This is an interesting movie. There are so many things about it I want to dive into and personally change myself. The editing, cgi blood, slow-motion, little things here and there. And then there's the character of One-Eye. Nicolas Winding Refn has said that the character is meant to be a monolith. A creature, not a human. He's not supposed to have identifiable emotions or true motivations for anything he does. Every time I think about that I get upset.
One-Eye is a human. Nicolas Refn might not have intended it, but he is a human. Everyone I've heard from who's been close to this movie, be it people who worked on it or people who've seen it, cannot get on board with the idea that One-Eye isn't human. Mads Mikkelsen himself said to Refn that he thinks he should register human emotion, but Refn refused and carried on. The interviewer in the commentary track with Refn said to Refn himself that he didn't understand the idea of him being an "alien". I can buy the monolith idea absolutely; he doesn't speak, and anyone can apply whatever dogma or idea they want into him. He can be whatever people want him to be. But the fact is that he IS innately something. What that something is may not be terribly deep, but it is nontheless something.
We begin the story with him as a slave, in the opening section entitled Wrath. He fights and sleeps in a cage every day, for what we're led to believe has been years. This is when the idea that he's a monolith comes into play; the pagan vikings that control him use him as a tool for money. He fights, and never loses. The chieftan himself says that he's driven by hate. Hatred for his captors, which is expressed in vivid detail in the scene where he escapes. He mercilessly cuts down two viking warriors within seconds, and then tears out a third man's guts with his bear hands. This is true, seething hatred. This is a very, very dark human. but still a human. He had motivations for doing what he did.
He goes to America with christian vikings. They start blaming him for bad things, others praising him for good things. Some say he and the boy will bring luck. Later on, they say they brought them to hell. He's a monolith in the way that nobody understands him, but they fool themselves into thinking they do. All we, or they know, is that he is very good at killing people and he doesn't much care where he goes. He protects a boy, we assume, because the boy fed him when he was locked up and was the only one who didn't show contempt for him. But then I start thinking back to what Refn said; he's not human. What? Every time I think back to what he says about One-Eye I start to think he must be fucking with me.
By the end of the film, One-Eye kills three men who attack him out of blame for the misery they've endured. He then decides to walk up a hill with the boy, two of the Christians following him. The Christians realize why they really went out on their mission in the first place, without thinking of God or One-Eye or anything but their own motivations. These are great moments, reminiscent of the film Stalker by Tarkovsky.
The ending is possibly the most frustrating part of the entire thing. One-Eye guides the boy to some distant rock in a vast ocean, and natives appear out of nowhere. From everything we know previously, any threat to One-Eye or the boy is responded in One-Eye killing the threat in moments. But instead, he grabs the boys arm, as if to tell him "everything is going to be ok", and lets the natives kill him. This is just as much a death sentence to the boy as is fighting them. Where is the boy going to go? He's in the middle of nowhere. There's no possible way he will survive. While One-Eye dies and becomes a spirit, still looking over the lands as he does in his visions, the boy he took along with him for the entire meandering journey is going to die. What was the point? What was the point to anything that happened in the movie? Refn says it's a story about the evolution of religion. Ok, I get that, and that's very interesting, but good god he could have shot higher. So much of it was a waste.
Now I'm going to describe what I wanted and expected. The first 20 minutes feel like a sped up version of a truly brilliant character piece. The fights, the cage One-Eye lives in, the interaction with the boy. The chieftan and his annoyance with the christian vikings, having to live in the fringes of the earth. All of those things could have been developed far more extensively. Give us more fights, more betting between the vikings. All of this would make a much different overall movie, but it's what I wanted to see so desperately that I can't help but talk about it here.
Nicolas Refn has talent, he just needs to be controlled. If not by himself then by a studio. I came away from this movie thinking he didn't have a clear enough picture of what he wanted to do. It wasn't concrete, it was all over the place. And the reason I'm critical and trying to get into his shoes is because I just really want to make a movie like this. But that's being selfish.
Anyway, that's enough complaining. Aside from everything I've said, the movie is great. It's better than most of the stuff out there, and it makes you think. The cinematography is some of the most beautiful I've seen since The New World, and the action scenes are incredible. It evokes atmosphere like no other, and you can really feel a true passion underneath everything. It's the best movie I've seen this year, and probably my favorite Refn movie if only because of the first 20 minutes and the mood of the entire piece. His best film is probably Bronson, but if he can figure out what he's really doing as a director he can only improve from here.
