A surreal medieval experience! It's a fine old story of vengeance set in a bewitching environment and time period as the film very brutally embraces the lore and paganism of the Vikings. And all of that is foretold in prophecies which is beautifully unraveled in a few interesting and anticipated turn of events. The master behind it all, Robert Eggers outdid it again. Even though from the trailers, it seemed like any other medieval/vikings themed action tale, I knew that this would be something special, i.e, captivating and an atmospheric trippy slow burn as Eggers previous films were and it delivered all that and some. The production and sets on this film is a sight to behold. No comparison with any other previous shows. And the extremely brutal yet beautiful allegorical imagery befitting the pagans during the period only makes it even more unique than that of prior films/shows. The terrifying score and the perfect casting only acted as a bonus to the film. It's a shame that this film hasn't released in India, would've been a hell of a theatrical experience.

⚔️🐺🧙❄️👶🏻 i don't have much to say about this movie except the above emojis but i will try since it's my bestie's fav director ive seen all 3 of robert eggers movies, and i wanted to give him a "last shot" with this one. i think he's a very talented man. the shots are beautiful, and he's obviously very good at his job. the set design, the colors, the language of his films, the choice of actors and the settings are all very cool. but it's still not really appealing to me personally. i felt bored with the lighthouse and i never once felt bored with this one, but on the other hand this one was also maybe too little dialogue for me? the best part of it (to me) was probably the mom's scenes. the obvious one and the one with her little son lying on the battlefield. this is a lot better than most big action movies in terms of quality but not necessarily my enjoyment. ill MAYHAPS watch another one of his movies but probably not the next one. also i wish alexander skarsgård spoke swedish in this instead but whatever it's fiiiine

That was so crazy imagine if Iceland was real

Felt very authentic and very passionate. Truly the definition of an epic.

[6.6/10] *The Northman* is nice to look at. Director Robert Eggers and his team still know how to make a historical setting shine in its splendor, repel in its bleakness, or engross with demonic imagery. The film doubles as a tourism video for the Icelandic and Irish locales where it was shot, full of scenic beauty and stunning landscapes draped in verdant wonder or frozen stillness. Eggers and his collaborators also still know how to shoot the hell out of film, even when they’re not awing the audience with some wide shot of a stunning vista. There are impressive unbroken shots of men and women at war, charged confrontations, and mystical experiences. Beyond that, the film is a triumph of imagery and composition, with any number of well-framed shots conveying the atmosphere and meaning of the piece better than any sorry bit of dialogue. And the director and his company expertly evoke an appropriately epic, bloody vibe for their picture. Much of this plays like a live action Genndy Tartakovsky piece, trading on an epic quest, steeped in a particular mythos, buoyed by larger than life renditions of battle and determination. There are big choices here, in the aesthetic, in the tone, in the costuming and other design elements, that craft an impressive sense of place for the Scandinavian legend that Eggers and his fellow creatives seek to summon for their audiences. Here’s the problem -- I don’t really care about that story. I don’t really care about the characters within it. And no matter how much exquisite texture the director packs into his fantasy-historical epic, that means I don’t really care when the quest is completed and the wrongs are righted either. *The Northman* is an impressively-built, intricately-carved, but ultimately empty box, and I could not, in good conscience, recommend it for its spectacle alone. Even if you haven't read *Hamet* or, god help us, *The Lion King*, you can see where this is going. Father killed by Uncle. Young son runs off and must become big and strong so he can avenge his dad. So on and so forth. Spinning a new version of an old narrative is no sin. The story is in the telling. And Eggers and his co-writer and brother Sjón get some credit for returning the plot to its Scandinavian roots. But there’s not much there beyond a few overfamiliar tropes spruced up with a faithful rendition of cultural myths and traditions. The biggest problem is our protagonist, Amleth, himself. He’s a largely flat character and star Alexander Skarsgård plays him like a cipher. Like so many characters here, save for a select few, he never evinces a sense of having an inner life. Instead, Amleth is just a big dumb Viking Batman, berserking in the hinterlands and avenging in the night and otherwise showing off his manly prowess with little depth or meaning beneath his crusade for revenge. Key events in his life, from having to hide his true nature as a thought-dead prince posing as a slave, to falling in love with a Slavic sorceress, to killing those who murdered his father are surprisingly deadened and emotionally uninvolving. This is a stoic meathead playing out predictable beats with extraordinary imagery. You can marvel at the look of the thing for some time, but after a while, you realize you care about this moving painting, but not really the figures within it. The exception comes in the scene where Amleth, still posing as a slave, reveals his true nature to his mother, Gudrún, his father’s widow and the coerced wife of his uncle the usurper. Amleth’s dream is to kill his uncle Fjölnir, not just to avenge his father, but to free his mother from the chains of her forced marriage. That is the dream he has been fighting to keep alight all these years. Only, when he figuratively unmasks himself, she reveals that it was Amleth’s father who conceived him by raping her, who forced her into marriage. And worse yet, she begged the bastard Fjölnir to kill his brother, claim his throne, and slay her firstborn to rid her of this curse. There is great power in that. Nicole Kidman nearly steals the whole movie with her taunting, upbraiding monologue, giving the best performance in the film. (Give or take Willem DaFoe gettin’ weird with it, as usual.) The twist that Amleth’s whole quest is founded on a canard, that the victim he set out to save was, in fact, the author of his misery, is the most electric turn in the narrative, one that threatens to upend the life the young man thought he was living to this point. And then...things just go back to the usual. He keeps questing, and yeah, now he wants to kill his mom and settle down with Olga, his fellow slave and love interest as his family instead. But the movie reverts into being a hollow Norseman’s brodown, rife with animalistic roars and outsized, blood-drenched battles, but light on reasons to give a damn about the purpose and losses that are supposed to motivate them. There is some merit to *The Norseman* as an elevated piece of folklore. Eggers and company’s devotion to injecting the film with every bit of Scandinavian ritual and cultural inheritance possible gives it its character. The script and the images it calls for take the spiritual elements of these old tales seriously, steeping Amleth’s trials in the auspices of fate and the demands of the gods. Scenes of spiritual family trees or valkyries carrying the dead to Valhalla or Björk-backed seeresses cajoling men to their destinies have a force and a flavor that the film’s more down-to-earth interactions lack. All of that's not enough, though, to save a movie that's rich with texture but meager in story and character. There is merit in retelling the grand tales of old, particularly with an air towards fidelity to the historical contexts and cultural wellsprings they emerge from. Wrapping them in alternatively gritty and gorgeous cinematic finery can give them new life, using the tools of our era to bring the stories of theirs back to life. But without the heart of the tale being revived along with the corpus, without a depth to the players who compel it anew, all that's left is a noble and radiant, but long and lifeless slog.

Nice scenery, but I found it hard to take this film seriously, mostly seemed silly. My opinion only, no need to pile on me.

quem aguenta vikings

It's pretty much what I would expect being a viking. It was a good story though and pretty engaging.

The script feels like it was spit out of some AI algorithm. The sets, costumes, cast, and the story itself are all above par. The dialog was just ridiculous and felt like it was dumbed down for western audiences. While it wasn't a very complicated story, they still felt the need to spoon feed everything. This looked like a home-run and was psyched to watch it, but was never able to get emotionally invested. Seriously disappointing. Go watch Vinland Saga instead. A much better viking story.