The Northman (2022) Review (Patreon)

Obviously The Northman was going to be my shit. You can't have Robert Eggers make a viking Hamlet with Björk, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe and not get me on board. I was always going to have a blast with this, regardless of its quality (which, to be sure, is markedly high). This hits many of my aesthetic bars.

Everyone's right that this has a literate and savvy script which cleverly avoids the obvious pitfalls of doing a Viking Hamlet. It's stunningly directed with extraordinary production values. The cast is off the walls - Anya Taylor-Joy is as good as ever. This is easily one of the best fantasy movies of the past couple years.

So to balance the scales, I'm going to be slightly more critical of The Northman than I'd like to be. For all that it's very good, the things it's very good at are somewhat limited. The revenge saga structure, while deftly executed, keeps the movie somewhat stodgy. Amleth is decidedly not its most interesting character, which would be fine, but when Olga is right there demanding her own story, it holds the movie back.

Moreover, the movie is uncharacteristically (for Eggers) predictable as a result. Granted, the psychedelic nightmares and delightfully gruesome images aren't predictable. The movie is constantly visually surprising. But when the plot inevitably heads towards a big showdown on Mount Doom, there's a sense of "that's it?" to it.

Not that I fucking care, obviously. The Northman slaps. I enjoyed the hell out of this and will undoubtedly rewatch it for fun in the future. This is the kind of movie a queer leftist Tolkien scholar dreams of watching. I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up in Nowhere and Back Again at some point. It's exquisitely made, and the most fun I've had with a movie in quite some time.