The Northman (2022) - first thoughts

by LoveUniHateExams 0 Replies latest social entertainment

  • LoveUniHateExams
    LoveUniHateExams

    First off, I really like Robert Eggers and think he's a great film maker. I really like his two previous films - The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019).

    I saw The Northman (2022) for the first time yesterday. It's a revenge/'Western' story about a Viking prince who avenges the death of his father, by his uncle. Yeah, it's ok.

    What didn't work for me was the accents that the different characters speak in. His two previous films were set in 1635 and 1890 respectively, and so the English dialects used in both were well-known, adding authenticity. But The Northman is set in the year 900 AD, during which Old Norse would have been spoken. Eggers could have gone all-in and had the characters speaking Old Norse the whole time, but for a 2 hour-plus film it would have been very difficult. Or he could have had them speaking English with standard American or British accents but that might have sounded strange. So, he chose a third way, so you have Amleth (Stellan Skarsgaard) speaking to Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy). Amleth speaks English with an Old Norse type accent, and Olga speaks with a Russian-sounding accent because the character is a Slav. It just doesn't work all that well for me, but no option would have been easy here, as explained above.

    Still, gotta love Fjolnir's accent, played by Claes Bang. I guess Claes does a reasonable stab of an Old Norse accent, but at some point he must have thought to himself, 'I'm a Dane, my first language is descended from Old Norse anyway ... so screw it, I may as well say my lines with a Danish accent'. And you can't blame him, lol.

    Yeah, so the mish-mash of accents distracted from the film rather than enhanced it, at least for me anyway.

    The costumes and settings were very well done - knowing Robert Eggers, he probably did his research on Viking clothing, weapons, and houses.

    The story was ok, the plot kinda just went along. TBH, there are better revenge films out there - The Nightingale (2018) being one such. But you do get to see Anya Taylor-Joy naked.

    So, yeah, it's an ok film.

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