Warning: This put up comprises large spoilers for The Northman
Forty years in the past, Conan the Barbarian slashed his means into film theaters, blowing the minds of a complete technology of children within the course of. A kind of youngsters was Robert Eggers, who was born the yr after John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1982 career-defining collaboration premiered, however grew up watching the movie again and again at house. “I watched Conan a billion occasions after I was a child,” says the filmmaker behind cult favorites like The Witch and The Lighthouse. “It felt like a residing, respiratory world, and at that age, that is superior.”
Flash-forward 4 many years, and Eggers has made a swords-and-sorcery epic that stands toe-to-toe with Conan. His new movie, The Northman, stars Alexandar Skarsgård as Amleth, a Viking warrior who — very similar to his barbaric cinematic ancestor — watches his beloved father minimize down in his prime and vows bloody vengeance on the killer: his personal uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang). “There’s lots of Conan on this film,” Eggers admits with amusing, including that he made a degree of not rewatching Milius’s film throughout The Northman‘s prolonged writing and pre-production course of. “When Fjölnir takes off his helmet in The Northman, that is clearly James Earl Jones taking off his helmet in Conan. There are many unintended nods simply because I watched it a lot.”
Despite the fact that Conan is an apparent touchstone for The Northman, Amleth slashes his personal distinct path as a revenge-driven swordsman. Based mostly on the identical medieval Icelandic legend that impressed William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the story follows the dethroned prince as he returns to his tribe in disguise and carries out his revenge in opposition to Fjölnir, who has since married his mom, Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). A stickler for historic accuracy, Eggers labored carefully with high Viking specialists to make sure an genuine immersive expertise in that long-lost tradition. However as in his earlier films, he additionally leaves the door open to the spirit world, mixing grounded motion and drama with fantastical sights and sounds straight out of the myths of that point. It is a potent mixture that Eggers has no plans to desert anytime quickly.
That is additionally the explanation he cites for why he’d by no means direct an precise Conan film — together with the legendary King Conan undertaking that Milius and Schwarzenegger have needed to make for years. (Milius suffered a debilitating stroke in 2010.) “It is simply not for me,” he says when requested if he’d settle for Conan’s Crown of Iron if Schwarzenegger signed off. “I could not use my method: I might must invent issues, which I do not love to do.”
With The Northman enjoying in theaters now, Eggers shares spoiler-filled tales behind a number of the movie’s most memorable scenes, together with a Revenge of the Sith-like duel between Amleth and Fjölnir and a jaw-dropping revelation about Kidman’s character that has left preview audiences gasping and cheering.
Björk’s again … in black (metallic)
The Icelandic singer — and swan fanatic — hasn’t appeared in a serious narrative function since Lars von Trier’s divisive 2001 musical, Dancer within the Darkish. (She did collaborate along with her former companion, Matthew Barney, on the 2005 experimental movie, Drawing Restraint 9.) However Eggers says that tempting her out of her unofficial retirement proved to be easy. “One of many movie’s composers, Robin Carolan, is a good friend of mine and has additionally collaborated with Björk, so he launched me to her,” he says. “After which Björk launched me to her good friend, Icelandic writer Sjón, who grew to become my co-writer. So it was a familial environment for her to be part of.”
Eggers solid Björk as a Seeress who prophesies Amleth’s highway to reaching vengeance in opposition to his uncle after he takes half in a Viking raid on her village. She solely seems in a single scene, and the director says that he resisted any urge to reinforce her function. “I suppose she might seem in a imaginative and prescient or one thing, like a lifeless Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he muses, including that solely a line or two of her sequence ended up on the slicing room flooring. “However I believe she features nicely the place she is. She’s the Seeress of that village and that is the place she belongs.”
Björk additionally made her return to the massive display a household affair: Her daughter, Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney, has a small function as one of many slaves that toils on Fjölnir’s land and sings a duet with Danish musician, Jonas Lorentzen. She additionally coached her mom throughout her large scene. “Sometimes I might give Björk some route and she or he would take a look at me as if my head was the wrong way up,” he remembers, laughing. “Doa would relate one thing to her in Icelandic, after which Bjork would say to me, ‘Oh, okay: extra black metallic. I bought it.'”
Enjoying hen
The aforementioned village raid is the centerpiece sequence of The Northman and one in every of two scenes within the film that Eggers says he is proudest of pulling off. Staged as a single take with one digicam — though there are hidden cuts alongside the best way — the raid options a number of the most intricate motion choreography and digicam motion this aspect of Alfonso Cuarón’s landmark 2006 sci-fi drama, Youngsters of Males, which is justly well-known for its lengthy takes. (Cuarón is a longtime champion of Eggers’s work and is thanked in The Northman‘s credit.)
“I believe that it turns into extra immersive to the viewers, whether or not they perceive the movie making strategies or not,” Eggers says of why he favors lengthy takes in his films. “In fact it is nonetheless artifice, however it ought to really feel rather a lot much less like artifice. There’s nothing improper with capturing with a number of cameras, however within the worst model of that stuff you may’t observe what’s occurring. I am attempting to inform a narrative, not simply have a bunch of photographs conflict collectively to be thrilling.”
In fact, Eggers’s method additionally means an extended capturing time. The raid sequence took 4 days to finish, and the director says that a number of takes had been typically ruined by the identical culprits: chickens. “We wasted days on these chickens, and getting them to fly into the shot on the proper time,” he says of his feathered nemeses. “It was troublesome to government, however it was additionally enjoyable and exhilarating. It took an incredible quantity of planning and collaboration, and we tried to seek out the pitfalls as we deliberate it. So we had been undoubtedly ready.”
Huge little fact bombs
The final time we noticed Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård share a kiss onscreen, they had been enjoying a married couple with severe emotional baggage within the HBO drama, Huge Little Lies. Once they lock lips in The Northman, it is as mom and son — a dynamic that is even creepier than their earlier pairing. And Eggers says that the duo knew they had been enjoying on the popular culture impression left by Huge Little Lies. “We had been consciously exploiting that. Whenever you’re working with stars, the viewers is conscious of their baggage, so that you want to pay attention to it, too, and know what it should carry to the story you are telling.”
It must be famous that Gudrún’s kiss is not motherly: quite, she’s attempting to seduce her son within the hopes of hijacking his vengeance. For years, Amleth has assumed that his mom was Fjölnir’s prisoner, however it seems that she satisfied his uncle to slay her former husband — who forcibly took her for his spouse and queen when she was a slave. Worse nonetheless, she gave permission for Fjölnir’s males to kill Amleth as nicely, already intending to begin a brand new household with the brand new king. As her fact bomb detonates in her son’s thoughts, Gudrún immediately transforms from the film’s Gertrude into its Woman Macbeth and Kidman makes a meal out of the scene.
“That is the show-stopping performing scene,” Eggers says, revealing that it is the different scene he is proudest of within the movie. “It was additionally actually satisfying after doing all these grueling motion sequences to dig into some advanced scene work with nice actors and plot turns at each second. I did not watch the movie in the course of the London premiere, however I perceive that Gudrún’s kiss bought an extremely vocal response from a often silent British viewers, in order that’s cool.”
He has the excessive floor
Amleth’s journey in the end ends on the solely place it might: the Gates of Hel aka Mount Hekla, an energetic volcano that has erupted 20 occasions over the centuries, most not too long ago in 2000. Hekla’s fires are definitely flowing as Amleth and Fjölnir face off in a unadorned duel to the loss of life, and watching these warriors cross swords amidst rivers of lava, it will be laborious for some moviegoers not to consider the climactic Jedi battle in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith the place Obi-Wan Kenobi makes his final stand in opposition to former pupil, Anakin Skywalker on the planet Mustafar.
Requested whether or not there are any behind the scenes outtakes of Skarsgård boasting about having the excessive floor, Eggers simply smiles. “I do know there was a sword combat in Revenge of the Sith with lava, however I do not know if I even noticed that film,” he admits. “I additionally know that it seems to be rather a lot just like the final combat from The Lion King! It is truthful to ask, as a result of I might have mentioned, ‘Yeah, a-ha!’ However I am only a snobby cineaste.”
Here is a technique that the Gates of Hel and Mustafar are related: Each had been dropped at life with digital results, though Eggers says that he averted going full greenscreen. “It was very grounded, as a result of we had a sensible set,” he explains. “We shot that in a quarry that we dressed with black earth to make it look extra like Hekla. Each single flame on display is sensible, the falling ash is sensible and the overwhelming majority of the floating embers are sensible.”
“The lava is CGI, however we constructed these streams out of LED lights, which we programmed to maneuver,” he continues. “So we had this interactive lighting that is transferring like lava after which our VFX coordinator went to a current eruption in Iceland and photographed all this documentary footage to make use of as reference for the digital artists. We did use CG for a number of the smoke and to ensure we had been hiding the actors’s genitals, however much more of it’s sensible than you’d anticipate.”
Subsequent cease, Valhalla
By the ultimate scene of The Northman, Amleth has slain his uncle and traveled from the Gates of Hel to the Gates of Valhalla — born aloft on the winged horse of a Valkyrie. However the movie stops simply in need of crossing over the brink from life to loss of life, and Eggers says he by no means had any intention of going additional. If something, he would have made do with much less. “Even the quantity of Valhalla, Valkyries, and undead Vikings we see within the movie is rather a lot for my art-house indie tastes,” he admits. “I believe we walked the road, however it was rather a lot for me.”
With that in thoughts, it isn’t shocking that Eggers would not have any plans to revisit The Northman in a Shut Encounters of the Third Sort-style particular version the place he takes viewers “contained in the Mothership” because it had been. He additionally lays to remainder of doing a director’s minimize of the movie after reviews surfaced that he and the studio, Focus Options, had totally different visions for the theatrical model within the modifying room. “I used to be exploring doing an prolonged minimize — not a director’s minimize — for the Blu-ray, however my editor and I discovered that we most well-liked simply to have deleted scenes. It is a means of claiming: ‘These are good scenes, however they do not make a greater movie.'”
Talking of the fabric that was excised, Eggers says that a lot of it concerned deeper cuts of Viking mythology. “There was much more details about totally different gods and goddesses that we shot,” he says. “I believe that it was a lot data that the viewers did not know what data was a very powerful data! So we bought it all the way down to the Valkyries and Valhalla and Odin and that is kind of it. We type of wanted to give attention to repeating probably the most important data.”
The Northman is enjoying in theaters now.
