The Northman

version

Well-known member
the rock of course
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version

Well-known member
One of my brothers saw it over the weekend and said it was decent but he wouldn't watch it again. He watched The Witch beforehand and thought it was shit, but he loves The Lighthouse.

The main thing he said about The Northman was that it felt really straight and direct, that there wasn't much flashy editing and the camera just methodically followed the action in a way that really stood out in comparison to a lot of contemporary stuff.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
One of my brothers saw it over the weekend and said it was decent but he wouldn't watch it again. He watched The Witch beforehand and thought it was shit, but he loves The Lighthouse.

The main thing he said about The Northman was that it felt really straight and direct, that there wasn't much flashy editing and the camera just methodically followed the action in a way that really stood out in comparison to a lot of contemporary stuff.
which brother? or are all of them a type of 'version's brother'
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Watched this a.m via illicit signal corps

It had a go, clearly some degree of work went into design elements. Fluidity of narrative but it could get clunky too (the love interest from Peaky Blinders can’t act). Enjoyed its mix of pulp and *blows Norse horn sound. Got bogged down a bit when the journey shifted to Iceland. White supremacy? Not really
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I really enjoyed The Northman. It's a fucking mad OTT cinema experience. Just lots of WTF moments piling on top of each other building to an insane crescendo .
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
It looks fantastic for the most part as well. Apparently a lot of the architecture and design is historically accurate? Idk what the limits on this were. I really liked the mythological aspects - Bjork as seeress, Othinn, the tree of Yggdrasil, though this sort of shit is very much my bias. There's a tremendous amount to enjoy.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
There's three of them, they're all quite different and this is the middle one.
In keeping with the topic, I'm imagining them as like a Stockport version of the Norns, narrating past, present and future for Version's very own hero's journey.
 

catalog

Well-known member
SPOILERS below

i watched the first half over the weekend, found it a bit much, but i was pretty tired/hungover, so maybe not the best time to watch it. finished it last night and actually really enjoyed it. something about the intensity seemed to click second time around.

kinda wish I'd seen it in the cinema, which is the same feeling i had with dune.

on my limited knowledge (watching the videos william kent posted a while back, by neil price, and subsequently reading price's book) it does all seem pretty on point in terms of historical accuracy. specifically about the reliance on slavery and also the funeral scene of thorir - all that stuff with the slave girl looking over a parapet and reporting what she sees, all that is pretty much word for word out of the only extant contemporary source on the funeral practices, the ibn fadlan report, quoted by pretty much everyone. Still not read it.

just checked actually and it turns out price was a consultant on the film


i think they went wrong a bit with including the supernatural elements, cos while i see what they were doing there, making those spirits etc come alive and be in the sapce with them, it pushes it a bit far imo.

also the general ridiculous plot starts to become a little far-fetched for me - like how he manages single-handedly to kill all those people etc. and the clubbing game felt a bit over the top.

but that is down to the directing lack of experience i think, it could have just been done a little better. similarly the very last pivotal scene, it just looked very ropey to me, the head falling off.

nicole kidman was good but also a bit too much? It really reminded me of her performance in dogville tbh. she is a bit annoying i find, like she has this knowingness which somehow undercuts the surprise of the revelation, which i thought was really good as it goes.

But, otherwise thought it was pretty good, not sure what all the fuss is about with the white supremacy angle tbh... some of the violence is very over the top and bloody i guess. the bit where he puts his sword through the guy who has no nose's head reminded me a bit of the cartoonish violence in tarantino's 'once upon a time in hollywood'.

it was making me think a little about why they (vikings) seem to be popular right now, why i'm interested in them, for one. i suppose there's just this unexplored angle, about the magic and other world, and it's also just a very visual thing.
 

catalog

Well-known member
i was thinking about plastic surgery as it goes, cos i watch a lot of curb clips on youtube and have now started watching irishman ones as well. and then i've started watching this series about the making of the godfather, where willem dafoe has this ridicullous plastic face, as do a lot of the mafiosi people...

what was the point i was thinknig about it.. that we are untethered from a normal body now. like, we are still recyclying stories about the italian immigrant experience to america, and we don't have the actual people who can do that story, cos they no longer exist.

i was thinking about it with blackness as well actually, in a different way, not plastic surgery. but i'm aware that this sort of line of thinknig goes into a dodgy area. my thought was that the issues we have with music now, in this country, is cos there is no significant black immigration, where a new type of social culture gets created. it's all just internet flattening off - there's definitely still a racial inequality but it's a politics of class as much as race imo. whereas maybe in america, cos you've got this ridiculous weight of oppression which effectively creates a different city experience for different people, it's still going on. innovative black music i mean.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Saw this today. I laughed a lot, my friend said he almost walked out and it was one of the worst films he'd ever seen. I think Liza liked it slighlty less than him.
 
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