The emptiness of space and the silence therein is the lead character of Valhalla Rising, easily pushing its human cast members into the background and rendering their lines of dialogue wholly irrelevant. So crushing is its austerity that the primary relationship in the film is probably that between the viewer and everything that director Nicolas Winding Refn decided to keep his hand out of, so unforced and vacuous are both the camera direction and the narrative. In some cases, this can be inspiring, the mere emptiness adding another dimension to a work’s physicality and philosophy. Unfortunately, it can also be really, really boring, and the way that you find Valhalla Rising will depend entirely on how impressed you are by shots of wide open landscapes with pasty-faced Nordics looking out at them. Because there are a lot of them. A lot.
One Eye (Mads Mikkelson, who played the similarly ocularly challenged villain of Casino Royale) is an supernaturally powerful man who is being kept captive by a band of Nordic savages and forced to fight for their amusement. As is wont to happen, he gets out, murders them, then runs off to roam the rocky landscape of Europe with the one member of the group that he spared, the young Are (Maarten Stevenson). They meet up with another band of nomads (Christians this time), who enlist One Eye and Are to join them in going off to Jerusalem to fight in the Crusades. On their voyage, however, they are taken off course, and end up in the New World, where there are forced to fight with the early Native Americans.
There’s something to be said for a system of belief that opens its creation myth with several gods killing the god that spawned them, and the world of Valhalla Rising is certainly reflective of that kind of spirituality. Characters look off into the void, they bash one another’s heads open, and they forcibly conscript those weaker than them into their religious beliefs/tribes. But Valhalla doesn’t really get into that, nor does it meaningfully explore any of the other profound historical themes that it evokes (the rise of Christianity over paganism, the Crusades, the discovery of the New World). Indeed, there is so little dialogue that there’s really no reason to believe that any of these characters have anything resembling an inner monologue. It’s perhaps frustrating as a viewer looking for a story, but its angering as someone looking for an understanding of the Dark Ages, as its major events have been distilled into what could essentially be called a tone poem, with both major characters and historical events serving as little more than syllables in an especially brutal haiku, and neither given the depth to act as anything other than a set-piece.
I will concede that there’s probably something to be appreciated here, as there are a number of intelligent people whose opinions I respect that appreciated this film a great deal. But when absolutely every facet of narrative dimension is stripped away in favor of the most austere aesthetic possible, and there’s no potential outcome for you to invest in as a viewer, there’s really nothing to appreciate other than the way that the director composes and then edits together his shots. There are a few nicely staged bits (Mikkelson is fairly convincing as a mute savage), but for the most part, the film just feels empty, as if wasn’t so much produced as found and then handed off without any human interpretation. This could have been felt raw if only the story had provided some kind of entry point, so that we might have experienced some kind of catharsis through the slow descent of One Eye, but he remains as enigmatic to us as he does to his captors, never betraying emotion or insight, and providing too little for anyone to even project a more engaging film onto.
DVD Bonus Features
The trailer is included.
"Valhalla Rising" is on sale November 30, 2010 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Written by Roy Jacobson, Nicolas Winding Refn. Starring Maarten Stevenson, Mads Mikkelsen.
