I went to Iceland. For almost 2-1/2 hours I was transported to year 895 AD to witness Prince Amleth's bloody revenge for the murder of his father King Aurvandill by his Uncle Fjölnir, who then becomes King and marries Gudrún, Amleth's mother. If the plot seems familiar, the ancient Norse saga was the inspiration for William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Director Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse) went to extremes to make this $70 million epic, every detail of ancient Norse life was meticulously researched and recreated down to the iconography, clothing, fabric and wooden spoons. The villages were recreated using traditional tools plus they were complete villages, not movie sets or fake facades. The movie was recorded on film with very little CGI, everything seen is real and visceral. The location is vast and forbidding, this film must be watched in the theater to fully experience the forbidding Iceland landscape.
Young Amleth escapes Fjölnir's henchmen in a small row boat. We next see him 20 years later rowing a Viking war ship, Amleth has become a berserker, men who turn themselves into savage animals to raid a village in the Land of the Rus, killing, pillaging and taking the few survivors as slaves. The raid is filmed in one long unbroken 3-minute take using a single camera by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, the small town is transformed into a mass grave as the villagers are slaughtered. The raid scene has "20, 30 actors, 20, 30 stuntmen, hundreds of extras. There's horses. There's chickens flying through the frame and - again, a lot of moving components to making that work."- Fresh Air interview
The town’s Seeress (Björk, bleeding from eyeless sockets) tells Amleth his destiny is elsewhere so he disguises himself as a slave to travel across Iceland's treeless terrain to Fjölnir’s farm to exact his bloody revenge.
"The Northman" is directed by Robert Eggers and co-written with Sjón, the Icelandic novelist and poet responsible for the Björk lyric “I’m a fountain of blood / in the shape of a girl.” The film stars Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth; Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrún; Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandil War-Raven; Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, a seer, and a head; and Björk as a Seeress.
"The Northman" is Norse mythology in all it's violent glory where this world exists alongside the supernatural, prophesies are destiny and valiant warriors go to Valhalla, where their reward is to continue to fight and die.
Further reading:
Fresh Air interview: Alexander Skarsgård lost his voice — and found catharsis — as a Viking berserkerhttps://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096120878/alexander-skarsgard-the-northman-viking-berserkerAnatomy of a Scene and interview with Robert Eggers: ‘The Northman’ Wasn’t Easy to Make. But That’s How Robert Eggers Likes It.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/movies/robert-eggers-the-northman.htmlWatch the trailers - the film is even better!
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https://youtu.be/oMSdFM12hOw#2
https://youtu.be/E7wNR9sHQ2g 
