The author of this article is a contributor @ Bullfrog
Learn to reconcile with yourself from the movies
Recently, a film with a unique style has won the admiration of international film critics.
No, the British "Guardian" gave it a perfect score, and other platform scores are also quite beautiful. Rotten Tomatoes has a freshness rating of 88%, and the more stringent MTC platform, the media average score is as high as 83 points.
It is the Nordics that tell the story of the Vikings.
The trailer and footage released recently in the film are very eye-catching.
The texture of the oil painting, the primitive and barbaric violent scenes, the magic and witchcraft in unison, I believe that many people can not resist such a tone.
The audience that first came into contact with Nordics was first attracted by its powerful cast.
The male protagonist is Alexander Skarsgard, who is affectionately known as "E Big" by netizens (because his role in the American drama "True Love Is Blood" is called Eric Northman, so he takes his initial letter as "E Big").
There are Chinese film fans like the Oscar actress Nicole Kidman, as well as Hollywood's popular little flower Anya Taylor-Joy, last year she defeated her rival Nicole Kidman with the American drama "Rear Wing Abandoned Soldier", and this same stage performance surprised fans.
The Nordics is Anya's second collaboration with director Robert Eggers, the first being the 2015 witch they made each other.
After the second cooperation, Anya played the witch again, and even some netizens suspected that "Nordics" was a sequel or derivative film of "The Witch".
The Witch
In the future, the two will have a deeper cooperation - Eggers's fourth feature film, the vampire-themed "Northferatu".
The Nordics
Other starring actors include Ethan Hawke, the male god who recently participated in Marvel's new drama "Moonlight Rider", playing E's father in the film, and the villain is the Swedish temperament actor Klas Bon, who has emerged from starring in the Cannes Palme d'Or film "Square".
In addition to the eye-catching lineup, the biggest feature of "Nordics" is the continuation of director Eggers' visual style.
The trailer is cut a bit to pieces, but once the pause button is pressed, each frame can be used as wallpaper.
On the one hand, this benefits from the amazing natural scenery of the Icelandic filming location, and on the other hand, it depends on the director's aesthetic.
From The Witch to The Lighthouse to Nordics, arguably, Eggers has been making the same kind of film in terms of visual style alone.
Symmetrical composition, central composition, Rembrandt-style lighting (clear contours, bounded light and shade), gray and cold tones even highlight only one color
There is no doubt that Nordics will be another oil painting film.
When he was working on his previous work, The Lighthouse, Eggers would first find a famous painting that matched the imagined picture, and then create the image, so that the director would feel "simpler".
There is reason to believe that "Norse Man" will also restore a large number of famous paintings, just wait for the gods to discover them one by one.
Audiovisual language is Eggers's best skill, as for his ability to tell stories, it cannot be said that he cannot, but can only say that he is very picky with the audience.
His movie must need to be calm and watch slowly, otherwise it is easy to lose patience, referring to the "Witch" and "Lighthouse" in the Douban score is barely 7, you can understand.
The main problem is that the threshold for watching movies is very high.
Eggers is an "academic research" director, so small that every line is as well-founded as possible. Much of the dialogue in The Witch comes from folklore, mythology, witchcraft records, and even periodicals, journals, and events.
From The Witch to The Norse, all three works are from folklore, without exception, and all of them involve strange gods.
"Witch" and "Lighthouse" originate from the legend of New England in the United States, and the director himself is a new England native, telling the story of his hometown, which can be described as handy.
This time, the story of "Nordics" touched on areas he was not familiar with, but fortunately he had a strong Nordic scholar to help.
The historical consultant was Neil Price, a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo who is recognized as an expert on Viking history.
The literary consultant is a scholar working at the National Library of Oslo, Norway (Joanna Caitlin Fririxddöttier), who wrote Valkyrie: The Woman of the Viking World, and the "Valkyrie" Valkyrie appears in the trailer for "The Norse".
Here are a few more historical examples.
One is the shape of the Valkyrie. The swan headdress is worn because in Norse mythology the image of the Valkyrie is a swan.
The black dots on her teeth are not "vegetable leaves", but "tooth lines" (tooth tattoos), which are status symbols in Nordic culture, and related artifacts have appeared in large quantities on the Swedish island of Gotland.
There are two crows at the beginning of the trailer, why are there only two, is it a special effect to save money?
Also, why is there a lot of footage on a head in the male wizard's scene, and what will be famous here?
The above designs are all based on literature, specifically here will not be expanded, interested can keyword search "Odin" + "crow" + "Mimir".
Compared with such a complex and even a little deep text, the main plot of the film is quite simple, even simple enough to be "a little boring", and may end in an anti-climactic way like the previous work.
The nordic story is based on the book The Danes, but more details are derived from earlier Nordic oral mythology.
The main line of the story is understood by modern people and can be said to be the "Nordic version of Hamlet".
But in fact, the "Nordic version of Hamlet" is the most original and original version of "Hamlet", and Shakespeare's "Hamlet" was inspired by the "Nordic version of Hamlet".
The biggest difference between the two is that the tragic and indecisive characters of Shakespeare's Hamlet are more pronounced.
And the "Nordic version of Hamlet", the characters are more simple and rough, belonging to a single-threaded brain. From the "E big" macho style, pure strength output attack method, you can see the reason.
Looking at this figure, people recall the moment when he played "Tarzan of the Apes"
However, the director felt that the film was more like "Conan the Barbarian", and Eggers commented that "The Nordic" was a combination of "Andrey Rublev" and "Conan the Barbarian".
The former is Tarkovsky's biopic art film with a whopping 9.0 on Douban, and the latter is a male action film mixed with male hormones and plasma.
Such a contrasting combination of styles, did the "Nordics" shared by XiaoWan arouse your interest?
Note: Some of the pictures in this article come from Douban and the Internet, if there is infringement, please take the initiative to contact us.