{"id":13671,"date":"2022-04-11T18:03:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1624855"},"modified":"2022-04-11T18:35:10","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:35:10","slug":"the-northman-review-robert-eggers-delivers-john-wick-in-a-loincloth","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/the-northman-review-robert-eggers-delivers-john-wick-in-a-loincloth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Northman review: Robert Eggers delivers John Wick in a loincloth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Huw Fullerton\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 11 April 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Robert Eggers\u2019 follow-up to The Witch and The Lighthouse comes with a certain level of expectation. Since it was first screened critics have raved about The Northman<\/a> as Eggers\u2019 best and biggest film yet, marrying epic visuals with the filmmaker\u2019s trademark offbeat diversions.<\/p>\n

In some ways they\u2019re right \u2013 The Northman looks incredible and features some challenging moments and top-notch performances from its cast. But the film also suffers slightly as director\/co-writer Eggers steps up into more mainstream, accessible cinema, with Eggers\u2019 trademark flights of imagination and horror sitting uneasily against the film\u2019s more traditional revenge plot.<\/p>\n

Said plot is, of course, familiar to anyone who\u2019s seen Hamlet (or, more appropriately given Claes Bang\u2019s shaggy mane of hair in this film, The Lion King). Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) flees his home when his father the King (Ethan Hawke) is murdered by his brother (Bang), and his mother (Nicole Kidman) is captured and forced into marriage.<\/p>\n

Years later, shaped into a killing machine by years of Viking raids Amleth is ready to take his vengeance \u2013 with the help of some implied supernatural forces and Slavic slave Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy).<\/p>

Over the course of the film, we see Amleth gradually chip away at his uncle\u2019s life, all leading to an epic clash where both men battle amidst the lava of a volcano. It\u2019s bloody, pagan, bleak (thanks to the Icelandic setting) and vicious. I\u2019ve never seen a film that quite looks like this \u2013 it\u2019s a feast for the senses, and gently explores superstition, faith and loss in interesting ways. I particularly enjoyed its light-touch approach to superstition and deific intervention, which are left teasingly ambiguous right until the end.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame that other parts of the film are less exploratory. This chapter from the Icelandic sagas has endured so many different adaptations and reinterpretations (including Shakespeare\u2019s) for a reason \u2013 it\u2019s an automatically engaging tale, easily understood. And while Eggers pushes the envelope technically and visually with the film, he doesn\u2019t do much to update or advance this age-old plot, delivering story beats that are less profound or mysterious than you might have hoped for.<\/p>\n

Reportedly, early tests for the first cut of The Northman led to the studio demanding a more accessible edit, and I\u2019d love to see what that first version of the film was like. This version feels like it has two identities \u2013 one a straight gritty period action movie (which is what it seems to be marketed as) and one that\u2019s more recognisably Eggers, full of unsettling sequences and characters challenging the natural order.<\/p>\n