"The Northman" Proves That The Easiest Stories Are Hardest To Tell

Robert Eggers breathes new life into a tried and true tale, but the results satisfy as often as they disappoint.

May 26, 2022

In a faraway kingdom, a young man suffers the death of his beloved father at the hands of his treacherous Uncle. In fear, he flees, escaping his Uncle’s wrath and vowing the revenge the ghost of his father demands. He returns to avenge his father, aided by mystical elements.

It is the story of Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare in the late 16th-century. It is also the story of Amleth, a prince from Scandinavian legend, the inspiration for the character of Prince Hamlet himself.

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most adapted play, and thus the concept of revenge has gotten touched upon time and again. Across over 50 film adaptations, the story of Hamlet, and thus of Amleth, has created a familiarity few ideas or genres experience. We have seen countless heroes grapple with tragedy, loss, sorrow, rage, and the bloody quest for vengeance that consumes cinematic heroes, for good or ill.

Reaching back to the source is an intriguing concept but is not enough to revitalize a genre. Reinventing the wheel too often gets intentionally misconstrued as employing abstractions to feign substance. The more you rely on a visual style or dialogue that harkens back to the olden days, the easier you can convince an audience it's seeing something transformative.

As Amleth flees from his father’s murder and sails in a rowboat chanting his vow for vengeance, we reflect on heroes of revenge tales past. We think of Kill Bill's Beatrix Kiddo, whose losses resonated with those seeking to begin anew but who was also devoted to her purpose. She learned a sacred martial art from its unforgiving grandmaster. She does not take the easy path. The bullet-riddled massacre of her wedding party rejects that principle. We think of Cassie Thomas, a young woman terrorizing those responsible for her best friend's rape and the subsequent coverup. She is a woman who has watched the patriarchy’s power go unchecked to horrific ends. She cannot sit by and do nothing while a close friend, and fellow woman, gets victimized without consequence. We think of Maximus in Gladiator, whose faultless moral fiber and brushes with tragedy both inspired our aspiration and upheld the principles most immediate to us.

The Northman’s primary failing is an inability to create a symbiosis between audience and protagonist. Amleth is a man of impressive musculature whose brutish sword-wielding appeals to a narrow demographic. Within that tunnel vision lies a film with honorable intentions for a select few, and therein lies the issue. Maximus was a man to whom we attached beyond the idea of having everything ripped away from you. A soldier’s family is a distant memory that always feels near, as much a pleasant recollection as fuel for survival. Anyone can understand the horror of getting betrayed and seeing your family hanging as a symbol of that betrayal. The film must cut deeper. Gladiator gives Maximus a code. It is a soldier’s code and thus lacks nuance, but a movie that understands itself well does not always need nuance.

Honor. Duty. Loyalty. Commodus’ betrayal is not just a crime against nature but against Maximus’ nature. Even if he does not know it, Maximus seeks revenge for who he is as much as whom he loved.

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Amleth seeks revenge. We can appreciate that, but The Northman fails to distinguish itself by neglecting to develop the man. He is tall and blonde, and he enjoys howling at the moon and growling during combat, but he is a mystery. The task gets set before he even has to undertake it, his father reminding him in adolescence that a man who does not exact revenge is no man at all. Unfortunately, shingling a roof is not a roofer; dicing onions is not a prep cook; drilling burr holes is not a surgeon. A task is not a person.

It somewhat undermines the film’s decision to tinker with new territory. The Northman got filmed in the lush Irish countryside, but it does not exploit its landscapes for visual exposition, drenching us in vistas as a distraction while it discovers itself. It knows its intentions from the off and thus feels like a film whose momentum, while quiet, is constant. A slow-burning revenge tale reinvents the genre, and this one does so well. There is no long journey across stormy seas and thunderous skies rife with supernatural beasts. There are no repetitious declarations of intent as though our memories fail without having motivations constantly spelled out for us. Even as we predict every development, there is a desire to see and know more, regardless of how restrained the sights are and how little knowledge the film imparts. Everything meant to shock or register rings hollow, but there is a refreshing atmosphere for a genre long reliant on overproduction.

We still applaud The Northman for making choices unfamiliar in highly familiar territory. Vengeance is always a matter of swinging the sword; the object of wrath sleeps but a few huts away on an isolated Scandinavian farm. It takes little time for Amleth to find himself in the company of his sworn enemy; everything the film attempts happens within the tension of “when,” never “how.” It allows the film to weave that tension into its narrative instead of relying on spectacle. Every gambit could get discovered at a moment’s notice; if Amleth is to have the vengeance he seeks, he must rely on wits and stealth, not just strength.

It makes The Northman a better film than it would have been otherwise, but it also means it employs more "auteur" elements. Despite its adherence to historical context, it flies its hero to the gates of Valhalla in a nighttime vision as he escapes the wrath of Fjölnir. It sets him against a pack of wolves howling at the moon as flames consume the farmland behind them. Much of the film’s visuals are catnip for those desperate to find meaning in the distinctive. Yet the film thrives on this instead of buckling under hubris. Everything gets balanced with those unfamiliar choices, the restraint that allows style to shine instead of distract.

Unfortunately, the reality of that truth is just as much the film’s salvation as damnation. The Northman rides the menacing of a king’s cowardly brother, the bloodlust of a man who not long before had forgotten his purpose entirely, and the quiet cruelty of a woman whose motivations are easy to figure. It depends on gentility to justify forsaking convention when it wants to shock us with the lunacy of Viking culture. It is an endless stream of contradictions, each pebble in the river inspiring as much intrigue as frustration. The film becomes less about feeling led to something or somewhere and more about whether anything is of genuine value. The vengeance is sought by a man who had to get shocked back into pursuing it, so how can the film justify zeroing in on his journey or him taking it at all? Retribution waits for a man whose intentions muddy once pure waters, but what does the film seek to accomplish by coloring our perspective? The contradictions spill into the thematics, not just the style or narrative. As such, The Northman is brisk, compelling, refreshing... and pointless.

Still, it is difficult to deny a film that compels so wholly, much like a Thanksgiving feast. The bird is moist, the mashed potatoes creamy, the corn drowning in butter, and the green bean casserole crusted with a golden brown sprinkling of fresh parmesan. We know what to do with all of those.

We know to appreciate Alexander Skarsgård’s physicality and marvel at the scenery, even if the movie does not want to rely on it. We know to feel intrigued by a platinum-haired beauty whose role is unclear, even if her intentions are; we know to question what we think we know, even if the movie answers those questions long after we have.

But what to do with the more creative choices, those side dishes born from a culinary love so palpable that none dare contest them? What to do with the three-layer boiled bean surprise or the diced shrimp cocktail? It is all on the table, so we must eat before stuffing ourselves with the more appetizing selections to mask the flavor.

It’s all muscle, just different kinds that serve varying functions. The Northman flexes to the end but leaves its audience wondering how much of that muscle has substance. We wonder as we sense the film moving to its conclusion but realize it's more of a slow gallop than a cavalry charge. We wonder as we behold the anti-climactic battle between a man seeking revenge and the one who made him need it, even as we accept that disguising the male form saps the fight of its luster. We wonder as we reflect, debating if the film awed us into submission with its stature and individuality or scratched an itch we did not wholly realize we had.

The Northman has much to show but relies on showing little; it has little to say but makes its desire to say anything ambiguous. It amounts to a film that balances its many elements well but fails to make any of them shine. It could get watched a thousand times and wildly enjoyed each one, but it would never get felt, a sad truth for a film about such an emotional burden.