The Northman (2022) Disappointing Viking mess from Robert Eggers
“In the end you are just like your father. Evil begets evil”
For every OK Computer there will be a Pablo Honey
For every Definitely Maybe there will be a Be Here Now
For every The Wall there will be a Momentary Lapse of Reason
For every Jackie Brown there will be a Death Proof
For every Heat there will be a Blackhat
For every The Prestige there will be an Insomnia
And for Robert Eggers, there will always be The Witch, The Lighthouse and most recently Nosferatu and then, there will The Northman, my least favourite in his canon of masterful cinematic work and alas, I found it all rather befuddling and not very good! But what do I know!
The opening 9 minutes:
As always in a Robert Eggers film, the brief black and white opening credits quickly give way to the first rumble of thunder and then an erupting volcano and the beginnings of a narration and…
“Hear Me Odin. All Father of the Gods. Summon the shadows of ages past, when the thread spinning norms ruled the fates of men. Hear of a Prince’s vengeance, quenched at the fiery gates of Hel. A Prince destined for Valholl. Hear me”.
Following a title card and “The North Atlantic”, accompanied by the sound of horns and first one and then two black squawking ravens flying to the right, we now follow 4 Viking ships approaching both the coast and an imposing castle in the near distance in the year “AD 895” and amid clashing and discordant sounds we cut to the first colour of the film and “Amleth” (Oscar Novak) clad in a red cloak as he excitedly exclaims “He’s Here!” before bursting into his mother’s quarters unannounced. Still dressing, “Queen Gudrún” (Nicole Kidman) chastises her young son and “Never enter my chambers without permission” before quickly following her eager son to await the arrival of The King. Upon the opening of the castle gates “King Aurvandill” (Ethan Hawke) slowly leads his army of men on horseback to the cheers of his subjects, with one exclaiming “Hail Raven King” as another shouts a welcome home for the “War Raven King” as we follow a procession through both the streets and the snow and quickly, a chain gang of female slaves as we cut for the second time to real colour in the film and a welcome for the King from his Queen as he dismounts his horse inside the King’s Court and “Like a battle-dog returning to its master, I’ve come to be fettered by my Queen’s fair locks”. Kissing the hand of her King, the Queen quickly gives way to her son and a son too old now to be treated as a child by his King but, releasing the tension of the film and breaking with royal traditions “You’re never too old for a good smothering!” Smiles and laughter abounds within the King’s Court as the Queen asks her King if his brother will be joining the returning party, a question brushed aside and largely ignored as the spoils of war are displayed for all to see either side of a roaring fire.
We cut to the Royal family of three sitting upon their familial thrones as the King proudly announces he acquired a necklace from a defeated Prince, a present he now places around the neck of his very own Prince beside him, a besotted and excited Amleth who couldn’t be more pleased to see his father and “My King”. As conspiratorial whispers circle the Court of “The Brute”, King Aurvandill’s brother “Fjolnir” (Claes Bang) enters and despite much tension between the two men Fjolnir raises a toast to “A slayer of men” before “Heimir the Fool” (Willem Dafoe) now raises his ire, a tension quickly defused by the King who presents his brother with his baby son, a further toast to his son and Amleth “To the Kingdom of Hrafnsey”.
Now in the presence of just two servants and with his Queen spinning a cotton yarn by candlelight, King Aurvandill opens his shirt and announces “The enemy has a taste of my liver” and fearing for his death without the honour of meeting it on the battlefield “It’s almost enough for Amleth to be marked as my successor” and “He must be awoken to what awaits him”. Queen Gudrún pleads with her King to take her to bed for she hasn’t seen him in a “season” but King Aurvandill refuses before returning to talk of his impending death and desires to meet this on the battlefield.
“The Gates of Valholl await you, I know it” she reassures him.
Here’s the thing with The Northman — By the film’s closing credits I was, whisper it, faintly bored with it all and to confuse matters further, when I watched the closing credits I couldn’t believe Ethan Hawke was The King of the opening scenes and whilst I’d spotted a returning Willem Dafoe, a similarly returning to a Robert Eggers film Ralph Ineson passed me by and even more befuddling, Björk was in the film, somewhere, and I had zero idea! Some might say or argue all of these to be a good thing, the shape of a good film, but I simply didn’t care for a film with obvious allusions to Hamlet, Shakespeare, dare I say Braveheart and, damning it with the faintest praise of all, Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2009 clunker Valhalla Rising.
For every Drive there’s a Valhalla Rising?
Definitely Maybe? Who knows.
Well my mini Robert Eggers odyssey is at an end and 3 fantastic films out of 4 ain’t bad!
Roll on Christmas Day 2026 and the release of Werwulf!
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon