FILMS

THE NORTHMAN Robert Eggers is a prodigious American director committed to deep dives into the eerie past. His debut The Witch was about hapless Puritans facing dark forces in 1700s New England; The Lighthouse was steeped in 19th-century maritime madness. Now Eggers has gone back to the age of Icelandic sagas. A Viking revenge tale, The Northman is his biggest film yet, vaulting onto a huge visionary scale and showing a tendency to Kubrickian perfectionism and grandeur – although it’s moot whether this film more closely resembles Kubrick or Leni Riefenstahl.

Set in the ninth century, retells the original Hamlet story that inspired Shakespeare. Alexander Skarsgård plays Amleth, a prince turned ferocious Berserker warrior determined to avenge his murdered father (Ethan Hawke) and kill the man (Claes Bang) who married his mother Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). Amleth ruthlessly pursues his bloody mission, while enjoying a romantic idyll with a Slavic woman, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy). The supernatural plays a part too: a raging Valkyrie, an