“I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” — The Viking warrior Almeth’s mantra in “The Northman.”
Robert Eggers’ bloody and bone-cracking and yet beautiful Viking saga “The Northman” is set primarily in 10th-century Iceland—but every frame of this 137-minute epic makes us feel as if we’ve been plunged neck-deep into the violent dread of Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell. Even the kings and queens and landowners in this fiery fever dream seem miserable and unfulfilled, while just about everyone else is either a brutally cruel henchman guarding and abusing slaves in forced labor camps, or one of the legions of slaves who are treated as sub-human creatures.
