Navigating the leap from his previous instant cult films on a modest budget to this $ 90 million large-scale bloodbath for Focus Features, Eggers is nothing but fearless. Benefiting again from the very detailed work of production designer Craig Lathrop and client Linda Muir, the director brings to mind a fascinating, highly evocative atmosphere that takes us back to the early 10th century, a dark and incredibly violent past in which the human savagery and the supernatural coexist.
The North
The bottom line Wild elementary, activated and without articulation.
The erroneous dialogue in the screenplay written by Eggers with the Icelandic novelist and poet Sjón (Lamb) often provokes laughter and the Scandinavian accents that come out of the mouths of actors like Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke are in danger of a recurrence of a House of Gucci injury. It is a boldly heartbreaking movie that continues to threaten to go to some strange land where Game of Thrones meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And that is before Björk escapes as a racist witch, equipped with wicker, shells and beads. But the imposing energy of the North holds you hostage, and Prince Hamlet is the hunting, heroically vindictive killing machine with a heart born to play Scarsgard. His longtime fans will accept him for stepping into the cultural roots of True Blood’s ancient vampire, Eric Northman, as well. The script is based on both Scandinavian myths and Icelandic family stories, based on the Scandinavian legend of Hamlet that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The prologue takes place in the imaginary island kingdom of the North Atlantic Hrafnsey, where King Aurvandil (Hawke), also known as War-Raven, arrives home with a lot of fanfares. A wound to the stomach caused by an enemy in battle pushes him to prepare 10-year-old Hamlet (Oscar Novak) to take the throne, despite Queen Gudrun (Kidman) ‘s objections that their son is just a boy. Hamlet’s transcendental initiation involves crawling on all fours with his father, howling like wolves. Also belching, farting, swinging and accessing disturbing visions through the Aurvandil wound. As soon as Hamlet vows to avenge his father if he dies from the sword of an enemy, the boy will witness his murder at the hands of his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), whose horror with the queen has already been joked by the shamanic fool of the yard. Heimir (Willem Dafoe). “Bring me the boy’s head,” Fjölnir tells his men, accompanied by the strings and drum beats of Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough for hard driving. But Hamlet, after watching the massacre of male villagers, the abduction of women and the Queen falling on Fiolnir’s shoulder and screaming, escapes by boat. He vows to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father. Decades later, Amleth has transformed into a muscular man who exploits the spirit of both a wolf and a bear. The rage is personified, traveling to the Land of Russia with a herd of Viking raiders who apparently never encountered a Slavic settlement they could not plunder. But Björk’s host recognizes him as the lost prince and reminds him of his fate. Learning that Fjölnir had been expelled from the kingdom who had been usurped and taken refuge in a remote rural community in Iceland, Amleth embarked on a slave who headed there to provide labor. Anya Taylor-Joy plays a passenger who knows a good connection when she sees it. “I am the Olga of the Birch Forest,” she says in an introductory statement, adding that while he has the power to break men’s bones, she has the cunning to break their minds. The two take on the Fjölnir farm, where Olga gradually gains Amleth’s trust and reveals his plan to kill his uncle and save his mother, who thinks she pretends to love her abductor for the sake of her little son. (Elliott Rose). Eggers films share a charm with the magical properties of animals – a goat in the Witch (I love you, Black Philip), a cursed gull in the lighthouse. The occult fauna this time is wolves and crows, with the first leading Hamlet to find a huge dead sword, known as The Night Blade. the latter are busy with their beaks when they torture him and tie him slowly in the game. The narrative accelerates as Hamlet gets closer to his goal, causing massacres on his uncle’s men and sparking fear of a “troubled spirit” among them. The plot becomes more frantic although it remains clear, even if there are one or two arches that almost made me scream like a wolf. Gudrun’s reunion with her long-dead son should have been a moment of intense drama. But it’s hard not to laugh when Kidman, wearing Daryl Hanna’s old frizzy hair from Splash and pronounced Natasha Fatale, greets a mighty silver blade around her neck with “Your Sword is Long” before dealing with anyone incest flirting. When Fjölnir suffers a painful loss and screams, “What’s wrong with that?” Gudrun glances at him with wide-open eyes and says “Fersso!” as if she were a Scandinavian Austin Powers. The romance between Hamlet and Olga also has time to blossom during all of this, with a break after intercourse in the woods just outside John Boorman’s Excalibur. There is also an intermediate on a flying horse riding a fiery Valkyrie (Ineta Sliuzaite). But even when Hamlet ensures the continuation of his bloodline, his deadly rendezvous with Uncle Fiolnir at the “gates of hell” remains. This would be the mouth of an active volcano, where they fight naked, as any self-respecting medieval warrior would do, even though their digitally erased penises make them look like Ken dolls. I may be wrong, but their sleek inguinal countries look more like lava in the studio than freshness on the part of the actors or a director who intends to present a world hovering between life and legend throughout. the greatness. The film was shot by Eggers regular’s DP Jarin Blaschke, with a restless push and a relief for dramatic landscapes plagued by rain, wind, snow and ice, or covered in mud and ash. The choreography of the battle scenes – both directing and shooting, in large, uninterrupted shots – is shocking. Also, the dense design of the sound is completely wrapped, with instruments of the Viking era, such as the birch horn and the bone flute, to be heard alongside the thunderous elements and the chaos of battle. The North is certainly a lot of movies, and while its hysterical intensity sometimes turns into excessive nonsense, it is at the same time unbridled and fascinating in depicting a culture dominated by cycles of violence. Eggers’ coherence of vision is admirable, as is the commitment of his collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera. Skarsgård, who has been working for more than a decade to develop a film that has its roots in his childhood love for Viking myth and tradition, has never been wilder or more physically imposing. Taylor-Joy, who started in The Witch, cheats as Olga knits baskets and plots disaster. (Her parents from that previous film, Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson, are also appearing.) Kidman is a jerk, juggling fire and ice in an enjoyable turn. And if one does not give Bang as Bond’s enemy or any other suitably elevated thug soon, then Hollywood just does not matter. Whether you buy Egers’s crazy epic, pick up his blood-soaked magic, or roll your eyes at his exaggerations, the film makes you appreciate how rarely we see a big, noisy, quarrelsome show these days that is not based on comics. -Book of superheroes and villains, but in a culturally specific story. In other words, a work of bold imagination, not another branch of a familiar IP. That alone deserves respect.
