The Northman

watching this in preparation for WERWULF (which is everything ive ever wanted). did i like the robert eggers viking presented-as-revenge-quest-but-something-more movie full of animal comparisons? of course i did. who do you think i am??? i will say, i dont really care for the sequences with blatant digital environments (like the bloodline sequences), i dont think it fully fits with the style of the film. i also thought a few flashbacks were kind of silly considering it feels like it just happened, but i understand what was being communicated and this isnt that big of a deal. especially because everything else about this movie is so fucking good to me. its cool. its so metal. its fantastic and awe-inducing and sometimes outright terrifying all without becoming more white supremacist bait. it never glorifies the viking. its filthy, and bloody, and violent, and cruel, but it never truly calls them savages either. they love, they sing, they dance. theres these constant beautiful costumes and lovingly crafted environments and props and these long, painterly drags across the environment. it reflects the protagonist, really, and the fact that under all his rage there is love, but he wont face it, and its never enough. (i also like the... everything behind the protagonist being called puppy.) i love how the surrealist mindfuck scenes serve to both ground and justify the mysticism at the same time. you can make entirely plausible real-world excuses for whats happening while simulatenously understanding that this is, truly, what he believes, and why he believes it in the first place. what a dirty, beautiful movie. i wish we got a little more from olga, i found her and his mother were as fantastically multidimensional as the rest of the cast and his mother especially just as grimy as he and his uncle and everyone else was, but olga just always felt kind of half-known. fantastic beyond this. will sit with me for a while. i always love it when a script is so good it jacks me off.