It wasn’t quite as good as The Lighthouse but still a very enjoyable historical action film. The cinematography was amazing, every frame looked like a metal album cover. They also didn’t sugar coat the Vikings, showing rather vividly the fucked up shit they’d do, cw: there’s a scene I’m fairly sure is inspired by “Come and See” and it’s not fun to watch.
Weirdly I feel like I would have enjoyed the film better if instead of setting it in a historical setting they had just gone pure fantasy. The movie plays pretty lose with realism and honestly at times felt more like an art house adaptation of Conan the Barbarian, which I feel like I would have enjoyed even more.
Fucking dude bro in the theater, "fuck yeah dude" after every death. So annoying. I can see why fascists like this shit, they're both death cults.
Yeah I'm not going to be surprised when fash glob onto this, I think Eggers himself admitted this was going to be a problem.
spoiler
Which sucks cuz a big part of the main characters arc is him realizing how fucked up this all is, and that he himself is a byproduct of sexual slavery, he was just too broken and detached before to realize it all, which I think is part of his decision in the end to sacrifice himself.
Pretty sure he said that he wanted to make a movie that would reclaim some of this from white supremacists but indeed white supremacists are just stupid as hell so doubt they'll get the message.
Cool movie. I can't believe I didn't recognise that it was basically just hamlet. Amleth is an anagram of Hamlet even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amleth
Amleth (Latinized Amlethus, Old Icelandic Amlóði) is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Yeah I didn't realize that till after the movie was over, it's just viking hamlet.
Apparently they put a ton of effort into remaining historically accurate, with all the sets and everything.
Normally gore doesnt shock me but this movie had two moments that made me nearly blurt out "oh shit" in the theater. Eggers is a good director
also
My partner thought the romance sucked and that they had 0 chemistry, which I agree with honestly. Although now that i think abt it maybe its because we view everything through the lens of an emotionally blunted viking dude
And willem dafoe puts in a great performance as always even as a side character. I will never not enjoy watching him
Dafoe is always amazing. I want a shriveled Dafoe head I can ask about the future
Not a history buff so i wouldnt know, in any case it doesnt feel set up well
We need more Conan movies. It's the best of the problematic early 20th century fantasy products. Like, it actually has female protagonists who do things. It also has pretty cringe depictions of "picts" who are just native American expies. Can it be salvaged? Time will tell.
I agree. Just saw it. Lighthouse is a masterpiece and so this being not quite as good isn't a condemnation at all.
Definitely didn't make being a Viking just a cool adventure time. Like most they were brutal and lived brutal and in the end absolutely everyone is fucked.
But it's a beautiful film and the performances all around were good. Weirdly though I feel the smaller characters were better performed than the main.
Also I'm curious which scene was inspired by come and see
Vikings get all the media representation but like 90+% of early medieval northern Europeans never viked anything and were just boring stay at home farmers and fishermen.
I thought it was dreadfully dull, I did like the realism they put behind the Viking culture of brutal destruction and death worship.
I immediately caught on that it was a Hamlet expy, with the anagram of Amleth to his father, the king, being killed by his uncle and married to the mother.
The whole movie reminded me of this reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/r8upda/the_poverty_of_revenge_cultural_and_personal/
It was on Vinland Saga, highlighting the futility and emptiness of vengeance.
Amleth eventually met his own oblivion through his need to destroy, and fulfilled his own death wish with a changed motive of self-sacrifice to preserve his love Olga and their children, rather than revenge. Revenge came secondary after Olga melted Amleth's frozone heart.
