![]() He has created an unalterable image of his mother, and he takes that characterization with him into her bedchamber - where she destroys it.įor the most part, Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke push The Northman as wide as it can visually go to show the grandeur and desolation of the film’s locations. ![]() What he perceives as primness reinforces his belief that she married Fjölnir against her will and is devoted to their son Gunnar only because she lost Amleth so many years ago. Gudrún, meanwhile, is an ambiguous puzzle around whom Amleth shrinks and stalls. Once there, everything Amleth sees seems to reaffirm Fjölnir’s scumbaggery: the overworked slaves, Fjölnir’s smug and coddled sons Thorir (Gustav Lindh) and Gunnar (Elliott Rose), and his sexual threats toward the slave Olga ( Anya Taylor-Joy), whom Amleth allied with during his journey. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” As an adult, Amleth learns that Fjölnir lost their kingdom to Norway and retreated to Iceland, so he abandons the Viking berserker warriors who’ve trained him in combat and poses as a slave to infiltrate his uncle’s homestead. After watching with him as Fjölnir slings Gudrún over his shoulder and carries her away, you can easily fall into the rhythm of the vow Amleth chants: “I will avenge you, Father. The Northman is Amleth’s story, so Eggers places us alongside the young prince (played as a child by Oscar Novak) to witness the murder of his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven ( Ethan Hawke), by his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), Aurvandil’s half-brother. The Northman travels in opposite directions in this scene, back into the truth of Gudrún’s past and forward into Amleth’s now altered future (as Heimir the Fool’s decapitated head tells him, “Days past and days yet to come”), and every other pairing in the film is affected by these few minutes. But it’s the first genuine glimpse into what Gudrún desires from her own perspective. The scene is a culmination of what we know about Amleth - his obsessive sense of purpose, his rigid idea of justice, and his certainty that his mother needs saving. But to have your illusion of a happy family and your sense of self shattered with one manipulative kiss from the person you were convinced loved you purely and unconditionally? That is the greatest wound The Northman inflicts, and writer-director Robert Eggers and co-writer Sjón wisely take their time leading us there. ![]() The Northman is relentlessly paced and meticulously imagined with an array of fantastical and supernatural elements that give the film its eerie potency and sense of danger: There are witches’ spells, magical swords that need to feed on blood, and a naked duel on an active volcano. One late-film exchange especially reveals their lies and delusions and, with a delirious moment of incestuous transgression, doubles as The Northman’s (pun intended) emotional climax. In The Northman, the bond between Kidman’s Queen Gudrún and Skarsgård’s Prince Amleth is key not just to the plot but also to how each individual distorts the other. But that simmering dynamic, fueled partially by lust and partially by disgust, is a little different when said actors are playing mother and son. They did both as married couple Celeste and Perry Wright in the HBO series Big Little Lies. ![]() It’s not that Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård haven’t kissed before or fought before. Spoilers follow for Robert Eggers’s The Northman.
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