Robert Eggers' 'The Northman' Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (39 reviews) with 8.1 in average rating

Metacritic: 82/100 (23 critics)

As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie. It's structured like this: quote first, source second.

Whether you buy into Eggers’ insane epic, get high on its blood-drenched sorcery or roll your eyes at its excesses, the film makes you appreciate how seldom we get to see a big, noisy, brawling spectacle these days that’s grounded not in comic-book superheroes and villains but in culturally specific history. In other words, a work of bold imagination, not another offshoot of a familiar IP. That alone deserves respect.

-David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

It’s not like this movie is a punishing chore; it’s not like Eggers doesn’t want multiplex audiences to like it. And they will. Because this is the kind of filmmaking that rips you out of your body so hard that you’re liable to forget what year it is. In a movie era that’s been defined by compromise, “The Northman” rides into theaters with the fury of a valkyrie — it’s the rare studio epic that would sooner die than submit to modern precepts of how it should be told. While so many people in the industry are scrambling to change their fates, Eggers reminds us just how awesome it can feel to conquer them.

-David Ehrlich, IndieWire: A-

'The Witch' director Robert Eggers has vision to burn, but robs this brutal 10th-century revenge story of the tragic twist it needs to hook us emotionally.

-Peter Debruge, Variety

The Northman is a horribly violent, nihilistic and chaotic story about the endless cycle of violence, the choice between loving your friends and hating your enemies – which turns out to be no choice at all, and the thread of fate down which masculinity’s delicious toxin drips. It’s entirely outrageous, with some epic visions of the flaring cosmos. I couldn’t look away.

-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: 5/5

“The Northman” is the best kind of multi-quadrant movie. Without abandoning his arthouse credentials, Eggers has made a rousingly rough, extreme action saga that has the potential of attracting the kind of viewers who might have found his previous work impenetrable. It’s a vision of futility and fury, of a clash between nature and humanity where violence is both the means and the consequence, and an ancient revenge fantasy that speaks with terrible truth to this moment and to the historical lessons we never seem to learn.

-Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

Eggers’s films have all been set in eras and places where the divide between the natural and supernatural feels as thin as a wisp, but The Northman allows him to push his flair for folkloric images to a new extreme. He shows us a tree hung with the zombified corpses of long-dead ancestors, and a valkyrie riding her way to the hero’s paradise of Valhǫll. The film’s budget, partially due to pandemic delays, reached somewhere around $90m (£69m). It’s a big risk to spend that much cash on an auteur-driven historical epic at a time when historical epics have largely fallen by the wayside. But what a beautiful risk it is. I call upon Odin: may The Northman make a billion dollars.

-Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent: 5/5

This is intimate, culturally rich storytelling on a brutally epic scale. Skarsgård is in his element, bolstered by a sensational cast throwing themselves headfirst into Eggers and Sjón’s awe-inspiring vision. A cinematic saga worthy of the ancestors.

-Hanna Flint, Empire: 5/5

A staggering feat of visceral filmmaking, “The Northman,” like Eggers’ previous films, warrants profound analysis while still delivering a high-octane action odyssey. Some of the flourishes the director opted for, as well as the film’s overall demeanor (neither entirely self-serious nor fully whimsical), may receive mixed reactions. Still what Eggers has ambitiously crafted lands as an invigorating beacon for an industry in need of studio fare with substantial ideas and artistry.

-Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist: A-

Compared to most US action adventures, The Northman is adventurous and distinctive. It feels compromised, but the great stuff outweighs the not-so-great stuff. To see or not to see? If that is the question, the answer is: see it.

-Nicholas Barber, BBC: 3/5

While this is Eggers’ least horror-centric story, he still utilizes many of the same techniques to engross the audience in the foreboding that this period must have induced in the people of that time. There are few filmmakers that can make the leap from smaller, insular stories into large-scale epics, but with The Northman, Eggers has proved that his style and substance can remain intact, regardless of the size of the story.

-Ross Bonaime, Collider: B+

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PLOT

Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who's on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.

DIRECTOR

Robert Eggers

WRITERS

Sjón & Robert Eggers

MUSIC

Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Jarin Blaschke

EDITOR

Louise Ford

RELEASE DATE:

April 15, 2022 (select overseas territories)

April 22, 2022 (worldwide)

BUDGET

$70-90 million

STARRING

• Alexander Skarsgård as Prince Amleth

• Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrún

• Claes Bang as Fjölnir

• Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga of the Birch Forest

• Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandill War-Raven

• Björk as the Seeress

• Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool

• Kate Dickie as Halldora the Pict

• Gustav Lindh as Thorir the Proud

• Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson as He-Witch

• Murray McArthur as Hákon Ironbeard

• Ian Whyte as The Mound Dweller

• Katie Pattinson as Shield-maiden

• Ian Gerard Whyte as Thorvaldr Giant-Crusher

• Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Thorfinnr

• Doa Barney as Melkorka

• Olwen Fouéré as Ashildur Hofgythja

• Ralph Ineson as Captain Volodymyr

Submitted April 11, 2022 at 11:07PM by SanderSo47 https://ift.tt/rt256ux