Digging it so far. Love me a bunch of shirtless dudes tripping balls.
Great film if you want to be transported back in time not just visually but the entire perspective. Just great. Same read I love VVitch and the Lighthouse. Absolutely just take you to a totally new perspective. Or an old perspective I suppose.
Plus in two of em Willem Dafoe is a dog for a minute so I'll watch anytime
Movie is fucking awesome. Immerse yourself in it, qell actually it looks like you finished it - what did you think?
Really enjoyed it. I love that the director hints that the spiritual and mythological elements are just the characters tripping balls. Also, loved that the more spiritual elements form a nice contrast between the reality of what the character is doing and living through with his mythology of himself.
Yeah the movie really was amazing, I left the theater stunned. Really felt like I had been on a journey lol. Also
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That fight scene against the draugr was also just incredible.
Having just read the Fellowship of the Ring, I'm loving anything with barrows.
I would say that the magic pretty firmly falls in the magic realism category. As in, it doesn't matter if it's "real" or not because it's presented as real and the characters interpret it that way. Or I'm still misunderstanding magical realism.
I'm not sure, I think there were enough hints in the film that the mythical aspects weren't real that I feel it's meant to be a commentary on the characters and their intentions and mental states, rather than a part of the world.
Edit: i'm too drunk to figure out spoilers
::: Weren't the people during the night raid like freaking out due to magical psychosis? I dunno again I think the purpose of magical realism isn't to pinpoint if it's real or not, but instead how it makes sense to the characters.
:::
I honestly couldn’t get into it :ohnoes: I just do not vibe with that director’s style. I didn’t like The VVitch, and I turned off The Lighthouse after 30 minutes.
My favorite moments of The Northman:
spoiler
Willem DaFoe farting in a man’s face
Our hero helping shepherd children into a building that is then set on fire - The hero never repents for this in any way
After escaping with his lover on a boat, she tells him that she’s pregnant. Immediately upon hearing this, our hero decides instead of staying with her to raise their child, to dive off the boat and return to his revenge quest where he then dies.
Also the movie is just fucking Hamlet again
not sure if you are being ironic but i genuinely enjoyed that the main character was unrepentant/unbothered about the shitty things. not everything needs to be a morality tale and it made it seem more realistic
Not being ironic, I find it hard to root for a character who commits atrocities. Why would I want Hamlet/Simba/Amleth to win over Claudius/Scar/Fjolnir when I’ve seen the hero do more evil shit than the villain?
Edit: I’m fucking drunk, and put Scar as both the uncle and nephew of this conflict
I'm not sure you're necessarily expected to root for a tragic hero. Macbeth is the other example that comes to mind, he was kind of a bastard throughout the story as well.
Maybe it’s just a personal preference, I guess I just don’t really like that archetype. I generally don’t like Macbeth or it’s retellings. Hamlet I do usually like though, just not The Northman.
I’m okay with a reluctant hero, and even one who was a monster, but I want their hero’s journey to include repentance for their past and a goal to do better in the future
Throne of Blood kicks ass though, that final scene is crazy
In case you haven't seen it, you might like Ran. It's essentially king lear, but the retired king in this case is forced to repeatedly come face-to-face with the atrocities he's committed through his reign. Tbh I don't remember how much that was a part of the original King Lear, only time I've read the play was as a high school senior and I kinda tuned out the second I got my college acceptance.
yeah, almost like people from a thousand years ago had different morals and values or something.
sure but that doesn’t necessarily make for a film I want to watch
a thousand years ago people didn’t believe in germ theory either, and im not lining up to see a movie about the ghosts that make people sick through the water
im not lining up to see a movie about the ghosts that make people sick through the water
I think that's a pretty accurate dividing line
In contrast, for me, that premise sounds interesting, reminds me a bit of Mushishi
Tbqh I think I would actually line up to see a movie about ghosts that make people sick through water, I was just trying to come up with an example that would be funny
Fair enough that was pretty brutal but
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He didn't return to his revenge quest for revenge at that point, he returned to end the blood feud and protect his kids
But
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There was no reason to be afraid of that! His uncle was basically banished to a god forsaken island where he would never be heard from again and had no title! At least in most Hamlet stories he has to kill the uncle to reclaim the title! In the Northman Scar/Fjolnir is just some asshole living in Iceland with a handful of slaves. Simba/Amleth sends his wife to go find his apparently royal and unknown family while he goes to kill the random dipshit that is his uncle. His uncle wasn’t a threat anymore he could’ve just left!!!
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Probably could have just left, yeah. But also remember that this is using some ancient viking logic, and it's also basically an epic poem that inspired Hamlet. No way he was ever just gonna leave, it was always gonna end with dude having an epic battle on a volcano lol.
This. Blood Feuds were intergenerational affairs. Sometimes there would be a decade or two or more between major instances of bloodshed. If you left anyone from the other family alive they might come back with relatives to kill your grandkids.
I loved the movie. Funny thing though, I follow this British academic/reenactor on YouTube, and he also liked the movie. He especially liked it because the movie goes out of its way to replicate material and social culture of the Viking Age in a way that, according to him, no other movie or TV show has done. But his biggest complaint was that there was too much violence. And I was reading through the comment section of his Northman review video, and most of them were echoing that complaint.
What's funny about that is that there honestly wasn't as much violence as I thought there would be. It's a violent film, but I've seen far more violent films. I'm not sure if it was even as violent as your average episode of Game of Thrones. You could have doubled the amount of violence in the same runtime and I probably wouldn't notice. I'm not sure if that's an American vs. Brit thing or if it's just that my personal tastes run towards hyperviolence.
Link to the review video for anyone curious. Fair warning though, it's half an hour long.
I loved it. As somebody who has spent some time reading papers and books about Norse medieval practices and beliefs, they did their research. The campfire scene espcially struck true., singing rituals about beasts breaking free of men's skin. IIRC they had a historian specialist as a consultant.
