Hi! You’re reading an entry in the Jscars 2022, a series on my favorite movies of the year 2022. Go to my profile to view the previous entries!
“I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.”
Revenge is something that a lot of stories try to tackle, but I feel that most of the time they don’t quite land. Hamfisted messages about how getting revenge won’t satisfy you or how a quest for revenge will just end up hurting those around you have been done to death at this point, and so if you really want your story to explore the topic of revenge, it has to be willing to actually do something fresh. And when I heard Robert Eggers, director of The Lighthouse was making a Viking revenge movie with names like Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman and even Björk on the cast, I knew something fresh was exactly what I was going to get.
Even before Amleth watches his father’s death occur in front of him, his journey of transformation begins. In an intense and nauseating ceremony, he is transformed into a “beast” so that he may one day be a ruthless ruler. But after barely escaping the kingdom with his life after invaders seize it, this change truly begins to manifest itself. He finds himself consumed by hate for Fjölnir, the man who took over his father’s kingdom. And this hate manifests itself in the way he views his own life and the lives of others, stopping at nothing and willing to commit any evil act it takes if it means fulfilling his promise to avenge his father. It could be a pretty basic story of revenge being all-consuming and poisonous, but when it’s revealed that Amleth’s father wasn’t actually as good of a man as he thought it was, some more interesting ideas begin being explored. Notably, multiple female characters lament the fact that they are unable to change anything about the endless cycle of evil acts by men begetting more evil acts by other men. It’s not simply a story about revenge, it’s about how these acts are driven by our ideas of masculinity and reinforced by “warrior cultures” such as that of the Vikings.
But of course, none of this would be possible if the cast wasn’t able to sell it all as well as they do. While the three cast members I was most excited for were not in the movie for very long (Björk’s barely in it for a minute), they still deliver great performances, with one particular scene by Nicole Kidman being a standout in conveying the agony felt by women in this world. But Anya-Taylor Joy and Alexander Skarsgård deliver two of the best performances of all of 2022 here, as their dynamic shifts in terms of who holds the most power and Taylor-Joy’s Olga tries as hard as she can to change the fate of man and stop the revenge quest, while Amleth struggles to break out of the role fate has assigned for him.
In the world of The Northman, revenge is not simply an act one individual chooses to perform. It’s a way of life that has been forced upon those unlucky enough to live in its society, either as the men performing the act itself or the women forced to bear witness. No matter how much land is conquered or foes are killed, there is still the stench of “a true man’s duty” permeating every facet of life. Let us sit here and be thankful we don’t live in such a world where the expectations of masculinity are so toxic. What a nightmare that would be.