Remember for whom you shed your last teardrop
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2022
#20 : The Northman
Brutal Viking saga based on the same legend as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with Alexander Skarsgård as the chieftain’s son out for vengeance on the man who murdered his father and took his throne
I've heard this is good, so I'm quite looking forward to it but I have a suspicion I might just find it a bit try-hard in its authenticity.
Hmmm. Having watched it, I'm not sure quite what I thought of it - it's diverting, but takes itself a bit too seriously, particularly considering how silly a lot of it is. It's the age-old tale of someone done wrong and putting things right in a kinda quest-y way with "stuff" happening along the way. I have to say it didn't half go on (136 minutes) - I was totally "get a move on" for a large chunk of this film and I suspected I knew exactly how it was going to end from the first minute (and I wasn't far wrong - not that I really cared by that point).
I didn't love this and I didn't hate it - but having finished it, a lot of the comments I found I'd made whilst watching it were on the negative side. A lot of it is very dark - not in mood, but in visibility (which actually hasn't been a big problem this year so far). There are also a lot of silly accents involved (some of which are more consistent than others) and it's surprisingly wordy for what's described as a "brutal Viking saga" (and it spends too much time using old Norse (or something!) subtitles - we all know that's what they spoke all the time, so don't pretend they only did it when they were angry). There was also far, far too much shouting at the sky going on and a silly number of heads being chopped off.
It does, however, always look very good. It's well filmed (apparently Robert Eggers can be relied upon here, but this is the first of his films I've seen) - whilst it might have shared roots with Hamlet, but I was very much reminded of this version of Macbeth - it's not in black and white, but it shares a lot of the same style (when you can see what's going on). Additionally, the scenery is beautiful - I have a strong suspicion that Iceland was heavily involved (Wikipedia tells me it was, but most of it was actually filmed in Northern Ireland). I suspect the cast probably didn't overly enjoy the filming experience though - there's a lot of wandering about in the mud or the sea involved.
And it's got a very impressive cast indeed - there's a lot of well-known names involved in this. Possibly, one might argue, too many well-known names without them necessarily knowing what to do with them. Alexander Skarsgard certainly isn't underused though - and he does a decent job, but he was unlucky considering he has just come off playing Matsson in Succession and it does feel at times that this role is just a much earlier version of that (here, he's a Viking disrupter). Of the rest of the cast, I'd say Anja Taylor-Joy comes over the best for me - it's also funny seeing Klaes Bang playing "The Prick" but in Viking times, as opposed to more modern times. But when you look at some of the other names involved (Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem DaFoe, Bjork and various other recognisable faces), it's hard not to feel they were a bit wasted.
All of which sounds a bit negative about the film, doesn't it? Maybe I'm being harsh because it certainly looked good and it "felt" good - but when I actually thought about what it was doing, it wasn't entirely clear what it contained. It's also very hard to describe what genre it falls into - horror? action? thriller? drama? It all felt a bit "style over substance" which didn't stand up to close inspection for me - maybe I just shouldn't have inspected it so closely. So, if you want to watch it, just try to do so without thinking about it too much and you can currently stream it on Sky or rent it in any of the usual locations.
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