The Northman

 Year:  2022

Director:  Robert Eggers

Screenplay:  Sjón and Robert Eggers

Starring:  Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe

Running Time:  137 minutes

Genre:  epic, action, drama

895 AD: After King Aurvandill War-Raven (Hawke) is murdered by his brother Fjölnir (Bang), who carries off Queen Gudrún (Kidman), Prince Amleth (Skarsgård) swears to avenge his father and save his mother.  As years pass, Amleth plans to pose as a slave in Fjölnir's stronghold, and prepare for his revenge with the help of sorceress Olga (Taylor-Joy).

The film is based on the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, which also inspired William Shakespeare's Hamlet.  However, if you are not into the Bard, you don't need to worry about this being Hamlet, it is basically more like a Viking version of Gladiator (2000), or a plot line from Game of Thrones (2011-2019).  Eggers, who has made his name with cerebral so-called "elevated horror" films such as The Witch (2016) and The Lighthouse (2020), may not seem like the obvious choice for making a blood-and-thunder action film, but the action is staged very well, even though it can be difficult to tell one hairy. bearded, mud-caked Viking from another.  The film is well-designed and it is a pretty bleak, unsympathetic worldview, even anti-hero Amleth seems more than happy to raid and pillage villages.  Alexander Skarsgård is good as the snarling, steely-eyed Amleth, Nicole Kidman is good as the sinister queen, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who made her name with Eggers' The Witch,  provides the film's conscience as the mystical, nurturing Olga.  The film has a semi-supernatural aspect with Olga's magic, and Amleth's frequent hallucinatory visions, as well as a magical sword.  Even though it is quite a long film, there is too much going on for it to ever get dull.  It's been a while since there was a proper musclebound sword and shield historical action film like this, so it is quite welcome.  It also comments on the price to be paid for vengeance on both sides.

Alexander Skarsgård is The Northman

The Lighthouse

Year of Release:  2019

Director:  Robert Eggers

Screenplay:  Robert Eggers and Max Eggers

Starring:  Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe

Running Time:  109 minutes

Genre:  Period drama, horror

In the late 19th century, two lighthouse keepers (or "wickies") head out to tend to a remote lighthouse off the coast of New England.  When they are stranded at the lighthouse during a terrible storm, their sanity begins to unravel due to the stress, the lack of supplies, the harsh conditions on the island, their isolation and their heavy drinking.

Director and co-writer Robert Eggers first came to prominence in 2016 with his feature debut The Witch, and has come out with one of the strangest films in recent years.  Filmed in crisp black-and-white, with dialogue influenced by the journals of lighthouse keepers of the period and the works of 19th Century American writer Sarah Orne Jewett, with elements from Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe, the film mixes bleak realism, surreal fantasy and elements of lowbrow comedy (there are a surprising amount of fart jokes).  The film is almost entirely a two hander between Robert Pattinson as the neurotic newcomer and Willem Dafoe, as the irritable, superstitious veteran, both turning in fantastic performances, alternating between tentative friendliness, almost homoerotic intimacy, odd-couple comedy and real menace and threat as the balance of powers shifts in some unexpected ways.  The film almost feels like a queasy nightmare, and a relic from a previous age.  It's full of references to art, literature and mythology, and cinematically feels like a folk horror film from Ingmar Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer, although it properly belongs to a world far older than cinema.  This is a film that may not exactly be enjoyable in a conventional sense, but people will be looking at it and analysing it for years to come.

 Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse