It took Eggers OCD and love for details to make a movie from an Icelandic saga while keeping a fair view from the Viking perspective, and I'm just getting started.
Visually the movie is beyond gorgeous: it is stunning. There's no CGI in it, but rather natural lightning and SFX, so the film won't age. From the detail of the villages and the clothing of the characters to the landscapes and the battles. The photography is as perfect as the 2022 cameras allow.
The acting goes hand to hand with the script. If the reader allows me the allegory, Eggers made a Jurassic-parkean reconstruction of the DNA of the sagas, stripping the christian interpretation of the monks and hit the core of the north-men folklore that lets you witness how these people perceived the world with all its myth, filth and brutality. Even the rituals and its symbology was reconstructed with academic historical precision.
The same love was set on directing and acting, particularly from Taylor-Joy as a stunning earthbound witch, and Skarsgård who effectively turns into a berserkr, both helped by the breath-taking ambient. For the spectator, the soundtrack provides the final push to witness with Odin's very eyes this marvel of film-making.
Unless the reader has an attention-span id 3 minutes, needs goofy gags every five minutes, or requires a politically-correct discourse rather than an historically accurate one (sorry, this ain't Disney/Netflix), this movie is a definite must to watch in cinemas. It won't age, and is on the right track to become a scholarly reference, a museum piece, and a cult movie.
Visually the movie is beyond gorgeous: it is stunning. There's no CGI in it, but rather natural lightning and SFX, so the film won't age. From the detail of the villages and the clothing of the characters to the landscapes and the battles. The photography is as perfect as the 2022 cameras allow.
The acting goes hand to hand with the script. If the reader allows me the allegory, Eggers made a Jurassic-parkean reconstruction of the DNA of the sagas, stripping the christian interpretation of the monks and hit the core of the north-men folklore that lets you witness how these people perceived the world with all its myth, filth and brutality. Even the rituals and its symbology was reconstructed with academic historical precision.
The same love was set on directing and acting, particularly from Taylor-Joy as a stunning earthbound witch, and Skarsgård who effectively turns into a berserkr, both helped by the breath-taking ambient. For the spectator, the soundtrack provides the final push to witness with Odin's very eyes this marvel of film-making.
Unless the reader has an attention-span id 3 minutes, needs goofy gags every five minutes, or requires a politically-correct discourse rather than an historically accurate one (sorry, this ain't Disney/Netflix), this movie is a definite must to watch in cinemas. It won't age, and is on the right track to become a scholarly reference, a museum piece, and a cult movie.