The Northman trailer reaction
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Update: You can read my full review of The Northman here. In my review, I don’t address all the nitty-gritty bullet-point stuff that I note in this trailer reaction, but the film is loaded with good details. It exceeded my expectations and was well worth the wait.
I’ve only gotten seriously excited about two movie trailers this year. The first was one I wasn’t expecting—The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, the trailer for which genuinely surprised me with its atmosphere and cold-wet-asphalt visuals. It also helped that, putting the stink of the Cullens further and further behind him, Pattinson has impressed me over and over as a fine actor. I’m looking forward to The Batman.
But I’m here to talk about the other trailer I’m excited about, one I’ve been anticipating for a long time—The Northman. The first trailer arrived this afternoon.
The Northman is writer/director Robert Eggers’s third film. His first feature, The Witch, stunned me not only with its genuinely creepy atmosphere and grim plot, but its attention to period detail, not only in costumes, sets, and props but even in the way the characters spoke and thought. His second, The Lighthouse, was somewhat too content with non-answers and fart-sniffy archetypal and Freudian mumbo jumbo to suit me, but was nonetheless a visual masterpiece and Eggers’s care for the look, feel, and sound of a period was again in strong evidence. When I learned that his next project was a Viking-era drama inspired by the sagas, I was excited—and somewhat trepidatious. Anyone with a serious interest in the Vikings or the Early Middle Ages more generally is used to being disappointed.
And now that the first trailer is here, I still feel largely the same. Excited. Trepidatious. But considerably more excited.
The Northman appears to tell the story of the son of a Scandinavian king or warlord. After the king is betrayed and murdered by his evil brother, the son goes on the run with the goal of one day returning for revenge. So far so good—classic saga material. You could probably count the sagas that don’t involve revenge on one hand. The son, who as an adult is played by Alexander Skarsgård, seems to spend a while as a captive or slave before allying with a volva or sorceress played by the ever-spooky Anya Taylor-Joy. Here you’re getting some solid stuff from the legendary sagas. And there’s plenty of material that spans both the more nitty-gritty, realistic sagas and the legendary material, especially a few shots of Skarsgård and company wearing wolfskins as they attack some kind of fortification. Is this the climactic battle? Somewhere in the middle, as our Northman fights his way toward his uncle? It’s unclear. But the wolfskins mark him as an ulfheðinn or wolf-shirt, a form of dangerous rogue warrior conceptually similar to a berserkr.
Beyond that—who knows? The trailer is long on atmosphere and striking images but thankfully leaves much of the plot unexplained. I was left wanting more, so the trailer is definitely doing its job.
Other thoughts/observations:
First and foremost, I’m not seeing any tattoos or fashy haircuts. Already major points in The Northman’s favor. Instead we’ve got heavily bearded but largely well-kempt men and women, as befits a culture famously concerned with appearance and especially coiffure.
As for other forms of adornment, there are some sensible necklaces and brooches and plenty of rings, and it’s good to see the hero with arm-rings in a couple of scenes. These were the badges of serious warriors across many early medieval Germanic cultures.
Weapons and armor (about which more below) look interesting, though I couldn’t examine every shot. The hero seems to be wearing a long seax (imagine a Germanic bowie knife) diagonally across his waist in his scenes as an ulfheðinn. A nice touch, one that doesn’t make it into a lot of medieval movies. I’m mostly thankful that the helmets in the trailer look good based on what we know (which isn’t much) and that other armor seems limited to mail shirts. That’s accurate. No anachronistic plate armor or ridiculous leather getups here, thank heavens. See the still from Alfred the Great here to see how badly this can go wrong.
“You must choose between kindness for your kin or hate for your enemies.” A Viking Age moral dilemma, one not uncommon in the sagas, and a call to be a drengr. (Which, not coincidentally, seems to be the last word chanted in the trailer.)
Great scenery, especially the glacier in Iceland and some of the sweeping landscapes. Eggers is always very attentive to the environments in which his stories take place, an undervalued aspect of modern storytelling.
Here’s an iffy one: While what we get in the trailer largely sticks with the muddy doom-and-gloom aesthetic of most medieval movies, it is welcome to see the characters largely wearing nice fabrics (as opposed to burlap or outright rags) and colors. Not just the Norse but everyone throughout the medieval world enjoyed colorful clothing just as much as we do. The Northman’s palette is pretty muted, presumably for artistic reasons as much as that ineradicable image of the Middle Ages as drab, but the young hero’s red tunic and Taylor-Joy’s blue shift were nice touches. I hope there’s more of that.
Related: When evil uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang) arrives to kill the hero’s father, he’s wearing a “goggle” helm with attached wraparound mail typical of the Vendel period, which directly preceded the Viking Age. A touch of archaism or ceremony for the uncle, then? Also, the drab color palette could be especially purposeful here, as several sagas refer to characters ritually dressing in black to prepare for a premeditated killing. If this is intentional, it shows Eggers has done a ton of homework. I’m hopeful.
Further related to the Vendel era stuff: Is that Oðinn we get a glimpse of by the fire near the end? His one visible eye appears cloudy. Further, he’s wearing a helmet typical of scenes depicted on Vendel art, which are often interpreted as mythological scenes. Here’s a really similar one. Notice the rods or staffs. Some kind of staff was apparently important for the practice of seiðr, a form of magic or divination that was typically associated with women (see Taylor-Joy’s “cunning” woman) and shameful for men to perform—though Oðinn, notably, practiced seiðr. Is that what’s going on in the trailer? Is that why no one in the scene is wearing pants? Who’s to say at this point, but again, that it suggests these possibilities shows that Eggers isn’t going for the superficial Hollywood image of Vikings.
Speaking of Hollywood Vikings, there appear to be no shield-maidens, female warriors, or other Hollywood Warrior Chicks™ in the trailer, which is astounding. Hollywood cannot resist throwing that bit of Norse fantasy in. (And I do mean fantasy: here’s a summary of the most prominent example from the legendary sagas.) The only exception here seems to be a valkyrie, about which more below.
Also: rather more wire-fu than I prefer, especially that over-the-top axe blow at approximately 2:05. Hoping the movie doesn’t go off the rails when the warriors draw their weapons, but there’s little enough here that I’m not too worried yet.
Other notes on combat: Lots of sneaking in small numbers, especially under cover of darkness. Definitely rings true if you’ve read the sagas at all.
A few shots I’m particularly eager to see more of: speaking of stuff straight from the sagas, we get what is clearly a glimpse of the burning of a turf long-house. (See the still at the top of this post.) Several other shots seem to show fighting inside the hall, presumably before the whole thing is torched.
Creepy but 100% realistic detail: Two shots near the end of the trailer appear to show a valkyrie riding through the sky. In the first shot, as she screams, you can see black streaks across her teeth. Numerous skulls from Viking Age burials have exactly this kind of grooving filed laterally across the teeth. Some kind of badge of honor for a warrior? Medicine or magic? Mere personal decoration, like a rapper’s grill? No one knows for sure, but it was cool to see that make it into the movie.
Eggers loves his dreams and nightmare visions, and I’m guessing the valkyrie and Oðinn—if that is indeed him—might factor into them.
Finally, I haven’t said much about the cast, but they look great. I’ve liked Skarsgård in whatever I’ve seen him in but remember him primarily as Sergeant “Iceman” Colbert in the mini-series “Generation Kill.” Here he seems to be channeling some of his version of Tarzan, particularly in the ulfheðinn scenes, which look like they’re calculated to show off his abs. Good for him, I guess. Ethan Hawke looks great as a good, wise king and father; Claes Bang—who has suddenly appeared in a bunch of recent American movies, none of which I’ve seen—as a quietly threatening evil uncle. Scar to Hawke’s Mufasa? Taylor-Joy was exceptional in both The Witch and, in something completely different, Emma, and should be excellent here as well. I’m especially interested in Willem Dafoe, whose role is mostly just teased here but, considering Dafoe’s caliber, should be important and not a little weird.
So—The Northman looks like a Viking revenge story taking place on two levels, the first a potentially quite authentic and realistic historical world and the other a dimension of dreams, visions, or the supernatural. That’s my initial reaction, anyway, with a few thoughts, observations, and wonderings. Considering what we get in the trailer, and considering the talent involved, I’m guardedly optimistic. We’ll see. Like I said, medievalists are used to being disappointed (see Knight, The Green), but based on these two and a half minutes, I’m here for it.
Check out the trailer and see for yourself! The Northman comes to theaters April 22 and I guarantee I’ll be there.
Addendum: If you can’t wait for April, as I imagine I may have a hard time doing, please do check out my novel No Snakes in Iceland, which is set in the same world but deals with ghosts and grief and mystery rather than dynastic betrayal.
