“The Northman” in the cinema: Harder than Hamlet – culture

In the world of the Vikings, fate is a force of nature that cannot be shaken, just like the weather. In New York earlier this month, she proved that Providence sometimes has a sense of humour. That’s when movie posters appeared in the subway, showing four serious-looking Viking rulers. “Conquer Your Fate” proclaimed big letters, conquer your fate, but underneath there was a strange emptiness. The film title was missing. The faux pas went viral and by now everyone who hadn’t heard of the film before knew about it: The campaign was for the fierce Viking film “The Northman” and the internet smiled at the involuntary comedy. At least one marketing employee must have met his fate, it said.

This error would probably not be worth reporting later if it were not one of the most important films of the year: “The Northman” is for the American filmmaker Robert Eggers after his two independently produced hits “The Witch” (2015) and “The Lighthouse”. (2019) the first studio film. Cost point: 90 million euros. Expectation pressure: enormous. A blockbuster with Viking adventures hasn’t existed in Hollywood for ages, maybe not since Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas competed against each other in 1958’s “The Vikings”. But the signs are good: even series like “Vikings” and the Marvel franchise about the superhero Thor have discovered Nordic themes for themselves.

The linguist worked out how Vikings would speak today if they appeared in a film

Eggers chose the Amlethus saga as a template for his epic, on which Shakespeare’s drama “Hamlet” is based. However, the Viking prince Amleth is less fickle than his colleague. Revenge is the overriding principle in his world and becomes his destiny as he narrowly escapes his power-hungry uncle. He killed his father, stole his mother and thus laid the nucleus for a monstrous retaliatory attack. The twelve-year-old flees in a rowboat and swears: “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Uncle Fjölnir.” He directs his entire existence towards this goal and hopes for the support of the gods. Eggers has gathered a star line-up around Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth: Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Claes Bang, Willem Dafoe and Björk all get fitting performances between rolling thunder, archaic drums and folkloric invocations of the gods in front of the cloud-covered mountains of Iceland.

Real and mythical worlds are one in the society in which Amleth grew up, and so Eggers does not differentiate between the two. Already in “The Witch” the believing settler family did not question the existence of witches and talking billy goats, and also the mermaid in “The Lighthouse” was as real as the barking seagulls on the tiny island. Eggers is also known for the historical meticulousness with which he builds the worlds of his films. Settings, equipment and costumes are just as meticulously coordinated with historians and archaeologists as the language and dialect of his characters. For “The Witch” he used only historical sources in the dialogues and wrote “The Lighthouse” in a fluent seaman’s dialect. For “The Northman,” he hired a linguist to solve a dilemma: what would tenth-century Vikings who speak modern English sound like because they happen to be in an American production? Brendan Gunn gave these Norse men and women their medieval Scandinavian twists, and a fitness trainer gave the adult Prince Amleth a physique somewhere between the bulk of a bear and the lurking agility of a wolf.

Experienced in battle, Eggers has actor Alexander Skarsgård return as the adult Amleth. As part of a horde of berserkers who roam the country as mercenaries, he is more bloodthirsty brute than human. In a ritual, these fighters roar themselves into a trance, don wolf skins and attack a village of the Rus tribe. In a crazy tracking shot, the viewer becomes part of these savages, runs with them when they climb over the village fortifications, literally plow through the village and kill everyone who stands in their way. You briefly sneak past behind houses with them, only to be there again the next moment when Amleth bludgeons an attacker from his horse, bites his throat and, covered in blood, moves on.

After the ambush, he smuggles himself among the captured slaves because they are to be delivered to Fjölnir. “The Northman” is ultimately a station drama dressed up as a bloody and raw revenge epic that would make Conan the Barbarian tremble. However, Eggers counters the seriousness of this mythologically and psychologically charged escalation of masculinity by constantly putting Amleth’s mission of revenge to the test. Because as clear as the moral compass should be in this clear worldview, it just keeps going crazy with every obstacle that Amleth overcomes on the way to his goal.

His worldview is that of a twelve-year-old, and he himself later states: “I know nothing but revenge.” Mirrored in the female characters – alongside Amleth’s mother Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) also a seer (Björk) – this doomed determinism ultimately becomes nihilism and undermines the large-scale display of masculinity. The Rus slave Olga, played by Anya Taylor-Joy as a cross between a nature fairy and a herbal witch, does everything to soften his determinism: “You break the bones of the strongest men, but I can break their will,” she whispers to him conspiratorially and Of course, that means him too.

The Northman, UK, USA 2022 – Director: Robert Eggers. Book: Robert Eggers, Sjon. Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claes Bang, Björk. Universal, 137 minutes. Theatrical release: April 21, 2022.