The Northman (2022)
Hooting, hollering and a revenge oath with an alarming follow-through.
Directed by Robert Eggers · Written by Sjón and Robert Eggers · Approximately 137 minutes
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård · Nicole Kidman · Claes Bang · Anya Taylor-Joy · Ethan Hawke
Owner-informed draft. Built from the Letterboxd note dated 27 February 2025, with source checks and provisional expanded analysis. Verdict and advisories remain proposals.
There is yelling in The Northman. Hooting and hollering, if you will. There are men for whom a reasonable response to almost any important development involves removing another man's head. Robert Eggers commits to the whole arrangement with such ferocious conviction that the ridiculous and the magnificent become close neighbours.
I liked this movie a lot. Its testosterone-laden excess is part of the attraction, and taking pleasure in the spectacle does not require pretending the lives inside it are remotely sensible ways to live.
Focus Features identifies Amleth as a Viking prince seeking revenge for his father's murder. The story gives him an oath early and then makes the fulfilment of that oath feel like an entire understanding of the universe.
Before you watch
Frequent severe bloody violence, mutilation, child killings, slavery and sexual assault. Rape is discussed; there is strong sexual content and nudity. A horse is decapitated and a dog's killing is implied. The BBFC advice corroborates these distinctions. A further revealing sexual context has a separate disclosure. The brutality is central to the world and the protagonist's place in it.
Specific content details (contains spoilers)
- A mother makes unwanted sexual advances towards her adult son, who rejects them.
A body becomes an argument
Alexander Skarsgård makes Amleth's strength look less like an accessory than a way of thinking. He advances, crouches, strains and attacks as though physical force might settle an uncertainty that conversation could only complicate.
The performance belongs to the film's ceremonial world. Animal imagery, collective exertion and ritual make violence something practised and inherited. Amleth's eventual revenge does not emerge from nowhere; a culture has supplied him with the terms in which a completed life might be measured.
The film is exhilarating when the staging gives that commitment a physical shape. Movement through a settlement or across an exposed landscape has weight and duration. The action feels attached to bodies that must traverse space, rather than to a montage announcing that a suitably heroic amount of fighting has occurred.
The supernatural is part of the weather
Eggers does not keep stopping to reassure us that a vision or ritual can be translated into modern psychological terms. The film gives its beliefs material presence. A prophecy can affect a decision as directly as an armed opponent.
That commitment makes the mythic register more persuasive. It would be hard to maintain the same force if every enormous gesture arrived with an embarrassed wink. The costumes, landscapes and ceremonial imagery help make the extremity feel internally consistent.
They also permit humour. There is something inherently excessive about a world that can make an already inconvenient family dispute require this much equipment and prophecy. The enjoyment comes from the intensity of the delivery, rather than from the film failing to notice its own scale.
The oath is easier than the people
Nicole Kidman's Gudrún complicates the familial story Amleth carries. Anya Taylor-Joy's Olga offers another relationship to the future, including the possibility that survival might matter more than completing an inherited script.
These competing perspectives keep the film from being only an illustrated promise of vengeance. They also have limited room inside Amleth's consuming purpose. The central performance and spectacle dominate; viewers seeking a more evenly developed ensemble may find the supporting lives compressed.
The treatment of enslaved people and sexual violence requires attention as well. Establishing a brutal historical setting does not make a protagonist's participation in that brutality disappear. Amleth's physical charisma is powerful, but charisma is not a certificate of innocence. The film is more interesting when admiration and unease are allowed to coexist.
Corny DNA
There is deliberate mythic extravagance, ritual weirdness and an enormous appetite for muscular spectacle. Calling that merely corny would miss the precision and commitment that make it enjoyable. The pleasure comes from the experience and the film's conviction. Numerical scores remain unassigned.
Verdict
Worth watching — proposed. A recommendation for its physical conviction, production design and willingness to inhabit its mythic register. The caveats are severe violence and sexual-assault material, an all-consuming central purpose and supporting characters with less room to develop. If the hooting and hollering sounds promising, the film has plenty to offer. It is not shy about following through.
Spoilers from here
Reveal the ending and detailed analysis
Two naked men have taken the family dispute to a volcano
Amleth leaves Olga and returns to finish the revenge. His final duel with Fjölnir takes place naked beside volcanic fire; they deal each other fatal wounds. Amleth's dying vision joins Olga and the children with the promise of Valhalla. The scene account corroborates the outcome.
Two buck-naked would-be alpha males fighting amid actual fire and brimstone: the film has committed to an extraordinary level of hooting and hollering. The film has taken the male revenge fantasy to an almost operatic extreme. Its commitment is a substantial part of why the ending is enjoyable.
The spectacle also completes a more troubling pattern. Amleth has encountered a possible life beyond the oath and returns to the terms that have defined him since childhood. The final vision can affirm his fulfilment within the film's mythic world while leaving a modern viewer to ask what that fulfilment has cost.
Those responses need not cancel each other. The ending can be magnificent, absurd, emotionally satisfying and an alarming example of what happens when a man mistakes the only story he knows for the only future available.
Sources
- Owner's Letterboxd note, watched 27 February 2025; supplied directly and preserved verbatim in the editorial archive.
- Focus Features: premise, principal cast and screenplay credits.
- BBFC: 137-minute cinema presentation and detailed content distinctions.
- Scene corroboration; contains spoilers.
The draft does not turn the owner's enjoyment into a claim that the film's violence is admirable conduct.