Dir: Robert Eggers. Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe. 15, 137 minutes.
History comes thundering back to life in The Northman, in a chorus of howls, farts, and belches. This is a Viking epic of thick, blood-red brutality, where Alexander Skarsgård – so bulked up he can only stand wide-legged like a He-Man action figure – rips a man’s throat out with his bare teeth. Where Ethan Hawke, high off the fumes of ancient henbane seeds, crawls feverishly around a mossy cave while a dust-caked and cackling Willem Dafoe decries the “dogs that want to become men”. Where Nicole Kidman, coins shimmering around her furrowed brow, delivers a performance so feral it seems to shake the very foundations of the frame she inhabits.
