“The Northman” (2022) is a film adaptation of an old Icelandic poem that has not survived, but the legend of Amleth appears in writing during the twelfth century in the Chronicon Lethrense (Chronicle of Lejre, a town in Denmark) and author Saxo Grammaticus’ (the Grammarian) third and fourth of the sixteen book Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes). If the story seems similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this legend inspired it. After Prince Amleth’s uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang) kills the Raven King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke), Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) seeks to avenge his father and save his mother, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). American Robert Eggers directed his third feature and cowrote it with Sjon, Bjork’s lyricist. Apparently Skarsgard kept bugging Eggers to make this film so he deserves more credit than just performing in the film.
I saw the film for Skarsgard. Despite being beautiful and a gifted actor, up to now, he has mostly appeared in supporting roles. I have never been an Eggers’ fan though he is critically acclaimed for “The Witch” (2015) and “The Lighthouse” (2019). Eggers’ films felt overrated to me like Christopher Nolan’s films because they are rooted in concepts that most viewers are unfamiliar with so they get amazed, but because I am either familiar or correctly guess within the first five minutes the film’s trajectory, I cannot stay invested or surprised for most of the film. Nolan and Eggers’ films also have sound quality issues, which make it challenging in theaters to understand what the characters are saying without subtitles. Because Eggers’ work adheres more to horror, not sci-fi thrillers like Nolan, and are more visually expressive, I prefer Eggers. Unlike Nolan playing with time in “Dunkirk” (2017), Eggers always successfully conveys the concept that he is exploring. Eggers’ movies use his characters’ madness to create two possible realities—supernatural and real-world explanations for the prior, but visually presents the prior. “The Northman” illustrates this moment two times: when Amleth finds a sword and after he gets beaten. It places Eggers in closer proximity to his fellow A24 director, Ari Aster, who wears the crown.
“The Northman” won me over even though each point of the film explicitly says what is going to happen and in one vision scene, shows the end of the film. There is one twist, which did not surprise me because the opening scenes laid the groundwork. I correctly drew the connection to Hamlet, but was unfamiliar with the original saga and Norse mythology. It was easy to follow because man’s relationship to the landscape felt like a character. Eggers’ epic sequences have few cuts and uses a dynamic, panning camera movement. This Orson Welles like tracking device facilitates the viewer to vicariously experience how the protagonist moves in space and makes us relate to him in an intimate, visceral and emotional way. It felt as if Eggers took a page from Panos Cosmatos’ oneiric logic except instead of feeling like a synthetic acid trip, Eggers’ visual logic is rooted in a nature.
“The Northman” is framed as a prayer or a song devoted to Odin with the He-Witch (Ingvar Sigurdsson) entertaining the god with the movie that we are about to watch and is divided into five acts. Odin also plays a role in this film if he grants the He-Witch’s request, “Summon the shadows of ages past.” There is a popular concept of Plato’s shadows on a cave and paralleling it to how we experience movies. If Odin is the All-father, the He-Witch wants dad to tell this story again, a story that the He-Witch happens to play a pivotal role. Odin is a filmmaker or at least a projectionist so Eggers as a director, plays the role of Odin and the He-Witch.
“The Northman” tells multiple stories at the same time because the characters also play surrogate roles. It is a story about Odin as the dominant, active god reasserting his dominance. Odin, who makes a brief appearance in the film, is associated with ravens, who plays pivotal roles in the film. Amleth’s dad is the Raven King. Fjolnir worships Freyr, whom Amleth derisively calls, “the god of erections,” i.e. fertility, and by killing his brother, declares war on Odin. No other god, including Freyr, makes an appearance in the film or takes an active role, including the Christian God who terrifies some worshippers because they see Jesus as a corpse god and Christians as vampires.
Amleth never interrogates the veracity of his two blood visions though they sustain and spur him to action. They give him hope, but his vision of himself is not accurate. He never becomes a king like his father yet he does not question the meaning of his second vision and takes it on face value. Later in the film, a character ridicules him for having faith in the stories that he was told. Even as an adult, he is called a “puppy,” but I think that it is worth pausing to consider how Eggers uses this story to examine abuse.
Eggers explicitly said that he intended this film to reclaim Vikings from white supremacists. Eggers wants us to ask why others try to make Amleth be the only one who must bear the fault of believing lies from abusers, figures of authority in his life, spiritual leaders and parents who may have lied to themselves or him. We are supposed to believe them, and children are punished for not obeying their parents. When young Amleth goes to his mom’s room, a natural action for a kid to take, Gudrun raises her hand to strike him, but reconsiders when an attendant announces that the Raven king arrived. If he makes himself a slave, it is with his society’s blessing yet he must find a way to break these chains.
Amleth never considers himself an abused child, but a favored one though as twenty-first century viewers, hopefully the signs will be obvious to us. His father gives him the necklace that belonged to another prince, whom the Raven King implies that he killed. Amleth is drugged for most of his life, which means he was groomed to become a child soldier and later a berserker. Only when he stops ingesting psychedelics, does he get the truth, but it also means that he is no longer numb to pain-physical and psychological. Trauma freezes people at the age that it occurs, and Skarsgard does a great job of wincing as a sign of identification whenever a young boy is killed or in danger on three occasions. He stops identifying with boys when he is forced to confront the trauma—that he was never a loved, embraced, and protected son as he imagined, which he does not consciously recognize until later, but Eggers shows. He stands alone, apart and on the edges. Even Fjolnir’s elder son, a scrawny, smug annoyance, experiences more warmth in his family, specifically from his stepmother. Amleth understands that he lost his past, but it does not lead him to distrust the future.
“The Northman” ostensibly seems to depict the Raven King’s last words, a curse/prophecy, his story of vengeance against his brother, enacted through his son.
We have the cover story, but it is one of redemption, not revenge. Amleth originally sought to avenge his father, save his mother, and reclaim his kingdom. He fails to achieve these specific objectives because a loftier sentiment, love and hope for the future, motivates him, not the past, which is the real twist of the story. He rebels in spirit even if not in deed. While he still worships Odin and is the only man with an active, ongoing successful relationship to the supernatural, Amleth does stray from his father’s teaching by becoming a (hu)man, not merely a wolf of the high one. His shamanistic practices embrace his animalistic sides-wolves, dogs, bears, vixen—to make him a brutal warrior and use the forces of nature as weapons, but he ends up using force to save, not hurt people, and abandons all his prior absolute principles, including one superficial good one that he does not kill women—to embrace complexity and nuance. Life holds more for him than death. While he cannot escape fate, he finds a way to subvert it while still playing his predestined role. He deconstructed his faith. He does not become his parents—he is not a slaver, a rapist, etc. Does he still belong to a death cult? Sure. He still dreams of Valhool regardless of knowing the identity of the Valkyrie who carries him, but he does not do bad for a guy who spent much of his life never questioning anything.
Like “Midsommar” (2019), the seasons reflect the characters’ lives. The movie begins in the winter of the Raven King’s life, and when we meet adult Amleth, it is in the spring of his life. I prefer “The Northman” to “The Green Knight” (2021) because Amleth shows more respect to the animals and people that befriend him.
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“The Northman” feels like a prequel to the story of the Chosen One, the Maiden King, his unborn twin daughter. After Amleth raids a village Seeress (Bjork) appears at night to him and calls him the “slayer of my people,” which implies that she is not a fan, but willing to be a catalyst for his plan because he is the Maiden King’s father. Even if Amleth inspired Hamlet, it feels more like MacBeth with witches giving instructions that will ultimately lead to the protagonist’s doom. Amleth also feels like an adult Fleance, the son of Banquo, who escapes assassination.
Some theorize that the Seeress is a Norn, the person who weaves fate. Others state that she appeared in the Temple of Svetiovit, a god of abundance and war. I did not get the impression that she was rooting for Amleth, but her direction is an act of revenge after war, the destruction of the rule of men. Odin may win because he gets another warrior to prepare for Ragnarok, but the Seeress serves the people from the Land of the Rus, the Slavs. She wins.
As soon as Amleth follows the Seeresss’ instructions, his first act is encountering Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy). From that point, Amleth becomes physically vulnerable, and his mortality only increases as the movie unfolds. He succeeds in protecting Olga, helping her conceive the Maiden King and helping them escape. If anyone succeeds, it is Olga. She may be a supporting character in “The Northman,” but in her life, he only appears briefly in her story to serve her and protect their children.
The backdrop of “The Northman” is the women behind the men as the real brains behind the men in power. The big twist, which I saw coming a mile away, is that Gudrun claims that the Raven King raped her, and she wanted Amleth dead. Duh; thus why she saw his intrusions on her chamber as sexual, not normal kid behavior. She equates Amleth with his father, and he is a safer target for her rage than the Raven King. Though she was a slave, she adheres to the principles of the culture that enslaved her. She urges the men in her family to not show emotion, enjoys the subjugation of slaves and overlooks that her current husband is a rapist. She perpetuates and enjoys an unjust system, which makes her an unnatural deviant. She expresses preference for unrepentant evildoers than hypocritical ones like the Raven King who have a veneer of civilization. She mocks her son’s unique quality, his ability to love.
In contrast, Olga revolts against the system. When we first see her, she pretends to be compliant while hiding a knife. When Amleth first meets her, she is giving Plan B herbs to a crying woman who was probably raped the night before. She allies herself with Amleth when he opposes her captors and treats her captors’ advances as the unwanted sexual assaults that they are. Also the forest orgy scene implied that she preferred women to men under ordinary circumstances, but like the Night Blade, she consents to Amleth and allows conception of his children. Some critics correctly call this scene as a happier ending than “The Witch.” While she would prefer to keep Amleth, in the end, Olga does win. Her captors lose, and her people are free. With the birth of her daughter, it is implied that the rest of this system will collapse on a broader scale. Sequel! Sequel!
Even with Gudrun’s counsel, Fjonir is a man who lacks judgment. He kills his brother and does not get a kingdom. He recognizes that his sons are spoiled brats. At least he was always feared. He boasts about his team’s chances in knattleikr without doing anything to prepare for victory. He is a shepherd, a sheep farmer, in a Viking society that only values warriors, which puts him in uncomfortable proximity with the imagery of the derided corpse god. Even his dog rejects him. His only accomplishment is a happy family. His sons may not share a mother, but his elder son seems to genuinely care for his little half-brother Gunnar. His wife loves him as much as she is capable. He can do nothing to save them. Without his wife and younger’s son’s blows, he may not have lasted as long in the denouement. His men’s intestines, the attendant in his temple and his other guards on the final night, serve as wool for the Norn’s thread of fate. No gods respect him. (Side note: why does Gunnar call their home a “holy chiefdom?”)
While Amleth may never escape the cycle of violence, which goes as far back as his grandfather killing his uncle, he breaks generational curses by slaying so they do not have to and not making them swear oaths of vengeance. With his hope lying in his daughter as the future, he breaks with a tradition that he clings to. Eggers’ third film is a hopeful one.
