In the weeks that have followed its release, Robert Eggers’ third film The Northman has emerged as unintentionally divisive. Following the critical acclaim received by his first two horror films – 2015’s The Witch and 2019’s The Lighthouse – the historical Viking epic was expected to garner the same. And in terms of pure craft, it has. The Northman is as well produced, directed and acted as films can be these days. But unlike Eggers’ preceding films, it is perhaps slightly different, though not necessarily for the worse.
Whiteness and violence
The main points of contention around The Northman focus on two broad aspects. The film, on the one hand, has been both criticised by a certain camp and well-received by the opposing one for being ‘unashamedly white’ – something that many contemporary culture critics, especially in the West, do not appreciate these days. Eggers, while defending his choice, evoked his intention to depict the Viking world in a way that is as historically accurate as possible. But in an age where a particular idea regarding ‘representation’ in media trumps all, the question of historical accuracy becomes problematic in itself for many.
Conversely, the choice to film a Viking epic with a predominantly white cast has won The Northman an audience that is not as reflective as Eggers and co-writer Sjón had perhaps hoped. The Western (read American) youthful alt-right has championed the film for this unashamed whiteness, leading to further criticism from the left about the ‘dangers of narrative possibilities’. We live in the age of weaponised narratives everywhere it seems.
There is the possibility that everyone is overreacting. Western media is going through a Viking renaissance these days. From Marvel’s Thor to series like Vikings and The Last Kingdom, to video games like God of War and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it is no surprise that a younger audience has developed a taste for all things ancient Norse. Then again all pop media enjoys a renaissance of certain genres and archetypes, from cowboys and gladiators to muscle-bound action heroes and superheroes (forgive me if the list sounds predominantly male-oriented). We presently have our own Ottoman fascination at home. But let us move on.
The other point of contention concerns the violence depicted in The Northman. While its polished cinematography and meticulous mise-en-scène suggest ‘award-bait’ cinema, the story itself is simply a revenge tale, albeit not a straightforward one, in my opinion at least. Still, the blood and revenge, the focus on ‘masculine rage’ has naturally prompted concerns by some that the movie celebrates ‘toxic masculinity’. I disagree that it celebrates anything.
The Hamlet connection
The criticism surrounding the violence shown in The Northman rests on a rather straightforward reading of the film. When seen as a gratuitous revenge tale, the violence no doubt appears gratuitous as well. But Eggers leaves for us several clues that suggest The Northman is anything but. By the end, in fact, the movie subverts the device of revenge along with notions of fate, duty and male honour that the story explores.
In the various takes that have been written about the film, much attention has been given to its connection with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But The Northman is nowhere near even a loose adaption of the play. Rather, it takes inspiration from the same mythical figure that is said to have trickled down via various stories and other plays to the Shakespearian classic – that of the Scandinavian prince Amleth.
Hamlet, as is widely known, is considered a rather philosophical play. The titular character’s soliloquys explore themes that would later inspire and in retrospect be identified as part of existentialism. Though not in an as overt a manner as the play, The Northman too pits existentialist ideas against the ancient Norse idea of an inescapable fate. Whether the Norns who weave the threads of fate have doomed The Northman’s Amleth to exact revenge for his father’s murder or not, would Amleth’s own perceived guilt and shame allow him to be free? Haunted by his father’s ghost in manner of speaking, would he find peace with himself without carrying out his father’s dying instruction?
But make no mistake. The world depicted in The Northman is definitely a supernatural one. Divine interference and magic very much exist in the world shown to us on screen, paying a form of homage to another enduring debate about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Within the play, the question of King Hamlet’s ghost has invited different readings. A certain school of thought suggests we take it as matter of fact as the characters in the play supposedly do, without letting our scientific worldview cloud it.
Women and ‘frailty’
One sign of an enduring classic is the amount of clichés it leaves for the generations that follow to suffer. From ‘to be or not to be’ to ‘what a piece of work man is’, Hamlet has left us with several memorable lines that have been repeated to ad nauseam to the point of misunderstanding. ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’, that classic of Pakistan’s school debate competitions, is one of them.
It was Sigmund Freud who used Hamlet’s anguish at his mother’s perceived lack of grief at his father and her husband’s death to illustrate the character’s Oedipal jealousy. But even setting aside Freud’s psychosexual reading, it has been long debated as to whether Gertrude’s apparent ‘fickleness’, or frailty in Hamlet’s own words, hinted at some complicity on her part in her husband’s death.
In The Northman, as Amleth, then just a child, escapes his uncle’s band of warriors following his father’s murder, he repeats to himself: “I will avenge you, father… I will save you, mother… I will kill you, Fjölnir.” Reminded of his fate as an adult and guided by providence to his uncle’s new abode, Amleth sets out to do just that.
But when he finally attempts to save his mother Gudrún, she reveals to him that she is saved already – at least until Amleth returned for her. Her back story reveals the ugliness that women suffered and that often would have been brushed aside in ancient legends, heroic tales and histories recorded by the conquerors. In his childhood memories, Amleth remembers her mother as a princess from Brittany who his father fell in love with in true fairy tale fashion. But Gudrún really was a slave Amleth’s father took for himself. Amleth himself, she reveals to him, was forced on to her. There was no love, at least not in this relationship.
Gudrún also reveals that Amleth’s uncle Fjölnir saved her from her cruel husband out of actual affection. But she is no mere damsel, either. The murder of her husband King Aurvandill took place at her own insistence. Not only that, Gudrún sanctioned Amleth’s own attempted killing in order to escape the possibility of the dead king’s vengeance revisiting her.
The Northman’s writers, in a further homage to the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet, have Gudrún attempt to seduce Amleth in a bid to save herself and her other son not borne out of sexual violence. As Amleth recoils in horror and retreats, viewers are left to dwell on medieval realities for women. As one historian has put it, the world of the ancient Norse, despite all romanticism, was a deeply violent world filled with instances of human sacrifice and ritual sexual violence. For men and women especially, eking out survival in the face of cruelty and indifference, could love be any more than a fanciful tale?
Turning revenge on its head
At a certain point in the story, Amleth does eschew revenge in order to seek peace and start a family of his own far from his uncle’s shores. As he attempts to escape with his paramour – a slave girl he collaborates with and later frees – he is confronted by the inescapable cycle of violence he has become part of. His own fears mirror that of his mother’s when she had sanctioned his killing. Violence done for justified or unjustified reasons will come back to haunt you in this bleak world.
Amleth returns to his uncle’s farmstead and unleashes hel. The sequence proceeds as one would expect, portraying the protagonist as an invincible force of nature, but only up to a particular extent. As he looks for his uncle, he finds himself ambushed by his mother and half-sibling. Unwittingly killing the two of them, Amleth is then frozen in horror. Is he the hero or the monster? When Fjölnir walks upon him, neither man attacks each other. As his uncle drags the bodies of his son and Gudrún away, he issues a challenge. “I will see you at the gates of Hel.”
Suddenly, Fjölnir has as much reason to seek revenge as Amleth. Perhaps we were misguided on who was right and who was wrong?
Critics who argue that The Northman celebrates and glorifies violence may have a point. But the argument applies purely to the visual layer of the film. Parsing through the subtext, we find a tale that asks us to meditate. When is violence justified? Is it ever? Are we humans bound by fate and doomed to go through the motions? Or do we have the agency to step off what we think is a pre-ordained path at any point we want? We may be utterly convinced our actions are just and rightful, but what do they look like from the other end?
Perhaps, as far as media products are concerned, we should challenge ourselves to look beyond straightforward readings. We may find there is always more than meets the eye.