I Watch Films: The Northman

 

The Northman

A Danish king is murdered by his brother, who then marries his brother’s wife. The prince escapes. Some years go by and he’s a Viking warrior on a raid up the rivers of Rus, part of a berserker wolf-cult. He learns that his uncle has been deposed and fled to Iceland, and after an encounter with a seer, disguises himself as a slave and sneaks aboard a ship heading for Iceland.

There he slowly works on his revenge, also falling in love with another slave, a Slav priestess. There’s several bits where people take hallucinogenic mushrooms and have religious or other weird experiences.

I enjoyed a lot of it, the ships, the difference between the forested rivers of Rus on one side of the Scandinavian world and the green pastured hills of Iceland*. The uncompromising commitment to a grim tale of revenge evoking actual Norse sagas. Yet not without lighter moments, few and far between as they are. I ought to have liked it more than I did to be honest, was it perhaps not weird enough? Is there too much grimdark tragic revenge in cinema? I don’t know.

Watch This: Cool Viking fights, some flirting with the uncanny, magnificent setpieces
Don’t Watch This: One guy decides to kill his uncle, takes drugs and murders a bunch of people on the way

* Though if I were to quibble, they had not finished destroying the forests of Iceland at this period, which is just as well for the fires, ships, wooden buildings etc.