![]() “There are actors, stuntmen, extras, men falling off horses, chickens flying through the frame,” Skarsgård recalls. ![]() It’s continuous and several minutes long, with dozens of people and animals filling up the frame. Take, for example, a magnificent raid scene where the Vikings storm through a village and kill everyone in their path. That was the only way I could approach this, because otherwise it would’ve been a nightmare.”Įggers’s disciplined style and Blaschke’s immersive cinematography result in some jaw-dropping shots. But it is very technical, so it’s more about trying to instill life into very technical scenes. “The stuff he’s asking me to do doesn’t go against my beliefs in Amleth and who he is,” Skarsgård says. Skarsgård searched for freedom within his restrictions, reminding himself how much preparation had gone into the film and how much he had admired The Witch and The Lighthouse, ultimately choosing to trust Eggers’s vision. It took time to get into the flow of things, to accept that this was the way he had to work for the entirety of production. What if I don’t want to go left here? What if I feel like my character would do this?” “It’s like a straitjacket,” the actor says of the controlled shooting style. I was obviously very familiar with his style of filmmaking theoretically, but I’d never worked that way.”Īt first, Skarsgård felt constricted by the choreographed nature of the film. “We’d never been on a set together before. The actual production itself was, in a word, “frustrating,” Skarsgård says with a laugh. It was ambitious and stylized, a bold way to tackle an epic of that nature. Production took place primarily in Ireland and Iceland, with Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke relying heavily on one-take master shots that require precise choreography and repetition. “That was something I wanted to explore…it is integral to him…and it’s subversive.”Įggers went off and cowrote a script with Icelandic poet Sjón, and with Skarsgård on board as the producer and star, assembled a starry cast that includes Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, and The Lighthouse’s Willem Dafoe-who, along with The Witch star Anya Taylor-Joy, is now a regular player in the Eggers Cinematic Universe. ![]() It’s a subtle nod to the idea of “ fylgja, a female spirit that lives inside of us and is guiding us,” Skarsgård explained, noting his fascination with the duality of testosterone-riddled Vikings believing in the female energy inherent within themselves. There’s the wild-eyed bear-wolf who slaughters men in battle the quick-thinking negotiator who learns how to move sneakily among traitors and the gentle giant who pays keen attention to the wisdom of the women around him. Skarsgård skillfully portrays Amleth in the viciously entertaining film, layering the role with the warrior’s alter egos. Amleth then spends the rest of his life becoming a ruthless Viking warrior and plotting his revenge, clawing toward the day he can finally face his uncle, avenge his father, and rescue his mother. Directed by Robert Eggers, the $90 million epic is a bloody and brutal adaptation of the saga of Amleth, a prince whose father is slain by his uncle. “I had this this dream of one day making a big, epic Viking movie, but based on an old Icelandic saga,” Skarsgård says over Zoom from a nondescript hotel room in Los Angeles, passionately recalling his early musings about a film that would authentically portray the fearless warriors whose adventures and myths ruled the landscape of his young imagination.Ī few decades later and Skarsgård’s dream has finally become a reality with The Northman. All the while, a fantasy project was blossoming in his mind. Like his father, Stellan Skarsgård, before him, Alexander would go on to become an actor, starring in films like The Legend of Tarzan and shows like Big Little Lies and True Blood, adept at playing multifaceted men who float between darkness and light. That’s when Skarsgård’s obsession with the storied Nordic warriors began. ![]() “A thousand years ago, a Viking stood right here,” his grandfather would tell him. His grandfather would take him around the island, teaching the young Skarsgård about the ancient rune stones-massive hunks of stone that Vikings inscribed to commemorate their dead-that jut out of the ground. When Alexander Skarsgård was a boy, he would leave Stockholm every summer and journey to the house his great-grandfather built in Öland, a Swedish island on the Baltic Sea.
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