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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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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 18:12 |
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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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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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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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There’s also a lot of desecrated corpses
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May 17, 2022 08:45
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I also think there’s an unspoken element of “even if I wanted to do something, I would get owned so immediately and completely that it would be meaningless”. Amleth is only effective, really, at night when he’s sneaking up on people.
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May 24, 2022 12:38
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He’s sneaking up on a fortress full of dudes at 5 AM and raiding them with a horde of his buddies, or he’s skulking around in the middle of the night stabbing people in the back. His one on one fights are against a ghost (not real), a sports game (he goes into berserker rage and wins via head butt), or against his uncle twice his age (a draw). The movie starts out with him watching his father get sniped before getting stuck like a wild boar, it’s a big part of Amleth’s character development even! He understands that he can’t just wage war, he has to destroy their minds first before picking them off, it’s literally the plot of the movie.
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May 25, 2022 08:14
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I went back and watch The VVitch because I really liked this & The Lighthouse and it’s a fine film, a pretty cool piece of filmmaking, but I think The Northman is miles and miles and miles more entertaining, engaging, and thought provoking. The Lighthouse gripped me for very different, personal reasons (queer), The VVitch is just horrible things happening to simple people for no reason, which is probably my least enjoyable kind of media. Just left a sour pit in my stomach compared to the dark wonder and mystery of Northman or Lighthouse. A good movie, but I think Lighthouse is his best work and The Northman is a close 2’d with The VVitch in a distant 3rd. (I liked The Lighthouse’s singular isolated setting but I really hated The VVitch’s singular isolated setting, go figure)
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Jun 7, 2022 11:09
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It’s very intriguing to read other perspectives like “oh the most compelling & dramatic part of the film? When his evil and traitorous uncle has been demoted to a meaningless feif and sheepherd? And the fabric of the vengeance fantasy begins to fray and Amleth begins to see the truth of things? Yeah, that’s the boring part that lost me!”
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Jun 11, 2022 11:42
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 18:12 |
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If you’d like a version of the movie where the main character isn’t a total piece of poo poo I can recommend 1994’s “The Lion King”
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Sep 16, 2022 14:52
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