'The Witch' and 'The Lighthouse' put director Robert Eggers on the map. But will 'The Northman' push him into the mainstream? d_arkin spoke to the filmmaker.
The nightmarish independent films "The Witch" and "The Lighthouse" put the director on the map. But will the brutal Viking saga "The Northman" push him into the mainstream?Aidan Monaghan / Focus FeaturesViking tales have been mainstays of American cinema for decades, thrilling audiences with stories of brawny heroics and swashbuckling exploits.
Eggers, who has jet-black hair and a close-cropped beard, specializes in films where historical realities mingle with unsettling surrealism. But he said he never expected to make a film that draws so heavily from Viking lore. “The Lighthouse,” Eggers’ second film, occupied similarly unsettling territory but posed more of a challenge for viewers. The film, set in the 1890s and infused with the creeping dread of Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction, stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as two lighthouse keepers gripped by madness. The combination of black-and-white imagery and a square-frame 1:19:1 aspect ratio inspires an uncanny feeling of claustrophobia.
“The book was like my Viking bible, for lack of a better word,” Skarsgård said. “I would go to it in order to understand the mindset of a Viking 1,000 years ago — Amleth’s relationship to the spiritual world, the gods, the concept of fate.” The rainswept, muddy and sometimes treacherous production did not much bother her. “I'm the most annoying person to ask about this. Is it everyone's idea of a good time? Probably not. But it’s my idea of a good time,” she said with a laugh.Eggers said he recognizes that Focus Features, an arm of Universal Pictures, took a gamble on “The Northman.
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