Valhalla Rising

Directed By: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written By: Nicolas Winding Refn and Roy Jacobsen

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen and Maarten Stevenson

Director of Photography: Morten Soborg, Editor: Matthew Newman, Production Designer: Laurel Wear, Original Music: Peter Kyed and Peter Peter

Rated: Unrated

    The early images in Vahalla Rising are something of another nature it seems, a primordial nature not yet formed. The clouds sit upon the sky, brooding violence. The endless hills are full of rock and dirt, suggesting a not yet born Earth. And men, not speaking a word, fight violently against each other. In this opening, director Nicolas Winding Refn suggests the birth of a world more than an action film. Owing to Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick, he sucks us right into a universe where man exists, but not in its current form.

    However, that same logic can be taken to the half-baked ideas that fill the script Mr. Refn has prepared with Roy Jacobsen. For all its atmospheric tone and beauty, Valhalla Rising is a pretentious bore of the story of the nature of man, as told through a very bloody and gruesome Viking film. Mr. Refn has shown much promise as a filmmaker, both here, and Bronson, which has a style that might be suggested to be the complete opposite of Valhalla Rising. Yet in both films, he still hasn’t found a way to appropriately bring us into the characters of his world, or suggest anything with them. The images are stark and wondrous in their own right, but the film Valhalla Rising reminded me of most was Lars Von Trier’s controversial Antichrist, not because the film is as horrific as the latter (though the violence is quite shocking), but because for all the atmosphere, the film is surprisingly hollow and seems to underplay a better film in the works.

    Its not apparent from the start though, Mr. Refn sucks us in immediately to the story of a one-eyed Viking who refuses to speak, and thus is given the name One-Eye. He is played with a fierce silence by Mads Mikkelsen, who has truly made a name for himself in films like After the Wedding, but is still most recognizable from his role in Casino Royale. When we come into the film, One-Eye is a prisoner of a small Viking gang, but escapes, brutalizing everyone in the clan, and sparing a young boy (Maarten Stevenson). The boy and One-Eye begin a descent through the world around the, in what might be called a prequel to The Road (a title card even announces one section of the film to be titled “Hell”).

    Yet as Valhalla Rising drudges though it’s actually short running time, its easy to see another similarity to The Road, which is its allegorical aspirations. However, the allegory in the film is neither insightful, nor painted with subtlety. Mr. Refn is too fascinated with the brutality of his film and the environment, and too focused on making a film that says everything, that it really says nothing. As frightening as Mr. Mikkelsen is, it’s hard to be brought into this world, as Mr. Refn’s other characters speak in frank dialogue about what the allegory is actually about. If One-Eye could only kill them as well, would there really be a movie worth talking about.