The Savage Absurdity of "The Northman"

The film is by turns silly, exciting, and disturbing, and that's what makes it great (fun).

As a devout fan of seeing history brought to life on the big screen, I went into The Northman–the new Viking epic starring Alexander Skarsgård and directed Robert Eggers–with mingled anticipation and trepidation. Far too many times I’ve gone into a sprawling epic of this sort, only to be disappointed by its refusal to take any kind of risks (I’m looking at you, Exodus: Gods and Kings). Well, having seen The Northman, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that it does take some pretty significant risks. Do all of them pay off? No, I don’t think so, but I have to at least give Eggers credit for being willing to go big.

Indeed, it is sometimes too big. It’s the type of film that wants to sweep you up in its own majesty and, to an extent, it succeeds. There are some truly remarkable shots of the beautiful and bleak Icelandic landscape (it is a very beautiful country; I urge you to visit if ever you can), and the sound design is hectic and unsettling and, at times, downright uncanny (there is, to put it mildly, quite a lot of throat singing). All of this works to immerse us in a time period that is decidedly not our own. 

If you haven’t seen it, the film goes roughly like this. After his father is slain by his nefarious uncle, Prince Amleth flees into exile, where he hones his skills as a warrior and commits himself to being the agent of vengeance. When he learns that his uncle has fled to Iceland with his queen (Gudrún, Amleth’s mother), the prince-turned-berserker disguises himself as a slave and, with the aid of the seeress Olga and begins to put his plan into motion. Ultimately, he faces his villainous uncle in the depths of a volcano (more on that in a bit), where they slay one another. Amleth, his oath fulfilled, departs this life with a Valkyrie. 

Given that this is very much a male-oriented story about men warring with one another, it was actually a little refreshing to see its two female leads–Nicole Kidman’s Queen Gudrún and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga--given something to do, rather than just sitting around looking pretty or fluttering ineffectually. Kidman, in particular, imbues Gudrún with a savage grace that makes her the equal to the men in the film. She’s as ruthless and cunning and manipulative as her second husband. Kidman deserves a great deal of credit for giving us a villain who is a very far cry from the suffering heroines she has recently portrayed on television. 

The Northman is also unflinching in its depiction of the sheer brutality of this world. During his exile, for example, Amleth partakes in the sacking of a village, and the film doesn’t spare us the gruesome details: we see people being hacked down in the street, women and children being torn from one another, people sold into slavery and, in one of the more shocking moments, an entire group of visitors burned to death. The dark ages, indeed. And there’s no question, though, that Amleth commits the lion’s share of the atrocities, particularly once he reaches Iceland and becomes a slave on his uncle’s homestead. While there, he manages to commit several notable acts of slaughter, including killing his uncle’s son and stealing his heart.

But, given that this is a tragedy, his victory soon turns to ashes. Not only is it revealed that his mother Gudrún planned his father’s assassination; she also prefers her new life (and her second son) to her old one. Ultimately, she forces his hand and he kills her and his own half-brother. He might have exacted his revenge, but it is cold comfort. Indeed, like other epics of recent vintage–The Last Duel comes to mind–The Northman, at least on some level, remains invested in interrogating the traditional masculine underpinnings of the traditional male-oriented epic. Other writers have already observed how Amleth’s journey of vengeance contains, in its own way, a critique of toxic masculinity, and while I’m not sure I entirely buy that particular argument, I do think the film, whether consciously or not, wants to highlight not just the cost of traditional epic male heroism but also its futility to redeem the world. 

And, like all of the great epic heroes of the cinema–Ben-Hur, Moses (both played by Charlton Heston, arguably the paragon of epic heroic masculinity in American cinema), Spartacus, Maximus, and the 300 Spartans–Skarsgård’s Amleth is the epitome of male virility and strength. It’s not just that he’s muscled; his body seems to bulge out of the very frame. It’s almost as if he has so committed himself to the mission of vengeance that his body has become the very embodiment of that principle; it’s only his romance with Olga that softens him, though even she cannot distract him from his mission. 

However great his physical strength, however,  he cannot escape his fate, and we in the audience know this. I’m sure that most people watching the film either consciously or unconsciously recognized that they were watching a (primordial, savage, and strange) rendition of Hamlet. Or, to be more precise, a visualization of the myths that inspired Shakespeare to write his very famous play about the Danish prince. What’s more, they would no doubt have found themselves drawing comparisons between the narrative of The Northman and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, which similarly focused on a man of good birth who enters into the realm of the abject in order to become the agent of justice and vengeance. Unlike Gladiator, however, The Northman doesn’t seem particularly optimistic about the future; in fact, it hardly seems to exist at all. There is no beyond for Amleth; there is only his duty and his fate. It’s a very premodern way of looking at heroism, and arguably this is one of the film’s greatest strengths.  

Yet, for all that it highlights the brutal absurdness of Amleth’s pursuit of revenge, The Northman is the type of epic film that, in some ways, is more than a little old-fashioned. It is, I think it is safe to say, a very serious movie with very serious things to say. Everything about it, from the unsettling score to the cinematography to the copious amounts of research that went into its production, tells us that we are meant to take all of this very straight indeed.

Unfortunately, there were times when it achieved quite the opposite of its intended aim. As I watched the film, I kept thinking to myself: this is going to be seen as high camp someday. Everything about it is ripe for camp (and particularly queer camp) appropriation, from the silly accents (something that seems to be endemic in epics of various sorts; see also: Angeline Jolie in Alexander) to the climatic fight between Amleth and his nefarious uncle which, I kid you not, takes place in the bowels of a volcano. Oh, and did I mention that they’re both naked?

Of course, two men engaging in grueling, sweaty, muscly combat is nothing new in the epic. It serves as the climax of numerous films, including Ben-Hur, Spartacus, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Gladiator, 300. And, just as is the case in those films, it’s meant to serve as a number of important symbolic functions: a reclamation of male agency, a diffusion of the erotic look, the mastery and ownership of a woman (even if, in this case, she’s already dead), and so on. But, importantly, it’s also what makes the film so ripe for queer camp. It’s both sublimely ridiculous and yet visually (and viscerally) delicious. What’s not to love?

So, where does this leave us? I do think there is quite a lot to be gained from watching this film, and I do think it is a stunning example of epic of filmmaking. At the same time, there’s no denying that it is, in the end, a glorious absurdity of a film, and that’s precisely what makes it such fun. Go watch it if you can. You won’t regret it.