I have no idea how anyone could see
The Northman as a white supremacist film, but it seems
some people do. If anything, it makes white people, especially Vikings, look really bad. Yet it is probably one of the most accurate depictions of pagan Norsemen ever filmed. The violence and superstition of life at that time and place are set in the magnificence of Iceland. It is well-acted but painful to watch, at least for me. From
Vox:
In the 12th century or thereabouts, a fellow we know
today as Saxo Grammaticus sat down to write a history of Denmark, a
chronicle of its mythology, history, and conquests. I doubt he knew that
his work would inspire generations of adaptations. But, as fate would
have it, two of his 16 books told a rollicking tale of Amleth, grandson
of a king. Amleth’s father was murdered by his brother, Amleth’s uncle,
who then married Amleth’s mother. Amleth feigned madness to escape his
uncle’s sword, but eventually, he took his revenge.
Historians believe Saxo Grammaticus’s account of Amleth
was itself an adaptation, based on older Icelandic poems. But it would
be far from the final retelling of the tale. Most famously, a few
centuries later, an English playwright used Amleth’s tale as the
inspiration for the story of a Danish prince who avenged his own
father’s death at the hand of his uncle-cum-stepfather. He titled it The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
And now — in a time when medieval legends seem to be increasingly sparking filmmakers’ imaginations — The Northman, a bone-crunching Viking epic from detail-obsessed director Robert Eggers, is based on Amleth’s legend as well. (To put it another way: if you feel while watching The Northman like you’re watching a Shakespeare adaptation, you are wrong, but only kind of.) (Read more.)
From Den of Geek:
When we spoke to Eggers about the film, he noted the story of Amleth
was a larger inspiration for him to chase his own Berserker ghosts. The
filmmaker wanted to use that basic framework of familiarity to keep the
audience keyed in to what is happening, even when weird things like
Bjork as a supernatural Seer appears, compelling Amleth to stop his
raiding ways and seek a righteous revenge instead.
Even so, there are more than a few elements of The Northman lifted directly from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (and not Amleth), only now with a modern subtext.
For instance, in Hamlet, the Danish prince
discovers a gravedigger excavating a burial site, only to find the skull
of his father’s court jester. The Danish prince becomes melancholic
recalling poor Yorick and the merry memories of kissing his lips and
laughing at his japes. Well, that court jester is a major character in The Northman, played here by Willem Dafoe.
As Heimir the Fool, Dafoe portrays perhaps the one person Hawke’s King
Aurvandil shows genuine affection toward. He is allowed to tease what he
sees to be the wandering eye of Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), and he is shown indoctrinating young Amleth into the Viking customs and superstitions of his father.
When Amleth infiltrates Iceland some decades later, feigning to be a
Slavic slave, a He-Witch (Ingvar Sigurdsson) manifests to reveal the
decapitated remains of Dafoe’s fool. Apparently after Claes Bang’s Uncle
Fjölnir assumed the throne he stole, one of his first acts was to
torture and behead Heimir. “Alas,” says the He-Witch to Amleth. Yet
after the new king’s torturers removed the fool’s tongue and eyes, and
later his head, a pagan witch retrieved the remains, restoring the skull
to ghastly shape. And now it’s been brought to Iceland in order for
Amleth to commune with the dead… much as Hamlet wished to do with poor,
poor Yorick. (Read more.)
From The Wrap:
Kidman rarely gets the credit she deserves for going out on a limb
and seeking opportunities to work with envelope-pushing directors. Like
Catherine Deneuve, Kidman embraces eccentric characterizations guided by
filmmakers working outside the mainstream, and she often reaps the
benefits with indelible supporting roles like this one that enhance her
reputation as an unpredictable and engrossing performer, a movie star
who’s always a character actress at heart.
“The Northman” is the best kind of multi-quadrant movie. Without
abandoning his arthouse credentials, Eggers has made a rousingly rough,
extreme action saga that has the potential of attracting the kind of
viewers who might have found his previous work impenetrable. It’s a
vision of futility and fury, of a clash between nature and humanity
where violence is both the means and the consequence, and an ancient
revenge fantasy that speaks with terrible truth to this moment and to
the historical lessons we never seem to learn. (Read more.)
Share