"The Northman" Lost Its Bearing In Marketing.

With The Northman, director Robert Eggers continues developing his brand of filmmaking consisting of gothic esotericism and dreamlike mythology. The Northman is an intriguing third installment in big-screen releases for Eggers. Coming onto the scene in a big way with 2015's The Witch, which also catapulted Anya Taylor-Joy's acting career, Eggers has chosen his projects carefully since then. Specifically, one project, the quirky, gothic independent hit The Lighthouse with Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, and Cara Delevingne.

First things first, the film does work. It does, but the screenplay is a little too slow. The film's prologue is a practical introduction to the world, the research, and the dramaticism of the mythology. The speed of the story also slows down the filmmakers' efforts to show and not tell. "Wait a minute," you might be saying at this very moment. "The whole purpose of a screenplay is to show, not tell." Yes, you are correct. Visual communication with the audience is a filmmaker's priority as a visual medium. However, what is shown in The Northman is a lot, a plethora, of historical research, translated predominately visually through the set, costumes, makeup, and action.

Because of the sheer amount of visual information, The Northman wants to push through to the audience, the amount of message processing and decoding that must happen for an audience member may be overwhelming. One moviegoer outside the theatre said, "I couldn't help but laugh when she showed up with her braces." It wasn't a goof in the film. A valkyrie, a mythological Norse warrior woman who shepherds warriors to Valhalla, bears teeth tattoos. To a modern audience goer who sees Viking braces, and only Viking braces, who struggles to make the association to, "they're showing me something about this culture that isn't widely seen," the image would be jarring.

It's not all the audience's fault. There's a lot of information to sift through in The Norseman. The film has predominately been marketed as an action-packed hero-rescues-damsel story on par with the physicality and narrative of any given Marvel film. The image most people probably conjure up, with or without seeing the film, is that of Alexander Skarsgard with ridiculous abs on display, all bloodied up, with shoulders that look like "sourdough loaves," according to late-night host Stephen Colbert.

The macho-hero angle is not an accurate tease of the film. More likely to draw audiences into seats at the theatres would be to more accurately market the story as perhaps the first serious adaptation of Norse mythology on par with established filmmaking adaptations of other pantheons' stories, including the similarly Euro-centric Greek, Roman, and Arthurian mythologies. The Norseman is simultaneously artistic, classical, esoteric, gothic, and epic. Calling it the Norse "Illiad" would bring a very different audience than the "historical Thor-adjacent hero" currently plastered around the media circuit.

The Northman has much more to give than abs and blood. It is refreshing to see a significant adaptation of core Norse mythology that, once you see it, has not been commercialized and sexualized in the ways that so much mythology has been. Thank you to the entire crew behind The Northman for taking the research seriously and not sexing up the Valkeryies… again. They could have felt like the Amazons in Justice League (not to be confused with Zack Snyder's Justice League, but even then). Eggers, Skarsgard (who also produced the film), and the company did a solid for research and women.

Eggers directs Nicole Kidman very carefully and to great success. In The Northman, Kidman gives one of her best performances. She's allowed to work on a micro-scale. She tailors her performance to a carefully placed expression or gesture and never quite lets the audience in on her state of mind. She plays her role meticulously, always keeping a little bit of the performance withheld and never sacrificing the integrity of her skills. Then, she's allowed to unleash about three-quarters into the film. The verb "unleash" is very appropriate. Once Kidman is given the reins in a satisfying plot twist, she runs with it. It's the most Shakespearean she's ever seemed on screen.

"Shakespearean" is also an appropriate descriptor. The Northman develops a visual and auditory tone similar to what one might expect from an epic Macbeth adaptation. However, The Northman is closely associated with Shakespeare's Hamlet. No, it's not because The Northman is an adaptation of Hamlet, a prince whose uncle hooks up with the prince's mother (his sister-in-law) after murdering the prince's father (the uncle's brother). The Northman precedes Hamlet.

The story of The Northman was Shakespeare's inspiration for Hamlet. The legend of Amleth, a scorned prince whose uncle does all the same deeds as Hamlet's, is traced from "History of the Danes," a history by Saxo Grammaticus, a medieval historian. Harvard professor Dr. Jeffrey Wilson explains the significance of celebrating The Northman's long roots in storytelling with a realm of "Shake­spherean," film adaptations that operate story-wise in the sphere of Shakespeare or are Shakespeare-adjacent.

The Northman will be a film that will be more interesting as a rewatch and perhaps grow more intriguing each time. However, something cumbersome about the story and the pace at which events unfold leaves something desired. After the initial berserker raid, which sets up the quest's beginning, the film slows down to a crawling pace. The Northman isn't an action film at its heart: it's a case study of Norse culture and mythology brought to the screen. Devoting the time to slow down to view The Northman for its contribution to the genre of mythological films is time well spent – even if you leave feeling a bit unsettled.