Film Review: ‘The Northman’ Is A Gory Tale Of Murder Most Foul

metroweekly.com:

The Northman (★★★☆☆) unfolds like the sort of epic that Viking warriors might have passed down for generations, sharing over horns of ale around a roaring fire: the haunting Legend of Prince Amleth.The exiled prince’s trials and adventures appear to have been shot by firelight, too.

Writer-director Robert Eggers and his Oscar-nominated Lighthouse cinematographer Jarin Blaschke opt for enveloping the action in shadows and mist, the natural darkness of a northern land where winter nights are long, and the days short.Even the film’s climactic showdown, a naked sword fight by a lake of lava and fire, is depicted as a brutal clash between silhouettes backlit by flames.Rivals dueling on an erupting volcano forms a gorgeous tableau, but audiences might, for various reasons, wish they could actually see more of the combatants swinging their swords — especially the ferocious Amleth, embodied heartily by Alexander Skarsgård.The erstwhile Tarzan delivers a gruelingly physical performance, fighting, running, lifting, swimming, hauling, speaking primarily and most clearly through Amleth’s vivid body language.

The camera captures as much rage and intention in how Amleth leaps at his opponents as it does in any shot of Skarsgård’s face, or speaking any line of dialogue.The actor turns the taciturn warrior into a stealthy weapon of vengeance, with perhaps just one weakness: Amleth is forever haunted by having witnessed the murder of his father, and the kidnapping of his mother.

He won’t know peace until he has avenged them.Eggers and co-screenwriter Sjón (who also co-wrote last year’s eccentric drama Lamb) basically have grafted a Viking revenge narrative onto the bones of Hamlet, and, as usual for Shakespeare, the plotting holds up.