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The Northman

Quite the fanfare attached to this bold, bombastic film from director Robert Eggers, of The Witch and The Lighthouse 'fame'. As a spectacle, it's fantastic. There are magnificent, ice-swept vistas, lava-belching volcanoes, inhospitable islands, zebra-patterned swamps and lush hillside encampments. This is all shot with Petzvel and Panavision Primo lenses by cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke. He says, on Cinematography.com:

Our Primos were adapted for us, the main differences are a round aperture rather than the spiky Primo aperture, some added barrel distortion, and subtle "cat's eye" bokeh.

Jargon aside, the film does have a special look to it, and it probably had something to do with the method of delivery chosen by Eggers and Blaschke (he also talks about Dolby Vision High Dynamic Range in that thread). It certainly holds the attention, and this is important when the plot is plucked from the bog-standard revenge stable. The story is based on the medieval legend of Amleth, the Scandi inspiration for old Shakey's Hamlet.

Early in the film, we see young Amleth flee from the bloody maelstrom of his father's deposition. A fairly intense opening, though more than a little abstruse in meaning - What was the king's brother's gripe? Why the fuckery were the king and Amleth channeling dogs? The next section begins with Amleth grown into the oxen Alexander Skarsgård, a non-reflective, slaughter-happy manimal. After a bout of choppy, slicey, bitey, Björk appears as a witch and reminds him of his task.

This was one of the two points in the film where I was happy to see a performer - the other being an intense game of ye-olde hurling, with Amleth's opposing team led by The Mountain himself, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. Let's just say that Oberyn Martell was allowed some form of retribution here. Other than those two, this is a cast that does not inspire. Skarsgård lacks charisma, Anya Taylor-Joy irritates, Nicole Kidman has a dry haughtiness to her, and Ethan Hawke is woefully miscast. Only Claes Bang, as Fjölnir, really felt like he belonged in this.

The film is reasonably well-paced, especially for a 2 hour plus run time, and there's a clever wrinkle where Kidman's queen Gudrún nearly hobbles Amleth's vendetta, but overall, it left me kind of underwhelmed. I think I'm probably an outlier on this, but while on the one hand, I found The Northman lovely to look at and fairly audacious, it was also overblown and ludicrous, with more shouting than Uncut Gems. On balance, this places it just below average in my book.

The Northman is on general release now.

See also:

I guess, using Hamlet as a guide, it's worth having a gander at one of its many iterations. Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) is great, but very long, and Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business (1987) is suitably odd. Other than these, How to Train Your Dragon (2010), directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, has the requisite Norse feel, though obviously more fluffy.

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