Written by Andreas Babiolakis

**Warning: Major spoilers of The Northman are in this review. Reader discretion is advised.**

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Robert Eggers with his third feature film, considering that The Witch and The Lighthouse are horror film staples of this generation whilst The Northman is a bloody dramatic epic; all I could sense is that we would have yet another historically accurate feature from one of the most meticulous auteurs working today. He has tackled Puritan England in the 1600s and the northeastern United States at the end of the nineteenth century, and his affinity for era-appropriate lexicons, detailed habits, and convincing sets and attire makes each of his features so far such singular journeys. Even without knowing a lick about Scandinavian history, viking cultures, or the story of Prince Amleth (outside of varying versions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which is based on this tale), I felt like I was fully cognizant of what was going on in The Northman (without the story being dumbed down to cater to viewers like myself). How does this film relate to the other Eggers projects outside of his perfectionism and ability to dish dread and tension out at any given time? It doesn’t relate with them at all, and that is the best takeaway I got from The Northman: we are becoming familiar with his style whilst seeing what else he’s got in his repertoire.

This time, we are transported to Ireland near the year 900 A.D. (with some Icelandic coverage as well). We follow a young Prince Amleth as he flees his homeland in ruins, with his father — King Aurvabdill — having been murdered in cold blood by his brother Fjölnir and his men; the Queen Gudrún has been captured and forced to hand the kingdom over to Fjölnir. Amleth returns as a ruthless Viking incognito as a slave, as to slink his way back into the arms of his enemies and claim his long-brooding vengeance. The notion of his family’s betterment is in his mind throughout the film (he wants to avenge his father, save his mother, and kill his uncle), but we also see the continuation of bloodlines and legacies through his association with slave Olga, who has her own hidden personal traits. To tell this blood soaked story properly, you’d need a strong cast, and The Northman boasts one of the best casts of 2022 already. These range from the leading roles played by Alexander Skarsgård (Amleth), Nicole Kidman (Gudrún) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Olga) to the small parts by Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe’s “Fool”, and even Björk’s tragically short work as the Seeress (only a few minutes on screen, and her presence is felt the entire film afterward). No one feels out of place here. Everyone falls into place on Eggers’ battlefield and diorama.

While the scenes of combat, pillaging, and action are all well and good (and, believe me, they’re quite spectacular), I find Eggers’ fascinations with the rituals within his and writer Sjón’s world to be some of the strongest elements, particularly how viscerally depicted everything is. It’s as though we have stumbled upon a series of transcendences by mere mortals to Valhalla (or at least their attempts to), and I find Eggers’ connections to these old mythological tales not as an observer but as a student to be the heartbeats of his various films (and here you can most certainly feel like this tale is a set of truths despite the obvious presence of otherworldly elements sprinkled throughout. Sjón’s certified poetic soul is also ever present here, with a sense of spirituality amidst the carnage, like the fallen are now watching alongside us as kingdoms fall and family trees are destroyed. Not once is anything treated as fantasy or unrealistic, and I felt all of the film in my core.

By the third act, after some shocking twists surrounding major decisions (the revelation that Queen Gudrún wanted to be with Fjölnir, and the murdering of The King was her idea), Amleth is left to face his own dilemma: should he continue a life with Olga and have a family away from his troubled past, or should he kill his history once and for all? Considering the analyses of one’s place within their family that take place over the course of The Northman, this feels like a much harder choice to make than in a film that wouldn’t have honoured the practices and principles of this myth’s time period (although this is still a difficult fork in the road to be caught at, mind you). Amleth knowingly sends himself on a sacrificial mission as his legacy’s martyr — especially having been given his premonition from the Seeress and having been freed by the ravens — to kill Fjölnir and his mother. Olga (of whom has been hiding her own connection with royalty until the end of the film) will now have to raise children on her own, so Amleth’s spirit continues in this form (he’s technically abiding by her wishes to be present with her elsewhere, I suppose). We then get to the very end, and it mirrors the conclusions of Eggers’ other films; The Witch wraps up with a ceremony; The Lighthouse delves into pure delirium; The Northman finds solace in ascension after a purposeful death (some eventual euphoria amidst chaotic madness). Eggers sure knows how to leave us on powerful images of the broken and seemingly reformed characters we follow.

It’s only April, and I already feel like The Northman will remain a strong contender for being one of the finest works of 2022. It’s as ambitious as your typical epic, but Eggers is willing to go as ugly and real as needed, resulting in a far more rewarding film of this nature. There’s no Hollywood tidying-up here, and The Northman is all the better for it. I also love how unique the film feels in Eggers’ canon, and how it acts as a signifier that the contemporary powerhouse may start to try and find his voice in other genres and stories. Although his next project is allegedly going to be a remake of Nosferatu, I also can’t help but be stupidly excited even for this, because there can’t be anyone more fitting to make this film than Eggers. He’s tapping into his stories better than many of his peers, and it shows in The Northman: a cinematic treatise that stands severed-heads and shoulders highly above so many other historical action films of our time (and it isn’t even close). I adore this film on its own, but I am also highly fond of the implication that we really haven’t seen everything Robert Eggers has to offer yet. I mean this because of what can come after this, but also because I was expecting a lot from The Northman, and I feel like it still managed to outdo what I had projected onto it. This is an epic that may ring throughout the 2020s; let’s just wait and see, but I have a gut feeling about this (this is either the most appropriate or inappropriate phrase to use following The Northman and its various sequences of disembowelment).

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from X University (formerly known as Ryerson), as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.