I had to sleep on it for a night before writing my thoughts. I was not expecting that...
On the one hand it was bombastic but also disappointing. That was my first thoughts after watching the Northman in cinema.
The word "expectations" is probably decisive in my case, because I think the expectations for this film were too high. I was thrilled to finally see a robert eggers film in the cinema and was very hyped accordingly.
In the end I think that The Northman is more than a good film, but I missed that certain "something" that Robert Eggers did so well, especially in The Lighthouse. I mostly enjoyed the whole thing, but the spark did not jump over as I had hoped for.
The basic plot of the Northman doesn't reinvent the wheel, but almost everything around it is great. It's raw, brutal, animalistic, has a lot of symbolic, mythology and is full of emotions especially anger 😅. Moreover, eggers manages to transport this dirty feeling very well onto the screen.
The brutality/violence and the audio/visual aspect was almost perfect.
Violence and death are staged extremely cool way directly in the face... only too rarely for my taste. I had wished for more scenes like with the nose 😉
Both the environment where it was filmed and also the general gloomy and iron and dirty look that reflects the life/action. However, the story itself was rather disappointing to me, as it was largely told "normally".
I think the cast is mostly good. I especially liked the role of Anya Taylor Joy, Nicole kidman and Alexander Skarskard.
I will remember several scenes, but I would like to briefly highlight these 3: real volcano and the eruption of it (the contrast of the colors😍), the tree, Valkyrie heading to ******* (I don't want to spoil the word).
I often had the feeling that this wasn't Egger's final version... I hope there will be a director's cut and I'm very excited if it gets released.
In the end I left the cinema rather unsatisfied (in particular the ending was too short for me) but I still liked this film as you can see from my rating.
The Lighthouse is still my favorite Eggers film and I'm excited to see what's in store for us in the future. What I was happy to hear was, among other things, what Eggers said in an interview:
"Right now, I definitely want to do something smaller, where it won't be as painful, or I'll have full control".
Moreover, recently in an interview when he was asked about making movies set in modern times, Eggers said "No, thank you." He states that he finds every other time period interesting rather than the one we are living in right now.
I was also happy to hear that ☺️

Best movies of 2022 so far ranked (German Release): boxd.it/fdCBG
Films I watched in cinema: boxd.it/gmtoq
Upcoming movies (Hype) 2022 (german release): boxd.it/egrxq