THE NORTHMAN
Axe to grind
No animals were harmed in the making of – oh.
➤RELEASED 18 JULY
(download out now)
2022 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/
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➤Director Robert Eggers
➤Cast Alexander Skarsgård, Anya
Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang
Vengeance is a dish served cold, muddy and brutal in Robert Eggers’s latest, but no one should really be shocked by that given that this is a Viking saga drawn from myth by the man behind The Witch and The Lighthouse.
Sticking with period drama, the director goes all-in on phantasmagorical imagery, bodies being horrendously sliced into and long meditations on fate. This is the story of Amleth (as the name hints, one that inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet), who after seeing his pops (Ethan Hawke’s King Aurvandil War- Raven) slaughtered and his mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) spirited away by his uncle (Claes Bang’s calculating Fjölnir), swears bloody vengeance.