Robert Eggers’ The Northman is out in theaters and stars an all-star cast that includes Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies), Golden Globe winner Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit), Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe winner Nicole Kidman (The Hours), Oscar nominees Ethan Hawke (The Good Lord Bird), Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate), Claes Bang (The Square), and Grammy/Oscar-nominated Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk (Dancer in the Dark).
Set in Iceland at the of the 10th Century, The Northman is “an epic revenge thriller that explores how far a Viking prince will go to seek justice for his murdered father.”
ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim spoke to The Northman director Robert Eggers about his first blockbuster, getting to work with familiar faces, and more.
Jonathan Sim: The Northman is your largest production yet, as far as budget, what was different about writing and directing a film with this type of budget, as opposed to your earlier, smaller work like The Witch and The Lighthouse?
Robert Eggers: Well, I mean, this is my first time trying to make a movie for a broad audience. So entertainment needs to be my number one priority. Whereas on my first two films, it was fifth or 15th. So, that’s the main thing, how do I share my taste and my storytelling with a ton of people?
It really does pay off in, just the way that the story unfolds itself. You’ve also worked with actors like Anya Taylor-Joy and Willem Dafoe in the past. So what was it about those two that made you want to collaborate with them again on this project?
Well, I mean, look, Willem Dafoe is, I’ll happily submit as a fact, like one of the finest actors who’s ever lived, and, lucky me, he likes to work with me. So, obviously, I’m going to write a role for Willem and, Anya, she is so incredible as an actor. I mean the way that she’s able to be ethereal and grounded at the same time, her facility with language, her intelligence, and the way she just, like, explodes off the screen, how can I not want to work with her again, you know? I mean, it just makes sense.
From here on out, would you like to continue telling stories with this massive scale and scope and all these different new genres, or would you ever want to go back to making more smaller budget, experimental types of films?
I’d like to do another small, New England folk tale, folk horror kind of thing at some point. The next film I’d like to be smaller than this, but not as small as, say, The Lighthouse. But it’d be fun to make another big movie again, too.
What do you hope that audiences take away from watching The Northman? How do you hope that they respond to it?
I mean, everyone needs to take away, whatever it speaks to them. But I think… Viking culture is a really sophisticated culture. Beautiful poetry, beautiful art, advanced technology, their ships, and their trade routes made the world very small, but it’s also a culture that was completely obsessed with horrible violence, and apparently, we haven’t changed in a thousand years.
Is there a scene from this film that really strikes out to you as a scene that you’re most excited for people to see or anything that was particularly tricky to pull off?
The raid of the village and the big scene with Alex and Nicole are the two scenes that I’m the most proud of. That’s for sure.