Shooting a film as sprawling as “The Northman” was like getting a doctorate in filmmaking, director Robert Eggers says.
“It’s really crazy the stuff I learned,” he explains during a Zoom interview. “I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to make a big movie that wasn’t a franchise movie.”
LISTEN NOW: Director Robert Eggers goes big with"The Northman" Your browser does not support the audio element. While a Viking drama was never a bucket list project for someone who had done such smaller films as “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” it was inspired by the “massive, overwhelming, otherworldly” landscapes found on a trip to Iceland.
Several times in the film, Skarsgard lets out blood-curdling screams. Intense blood-curdling screams. “I was scared of what he was doing,” Eggers says. If the director wanted another take, Skarsgard was more than up for it – “and that made him scream harder.” Iceland’s Bjork figures in, too, and “The Witch” star Anya Taylor-Joy turns up as a witch here as well. “But it’s not easy to be a woman in the Viking age. It’s easier to be a witch in the Viking age than in Puritan New England.”
Heavy on violence, “The Northman” offered parallels to today. “Viking culture was an incredibly sophisticated culture,” Eggers says. “They’re a culture of advanced technology. Their ships and their trade routes made the world a very small place but it was completely obsessed with horrible violence – the kind of violence that terrorized everyone. Clearly, we haven’t learned any lessons.”
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