After witnessing the assassination of his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), young Amleth (Oscar Novak) runs back to town only to find his murderous uncle Fjölnir the Brotherless (Claes Bang) taking his mother, Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), to be his queen next to him on his usurped throne of the 9^th century Viking Village.  The boy flees by boat, vowing to avenge his father, save his mother, and to kill Fjölnir.  Twenty years later, now grown and a fierce warrior, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), with the assistance of Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy) intends to make good on that vow and will stop at nothing to see his vengeance to fruition.  

With Robert Eggers at the helm of the Viking drama, to say that every frame would be lush with period details would be an understatement.  The Northman was financed in part and released by Focus Features, it is the rising auteur’s largest film to date and first feature not associated with A24.  As with The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), The Northman boasts a script co-written by Eggers, and this time with Sjón, an Icelandic poet, that adds precision to each word and, while flowery at times, never crosses into the realm of inaccessibility.   

The sheer amount of craftsmanship that went into making The Northman is nothing short of incredible.  Overall production design was led by Craig Lathrop, and it certainly was no easy task.  The massiveness of the landscapes is matched only by their pristine beauty, and it was here that sets needed to be constructed to show fully realized villages full of the culture and history of these thriving, yet exiled, settlers.  Pancho Chamorro and Niamh Coulter led the set decoration and made sure that there was no shortage of things to look at.  Appropriate costuming was also made by Linda Muir who had to construct the period outfits from scratch while staying true to the styles and functionality, while also allowing each character to have their own specific identity.  All of these elements came together in front of cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s lens and helped to bring Eggers’ vision of the ancient story which would inspire William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the silver screen.  This violent ballet is not only beautiful to witness, but with the drum-heavy score by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough backing the action, it is impossible not to get swept up in the scale and the scope of the film and to be transported to the muddy bases of the frigid mountains. 

The stage is set with King Aurvandil returning home, victorious from war, though we learn later he suffers from a wound.  To ensure the continuity of the throne, late one night he travels to see Hermir (Willem Dafoe) with his son, where they participate in what we can understand to be a coming-of-age ritual signifying young Amleth becoming a man.  Dafoe, in these scenes, acts with terrifying lunacy.  His fierce commitment to the intensity and the insanity sells the wild antics to the audience, as well as the primal turn taken by the mild-natured Aurvandil and young Amleth.  As our first introduction to the magic of this film, it is a doozy, but one that helps to inform what is to come and acts as the first of two prophecies in the film.  As dawn breaks and they leave Hermir, the father and son are ambushed and after fleeing, Amleth becomes a fierce warrior – a wolf – no longer a boy just howling in the dirt but a ferocious man who wears the canine furs like they are part of his own skin. 

Skarsgård, at the forefront of the narrative, does an incredible job of fleshing out what could otherwise be seen as a very thin leading role.  It is an incredibly physical role, and much of the film finds the actor grunting and yelling as he slashes and slices his way through anyone that stands before him.  His humanity is found more so in the unfolding narrative around him than it is through his own direct actions.  His is an arc of violence, and Eggers gets to show his skills as an action filmmaker for the first time in an incredible debut.  There is a scene of a village raid not long after the time jump that works as an impressive tracking shot; the camera moves along its axis at a steady pace while Amleth and his army scale the walls and destroy the town.  It is unflinching in its brutality, and despite the chaos that abounds the scene remains incredibly legible so that we do not miss anything that happens. 

Despite the rough and tumble nature of the film, The Northman relies heavily on its female characters to really drive the story.  The first is Queen Gudrún, one of the three motivating forces behind Amleth’s vengeance.  Kidman delivers a solid supporting role as the matriarch, and the script does well not to treat her as a damsel in distress.  Gudrún is still a Viking and therefore is cunning and ferocious in her own ways. As the story deepens, so too does her role, and Kidman makes sure we know she is still a powerhouse of an actress that is not afraid to lean in to the intensity of this world. Hers is a captivating arc to watch unfold and Kidman walks the line perfectly so that we can never be sure what she is saying is truth and what she is saying to survive.   

Later, after the village raid, Amleth happens to enter a wrecked shrine where he encounters a Seeress (Bjork), who tells Amleth of his fate.  In a very strange storytelling twist, Amleth seems to follow the path laid out by the Seeress to the letter, even when it is disadvantageous to the warrior, he does little to fight to protect his own life and interests from the damning vision; his heart is set on the destruction of Fjölnir, whatever the cost.   

The whole concept of fate is older than this story itself, but often times it finds the hero fighting against the prophecy he has been told.  A prime example of the weight that fate plays on a story can be found in another of Shakespeare’s works, Macbeth in which much of the intrigue in the text lies in how much credence the Three Sisters have; are they truly looking into the future, or are they guiding and manipulating it?  There is not much questioning in The Northman as the Seeress confirms Amleth that he will succeed in fulfilling his oath and helps him unlock the path to his victory.  It is already set on a track and in motion, and in that way Amleth follows a similar arc to Sir Gawain, most recently seen in David Lowrey’s The Green Knight (2021), but what these two films share narratively, they differ visually.  Both stories of fated warriors in a dangerous and magical world, Lowery creates a more fantastical – not to be mistaken for whimsical – world for his tragedy to play out, but Eggers’ Viking piece is notably much more tactile in nature and creates an incredible richness on screen. 

The last major female role in the film belongs to Eggers’ muse-apparent, Taylor-Joy as the green witch, Olga.  She plays a great foil to Amleth as she too longs for freedom, but her strength lies in her mental ability.  She can work to sometimes calm, or at least slow, the brute so that his blind rage does not spoil their joint plan for freedom.  It is certainly not an oversight that through all the griminess of this world, Olga remains almost always clean skinned and angelic.  Her pureness of heart is Amleth’s true key to success in life, but like his father, the warrior views life as just a series of battles to be won and enemies to be conquered. Late in the film, in one of the final scenes, Olga lashes out finally and beckons the winds to come and guide her, and it is one of the most memorable moments of the entire film that has been a sensory onslaught since the start almost 136 minutes prior. Like Kidman, Taylor-Joy has a keen sense of pacing and buildup so that when it is Olga’s moment to shine, we cannot help but get excited and be awestruck at what we are witnessing.   

The Northman is a tour de force from one of cinema’s most exacting eyes working today.  With an intense fascination for bygone eras, Eggers’ body of work is one of the most eclectic of modern day.  His films never get lost in the details, though, rather they help to create a subconscious authenticity with the audience so that when Amleth faces off against an undead knight or is visited in a vision by the truly frightening Valkyrja (Ineta Sliuzaite), this dipping into the supernatural still feels at home in the otherwise grounded world he has reconstructed for us.  His approach and his style may not be for everyone, though, and The Northman’s reliance on violence can turn audiences’ stomachs enough that they tune out of the film, but for those who remain, they will be regaled by one of the most unique voices in cinema today of an epic, yet tragic, arc of a hero who never quite learns his lesson that violence is futile.  We, like Olga, are powerless to change what Amleth sees as his fate, and we also know that every step he takes closer to his goal is one step closer to his own destruction, too. Despite this knowledge, we cannot pull our eyes from the screen and there is always that small spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, Amleth, with all his mortal force may be strong enough to break the heavy chains of fate.