Valhalla Rising (18.)
Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn.
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Marten Stevenson, Gary Lewis, Jamie Sives, Evan Stewart, Alexander Morton. 100 mins.
Of all the adjectives you might predict to be thrown in the direction of a Viking movie I’m guessing Pretentious, Arty and Trippy would be low down on your list. Violent though would probably be quite near the top and it certain is that, often skull crashingly so.
Refn (Bronson, the Pusher trilogy) has made a striking but obtuse movie that people will either click with and become quite devoted to or will leave them completely alienated.
Film critics; they’re just pests aren’t they? Wittering away and spoiling the film for you. Before the screening one of them came out to introduce the film and its director saying that he’d just flew in from Paris where it was being well received, one magazine calling it the “2001 of Viking movies.” This right before the lights go down, meaning that you were doomed to view the film in terms of whether it was or wasn’t the 2001 of Viking Movies.
It isn’t of course but the description has a certain surface relevance. These Vikings seem barely one step up from cavemen – no longboats or horned helmets here. Starting in a barren land of permanent mist, a group of these primitive people set off on an odyssey guided by a monolith - in this case One Eye (Mikkelson) a mute killing machine who seems endowed with some mystical power. He is repeatedly shot with his head framed against the skyline, like an Easter Island figurehead.
But while 2001 could claim to be a non verbal experience, despite its long voiceless sequences ultimately Valhalla Rising relies on dialogue to get its ideas and plot across. And every time someone opens his mouth to speak in a Scottish accent light enough to be easily comprehensible and modern language, the mood is just blown clear out of the water.
In 2001 you feel sure that even if you are confused, Kubrick knew what was happening. This just seems like an opportunistic grab bag of idea in a blind search for mythic resonance. Towards the end there are a few beautiful images but a lot of it is quite foolish, respectable Caledonian thespians writhing around in mud.
There’s really no end to the number of directors and films that are referenced here. Almost every prestigious art house director gets some kind of nod. I’m going to plump for summarising it as Gasper Noe’s transcendent fusion of loud music and extreme violence crossed with a bad Malick film (the even number ones), in an attempt to make a whole film in the mood of the ten minutes in Apocalypse Now before they reach Kurtz’s camp.
Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn.
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Marten Stevenson, Gary Lewis, Jamie Sives, Evan Stewart, Alexander Morton. 100 mins.
Of all the adjectives you might predict to be thrown in the direction of a Viking movie I’m guessing Pretentious, Arty and Trippy would be low down on your list. Violent though would probably be quite near the top and it certain is that, often skull crashingly so.
Refn (Bronson, the Pusher trilogy) has made a striking but obtuse movie that people will either click with and become quite devoted to or will leave them completely alienated.
Film critics; they’re just pests aren’t they? Wittering away and spoiling the film for you. Before the screening one of them came out to introduce the film and its director saying that he’d just flew in from Paris where it was being well received, one magazine calling it the “2001 of Viking movies.” This right before the lights go down, meaning that you were doomed to view the film in terms of whether it was or wasn’t the 2001 of Viking Movies.
It isn’t of course but the description has a certain surface relevance. These Vikings seem barely one step up from cavemen – no longboats or horned helmets here. Starting in a barren land of permanent mist, a group of these primitive people set off on an odyssey guided by a monolith - in this case One Eye (Mikkelson) a mute killing machine who seems endowed with some mystical power. He is repeatedly shot with his head framed against the skyline, like an Easter Island figurehead.
But while 2001 could claim to be a non verbal experience, despite its long voiceless sequences ultimately Valhalla Rising relies on dialogue to get its ideas and plot across. And every time someone opens his mouth to speak in a Scottish accent light enough to be easily comprehensible and modern language, the mood is just blown clear out of the water.
In 2001 you feel sure that even if you are confused, Kubrick knew what was happening. This just seems like an opportunistic grab bag of idea in a blind search for mythic resonance. Towards the end there are a few beautiful images but a lot of it is quite foolish, respectable Caledonian thespians writhing around in mud.
There’s really no end to the number of directors and films that are referenced here. Almost every prestigious art house director gets some kind of nod. I’m going to plump for summarising it as Gasper Noe’s transcendent fusion of loud music and extreme violence crossed with a bad Malick film (the even number ones), in an attempt to make a whole film in the mood of the ten minutes in Apocalypse Now before they reach Kurtz’s camp.
