If Alexander Skarsgård is a Method actor in the pop definition of the term — someone who never breaks character even when the cameras stop — I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near his quarters in Northern Ireland from August through November 2020, during the shoot for The Northman. God forbid I were a gofer with unpleasant news; say, craft services were out of half-and-half. I’d be liable to return without a nose, or an arm, or a head.
Skarsgård plays Amleth, the medieval Viking prince of Old Norse lore, whose legend is so ancient that Shakespeare adapted the narrative into Hamlet. But unlike the Bard’s conflicted Dane, seldom does Amleth vacillate. The Northman is about one thing: his relentless revenge for a murder most foul.
As a child, he witnessed the slaughter of his father, the king, at the sword of the monarch’s brother, who then ran off with his mother. He escaped the usurping regent’s henchmen, surviving into adulthood as a savage warrior who has only known death and hate.
Skarsgård plays Amleth with a slight but imposing hunchback, a reflection of the crushing psychic pressure eternally weighing on him. He can speak the king’s English, but he’s just as comfortable with the grunts and growls of early Neanderthals, which is why he seems more related to the animal kingdom than to his fellow Homo sapiens. He is referred to, more than once, as a wolf in a human meat suit. It’s all a far cry from the last time I saw Skarsgård, as the cultured urban racist in Passing, an epitome of upper-crust prestidigitation. This time, he’s still a monster, but he’s our monster.
Directed by Robert Eggers, the director of such atmospheric and pulverizing psychodramas as The Witch and The Lighthouse, The Northman is nothing if not straightforward. It’s Tarantinan in its protagonist’s ceaseless single-mindedness: to slay his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang) at all costs, even if it means his own early summit to Valhalla.
This is what leads Amleth, after hearing of Fjölnir’s deposition from Norway and his retreat to running a chiefdom in Iceland, to stow away on a slave ship to that beautifully inhospitable land, and to be chosen among Fjölnir’s chattel. Then comes the stealth work of destroying the king’s property and disposing of his men until the timing is right — something about the full moon, it’s Norse mythology, just go with it — to reveal his identity and face his enemy.
The Northman’s plot is so direct that anyone who has played an 8-bit video game can chart its inevitable structure: the build-up to the final boss. Its own credibility, buttressed by Eggers’ fastidious approach to accuracy in costumes and production design, occasionally strains, as when Fjölnir, like some Bond villain of yore, can’t seem to shut up when he has his quarry exactly where he wants him, thus stalling for time and allowing his prey to escape.
But The Northman is a movie movie, directed by an obvious visionary whose command of the frame and every centimeter of the action inside it argues for the resilience of the old-fashioned cinema experience. One day, probably very soon, The Northman will stream, but a home viewing would be a disservice to the experience.
This is a film whose two hours and 20 minutes progress at a hypnotic pace, as a procession of one gobsmacking set piece after another. In one mesmerizing extended tracking shot (if we can even trust long takes anymore, post-Birdman trickery), we follow along as Amleth pillages a village, carnage in every corner of the screen, our hero appearing and disappearing behind soon-to-be-razed homes until he lands on his final victim, burying his teeth in his neck, because what beast isn’t above a scoche of cannibalism every now and then?
If you’re not prepared for a heavy experience by now, I don’t know what else to say. The Northman is tactile, almost nauseating, in its intensity and aggression. Its spooky score, by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough, aids in every visceral detail; at times, it sounds like didgeridoos from the bowels of hell. In a mythological world where magic and prophecy are facts of life (Björk, in her first movie appearance in 17 years, has a memorable cameo as a seeress), there are sequences that blur lines between reality and fantasy.
This is another reason to see The Northman on the big screen. Eggers wants the actors to be in our heads, and for us to enter theirs, which might account for the extremity of its close-ups in its most hallucinatory moments. Indeed, there’s no reason to dabble in anything psychoactive before settling in to watch The Northman. It’s a potent enough drug on its own.
THE NORTHMAN. Director: Robert Eggers; Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe; Distributor: Focus Features; Rated R; Opens: April 22 in most area theaters