The Northman
It’s basically Conan
The Northman (2022)
4 / 5
I’m not kidding. It opens with a gruff shaman-narrative introducing the tale of the hero. The hero’s father is killed, robbing him of his tribe. He learns to be a powerful warrior. He eventually learns the location of the man who killed his father, and sets out on a revenge quest. He bangs a witch. He finds a magic sword (which he liberates from the hands of a long-dead king whose helmeted skull bows in defeat just so, a moment that reminds us that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). He is discovered, tortured, and rescued so he can participate in a final (extremely graphic) showdown in pursuit of brutal justice. Everything is played completely straight, and every cast member is taking the whole thing dead-seriously. And so forth. It’s basically the 1982 Conan movie but with Vikings. If that’s your thing (and it’s certainly mine) you’re going to find a lot to enjoy here.
In fact, it’s sufficiently Conan-esque that at first blush I questioned the need to set it in the 9th-century North Atlantic at all. This could easily have been another tale of the Hyborean Age, with a Vanir hero doing barbarian stuff. In fairness, though, at that point the Conan-cribbing would be so obvious that the movie could be accused of being a ripoff, or even a “whitewashing” soft reboot of the Conan character. So I can understand the desire to keep this narrative set closer to real history.
It also allows the now-trademark bleak palette and unrelentingly grim moodiness of Robert Eggers’s filmmaking style to come to bear here without suffering from undue comparison to John Milius’s Nietzschean philosophizing, even if that opens it to other, admittedly valid, criticisms. Basically Conan this may be, but it’s Conan filtered through the grimy, ugly, verite of 2015’s The Witch. In fact, sitting a moment as the credits quietly rolled, it occurred to me that Anya Taylor-Joy’s magical Rus chick, Olga, could totally be a forgotten ancestor to Anya Taylor-Joy’s abandon-all-hope Puritan outcast, Thomasin. It’s a tasty coincidence, if a really dark one. In fact, “tasty but dark” probably sums up this whole film.
4 stars of 5: I dug it, and might watch it again with Conan fans specifically.