Rexirionivan’s review published on Letterboxd:
Jarin Blaschke>Emmanuel Lubezki.
-
What a godlike cinematography! Haven’t been that blown away by movie’s visuals since «Spencer». My jaw literally dropped from all these breathtaking long takes during brutal fights, landscape shots, amazing lighting and the way they decided to give night scenes a unique feel by making them look like something black-&-white-esque through color grading.
-
But even besides cinematography, «The Northman» is a flawed masterpiece by Robert Eggers. His work is very reminiscent of old-school sweeping edge blockbusters like «The Lion King», Ridley Scott’s «Gladiator» and Darren Aronofsky’s «Noah». A blockbuster with universal Shakespearean story that despite not being fully unhinged narratively in order to make it mass-appealing, stylistically and directing wise it still feels like a fully realized vision of a true auteur. However, even with some possible smoothed edges «The Northman» portrays revenge in its own way by making it fatalistic, inescapable and how our protagonist and his enemy reevaluate their visions of vengeance once they both face some fateful events or learn some shocking truth. And this twist together with already Robert Eggers’ trademarking exceptional period mise en’ scene, interestingly fleshed out Scandinavian mythology, gory action and decent cast with Skarsgård being a ferocious beast from start to finish give us an awesome cinematic experience and already one of the best movies of 2022. If it’ll somehow not maintain its position in top 5 by the end of the year, then we are about to have the best movie year since 2019.
