The Northman Honest Review (some spoilers)

so the northman is a film that's been out for a few weeks now and the director robert eggers said that he specifically wanted to reclaim the viking age from the far-right idiots and white supremacists who've tried to misuse it to further their own cause and that's why i think he's done a really good job in making the two female characters porcelain-skinned blonde women with child rearing as a main motivation oh so for those of you who haven't heard the channel here is called the welsh vikings so all of the people asking if i was aware that the northmen had come out am i aware that a film is coming out called the north man am i aware that there's a major big budget film coming out starring ethan hawke alexander skarsgard nicole kidman and anion taylor joy called the north man and it's set in the viking age yes i love you guys i am a big fan of robert eggersfilms and uh i'm a big fan of the white house white house the lighthouse big fan of the lighthouse big fan of the vich and i was really excited to hear that he was making a viking age film but unfortunately because of how most films and series set in the viking age turn out i was apprehensive because especially with historical films there's usually a lot of bigging up how historically accurate they are and there's often a lot of disappointment when you go to see a movie or you see a tv show that is being touted as historically accurate and it turns out that it's not and especially with the north man the trailer having the mud eating topless berserker scenes set some alarm bells ringing however we're going to have to do a critique sandwich here because there is some excellent stuff to look at in the north man we're going to do some really positive stuff we're going to look at some of the stuff that could maybe have been done better and then we're going to finish on a positive note because who doesn't love finishing on a positive note so full disclosure i took a notebook into the cinema with me when i went to see the north man this was a work trip i intend to get the ticket price back off taxes and it was one of the most enjoyable work trips i've ever been on it is a film being directed by robert eggers and eggers loves his history he is a big history buff that's why in the witch we have hand-finished hand-sewn 17th century clothing that is pretty much spot-on that's why in the lighthouse we have actual goldwork and embroidered lighthouse keepers caps being worn by robert pattinson and willem dafoe superb that is why in the north man arguably this film has gone to greater lengths than any other film or series set in the viking age that we have so far we have hand woven plant dyed cloth being used by the mile in this movie a lot of the cast if not all of the cast are wearing extremely well researched clothing at least to a degree we have things like the tablet weave that's in nicole goodman's hair that is handmade hand dyed plant dyed with golden rod tablet braid made by somebody who is in a facebook group that i'm in about historical tablet weaving who makes museum replica tablet weave from the viking age we even get a scene showing nicole kidman tablet weaving on screen like tablet weaving is shown on screen a period craft is being shown done on screen which i think is fantastic because tablet weaving is beautiful we have things like an eight-year-old polish man hand-weaving cloth to be used in this film that is then naturally died no other film has done that this film hands down by a league is the best costumed best propertied best set designed probably best interior lit big budget viking age film full stop there's no butt there that is that is a statement that i'm happy to stand by superb effort some of the really nice details of what are the most impressive things so in this shot we have here of the king we have a diamond twill wool cloak lined with fur fur lined cloaks are how people were using fur in this period we know that we have an example of a marmot fur lined cloak from mammon this is a superb piece of kit this is a piece of kit i would be very happy to see somebody of this status wearing on a living history encampment it's closed with a peninnuel approach this is fantastic the helmet is a lovely kingly helmet it looks good i can't say for certain if it's based off a specific find but it looks like it's based off period examples you know like it's it's probably better than the helmet i've got behind me right here it's really really good a lot of the kit in this movie is better than kit that i have it's very good it's very nice to have 90 million pounds to spend on things like authentically uh clinker built long ships and diamond twill hand woven cloaks brilliant and the material culture in this movie is really what shines we have lots of fantastic material culture in the film so in in this clip we have of nicole kidman brushing her hair she's combing her hair with a bone comb a a replica of a find we have hundreds of these types of bone comb found in the period and this shows us aspects of the viking age and norse people that you don't see in a lot of other series these are norse people who are tablet weaving these are norse people who are crowned kings being treated as nobility and royalty by serfs slaves and peasants of their country these are people practicing crafts these are people who hang tapestries in their homes they comb their hair before they get dressed in the morning they're wearing linen layers underneath wool layers underneath outer layers they're dressing they're taking care of themselves and yes a lot of the color color is washed out of this film because it's brutal but there's a lot of colorful kit in it the kit if it's if it's actually shown in good lighting like when you see behind the scenes photos is really really vibrant and i think it's a shame that the colors have been washed out so much i hope that there's a kind of more vibrant version out there that we can see and it's not all just been lost in the digital ether but some of the little bits like the coin young amleth wears that's fantastic because in this period in the viking age people are taking foreign coinage islamic coinage ancient roman coinage punching holes in it and turning it into necklaces so that's a lovely thing a lovely detail the arm rings that people are wearing some of those are definitely replicas of real arm rings the clothes look good we have people wearing tunics pants turn shoes and leg wraps and some cross gartering that's what the men are wearing the women are wearing wool dresses some of them are wearing apron dresses with tortoise brooches and many of the tortoise brooches are replicas of real fines i think that's an ambulance in the scene that we have with claudius i mean fango i mean filner can we can we just decide on a name for this character from amla's tale please because if you keep changing the name i'm just going to keep getting confused so in this scene where fjornier kills his brother he uses a really nice sword a single-edged blade something of a rarity but absolutely something period with a two-part pommel with a riveted multi-piece um handguard and he's wearing vara felder and he's wearing this varifeld that has been made by somebody who makes again reenactment costume and museum replicas of things like the thorsburg trousers and who makes this wool pile woven fabric that was used as a major export in viking age and medieval iceland so this is actually a proper pile woven cloak and i was excited to see it in the trailer and i was still excited to see it in the film shame about the lamellar but he's also wearing the ubiquitous guillermo helmet and that is one of the only helmets that we have from northwest europe from the viking age his friends around him are wearing these felt masks which that's a lovely use of an artifact we don't know the purpose of maybe they were worn as like anonymous gang member masks to protect them whilst they were assassinating a king who who the hell knows like super cool little details like that really really nice when you go into a cinema and you see stuff like that you're like okay you actually did put in the research that you claim you put in that's super amazing that's really cool there are more little details here where if you're a reenactor or you're someone who's researched this period you see them on screen and you go oh i know what that artifact is i know what that artifact is that's really cool and it's lovely to see them there's some like fun things that aren't used in quite the right place like amleth's cloak clasps they're actually leg binding hooks but there's still an identifiable artifact on screen you see things like the sets and the sets look for the most part really really good the long haul at the start of the movie is lit with a central half a big central half like it's big enough to actually cast that warm golden light on everybody and we have crescent lamps hanging lamps inside these buildings which are decorated with tapestries this is what medieval buildings are like and comparing the look of the people i mean just compare this to say vikings or the last kingdom and it's just leagues ahead of the costuming in any other big budget film or tv series that we have any of them it is it is absolutely yards ahead and it's what we would expect from eggers he does take liberties and that was the bread of the critique sandwich now we're going to have some of the meat and some of those liberties are tropier than others and we have tropes like the the motivation for the women's characters is previous trauma and they deal with that with manipulating the men in the film so in some way or another all of the women in the film are bad characters but then nobody in this film is likable and you can tell that it's meant to be a fantasy story it's not meant to be a historical tale based on real life because neither is the tale of amleth it is a 13th century fairy story basically and we know already that robert eggers was inspired by saxo grammatica's story and by william shakespeare's retelling in hamlet and by the sagas and it shows because a lot of stuff is directly taken from the sagas the clothing that you see certain people wearing directly from the sagas even the valkyrie she's got a swan feather cloak at one point they are mentioned as wearing swan garments which he has taken with as being a swan feather lined cloak love that the rest of her kit garbage she looks terrible but still the the ground teeth with the dye in them they never dyed them there's no evidence of that that is fiction but certain other aspects are quite tropy like the berserker scenes the berserker gang is dealt with beautifully even in this negative section i'm putting positive stuff in because there are beautifully dealt with bits here the berserker gang is directly taken from things like the sutton hoo helmet and the torch lunda plaques where we have the guy with the silly hat and the spears we've even got the topless dude in the furry trousers in the background at one point that is directly taken off the torso under black are they bare skinned trousers who the f knows there's a great plaque from torso under where there's a guy wearing what looks like for stabbing a bear whilst two bears are actually like sucking at his head so he doesn't do so well but we don't know how the berserker gang worked we do not know how it worked we don't know if the plaques here are referring to the same religious ceremony but it's a fair interpretation of them to say that there's some kind of wolf related or bear related cult at one point in the sagas berserkers are called wolfskins and are called soldiers of odin warriors of odin combine the two make it a cult of odin where people dress up in furs and do a funky dance round of fire cool also from the sagas is the idea of the wolf shape where we're told that they they they transform in their wolf shape and that is taken in this movie as basically you get all hyped up and you make yourself feel like a wolf and then you go ra and then you fight people okay fine yeah they get hyped up before battle they channel their wolf inside you are two wolves they both howl and wear leather speedos but then unfortunately it falls into the trope of berserkers were topless people who fought in wolfskins let's break that down in the sagas there is one mention of berserker's fighting unarmored that's it not shirtless not nearly naked unarmored without armor without bernie without chainmail that's what we got there is one reference to them wearing wolf armor we don't know what that means does it mean it's the magical protection that they take on by being in their wolf form we don't know is it a wolf pelt we don't know what it probably isn't is leather speedos and the wolfskin what's with the leather speedos robert why are there so many people wearing leather speedos why is the entire spoilers last few minutes of the film just two sweaty men dragon ball z screaming at each other wearing leather speedos what's with the leather undies like the chafing the chaffing the entire raid scene with the bar behind me i'm just going to call them barbarians because berserkers yeah right was a little disappointing the fact that he just easily climbs up a palisade unhelmeted without a shield and doesn't just have a spear put directly through his head and into his spinal column nah not for me and i know that that's taken directly from the sagas because they're impervious to iron when they're in their wolf shape and then afterwards they are completely shattered like we get a scene of them all like completely exhausted directly from the sagas fine we're using 13th century fairy tales as one of the sources for some of the more fantastical elements of the film cool but like five protein-rich meals a day and mega gym workout alexander skarsgard in tiny pants is not a viking age warrior it's ripped hollywood dude in pants let's just admit that and stop trying to pretend that it means it's 100 accurate just because it's in a film where the director cares about history i mean we also have the scene with bjork as the seer and she has chicken feet on her necklace just because robert wanted them there yeah so i know that they have amazing historical consultants i know that they have neil price who is a wonderful writer and an expert in his field he's very good he's an upseller but this is still a film directed by robert eggers who wants weird fantastical wooi woo stuff included the mummy had some good historical consultants on the team it doesn't make it 100 accurate let's stop pretending that it does just because you have them on the team doesn't mean that they are completely listened to and yes dr price was listened to a great deal on this but we still have a couple of disappointing things like the leather helmet why does the guy have a leather helmet it just looks so bad so leather speedos aside most of what we see here is a good representation of not just the material culture but the intangible stuff the culture culture if you like and one of the things that's treated quite well is the blood involved in old norse religion there is no holding back from the blood sacrifice in this movie we have animal sacrifices we have at least two horses getting beheaded in funeral rites we know that horses were sacrificed we know that animals were sacrificed we know that human beings were being sacrificed it's a bit disappointing that we have a funeral spoilers for fjallnir's son who is i mean at this point barely a prince that is meant to be the royal funeral from ahmed ibn fadlan's story because that is the rus two things there one the rus are not the same as the norse in this period they are not the same as the norse they are ethnic swedes who then travel east and are then heavily influenced by hazard and slavic culture up to the point where in the period this is happening in the film it's basically unidentifiable it's not the same culture you can see bits of it here and there it's not the same also if they are using the same funeral rights as the rus why do we have so many mentions of the rus as savages in this film there are several mentions by norse people of the rus as savages which doesn't make any sense we have no evidence that that was the attitude they had about the rus or the slavic people we have no evidence that they really thought anybody was a savage in particular especially if they have the same religious rights that tends to be a big unifier culturally so if they're using the same funeral rights as the rus which they are because the funeral scene in this film is directly taken from a description of a rus funeral on the river vulgar in the 10th century why would they consider them savages it's just little bits like that that just don't make sense like the idea that there is the thread of fate very common trope in lots of mythology it's in greek mythology where the fates spin the thread of how your life is going to go in old norse mythology the norms spin the thread and then we have anya taylor joy's kind of character olga saying tell me how does this work she's like oh the the thread of fate how does that work well you should know because you literally have exactly the same thing in slavic culture at this period like you you literally have that bjork's character is spinning thread with a dystopian drop spindle like you you you absolutely know how that works you know that so it doesn't quite work we do have the slave girls lament low do i see my father low do i see my master that incidentally is a slave girl saying that there are so many t-shirts with it on that's like this is a warrior's prayer it's absolutely not it's a sacrificed enslaved young woman who is ritually sexually assaulted and then stabbed and drugged whilst being held down by large sweaty ross men like that's what that is i see my master and he is surrounded by men and boy servants and he is sitting in paradise and paradise is green and beautiful and i want to go to him that that's that's what that's what that is that's it's literally a legitimization of somebody being a slave you're when you quote that you're literally saying i am this person's slave and i want to be killed ritually at his funeral there's no subtext there that's that's what that is so there are bits like that but even those those scenes where i'm watching them and i'm like [Music] yeah the other half of my brain is like this is done really nicely the material culture in this scene looks great that ship for the funeral looks fantastic everybody's clothing here looks really nice i'm really enjoying the fact that we have animal sacrifice on screen in a story that surrounds old norse religion and culture because they would be animal sacrifice we have stone statues and wooden statues of deities in separate buildings and sacred groves as it would have been when people are enslaved we have conversations amongst the slavers saying these guys are going to constantinople these guys are going up to the vulgar these guys are going to iceland and you think yeah that probably was happening if you hadn't guessed we're back into the bread now so little touches like that where we have things like uh hamir the fool played by willem dafoe brilliantly brilliantly treated because a lot of jesters and fools in medieval courts were both somebody who says really near the knuckle slightly insulting stuff to your guests to see how they'll react which is exactly what he does and also provides you with really good advice it's what we have in hamlet it's what we have in amleth it's what we have in real medieval courts and it's it's a good medieval storytelling trope that is translated into this movie really well the fact that he is spoilers also basically the high priest of the kingdom really cool touch and the whole coming-of-age ceremony that we have at the start of the film yes it's probably fantastical to a degree but probably there was some kind of ritual of that kind not probably in the same way by any means but really fun that that's an aspect that we have of it and that one part of it almost a throwaway line is do not seek sader do not seek the women's magic yes love to see that mentioned love to see the fact that women's magic is considered a different thing that's something that we have evidence for from from sagas and from earlier texts that's really nicely treated and it's also interesting that we see the the male priest who is a sader worker he he is effectively a male vulva and it's a bit weird that he has a papier-mache hat with a veg vizier on it somebody's tried to convince me that it's just a rune from the period a bin droon it it's it's it's it's not it's a 17th century christian icelandic stave they had to make it into the film somewhere i suspect that that was just put in there purely to piss off pedantic people like me fair play i like it if so um irritating that it has to be on screen but still things like the barrow white secret sequence where we have you know the draugr the zombie guy that is like the todd's lunda plaque we have the ball-crested helmet the ringed pommeled sword exactly as represented it's a shame that we have the splint armor on the on the lower arms and lower legs because yes it existed no it didn't exist there no the guy buried in that mound probably wouldn't have had it but other than that beautiful example of a ship burial under a mound very nice thank you very much love that um love the fact that that is also like a battle in the mind of amleth and really fun to see the little details like the different period swords being used in that way it is an old sword it has a ring pommel on it that's an older thing that is a migration period thing brilliant we have this old dude from a couple hundred years ago with this old kit i'm like it's so good and it's where jrr tolkien gets it from and that kind of thing it's just a lovely touch so is this a positive or a negative review this is an honest review there were some fantastic bits of material culture in this film some of the shots of iceland were fabulous the bit where we have the entire household on their horses and walking is so good so well done we have people wearing tablet weave we have people wearing hand dyed uh hand woven wool we have riveted mail riveted mail you do not see riveted chainmail shirts in films this film has it and it's got ethan hawk wearing it which makes it even better so really really beautiful touches and i'll probably milk a couple more videos out of this film i'm sure robert won't mind but superb material culture tropium parts definitely the mud eating berserker thing and his tunic around his waist how do you do that does it have a zipper because the neckline should be pretty damn tight and you certainly don't like step into your tunic like it's a maxi dress that's not how they work guys can we just can we stop so i'm sure there are things that you guys will have spotted and want to mention in the comments section and i know that most of them will be tiny little pedantic nitpicky things that i love people to spot so please do mention any of the tiny pedantic nitpicky things that you didn't like or any of the really tiny pedantic nitpicky things you really did like like the fact that at one point nicole kidman is wearing a cloak with the ausserberg tablet weave on it the ausserberg pattern of the tablet weave appears in this film and you do not notice stuff like that unless you have looked into this period and when you spot things like that in films really nice so yeah overall the costume is fantastic leather helmets and leather speedos aside seriously what is with the leather speedos the the heightened dialogue that we see the heightened language and the formal language hail king hail all that kind of stuff i really love seeing stuff like that because it it is very eggs but it is also very um you know it's medieval storytelling it's the bad standing up and using formal language and the what of of anglo-saxon storytelling and norse storytelling and even early medieval welsh story telling a lot of that hear me and hear my tale am i not a bard with a blue cloak who has entertained many many all of that kind of stuff i love i drink it up go and watch it if you like the idea of everything you've heard if you don't like gratuitous violence blood gore and literal on-screen seconds of sweaty men just screaming at each other there's a lot of just men screaming at each other in this movie and a lot of implausible stuff maybe not for you and overall probably if i had to sum it up i'd say make it 45 minutes longer and cut out half the gore there is a lot missing from the original saxo grammatica story of the 13th century so if you're expecting things like amleth going over to [Music] england marrying the english princess swapping the letters uh all of the skullduggery that happens and the timings that happen that doesn't happen lots of really cool stuff to look for lots of really interesting stuff from the sagas and as long as you go in bearing in mind that it is a fantasy story based off a fantasy story written 200 years after the end of the viking age and the christianization of iceland blah super good deal audio in life is thank you so much to everybody who has joined me this is actually a reshoot of the video i was meant to be putting out uh so it's probably going to be a day or two late it may even come out on my birthday uh so we shall see and um thank you for your patience as some of you know i've been moving to a new flat so things are a little bit ah but dear friend uh thank you so much thank you to all of my lovely patrons and thank you to everybody who's been sending me messages and keeping me going financially i really do appreciate it you guys are making it possible for me to do videos like this that take quite a long time to film and edit so tantronis till the next time will vowr amatro bye for now [Music] is robert next time you make a film and you need a mediocre welsh actor you know who to call

Channel: The Welsh Viking

Views: 104,569

Keywords: Welsh Viking, Jimmy, Northman, Eggers, Skarsgard, Dafoe, Anya Taylor Joy, Norse, Norge, Island, Iceland, NI, Northern Ireland film, Old Norse, Saga, Amleth, Hamlet, Odin, Odinn, Freyr, Thor, Saxon, Rus, Slav, Slavic, Ibn Fadlan, Khazar

Id: XZv_HZvhCd0

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022