Always Good Movies

Direction: Robert Eggers
Country: USA

After the excellent results obtained with The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), American director Robert Eggers is abandoning the horror genre that allowed him to make a name for himself. His new film, The Northman, is an unengaging, mythologically charged story of revenge that takes place in 10th-century Iceland. Actors Willem Dafoe, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Kate Dickie team up again with the director but with minor roles, while the heavyweights Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke join him for the first time in this exhausting, Hamlet-(un)inspired epic in need of a better dramaturgical arc.

Eggers, who co-wrote the script with Sjón, takes us to the kingdom of King Aurvandil (Hawke), who is betrayed and slayed by his half-brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang). The king’s only son and heir to the throne, Prince Amleth (played as an adult by Skarsgard), manages to escape, swearing revenge. He returns many years after, in the company of an enslaved sorcerer named Olga (Taylor-Joy), to finally avenge his father’s death and free his mother, Queen Gudrún (Kidman).

Denoting a certain grim integrity, the film has its visual beauty exceeded only by the gruesomeness of the violence. As for the rest, there’s a scarce amount of cleverness here. The adrenaline refuses to pump, even when multiple screams of rage burst from the Viking’s mouth, and the execution didn’t satisfy, with Eggers often showing indecision between pure rawness and the frivolous adornment that typically mark high-budget flicks. By comparison, David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021) was as darkly medieval as this one, but brought much more mysticism and ambiguity to the setting. The Northman has a limited payoff after two hours, and not even an unexpected finale saves it from averageness.

Direction: Robert Eggers
Country: USA

The Lighthouse is a super well crafted psychological thriller set in a remote island of West England in the late 19th century. The film stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers whose disturbed souls clash as their minds grow insane.

Directed by The Witch’s Robert Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max, this is a churning examination on isolation and derangement that moves tenaciously toward complete annihilation. It’s also an unparalleled showcase for the two actors, whose characters might cause a certain disturbance in unprepared viewers due to their graceless posture and crude behavior. The aptly tense dialogue is not devoid of humor and the salty, dreary landscape is expertly captured by the sharp lens of cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, who was able to increase discomfort all around.

Dafoe is Thomas Wake, an old limping sea wolf whose prepotency is flagrant. He is in charge of the lighthouse and can’t help demeaning, screaming and sneering at his newly arrived aid, Ephraim Winslow, majestically interpreted by Pattinson. With the tediousness affecting the notion of time and the alcohol fueling their darker sides, are these men capable of regaining the control of themselves?

Secrets and torments, symbolism and omens, obsession and mystification are all ingredients of a cinematic invention that, at times, evoke the physical exertions of Kaneto Shindo’s The Naked Island, the unsettling surrealism of Luis Buñuel, and the dramatic severity of Ingmar Bergman.

Bolstered by the vigorous performances, a great sound design, and the mind-expanding black-and-white imagery, Eggers assembles a legitimate, weirdly fascinating pitch-dark horror picture that spirals beyond human comprehension.