Robert Eggers
The Northman

THE REVIEW

It has been many years since I watched The Witch, and I still hold onto the memory of that magnificent terror. A dizziness, a sense of loss and nakedness in the face of the devil's machinations. Evil that springs mostly from us, that creeps into our flesh to drive us to madness, to emptiness. I have never watched it again, but I am clear on the distance that separates it from Eggers' new work.

The Northman is a film of style, which never conveys a sense of authenticity. The director works with his imagination, leverages the qualities he undoubtedly possesses: the vision that disturbs and captivates, the creativity and taste for horror incursions that can upset but also somehow delight; the construction of an atmosphere infused with dark mysticism. We gladly dive into this cold and violent world, savor the taste of blood, feel the biting wind of the kingdoms of Norway and Iceland on our skins.

A long film with a fairly flat story, which however does not bore precisely thanks to this deeply aesthetic use of the camera. My gaze lingered with satisfaction on the deformed faces of the sorcerers, on the putrid flesh of the victims, probed the desolate landscapes of the far north, warmed itself by the fire of the Vikings, skimmed the flesh of the kidnapped maidens.

However, Eggers fails to entirely elevate a story and script that do not withstand the comparison with his purely directorial numbers. The writing, in particular, disappoints due to its gratuitous verbosity, excessive emphasis, weighed down by the lofty register that is not too pleasing because it lacks a counterbalance in the events that unfold on-screen. Words must go hand in hand with the vision: emphatic phrases can work in grand scenarios (The Lord of the Rings wouldn't be the same without elevated language); here I see a wild and rough world prevailing, which would have better suited the reticence practiced, for instance, in a film like Valhalla Rising.

The story echoes the tales of Amleth but handles them in a crude, almost surreal way. Doubt is absent here; our protagonist moves in a two-dimensional dimension that seems to want to flirt with flat contemporary heroes. The portrait that emerges is bland, with some setbacks that almost verge on the comedic (the confrontation with the mother, after all that pomposity, brings a smile). The directorial language fails to reconcile the different instances carried forward by the characters: it can't decide on the point of view it wants to adopt because, deep down, it doesn't know what to say about this story. Or rather, it has almost nothing to say. It just wants to dress it up in shimmering clothes, but in the end, a sense of misery, of poverty, emerges.