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Steve Yun posted:Eggers first two films were so good I can’t imagine this being just a macho slaughterfest. He has to have an angle. if anything, it's a tragedy driven by the macho culture of the vikings. All the violence is sickening and dispassionate and usually barely in frame. Because of this culture they are driving themselves towards death. The only happiness and chance of a future comes after love and understanding between two people of warring tribes.
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May 1, 2022 01:31
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| # ? May 17, 2024 01:55 |
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https://twitter.com/zeroasalimit/status/1520587152702459906?s=20&t=tp-aqgRLJIR-QKLIsSfrZQ
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May 1, 2022 17:45
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Hahahaha that’s great
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May 1, 2022 18:31
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The more I think about this film the more I feel I should have liked it. Maybe the themes are just played out for me. Living in a world fully captured by injustice and unsustainability... culture perpetuating so many regressive ills it isn't worth fully preserving....a power found in primal reconnection with nature... forsaking ones personal self interest... the inherent chaos and desperation of life. May be a subjective learned lesson. Gonna go learn to climb a barricade with a hand-axe in case anybody calls me out. I WILL AVENGE YOU PROGRESSIVES! I WILL SAVE YOU LEFTISM! I WILL KILL YOU lol no! Seriously there are some intersections or juxtapositions of Northman with our current way of life that do bear thinking about, despite/ because of the fact its the same old story.
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May 1, 2022 23:25
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Not to dismiss your experience of the film, but I don't think one needs to root for the protagonist of a story to have a happy ending to be invested. What do you mean by the 'same old story'? Because to me, while the plot is purposely simplistic, the narrative as a whole is quite unique: that it's predictable is part and parcel of the Destiny story-line, which in and of itself distinguishes it from most contemporary films.
KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 01:04 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 00:24
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One thing I go back to that I really like is how during the Viking bar-mitzvah, Amleth’s father stresses to Amleth that should he, the king die, then it’s Amleths duty to hunt down the killer and avenge him. He doesn’t stress that he should be a good king and take care of his people. Or go marry some princess of Norway for an alliance. Just avenge him. It really shows the culture of violence. And his mother acknowledges this later by saying she insisted Amleth be killed to avoid the revenge cycle. And then we see Amleths nephew start stabbing Amleth after killing his mother. .
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May 2, 2022 01:19
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checkplease posted:One thing I go back to that I really like is how during the Viking bar-mitzvah, Amleth’s father stresses to Amleth that should he, the king die, then it’s Amleths duty to hunt down the killer and avenge him. He doesn’t stress that he should be a good king and take care of his people. Or go marry some princess of Norway for an alliance. Just avenge him. Thanks for reminding me of this, I was thinking maybe the king and Olga were the only decent people
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May 2, 2022 01:38
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Yeah Olga is really the only one who wants out of this cycle. Maybe Defoe as he’s just slinging jokes helping people get high.
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May 2, 2022 01:45
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I feel like there's a drive to find subtext in this movie because Eggers couldn't possibly have written a movie this simple, this *just text*. But I'm fairly certain he did. There's no hidden directorial meaning or intent. No subversion. Everything he meant to say he put right out there, just like Amleth or Olga or anyone else in the movie screaming into the wind. And it was fine. But I feel like in five years people will still be talking about The Lighthouse and even the Witch, but there just won't be much Northman discourse because, at the end of the day, there's just not that much to talk about there.
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May 2, 2022 03:03
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Should've made it more like Conan
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May 2, 2022 03:13
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Krom vs Odin, who wins.
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May 2, 2022 04:58
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Gaius Marius posted:Should've made it more like Conan I do agree with this somewhat, though the endings are quite different and may make that impossible. The shot of Conan sitting on the steps of the temple, contemplating the moment and his future, is probably the most powerful of the film. There's no real correlation here as amleth dies to achieve his goal. There's no future to ponder, no asking "what now?" which is the heart of that film.
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May 2, 2022 05:30
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Memnaelar posted:I feel like there's a drive to find subtext in this movie because Eggers couldn't possibly have written a movie this simple, this *just text*. He does say he wanted a simple story so he could play in this time period without confusing audiences. Wish I knew that going in, I agree with you.
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May 2, 2022 12:20
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All Eggers movies are pretty simple.
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May 2, 2022 13:25
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it was refreshing as hell. subtext is for cowards.
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May 2, 2022 14:07
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Eggers thing, at least with Northman and Witch, is to take a historical subject and try to make it as authentic as possible. So what meaning develops is often part is that history: violence with Vikings, patriarchy with witch, etc. And of course what he chooses to depict in that story will also inform any messages/subtext.
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May 2, 2022 14:11
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The Lighthouse was the most historically accurate movie about chugging lamp fuel with my bro (who I am NOT attracted to) that I have ever seen
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May 2, 2022 15:09
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i would've loved this movie so much as a teenager. it was good as an adult, but it's not connecting with the angery revenge part of the brain like stuff used to, plus you aren't rooting for his revenge, everyone sucks too much. i really appreciated this movie for making the viking stuff look so cool while also showing that vikings suck rear end and are lame as hell. Tankbuster posted:The berserker ritual seemed fun and I want to do that with friends. Don't want to do the rest of the viking stuff though. the funny part of that was they weren't going anywhere after that, it wasn't right before a battle. like after that scene everyone mills about for a bit, stretch a bit, and start handing out goodnight kisses before laying down for bed
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May 2, 2022 16:12
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I really liked that this movie did sort of what HBOs Rome did in that it gave an unflinchingly accurate portrayal of glorified "ancient" cultures/belief systems that absolutely takes them down a peg and shows you just how absolutely awful and terrible any large society intent on conquest and subjugation was, which was pretty much all of them at that point in time.
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May 2, 2022 20:45
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Drunkboxer posted:The Lighthouse was the most historically accurate movie about chugging lamp fuel with my bro (who I am NOT attracted to) that I have ever seen Charging up my jo crystal No you can not see it! It's up there and I will loving kill you!
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May 3, 2022 08:15
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I really loved this movie. I think it’s a somewhat rote exploration of cycles of violence in that begin and end in the mural destruction of all parties involved. I don’t have a problem with simplified minimalist film making if it’s pretty. I think this film was about the transformation of men through violence, and how we use violence to attempt to transcend humanity to become more like Gods (what we want to be) but all it does is bring us further from God (we become wild animals who kill with our hands & teeth). The only thing the gods give us is weapons to do more murder, or they free us from bondage to go be free (to murder our captors). Skarsgaard’s Amleth is a weapon, hewn and honed for the express purpose of slaughter & pillage, and he is a perfect instrument. The drama of the film comes from the scene with his mother in her little cottage. You can see Amleth’s mind snap in half as he realizes that his entire life is predicated on a lie, and he absolutely does not have the tools to course correct. His only intimacy with anyone in the film besides Olga is the old Viking telling him that he knew he’d grow up to be good at murder one day, there has never been a moment of his life that could have possibly prepared him for this eventuality, you can tell this never occurred to him. In the same moment he realizes that his father was a simple idiot hated by his wife, he also realizes that his noble and beautiful mother is just a liar who would do anything, even her own son, just to live, to survive, to persist. When he is finally given the opportunity, the out, the chance to escape, he gets as close as he possibly can to being free, but because of his life and his experience as a raider, he literally cannot envision any outcome outside of the rigid framework of religious violence that ensconces his entire worldview. There is no thinking outside of this box for Amleth. We see a man absolutely capable of desiring peace, of empathy, of tenderness, but holy incapable of choosing those outcomes when violence is an option, because violence is the only behavior in his life that has ever served him. It’s a really incredible exploration of what violence does to men and how we destroy ourselves and each other by killing our souls and replacing any sense of spiritual connectivity with a religious mandate for violence, effectively supplanting the human soul with a insatiable spiritual bloodlust. They see it as Valhalla, we’d view it today as extremist religious terrorism, but by entwining the ideaology of eternal peace with eternal violence, you’ve effectively killed culture’s ability to save itself in the crib. Finally, it was just nice to see a film with light supernatural elements peppered throughout and not have it all collapse into a giant blue sky laser and a Dragonball z style fight. The Lighthouse is a favorite of my mine, after this film the Witch has skyrocketed to the top of my list.
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May 4, 2022 00:21
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The Witch was freaking amazing. One of my favorite endings of any film ever.
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May 4, 2022 01:43
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Yeah this was good, heavy to be sure but I did appreciate how Eggers did commit to showing characters with this worldview, even as he subverts it. And the (mostly plausibly deniable) light fantasy touches were interesting, a good approach to this kind of material. At times it reminded me of an old fashioned costume epic. I also got the idea that Eggers could probably do a pretty good adaptation of The Stars My Destination.
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May 4, 2022 04:26
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Good summation, Bust Rodd. I also thought that Eggers sci-fi movie would be fascinating to see. His approach to staying faithful to historical anachronism in psychology would go great with speculative fiction. Even something simple on the surface, like a Star Trek utopia, has so many things to explore.
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May 4, 2022 07:12
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I saw this on Sunday and really loved it. There was a lot there to engage with, and while I'm not surprised there weren't people who loved it, it brought together a lot of threads that struck a chord with me. First I'd say that the film making really was striking. I felt care in the craft, and I think that the attention to detail and attempts to really make it real brought me into the world. This is also the first movie that actually made me care about a vision sequence, I wasn't rolling my eyes or taken out of the film, which is rare for me. A couple of other aspects have been mentioned which I think were present; the death-cult that is the violence of patriarchy and the ways in which imperialism sows the ground for it's own violence to repeat across generations were two big ones. There were a few other parts that really stuck out to me and that I've been ruminating on since I saw it which I'm interested in talking about. The part of the story that stuck out to me was how much it helped me appreciate the idea of classical tragedy as a genre. I've enjoyed a few classical or neo-classical tragedies that I had to read during high-school, but it always felt at a remove, plays and stories that I liked intellectually but didn't connect emotionally. The Northman, though it followed a lot of conventions of the genre, was actually something that had me holding my breath. When Amleth made the decision to return to the fight, the inevitability mattered. (As an aside it also helped make clear that you don't really need to follow the three unities for something to be compelling, but I think most people already knew that). It struck me as something that follows a very classic pattern but makes it come alive with modern techniques, and I really appreciated that. The Northman also really grappled with the notions of events vs. myth. The standout scene of this one is the 'fight' against the lich-king that's very obvious. The first part of the action is showing us the mythical version, how Amleth defeated the wight using trickery, that a bard might tell. Then cut to what 'actually' happened. The fight also serves a manifestation of how Amleth is using stories and myths to shape his own understanding of what he went through. I'm sure it was scary, so the fight also represents him overcoming his own fears as one might imagine a legendary hero doing. The myth is shaped by events but also shapes them. You also get further exploration of this with the fear of the spirits that causes Fjölnir to arm his slaves against the dark spirits, or how the bodies were shaped into a many-legged horse. It helps show again how people interpret trauma through their own cultural lens, and because the culture is one that's generally foreign to us today, helps highlight it for the viewer. Lastly I was really impressed by how The Northmantackled the supernatural. I felt it made clear that the power of a culture comes from how people engage with these myths and give them power. It's not that Valhalla existing that's important, but that people in the culture believe it's important and shapes how they act. This includes big issues like Ethan Hawke's obsession with dying in battle and spitting at his brother-killer, the indoctrination of Amleth into a cult of revenge, and the ease at which Fjölnir reaches for human sacrifice. The tree vision also ties into this theme. Why is the potentially silly scene of them barking like dogs important? Because the scene ties them into a cultural web and makes the instructions there feel double or triple layered with meaning. Overall I was pretty impressed with the film. I don't generally enjoy horror so took a pass on The Witch, but might actually catch up with The Lighthouse because of this.
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May 4, 2022 08:51
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Oh you should absolutely see The Lighthouse. The VVitch is fine and all but The Lighthouse is pure entertainment.
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May 4, 2022 08:52
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Good posts.
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May 4, 2022 10:32
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Carillon posted:
If you think you can stomach a slow burn version of the genre you should try The Witch because it sort of handles the supernatural in the same way. Not that there’s any real ambiguity about whether or not something supernatural is happening (it is), but it’s presented as a straight folk tale from the period.
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May 4, 2022 14:40
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The Viking rituals(barking, wolf howls and skins, bears) show the Vikings becoming more animal like an attempt the be more pure killers. Such animals can kill without hesitation or regret like the raiders But animals don’t seek revenge. That’s purely a human thing.
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May 4, 2022 20:28
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checkplease posted:The Viking rituals(barking, wolf howls and skins, bears) show the Vikings becoming more animal like an attempt the be more pure killers. Such animals can kill without hesitation or regret like the raiders But animals don’t seek revenge. That’s purely a human thing. Orca, The Killer Whale (1977, d. Michael Anderson) begs to differ
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May 4, 2022 21:22
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Maxwell Lord posted:Orca, The Killer Whale (1977, d. Michael Anderson) begs to differ That whale was loving pissed
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May 4, 2022 22:53
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checkplease posted:The Viking rituals(barking, wolf howls and skins, bears) show the Vikings becoming more animal like an attempt the be more pure killers. Such animals can kill without hesitation or regret like the raiders But animals don’t seek revenge. That’s purely a human thing. It also functions as a nice parallel of Hamlet/Amleth’s feigned madness. I thought this was dope. Vvitch and Lighthouse were both excellent pieces of storytelling, but I really appreciated seeing Eggers lean into a real psychotic theater geek thing with this. This is what Shakespeare is all about. I would love to watch the Eggers not-an-adaptation take on any drat Shakespeare thing.
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May 4, 2022 23:19
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I was very confused and thought I'd misheard the "god of erections" line until I remembered that Freyr is a fertility god. 
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May 5, 2022 22:36
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The gigantic boner on the statue was one of the best parts
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May 5, 2022 22:47
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Famethrowa posted:it was refreshing as hell. subtext is for cowards. i'm going to rather shallowly compare anyone looking for "deeper meaning" than what is right there on the screen to IPA sniffing diaper nerds who have no idea how to appreciate a frosty cold delicious pilsner.
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May 6, 2022 21:14
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Just saw it. I thought it was just short of great. I could very clearly see the seams between what Eggers wanted, and what the studio wanted. I feel like the final line by Anya Taylor Joy was very much tacked on go, we're free, thanks to you, everything's good now when the movie itself was very much saying no, this dude's an idiot for jumping off the boat. The final decision actually very strongly reminded me of Heat, when De Niro is free and clear with his prisoner-girlfriend, and makes the decision to turn back and get himself killed for some dumbass Real Man reasons (I haven't seen or read Hamlet so don't @ if this is lifted from there.. I feel like for the end, a more Eastern Promises bathhouse-style style fight might have fit better, where nudity was important to getting across how vulnerable and exposed you are, but the studio wanted a more traditional fight. I mean that's just my own theory but I feel like the fight as-is didn't really fit in with the rest of the imagery or tone. Like all the parts are there, but it should have been more knockdown dragout desperate kind of fighting. IMO. But at least it wasn't framed as this honourable thing to do, at that point he'd already killed his half-brothercousin and his mom, so gently caress that guy. What's great with Nicole Kidman's character sayingshe was laughing, and her whole speech there, is that you could read it any way you wanted. Was she telling the truth? Was this a lie she's convinced herself of to psychologically manage what her life is? Does it really matter either way? I think Skarsgard's body posture was kind of goofy. I knew he was going for a barely human, verging on animalistic kind of thing, with his hunched over posture, but all I could see is that thing that skinny people do when they pop their shoulder blades out to embiggen their traps to make them look bigger than they actually are. Meanwhile Skarsgard was a brick shithouse. What a beefcake. And I really don't get the Green Knight comparisons itt. I wasn't reminded of it at all. edit: Oh yeah I'm surprised it's not doing well financially, I checked around various theaters and they were all 1/2 to 3/4 sold out. Considering Dr Strange has taken over the box office, that's still pretty good. stratdax fucked around with this message at 07:58 on May 8, 2022 |
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May 8, 2022 06:58
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His posture is because he’s spent his life rowing longboats, it was to help symbolize his dehumanization as an instrument of war & pillage, I thought that detail really made the whole thing seem more authentic. The final line is literally a hallucination of a dying man trying to justify a lifetime of murder, it’s supposed to feel incongruous with the movie because it is, literally the only person who thinks Amleth did the right thing is Amleth, literally every other person thinks he’s an idiot and/or a bad person.
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May 8, 2022 10:35
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Spoilers for The VVitch, just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet (you should!): Eggers has mentioned in interviews before that the corn had a fungus known as ergot growing on it that can cause a bunch of health problems, including hallucinations. I haven't seen the movie in a minute, but I *think* the only supernatural thing that any of the main characters witness before the tainted corn is revealed is the baby being carried off right at the beginning by what looks like an invisible person, but that could also be a wolf or coyote parting the tall grass, IIRC. Ditto for The Lighthouse: And of course they spend the entire second half of the movie getting wasted on kerosene before everything goes all the way off the rails. Eggers clearly has a thing for giving all of the supernatural stuff in his movies plausible deniability with a (un)healthy dose of hallucinogens, and although that would be a complaint with most directors, he can actually pull off having it both ways for the sake of narrative ambiguity, IMO. I enjoyed this one quite a bit too, even if you could play "spot the studio rewrite" a few times.
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May 10, 2022 00:15
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I’ve watched the Lighthouse but not the Witch so I can’t say I’m super familiar with Eggsrs work, but I didn’t really feel any incongruities throughout the film, except feeling like “I should be able to see their dicks in this volcano” What are you folks talking about when you say you can clearly see the studio interference? A woman pulls out her genitals and rubs period blood all over a guys face, and you still think this movie was numbed or defanged by studio influence? Where?
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May 10, 2022 00:21
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Nestharken posted:Spoilers for The VVitch, just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet (you should!)... Those flawed subjective aspects of Eggers' stories are some of my favorite components. I think a lot about how isolated people were until recent human history, how common in human experience it was to be alone or nearly alone, or to live your entire life interacting with a super small number of people with a very limited worldview. Of course, the barrier between the subjective and the divine would feel razor thin...all you could possibly know of the nature of reality was what you and a few dozen others have experienced. And if you couldn't reconcile something, there was no scientific authority to appeal to, so who's to say it wasn't magic? Or a god? Or a demon? [VVitch and Northman stuff]Especially as psychoactives go. I fully believe that theory of the Salem witch trials...if I was a scientifically-illiterate Puritan raised in mortal fear of Satan, and one day I started seeing eyes pop out of the wall or people's faces melting, "witchcraft" seems like a pretty reasonable explanation. Likewise, if my father fed me some crazy potion that made me hallucinate Yggdrasil or screaming Valkyrie, there's no way I wouldn't see that as hard proof that the Aesir and Valhalla are real. Most period-based fiction tries to reproduce the look and feel of a setting accurately, but the characters typically still act like modern people. Eggers' stories are interesting to me because his characters don't. Their perception and philosophy are of a different time and place, so what's "real" or "possible" for them doesn't preclude the supernatural. There is no contradiction there that these things "actually happened." Belief and reality are not distinct things. Xealot fucked around with this message at 01:18 on May 10, 2022 |
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