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Post by notacrook on Apr 17, 2022 22:57:07 GMT
Eggers may have upped his budget ten-fold, but he hasn't sacrificed any of his weird, trippy, demented (and kinda camp) style in the process. The Northman is one of the most immersive cinematic experiences I've had in recent memory, the kind of film where every now and then I'd shake myself out of a reverie and remind myself I was, in fact, sitting in a cinema. It tells a very familiar revenge tale, though one tinged with unnerving psychological complexities in exploring how revenge can chip away at one's psyche until they are rendered a blind slave to it. In other areas it feels a little thin on the ground, particularly regarding Olga and her relationship with Amleth. This thinness is a problem I also had with The Lighthouse on a second-viewing, indicating that Eggers, while a master at visual storytelling, still has some growing to do on a more intimate, character-based level.
Skarsgard does go full 'beast mode' as many have said, but he also finds plenty of room for quieter, subtler shades that convey years of pain and grief. Kidman sneaks up on you and gives us a performance that I already know will haunt me for years, in a way only she can (her Queen is easily the film's most complex character). Bang, in the first performance I've seen from him, is perfect as the film's brutal but world-weary antagonist. Taylor-Joy, despite her role's limitations, is a reliably commanding presence. Hawke, Dafoe and Bjork are all wonderfully committed in brief appearances.
I'd probably slot it in the middle of Eggers' films so far. He's three-for-three in my book, though. The Northman is an absolute feast of a film.
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Post by stephen on Apr 22, 2022 1:55:20 GMT
I just got out of the movie, and I think I might be pregnant.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Apr 22, 2022 13:25:57 GMT
Indeed very much an Eggers film. A bit surprising that a studio gave him this budget without putting out a more conventional cut. Either way, I really dug this. Really great cinematography and was not short on brutality. Wish ATJ had her role beefed up a bit. Skarsgard was pretty much born to play a Viking and he fully delivers. And while I wouldn’t give career best accolades to Kidman, her big monologue was truly spectacular. I don’t think a nom is likely but there’s a good chance she’s stick in my personal Supporting Actress lineup.
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Post by stephen on Apr 22, 2022 13:28:53 GMT
Now that I've had time to marinate on this movie (and I was thinking about it all night and found it very tough to sleep, which makes work today and seeing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent quite an event), I think that even though it is not without flaw (mainly in some of the character choices that Amleth makes, which seem so immediately contradictory as to leave me baffled), in retrospect those character decisions make sense if you believe what Amleth believes: that he is so intrinsically bound to Fate that everything he does has to follow that skein, and that any divergent path he takes is as great a sin as patricide. I'll be seeing it again this weekend, so with that theme in mind I wonder if I'll have a lot of the same issues as I did the first time.
I also wonder how much of this film was affected by COVID because I do feel like they kinda just threw their hands up at the "reclaiming of the kingdom" bit of the narrative. They make kind of a big deal about Amleth regaining his birthright, but then when he learns that Fjolnir lost his kingdom to Harold of Norway and became a shepherd, it all felt like "well, we couldn't go back to our kingdom set, so we had to make do." It makes it a bit more of a personal quest than a sweeping one, but I did think it was interesting.
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Post by wilcinema on Apr 22, 2022 17:21:41 GMT
I was unfortunately disappointed. I was madly in love with the first 40 minutes, they really established how strange and brutal the Nordic world was back then, with that scene with Hawke and Dafoe and the kid which really sent me into cinematic nirvana (the Bjork scene too tbh). But then the whole revenge story began and it started to lose me, the characters weren't interesting enough and it felt like the movie lacked a real connective tissue, the scene would come and go without making much of an impact. There's always some interesting imagery like in the other Eggers films but to me it served a better purpose in those than it does in this one.
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SZilla
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Post by SZilla on Apr 22, 2022 19:27:59 GMT
Oh boy I loved this. Just got out of a screening minutes about half an hour ago but it’s going to be on my mind for the rest of the week, I’m sure. Just fantastic overall. It’s experiences like these that I wish every movie going outing was like.
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Post by DeepArcher on Apr 23, 2022 7:27:39 GMT
You know, I'm not sure how much staying power this testosterone-induced video game walkthrough will have in the long run, but holy hell, I haven't been that exhilarated in a movie theater in a looooooongggg time. Gnarly as hell, briskly paced, vividly atmospheric & lived-in with practically every scene introducing some new insane bit of Viking culture or mythos. I loved nearly every second of this. Skarsgård is never anything short of captivating with how fucking committed and animalistic his performance is. Kidman really only gets the one big scene but it genuinely took my breath away. Björk and Dafoe one-scene standouts as well, but damn, everyone played their roles of equal parts Shakespeare and God of War NPC to perfection. On top of everything else, I also wanna shout out the score which absolutely rips.
I'm happy with this cut, but if there is a 3/4 hour Eggers cut out there, let me fuckin' see it!
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Post by stephen on Apr 23, 2022 11:41:32 GMT
You know, I'm not sure how much staying power this testosterone-induced video game walkthrough will have in the long run, but holy hell, I haven't been that exhilarated in a movie theater in a looooooongggg time. Gnarly as hell, briskly paced, vividly atmospheric & lived-in with practically every scene introducing some new insane bit of Viking culture or mythos. I loved nearly every second of this. Skarsgård is never anything short of captivating with how fucking committed and animalistic his performance his. Kidman really only gets the one big scene but it genuinely took my breath away. Björk and Dafoe one-scene standouts as well, but damn, everyone played their roles of equal parts Shakespeare and God of War NPC to perfection. On top of everything else, I also wanna shout out the score which absolutely rips. I'm happy with this cut, but if there is a 3/4 hour Eggers cut out there, let me fuckin' see it! Can we talk about that Mound Dweller scene which felt like Eggers was paying homage to David Lowery and The Green Knight? Fucking righteous.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 23, 2022 13:26:06 GMT
I was unfortunately disappointed. I was madly in love with the first 40 minutes, they really established how strange and brutal the Nordic world was back then, with that scene with Hawke and Dafoe and the kid which really sent me into cinematic nirvana (the Bjork scene too tbh). But then the whole revenge story began and it started to lose me, the characters weren't interesting enough and it felt like the movie lacked a real connective tissue, the scene would come and go without making much of an impact. There's always some interesting imagery like in the other Eggers films but to me it served a better purpose in those than it does in this one. This - exactly this. ^ I think there may be a great film in Eggers cut - because there are great things here - but this doesn't work remotely as efficiently or as well as The Witch or The Lighthouse........ Pictorially eloquent, narratively (mostly) mute with some great performances though even those are in ways where you never forget you are watching actors give performances. Starts off like gangbusters, and becomes repetitive and at times actually laughable in its repetiveness...... If you thought PTA hysteria got people to jizz over a relatively "minor" effort from him (and I really liked that, that made my top 10 but it was minor PTA) then this letting off the hook that Eggers is getting atm is somewhat weird - this film is like around a ~ 6.5 not an 89% on RT........an extremely puzzling film.......looking forward to seeing his cut or whatever......
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Post by DeepArcher on Apr 23, 2022 16:09:04 GMT
You know, I'm not sure how much staying power this testosterone-induced video game walkthrough will have in the long run, but holy hell, I haven't been that exhilarated in a movie theater in a looooooongggg time. Gnarly as hell, briskly paced, vividly atmospheric & lived-in with practically every scene introducing some new insane bit of Viking culture or mythos. I loved nearly every second of this. Skarsgård is never anything short of captivating with how fucking committed and animalistic his performance his. Kidman really only gets the one big scene but it genuinely took my breath away. Björk and Dafoe one-scene standouts as well, but damn, everyone played their roles of equal parts Shakespeare and God of War NPC to perfection. On top of everything else, I also wanna shout out the score which absolutely rips. I'm happy with this cut, but if there is a 3/4 hour Eggers cut out there, let me fuckin' see it! Can we talk about that Mound Dweller scene which felt like Eggers was paying homage to David Lowery and The Green Knight? Fucking righteous. The Mound Dweller is the one he fights to retrieve the sword, right? Incredible scene. I definitely got Green Knight vibes there and throughout, though honestly if anything I feel like Lowery was more inspired by Eggers than vice versa.
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Post by stephen on Apr 23, 2022 16:12:57 GMT
Can we talk about that Mound Dweller scene which felt like Eggers was paying homage to David Lowery and The Green Knight? Fucking righteous. The Mound Dweller is the one he fights to retrieve the sword, right? Incredible scene. I definitely got Green Knight vibes there and throughout, though honestly if anything I feel like Lowery was more inspired by Eggers than vice versa. Exactly right. I do agree with the above complaints in that I wish the film had kept the hallucinatory aspect of its first act (the Willem Dafoe trip sequence felt very Ritual of Chud-esque from It), but that's why God invented Valhalla Rising.
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Post by DeepArcher on Apr 23, 2022 16:16:20 GMT
The Mound Dweller is the one he fights to retrieve the sword, right? Incredible scene. I definitely got Green Knight vibes there and throughout, though honestly if anything I feel like Lowery was more inspired by Eggers than vice versa. I do agree with the above complaints in that I wish the film had kept the hallucinatory aspect of its first act (the Willem Dafoe trip sequence felt very Ritual of Chud-esque from It), but that's why God invented Valhalla Rising. To some extent I think it does -- those Valkyrie ride sequences are great and there is a fever dream-ish feeling to a lot of the proceedings, even that Kidman confrontation scene is sort of surreal in how surprising it is. But I agree, it's sort of hard to top that Dafoe scene for sheer hypnotism, and I'd be curious to see if a hypothetical longer director's cut included more stuff like that.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2022 21:13:10 GMT
I'm surprised by the mixed response its receiving here, as I loved it totally. I was completely enthralled from beginning to end - this film is a visual and aural marvel. For me, this is Eggers' most ambitious (obviously) and accomplished project yet.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2022 16:06:37 GMT
Perhaps it's the obvious thematic parallel and the medieval period trappings, but did Skarsgård's and Kidman's performances not recall Mel Gibson and Glenn Close in Zeffirelli's Hamlet for you? I don't think the oedipal current between Hamlet and Gertrude had ever been played quite so passionately before 1990... and now.
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Post by stephen on Apr 24, 2022 16:23:40 GMT
Perhaps it's the obvious thematic parallel and the medieval period trappings, but did Skarsgård's and Kidman's performances not recall Mel Gibson and Glenn Close in Zeffirelli's Hamlet for you? I don't think the oedipal current between Hamlet and Gertrude had ever been played quite so passionately before 1990... and now. I was obviously thinking Hamlet/Gertrude in general while watching it because, well, obviously, but in respect to the Zeffirelli comparisons, I definitely can see Gibson's (on-screen) unhinged savage energy in what Skarsgård was bringing to the proceedings. And Kidman was certainly exuding that austere patrician vibe that is Close's mainstay. There's a version of this (probably directed by Mad Mel) in the '90s that would've been insane to behold -- never forget that one of Gibson's stalled projects was Berserker, which would've been done entirely in Old Norse. I'm actually curious if Eggers tried to get this one made in the original language, considering his laser-like attention to accuracy.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2022 17:16:20 GMT
stephen - It’s the visual element, too - Skarsgård and Kidman look more like lovers than mother and son (as Gibson and Close did in their film). And the beautiful, long, flowing blonde wig hair on Close and Kidman. Lest we forget that Baz Luhrmann wanted to make his own version of Hamlet with DiCaprio and Kidman as Gertrude, also.
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Post by pupdurcs on Apr 24, 2022 17:21:31 GMT
I'm pretty sure Kidman is the best Lady Macbeth we've never had.
I liked Frances McDormand in The Tragedy Of Macbeth better than some, but I think Kidman would have been extraordinary in that film opposite Denzel.
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Post by countjohn on Apr 24, 2022 20:02:26 GMT
I'm gonna say the opposite of a lot of people here and say that the first two acts were borderline catatonic but then that scene with Kidman finally gave it a spark and the last act was alright. Still not really enough to salvage the movie for me though. There's so many issues I don't know where to begin but agree with a lot of people that the lack of characterizations is the big issue. Kidman is the only thing approaching a real character here and she really only gets the one scene. People are complaining about the ATJ character but she still got a lot more development Skarsgard who I don't think ever developed a character trait beyond "mad that his dad died". The whole performance was just switching between monotone and all the ridiculous wolf howling. He's just not a star, for this kind of thing you need one of those larger than life performances like Crowe in Gladiator, Mel Gibson in Braveheart, or one of those old he-man guys like Charlton Heston or Kirk Douglas. Good cinematography, a couple cool fight scenes, and one scene of great acting is not enough to salvage that. Despite what I said about the cinematography I hated some of the lighting in this too. Then I don't think it could decide if it wanted to be an arthouse film or a populist adventure film. I guess you could successfully balance the two in theory, but in practice it didn't really work as either one. In particular it's thematically kind of a mess, it was trying to have its cake and eat it too with that ending by being both a cathartic revenge film and about the emptiness of violence, which is just a copout and doesn't work. You've got to pick one. I thought watching it that I would have ended the film with him jumping off the boat. He's given up his chance at happiness and you know he's going to spend the rest of his life chasing the king or die trying. That's just me, the other way to end it would be to give it the traditional revenge movie ending where he kills the king, is hailed a hero and goes back to get ATJ. Having them both die is cheating by trying to give the audience the satisfaction of seeing the villain die while also trying to not appear to condone violence too much. Like a 5/10 from me
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 25, 2022 1:12:26 GMT
I know it’s still early, but… did I just see film of the year? I might have just watched film of the year!
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 25, 2022 4:56:35 GMT
Also, was it just really great, really subtle makeup effects, or did they break out the de-aging for Kidman? Because I saw this at an AMC, so obviously we have that pre-movie ad with Kidman in it. It was just funny going from “We make movies better” Kidman to Eyes Wide Shut Kidman.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 27, 2022 1:11:33 GMT
I just want to keep going back to this. It’s ssoooo rewarding.
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Post by Viced on Apr 29, 2022 21:07:57 GMT
Against all odds... I now have to revoke my membership to the Robert Eggers hateclub... because this was fucking great.
Most brutal movie I've seen in theaters since... I don't know when. Even some of the tomfoolery that gave me flashbacks of his previous two films mostly worked for me here. Plot-wise it reminded me of two of my favorites... Excalibur and Gladiator... but mixing those vibes with a heaping dose of Viking culture ensures that this stands on its own as well. I want to go play some knattleikr now tbh. And that was just one of many epic scenes.
Kind of confused by the people that think this was heavily compromised btw... the pace is slow a good chunk of the time, there's a lot of out-there (possibly) alienating moments... and I can't even imagine what a longer cut would entail because 137 minutes seemed as long as this plot could've possibly been stretched. I agree that ditching the "reclaim the Kingdom" motivation completely seemed strange and unfulfilling... but they would've had to completely change the epic ending to further explore that.
now it's officially high time for Mad Mel to revive BERSERKER.
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Post by stephen on Apr 29, 2022 22:53:57 GMT
now it's officially high time for Mad Mel to revive BERSERKER. Question is, who would you like to see in the role vacated by DiCaprio?
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wonky
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Post by wonky on Apr 30, 2022 0:38:45 GMT
There was a moment in this where some guy bursts in with his guts spilling out that gave me absolutely no reaction which is really when I realized this movie was bouncing right off me. Can't put my finger on it.
Moments I liked but found it hard to really get into the tone of it and how seriously to take it, which is not usually a problem I have with these kinds of things, I never really understand when I hear about people laughing during horror movies for example, but the whole finale I just thought was hysterical...I feel like there was some camp going on but I just couldn't really get a handle on it. That shot of ATJ with the babies really had me rolling me for some reason.
This sort of felt like an Eggers self-parody to me in the way that French Dispatch was for Wes Anderson and he's only three deep, think I'm officially a skeptic and kinda making me reconsider The Witch (which I loved) and The Lighthouse (which I liked)
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Post by stephen on Apr 30, 2022 0:51:29 GMT
Question is, who would you like to see in the role vacated by DiCaprio? fuck it... just get Skarsgård again. outside of that... I dunno. Bale? Your main man Ben Foster could definitely bring the intensity. Or how about the star of Mel's last film goes waaaaay against type? I'm gonna throw Pilou Asbæk into the mix. I know his Euron Greyjoy wasn't the most beloved character in Game of Thrones, but I chalk that up more to the writing of that character than what the actor was bringing. But the scene where he slaughters the Sand Snakes -- just imagine that scene for two hours. Fuck it. Bring Coster-Waldau in there as well. Two rival Danes battling it out under Mad Mel's direction.
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