The Herald - The Herald Magazine
A daring plan to break Hitler’s grasp on Europe
Damon Smith reviews the latest new releases to watch in the cinema
THE NORTHMAN (15)
IT’S bitterly cold up north specifically 9th-century Scandinavia in writer-director Robert Eggers’ slow-burning and morally ambiguous thriller, inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Norse legend.
Shot on location in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, The Northman reunites the American filmmaker with Anya Taylor-Joy and Willem Dafoe, stars of his award-winning films The Witch and The Lighthouse, and with regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke.
Their mastery of foreboding shadows and natural light, epitomised by a fluid single take of Vikings storming a fortified outpost and massacring menfolk, creates striking yet horrific tableaux of a torched barn filled with screaming women and children and mutilated naked bodies pinned to a hut as an omen of angered gods.
Warmer, golden hues of candlelit interiors contrast with muted earth tones of wind- and snow-swept vistas where a decapitated horse lies perpetually frozen and cawing ravens wheel ominously in overcast sky. Alexander Skarsgard and co-star Taylor-Joy are exposed in every sense, including dramatically necessary full-frontal nudity to deter an imminent sexual assault with a demonstration of menstrual blood.
Mood and mythology overwhelm a simplistic revenge plot co-written by Eggers and Icelandic author Sjon to inflate the running time beyond what feels comfortable, providing us with a physical ordeal in tandem with characters’ gruelling odysseys through mud and mire.
As a flaxen-haired youth, Amleth (Oscar Novak) is devoted to his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), who rules with a strong hand and the unwavering support of wife Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). Court jester Heimir (Dafoe) provides ribald comic relief and oversees a comingof-age ritual to anoint Amleth as heir apparent. Treachery consigns the king to Valhalla and Amleth watches helplessly as his treacherous uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang) seizes the throne.
“I will avenge you father, I will save you mother, I will kill you Fjolnir,” declares Amleth as he rows out to sea to escape knife-wielding assassins. Many years later, Amleth (now played by Skarsgard) smuggles himself aboard a prisoner ship bound for Fjolnir’s fractured tribe in Iceland. En route to a destiny foretold by a seer (Bjork), Amleth meets resourceful captive Olga (Taylor-Joy) and they forge a pact to bring down his murderous uncle in the shadow of a slumbering volcano.
“Your strength breaks men’s bones,” she hisses. “I have the cunning to break their minds.”
The Northman is an ambitious and technically dazzling tale of power and succession set in a time of mysticism and human sacrifice where Skarsgard’s strapping avenger meets betrayal with a sharp blade and a colder heart.
7.5/10
OPERATION MINCEMEAT (12A)
THE truth is protected by a bodyguard of lies in Operation Mincemeat, a handsome dramatisation of outlandish British counter-espionage during the Second World War informed by Ben MacIntyre’s book of the same title. An extraordinary true story of subterfuge involving the corpse of a homeless man, posing as a fallen British agent in possession of classified documents, sustains bearably light tension over two hours in the assured hands of director John Madden.
The upper lips of a stellar British cast led by Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Penelope Wilton and Jason Isaacs are visibly stiffened by Michelle Ashford’s script, which juxtaposes events in the Mediterranean in the summer of 1943 with personal rivalries and thwarted romance on blitzkrieged home shores.
A plummy voiceover from James Bond creator Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), a Lieutenant Commander in the British Naval Intelligence Division at the time, skirts solemnity and earnestness and is occasionally distracting. His prosaic narration is superfluous when Madden and cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov successfully conjure striking images of “battlefields in shades of grey” to a robust score courtesy of composer Thomas Newman.
THE LOST CITY (12A)
6/10
SANDRA Bullock and Channing Tatum grumble in the jungle in a rip-roaring action-adventure comedy, directed by Adam and Aaron Nee, which lovingly harks back four decades to the good-humoured escapism of Romancing The Stone and Jewel Of The Nile.
Sparkling chemistry between the leads, who are unafraid to make fools of themselves for our enjoyment, enlivens a gloriously silly caper that milks laughs from Bullock’s impeccable pratfalls, Tatum’s exposed buttocks and the slow-motion hairography of Brad Pitt’s extended cameo.
A loopy script strikes a crowdpleasing balance between breathless action set pieces and full-blown screwball comedy that excavates unexpectedly macabre ground.
Some of the nuttier diversions, like a goofy cargo plane pilot whose best friend is a goat, don’t quite land. However, Bullock and Tatum sell every deranged digression with aplomb, cajoling us to have as much fun in our seats as they are having together on-screen in steamy surroundings.