There Is a World Elsewhere
I was invited to an advance screening of The Northman not as a movie reviewer but in my capacity as a member of a university History department. This makes sense given that, arguably, no other active filmmaker takes the the past as seriously, and as much on its own peculiar terms, as does Robert Eggers.
Yet, in The Witch, The Lighthouse, and now The Northman, Eggers is rigorously committed not only to the standard checklist of "period accuracy" production-design components, he is also singularly focused on getting inside the thought-worlds and proprioceptive experiences of seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a remote nautical outpost in the 1890s, and the visceral landscape of early medieval northern Europe, specifically from the perspective of pre-Christianized Vikings – though, true to period, this modern term is never used (digressing here: anachronistic name notwithstanding, if you happen to be in the Montréal area, this serendipitously timed special exhibition is a must!).
These are immersive visions of (more or less) alien milieux, equal parts awesomely beautiful and awesomely terrifying. And Eggers' films betray remarkably little interest in the concerns, debates, and assumptions of current culture, except insofar as Eggers-the-craftsman-of-spectacles seems to know intuitively how to entrance and thrill modern audiences as well as any contemporary director. The perspectives of these three films and their encoding of meaning belong as far as possible –– Eggers would make a very good professional historian –– to the distant moments in time and space they make palpable and immediate. The Northman's narrative rhythms, its moral tone and internal logic, its eerie beauty and ghoulish grotesquerie all derive from the world of the Icelandic Eddas and of Beowulf, although there are also unmistakable (pre-)echoes of Shakespeare, with the primordial ooze that would much later coalesce into the Hamlet and (to a lesser extent) Macbeth stories mixed in with the mud and blood and bile on screen.
Given an obviously larger budget, a wider canvas on which to create, and a terrific cast of movie stars (including, best of all here, the one of Eggers' own partial making), Eggers compromises or tones down none of his esoteric or idiosyncratic artistic impulses; he delivers his most impressive film yet. As a cinephile, I'd say it's a masterpiece, and also that it's extremely unlikely to be surpassed by any Hollywood release – or film, period? – this year. As an historian of the Early Middle Ages, I wonder if it might be the best, and the most indelibly evocative, movie set in that period – a time before the knights and castles and codes of chivalry that have attracted far more cinematic attention than this stranger, liminal lost epoch separating the High Middle Ages from Roman Late Antiquity.
Angelbert on the Battle of Fontenoy (841), the bloodiest battle of the Carolingian civil war; translated by Peter Godman in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), pp. 262–265:
When in the earliest morning dawn cleaved the horrors of night
that was not the day of the sabbath but the cauldron of Saturn.
The hubbub of war resounds. A terrible battle arises on all sides.
Brothers prepare death for brothers, uncles for nephews,
There has been no worse massacre on the field of battle.
Christian law is violated; blood flows in waves;
The hand of almighty God protected Lothar
who himself put up a valiant struggle.
But even as Judas once betrayed the Saviour,
so, Sire, your generals abandoned you in the struggle.
Fontenoy is the name the peasants give to the spring and village
where Frankish blood was shed in slaughter and destruction.
May neither dew nor showers nor rain fall on that meadow
on which mighty men, seasoned warriors, were laid low,
I, Angelbert, witnessed this crime which I have described
in rhythmical verse, as I fought with the others.
From the height of the hill I looked down into the valley's depths
where the brave king Lothar was vanquishing his enemies
On Charles' side and on that of Louis too
the fields become white with the linen garments of the dead
The battle does not deserve to be praised or to be the subject
of fine song. Let every quarter of the globe
Cursed be that day, may it not be counted
in the round of the year, but expunged from all memory,
That night and the following day, the night was especially terrible
a night mingled with lamentations and suffering,
O grief and lamentation! The dead are stripped naked,
vultures, crows, and wolves greedily devour their flesh.
I shall not describe further the weeping and wailing.
Let each man restrain his tears as much as he is able to.
Let us implore the Lord on behalf of their souls.
With the Oscar nominations coming tomorrow, here's what I would've voted for, now having seen a few more really good movies; roughly in preferential order for each category:
Since posting the (admittedly severely limited) best-of list down below, I've seen three more 2021 movies of note: Drive My Car, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and The Lost Daughter. The first is not only far and away the best film I've seen that was released last year, it's one of the best, and most genuinely profound, films I've ever seen (no hyperbole intended); one of the true masterpieces of this still-young century. The second is thoroughly terrific –– funny, touching, and very on-point without ever being on-the-nose. The third one I'm more split on, admiring the uniformly strong performances and the main, present-tense narrative, but less so the cliché-ridden flashback scenes and ultimately too-neat schematic structure.
2021 Films
I did not see too many 2021 movies – and, frankly, I did not think very much about movies this past year – but, for what it's worth, these were the fifteen I liked best:
Forget tasteless or gross, this is very possibly the single most psychotic thing I've ever seen; the horrifying voicemail left for Ilhan Omar is certainly among the more psychotic things I've ever heard. Together – image and 40-second audio recording – they sum up catastrophic, perhaps unsalvageable American decline better than any 2000-word magazine article or op-ed piece.
I just don't know what to think of this.
"2021" Singles
"2021" Albums
Reasons to Believe
–Phoebe Bridgers, "Graceland Too"
–Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23: II. Adagio
–The Anthony Bourdain doc, Roadrunner
–Samantha Power
–Bruce Springsteen, "Reason to Believe" (and the rest of Nebraska)
–That time the French military band performed "Don't Look Back in Anger"
–The last scene in Green Card (see below)
–Mirin Fader's Giannis book
–The Fake or Fortune? episodes that result in authentication
Everything is gonna be alright?
If there has been a better straight-up romantic comedy released in the three decades since Green Card, I must have completely missed it.
It is an inexhaustibly wonderful movie.
(Note: I would not count any part of the Before... Trilogy as "straight-up romantic comedy. "And the more extraordinary virtues of Groundhog Day –– the middle entry in the great "Andie MacDowell '90s Rom-Com Trilogy," completed with Four Weddings and a Funeral –– largely transcend its particular genre.)
Going further still: the bittersweet, ambiguous final scene (above) is as poignant and moving and perfectly realized and executed as any I've ever seen in any film romance, full stop.
Also: Peter Weir must be one of the most generally underrated and extremely versatile filmmakers of the past half-century or so. Consider that the same director made Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Green Card, The Truman Show, and Master and Commander. Nearly the only thing these films have in common is that they are all either very good or great.
