Valhalla Rising, Refn, 2009, 7.7/10
"In the beginning there was
only man and nature
Men came bearing crosses
and drove the heathen
To the fringes of the earth"
So begins Valhalla Rising.
"I will lead this beast on a chain of flowers" - from "(A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem of 12 Stars"
Part I: Wrath.
One-Eye reaches the crest of a hill and sees a man bowed over a recent battlefield, smoke rising, a cross erected on a knoll at the edge of the scene. He looks like Blondie, with the poncho draped over his shoulder. He doesn't talk, not unlike the Vincenzoni character in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He just won his freedom by finding an arrowhead in a stream and massacring those who had recently taken him as thrall, despite being "Christian." They'd planned on trading him from one chieftain to the other. Their plans failed. Finally the violence he is capable of inflicting - which seems like the reason for his movement - is enacted.
Interspersed through these simple beginnings are lengthy shots of the hills of Scotland, beautiful beyond words. Despite all of its flaws, the movie evokes the seething chaos of a society in transition better than most.
Part II: Silent Warrior.
"The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak."
The scenes here are brutal. We have the clashing of nomadic hunter gathers and "more civilized" Norsemen, though some have argued that this nomadic hunter gatherer (pre-Christian Norseman has more honor than his captors). Dark grey clouds are salutary, the themes and characters put them to shame. Human nature laid more bare than we are used to seeing.
As the pair - the boy who fed One-Eye has followed him cautiously, no longer having family - come over the hillock the crusaders ask if he is from the clans, and his partner, Are the boy, answers, "no." They have a cache of topless women off to the side. Captives? How Christian was that? We see a pile of burning bodies, another element of pre-Christian Norsemen mixing with "God's own soldiers."
"Do you think he'll come back?" asks one Christian to the other: "If it's God's will," answers the other.
Part III: Men of God.
"We must be alert to the deeply ingrained capacity for murder that lurks inside us all." Buss, The Murderer Next Door
He has come back, like Jesus risen from the dead after three days. Refn gives us no timescale, however. The famous viking longship is boarded, the Christians, along with One-Eye and Are, are sailing to Jerusalem. The boat ride is intensely quiet, heavily shrouded in fog. There is attempted theft, murder, suspicion, schadenfreude, and a health dose of the absurd. It's hard to understand, because nobody is rowing in the boat and nothing changes as they go along, until finally they arrive at...
Part IV: The Holy Land
North america, as most critics seem to agree, probably Newfoundland. The trees and bushes don't differ much from our own back yard, here in Oregon. The men spread out to search their new found land. The camera work and scenery is beautiful. They happen upon a Native American burial ground, which is speculated to be Beothuk. They are clearly nowhere near Jerusalem, as they had planned to be.
They continue to bicker and suspect one another, clearly frustrated that they're in the wrong place and spent so much time and misery getting there. They suspect one another, especially the most obvious outsider of the group, One-Eye. Two of the elders discuss their plans as fog rolls in. Fog plays a big part here, as everything is obscured. Not only is the group lost, but perhaps we as viewers are meant to be as well. Refn seems to be saying, it doesn't matter where they are, this was a fact of life for everyone at this time. One man leaves the group and his sword behind, and goes wandering.
One of their men is hit with an arrow while they are exploring the waterways.
Part V: Hell
The elders hold the stone arrow point and marvel at it's lack of sophistication. "Not iron." They pass around a ceramic jug with a hallucinatory brew (probably fly agaric tea) used to prepare vikings for battle. While One-Eye builds a cairn, perhaps for their recently fallen comrade, others pray, and one assails another (the one who we thought was dead) and roughly sodomizes him. It seems he is left for dead. The wandering member of the group is back now, covered in mud and scrawled runes. They begin to exhibit mass frustration and quite a few of them die. "Only men of faith deserve the riches of my new Jerusalem."
Part VI: Sacrifice
The leaders discuss the new Jerusalem. The madman and the murderer. We don't see what happens to the madman, but the leader is finally taken down with three arrows to the back. Are and One-Eye continue on, a couple of stragglers behind them as well. Finally they leave the other two behind and are making their way through the environment. Beautiful shots of glades and lakes, as the two cross large river rock and foggy valleys. The end is violent, but nowhere near as shocking as most of the violence in the film.
Issues with dress are there. The movie is slow, it's odd at times, and it's flawed. One-Eye has these bizarre visions, or is it the director? Is it another way for us to see his future actions? He's bathed in red light, and maybe it is just the blood of violence that has followed mankind since our days as protozoa. Life feeds on life? They all frustratingly speak English. It would have been far more interesting if they'd all have spoken their native tongue, but most likely whichever tongue that is is a largely dead language.
References
Film
-The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Leone, 1966
-Valhalla Rising, Refn, 2009
Literature/Websites
-A Brief note on Fly Agaric used by Vikings here
-Beothuk natives @ Wikipedia
-The Murderer Next Door, Buss, 2006
-TIFF: 'Valhalla Rising Delivers Authentic Viking Experience, available here
-Valhalla Rising @ Wikipedia
-Valhalla Rising Review from here
-Viking raids
Music
-Diadem of 12 Stars, Wolves in the Throne Room, 2006
The Last Films I've seen
1. Double Indemnity, Wilder, 1944, 8.0/10.0
I've seen this movie 3 times now, and finally for the first time on a decent print. I must say, it gets better each time I see it. I've not read anything by Ernest Hemingway, except for excerpts from his writings, and his name is synonymous with economy in my mind, and that's what I think of when I think of Billy Wilder. Double Indemnity is a film noir packed tightly into the economy of a Hemingway novel.
2. "Are you...?", Dexter, Season 7, Episode 1, 10/10
Quite possibly the best episode of one of my favorite television shows. A show that casts a moral grey area (for some?), certainly makes me wonder. If you knew someone was killing bad people, picking them off one by one, would you say anything about it? How would you react? What if you found out it was someone you were really close to?
3. The Piano, Campion, 1995, 9.4/10.0
Brilliant tell that weaves folklore, murder, love, indigenous people vs. settlers, and many other things together to relate a tail that is almost unbelievable at times. The way it concludes leaves no doubt of its gravitas, however.
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