NEW - Alexander Skarsgård and Robert Eggers talk to The Impact Journal about THE NORTHMANThis
NEW - Alexander SkarsgårdandRobert Eggers talk to The Impact Journal about THE NORTHMAN
This article is in Danish. I transcribed it and used Google Translate.
Robert Egger’s new film, ‘The Northman’, is a blood-soaked Viking fairy tale about revenge, love and the gods’ play with human destiny - starring Hollywood star Alexander Skarsgård. Impact has met the two to talk about what has been the most challenging film to date - both to play and instruct.
The Northman is based on The Legend of Amleth mixed with elements from other Norse sagas. Why have you taken these as your starting point?
ROBERT EGGERS: The story of Amleth, which is also the Nordic saga on which Shakespeare based Hamlet, is the one we have used as the main idea in our story. Everyone knows Hamlet and the Lion King, so therefore we could dive deeper into the rituals and the mythological culture without losing the audience. However, the original Amleth did not have all the elements we wanted in a great Viking movie. We had to have a big looting spree, longships, a Viking funeral and all that sort of thing, so for us it was about taking the best of several different stories and creating something new and unique.
What was it like directing The Northman, which with a budget of $ 90 million is on a completely different scale than the other films you’ve made?
ROBERT EGGERS: My first two films were so small that I had the opportunity to create the entire universe and build it from scratch. Due to the size of the budget, I had the opportunity to do the same with this film, but it was a massive challenge to make a film in this magnitude. But it was also a challenge that my collaborators and I were excited to put our teeth into.
Alexander, you play the physically demanding role of the great Viking warrior Amleth. How did you prepare for the role?
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: I started training for the role five months before the filming started. Amleth’s berserker name is Bjørnulf, which means bearwolf, so it was important that I came to look like a bear a little more than I normally do. I got help from a personal trainer, Magnus Lygdbåck, with whom I also made Tarzan. He almost knows me and my body better than I do, and he knows how I react to different types of training and diets so he made a program for me. It was basically about lifting weights and eating a lot of food - I ate seven meals a day to gain weight.
Alexander, where does your interest in the Vikings come from?
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: It has been there almost always. My family has a house on Øland, which is a large Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, and as a child I spent all my summers there. Øland is culturally a very significant place for the Vikings. There are close to 200 rune stones on the island, and my first memories of the Viking culture are from here. My grandfather read the inscriptions on the stones aloud to me and told stories about the Vikings who traveled on expeditions to Constantinople and Istanbul. Most of them never came back, and it was really exciting for a little boy to stand in exactly the same place where a Viking stood several thousand years ago and cut stories into stone. ”
Robert, did you have a clear vision of how you would direct the film?
ROBERT EGGERS: We knew from the start that we wanted to shoot with one camera in long shots without stopping, but because the film was so big, we had to plan EVERYTHING. In my first two films, the idea was that if we showed up completely well-prepared, we might as well change a little along the way or make something unexpected happen. But here, where we had hundreds of extras, horses, chickens and stuntmen, we had to prepare to the fingertips - and follow the plan completely. The only time something changed was if it dawned on us that what we had planned was a mistake.
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: It also meant that there was very little improvisation during the filming. It was almost a dance between the actor and the camera, and it just had to work, so we had to plan it down to the smallest detail. There are other jobs where you can just show up and fool around Tundt and have fun. For example, I have had the pleasure of working with your compatriot Lars von Trier a few times, and he works in the completely opposite way, where you just show up, not even rehearse the scenes, and everything is chaos. It’s fun to work that way too, but Robert’s way of making movies is very different. This is about doing the hard work before you show up on the set. I was lucky to be a part of this film from the very beginning, so already in the process of creating the world and developing the characters, I could talk to Robert if I had any thoughts and ideas about Amleth: Who he was, where he came from , and what the essence of him was. Robert was very cooperative, so it was really nice to be a part of it for such a long time. It’s a privilege you often do not have as an actor, where you just get sent a script that has already been approved and is ready to be shot.
How challenging was it to record the film?
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: It was both physically and mentally draining to shoot the many fight scenes. For example, there is a scene in the film where Amleth transforms from a human into a hybrid between a wolf and a bear. It was a very intense scene to record because it was very primal and it required a lot of adrenaline. We filmed the scene at night and we were all really tired after just one time, but like most of the movie, the scene had to be filmed in one clip, so we did it again and again. I think we did it 25 times before we finally got it in the box. We were completely drained of energy. I got my bear-wolf skin and all the gear off and got back in the car. It was five in the morning, and just as we were about to drive, one of the assistants came running and knocked on the window. It had been raining during all the shooting so we had had such a rain deflector on the lens to avoid raindrops.
Unfortunately it had not worked on the last shot, so I had to go all the way back, put on the wet bearskin and do it all over again. So the animal frustration you see in that scene is completely genuine. It is in fact us who are so frustrated that we were so close to a bath and a hot bed but were forced into the fight again.
Why had you chosen the bear and the wolf to represent Amleth and his journey?
ROBERT EGGERS: Our best understanding of these warriors from the Viking Age is that they were bersekr, which means bear warriors, and wolf mockery, which means wolf warriors. We wanted to emphasize that the berserkers must have fought like bears. They must have been huge, while the wolves must have been more cunning and fluid. I liked the idea that Amleth was big as a bear and cunning as a wolf.
Alexander, what surprised you the most when you first met your character?
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: I like that it starts out as a classic hero story, but then changes along the way.
At first, for example, it’s very clear to Amleth who the hero is and who the villain is, but when he finally meets his mother after 20 years apart, his whole world is turned upside down because he finds out, that the truth might not be quite as he thought. That element I think is really interesting to have in such a big-budget-epic-viking adventure movie. It’s cool that it does not follow the classic pace like other great movies.
ROBERT EGGERS: That was also what struck me most when I started reading the sagas. Although they think and behave in a way that is different from today, the hero was often an anti-hero. The way Amleth, for example, kills people at night was not an okay thing to do for Vikings, and you often see that in the sagas. You also see that the so-called villain is actually a loving father and husband as well. The stories had an ambivalence that I found really appealing, and that’s pretty rare for a film of this size, so it was cool to have.
ABOUT THE NORTHMAN
Behind the film is the visionary American director Robert Eggers.
The film is about the young prince Amleth, who is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps Amleth’s mother. Amleth flees from his island kingdom, but swears revenge: He will avenge his father, save his mother, and kill his uncle. Only many years later, when Amleth has become a respected Viking warrior, is he reminded of his promise and embarks on his blood-drip revenge.
In addition to Alexander Skarsgård, star actors such as Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Danish Claes Bang are also on the cast.
The Northman is current in theaters now.
Sources:theimpact_journalon Instagram, and read the magazine on ISSUU here: https://issuu.com/gitte9/docs/impact_maj2022_v2_epaper. Photos are of The Northman premiere in London (credited to Universal Pictures) and the still photographs are by Aidan Monaghan.
