“The Northman” exposes the Vikings and their women too

• "The Northman" mixes Icelandic history and legends around a Viking prince.

• Alexander Skarsgard is surrounded by colorful female stars like Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy and Björk to bring those wild times back to life.

• This spectacular and bewitching fresco shows this wild period as we had never seen it.

Robert Eggers offers a visual and psychological shock to the viewer with

.

The director of

and

pushes the multisensory experience even further for this fresco full of noise and fury.

Alexander Skarsgard embodies a prince drunk on revenge in an intense and magical universe.

“I wanted to show Vikings between legends and historical reality, confides the director to

.

It also seemed important to me to stand out from the virile and toxic side that often accompanies their romanticized adventures.

Powerful roles played by Anya Taylor-Joy (seen in

,

and

), Nicole Kidman and Björk (who is making her big movie comeback) add to the audience's fascination.

With women of this caliber,

is all the more surprising.

History and battles

However, the filmmaker does not spare Dantesque combat scenes by relying on the heroic deeds of Amleth who also inspired William Shakespeare for Hamlet.

"Reporting violence, showing it in a spectacular way without glorifying it is the challenge I have set myself", specifies Robert Eggers.

It achieves this result by not sparing the effects showing that the brutality of the clashes causes serious damage.

The filmmaker has also done extensive research on the history of Iceland and the reality of the Viking people.

“I am sometimes criticized for living in the past, he insists, but it's my way of expressing what I feel and talking about the present.

These princes who sacrifice their lives and their loved ones for the desire for power end up seeming paltry in their quest but they find an echo in the current period.

The Icelandic spirit

The director worked meticulously with archaeologists to stick to historical truth in every detail.

He also called on Sjon, an Icelandic poet, to give a fantastic, very powerful side to his film.

"I couldn't have achieved such subtlety without an artist like Sjon to help me understand the Icelandic spirit," he admits.

Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "

", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our "I accept for today" button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.

In this area, the appearances of wizards played by Björk and Willem Dafoe seem particularly apt.

This cocktail of the trivial and the fantastic gives a unique tone to

which takes the audience to remote times where everything seems to be able to happen to capsize souls and roll heads.

Movie theater

“The Lighthouse”: How do Pattinson and Dafoe, as lighthouse keepers, freak out so much?

Movie theater

“The Witch”: The horror movie that even Satanists love

• Movie theater

• 20 minute video

• Carol's choice

• Nicole Kidman