The Northman 4K 2022 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Late ninth century, a small island in the North Atlantic. King Orvandil, seriously wounded, returns from a campaign to his wife Gudrun and young son Amlet. Dreaming of going off to another battle and dying on the battlefield, he hands the throne to his son, but is immediately killed by his brother Fjolnir, who beheads the monarch and takes the kingdom and Gudrun for himself. The boy manages to escape.

Decades later, Amlet grows into a tough, ruthless Viking, and one day in another devastated village he meets a witch who instructs him to pursue vengeance. After learning that Fjolnir and Gudrun have settled in Iceland, Amlet travels there with a shipment of Slavic slaves. On board his attention is drawn to Olga of Birchwood.

Review 4K Movie

Many viewers see the reason for the failure of "Varyag" in the failed marketing campaign, which was, first, insignificant by industry standards and relative to the budget of the film, and second, could not sell the film and show its essence. However, everything is much more prosaic. The reason for the failure of "Varyag" lies, oddly enough, in the film itself. Amazing, isn't it?

The film itself could not choose a single way of developing the story. The whole film is a mixture of genres, which prevents a coherent and consistent perception of the story. The average viewer is at best puzzled by what happened in the film, and at worst will leave the theater in complete incomprehension.

"Varyag" is not a fantasy, not an epic, not a drama, not a parable, not a horror, not a thriller. The film can't be categorized in any single genre, it's all of them together. If we take the most accurate description of its genre affiliation, it would be an epic (somewhat) fantasy in the setting of early medieval Scandinavia with elements of horror. Even describing the genre of the film becomes difficult, not to mention trying to weave it all into a single story.

Well, the mixing of genres wouldn't be a problem if the director had managed to masterfully weave them together, making the film an unforgettable spectacle. Thus, the previous film by Studio A24, All, Everywhere and At Once, very successfully combined comedy, science fiction, fantasy, drama and thrash into an endless stream of unforgettable scenes and a seamless story of the relationship between children and parents. The very complex genre construct told a rather down-to-earth story with incredible ease. "Varyag," on the other hand, utterly fails in its narrative component, making you bored for most of the timing. It doesn't surprise, amaze, or become a revelation. It reveals all of its trump cards in the first half hour, after which it becomes absolutely obvious to us the further development of the story. Eggers didn't have the time, energy, or desire for more depth in the story and character development. Simple as two sticks, the story is stretched out for 137 minutes of timing, which is filled with inarticulate dialogue and empty mise-en-scenes.

Also, "Varyag", because of its genre specificity, is a very niche movie that found its way to the big screen. It is probably too harsh to compare it to Villeneuve's indie blockbusters, but it is fair to say that it is a completely auteur film that is clearly not intended for a general audience. I'm sure Eggers fans will be pleased with the brutality and realism of the story along with the Scandinavian mysticism and fatalism inherent in the director's writing.

The visuals disappointed me, unfortunately. But that's not the film's problem - I was expecting a more visually sophisticated film, even aesthetic in a way. My expectations were not met, and consequently I was not impressed by the visuals either. But setting aside my own expectations, the camerawork in "Viking" is quite good, though not quite up to the masterpieces of Roger Deakins or Greg Frazier.

But the main disappointment was the acting work of the film's main cast. I don't know if it's due to an underdeveloped script, poor direction or just shoddy acting, but almost the entire main cast plays pretty well at best. Skarsgard is not at all happy with his stone face throughout the film; Nicole Kidman seems to have gone on vacation, but she was forced to play; Anya Taylor Joy just played her character from "The Witch" out of habit. Willem Defoe's brief acting scenes evoke far more emotion than anything else throughout the film.

Overall, "Varyag" is a pretty average movie. It does not lack a unique style and authorial flair, perfectly conveys the atmosphere of doom and fatality of life and is not bad from a visual point of view. However, the picture is completely devoid of the depth inherent in the director's previous works. It lacks the mystery of "The Lighthouse" and the metaphoric "The Witch", and the story itself, though brutal and peculiar, is very faded and predictable. The characters give no reason to empathize with them, much less follow their story, and the mediocre acting only exacerbates the problem of identification. The mixing of genres and obvious homages to Krusel's Macbeth and Astaire's Solstice are not advantages of the film, but obstacles to the formation of a coherent picture and a quality narrative component.