DIRECTED BY ROBERT EGGERS and cowritten with Sjón, the Icelandic novelist and poet responsible for the Björk lyric “I’m a fountain of blood / in the shape of a girl,” The Northman is set within the stark corners of Viking life and expansion during the tenth century, evoking the era’s sundry pieties and incessant cruelty a lucid vision of the eternal strangeness of us skin-encased fountains of blood looking to myth for aggrandizement and purpose. The film’s protagonist is a Norse pagan warrior who identifies as a “bear-wolf” and plucks a man’s throat out with his teeth. Despite being a force of
A brutal hockey-like sport played to the death. Berzerkers dancing and screaming 'til dawn pre-raid. Shallow, stealthy longboats. Though the narrative may be the stuff of legend, the Viking Age detail in The Northman is rooted in history, and writer-director Robert Eggers took pains to get it as close to the real deal as possible.The Northman is the bloody Nordic tale of Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) on his fate-determined quest to avenge the murder of his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven