores the myths of Vikings in a historical epic that is star-stuffed, action-packed, and yet far from the crowd-pleasing likes of Gladiator.

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Co-written by Eggers and Icelandic novelist Sjón, The Northman unfurls the legend of Amleth, a 10th-century Norseman on a gruesome quest of vengeance. If you know the story of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you know the broad strokes here, as Hamlet was based on Amleth’s tale. As a boy, the princeling Amleth admires his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), above all else. When the king is murdered by his traitorous brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang), Amleth swears vengeance against his uncle. After escaping by the skin of his teeth, he grows up in a pack of vicious raiders, learning the ways of battle before coming across a witch (Björk), who delivers a prophecy that drives the now grown and brawny Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) back to his homeland. His plan is to avenge his father and rescue his captive mother (Nicole Kidman) by murdering his uncle. However, the fates have specific instructions on how this must happen. And falling for a young and gorgeous clairvoyant Olga (The Witch‘s Anya Taylor-Joy) complicates matters for Amleth, as he now has something to lose beyond his life.

The Northman is brutal in violence and battles.

If the endless waves of bloodless superhero movies have you hankering for something harder hitting, then you may well relish the graphic violence of The Northman. With an R-rating, the film is not only able to show the gore so studiously excluded from PG-13 action movies, but also is able to audaciously depict the brutality of Viking culture. There are decapitations aplenty, dismembered bodies crafted into ruin symbols, and a farmhouse filled with children burned to the ground (presumably to prevent any other Amleth story arcs). Notably, many of these acts are committed by our hero or through his complicity. No matter how ghoulish, Amleth’s response to this carnage is either stoic stares or yowling war cries of intimidation. Violence, Eggers seems to say with a shrug, is just such a common element of Viking life that the hero is inured to it.

Further pulling us into Amleth’s perspective is Eggers’s tendency to build visual worlds so carefully detailed that you can almost smell them. And that smell is knowingly repugnant. Amleth’s is a world not only of blood and sweat, but also mud, rotting flesh, and shit. Fart jokes and burbling burps are central to father-son bonding. A mummified skull recalls “Alas, poor Yorick” with a twisted grin. As a visual cue that all in this world is tainted by the violence of man, everything is covered in relentless grime. Well, save for its radiant women.

The beauty in The Northman lies in Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, and nature.

While Amleth and his male cohorts are often covered in muck, his mother and lover have porcelain skin as flawless and sparkling as their long, untangled, blonde hair. In every frame, these two look ready to glide into a photoshoot for a magazine cover. While The Northman is steeped in realistic details, the fashioning of these female characters plays into the fantasy of myths and the supernatural seen elsewhere. These are not women as they would be, but as Amleth has idealized them. As such, the cinematography from Jarin Blaschke regards them with the rapt fascination that he does the Icelandic landscapes that surround embattled heroes and villains.

Like the American Western, The Northman cuts wide to these the glories and apathy of the wild around them. In this case, that means not only crashing beaches, rolling green hills, and towering forests, but also a raging volcano, where the final battle is fated to be held. These beauties contrast with the brutality to create a chaotic visual splendor in The Northman. So, why did this movie leave me so numb?

The Northman is missing a crucial element.

Aesthetically, I appreciate the world Eggers has built, so fetid with detail that you do feel thrust into this space of wrath, rot, and violence. Intellectually, I comprehend what Amleth is going through, dedicating his entire existence and identity to avenging a father who has become a faded memory. However, I didn’t feel it.

Admittedly, I’ve never been much for Eggers’ preferred performance style. His films boast a clunky theatricality as if his stars are on an ill-lit stage, performing Shakespeare to the back row. Amid so many grounded production design choices, such acting feels false or forced. The anguish of Amleth is not something I could connect with, perhaps because Skarsgård’s performance is a medley of scowl and howls. His hulking shoulders and flexing muscles show a warrior, but give us no access to his soul. The women are more often given dialogue about emotions, which Kidman and Taylor-Joy deliver with poise and an edge of grandiosity that makes their characters feel mythic but not real. Some roles work with such extravagance, like Björk’s prophesizing or The Lighthouse‘s Willem Dafoe, playing another a wise fool. However, their screentime is cruelly cut short, so we might focus on a hero who is hard to root for. After all, as we’re getting to know Amleth, he watches the slaughter of innocent children with apparent apathy. If he feels nothing, why should I feel for him?

Perhaps Eggers overplays his hand with the violence. As Amleth’s campaign of vengeance grows more audacious, audience members were chuckling at the grim reveals of his slaughtered victims. There is a comical collision in the sternness of these men and the outrageous of the violence that turns limbs into a macabre sculpture. But it’s not exactly funny as much as jarring. The Northman is filled with conflict, between the real and the fantastical, the stoic and the absurd, the brutal and the beautiful. And while I admire the structure of such storytelling, Eggers’s execution feels hollow, capturing the horror but undercutting the heart. So in the end, the blows — while intense and gory — don’t hit as hard as I’d have hoped.

The Northman opens in theaters April 22.

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