Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuaron has given Focus Features' upcoming Viking epic, The Northman, one of its first reviews. The two-time Oscar winner calls the film "complex" and has only good things to say about fellow director Robert Eggers.
Cuaron won the prestigious Oscar award for the first time in 2014 for his epic science fiction film Gravity, starring actress Sandra Bullock as an astronaut stranded in space. The film also won Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects, and Bullock received a nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Cuaron went on to win Best Director again in 2018 for his semi-autobiographical film Roma. The film was tied with The Favourite as the most nominated film at the Oscars that year. It also won Best Cinematography and Best Foreign Film, becoming the first Mexican film to win the latter award.
In a new lengthy piece from The New Yorker on the making of The Northman, Cuaron is revealed to have seen the most recent cut of the film after it initially underperformed with test audiences. "Every single frame is charged with all the thematic elements of the whole film,” said Cuaron. “I have to say, it is very complex, it is very complicated what he does.” This certainly comes as high praise, as Cuaron is an extremely accomplished filmmaker and one of the few directors to win the Best Director Oscar multiple times. Cuaron has been a fan of Eggers since the director's debut 2015 film The Witch. Cuaron read the script in the early stages of development, saying, “I was just in awe of it. I was, like, more than anything, curious. It’s as if those elements are as natural as the weather. And people coexist with those elements as a matter of existence. There’s no question about the existence of witches. There’s no ulterior explanation. . . . It was just witches.”
In the years since then Eggers has developed a reputation for his unique genre-defying approach to filmmaking. His second feature was the psychological thriller The Lighthouse, which starred Willem Dafoe, and The Batman star Robert Pattinson as two eccentric lighthouse keepers who slowly drive each other mad. The film was notable for its larger-than-life performances from Dafoe and Pattinson, as well as its stunning black and white cinematography and ambiguous themes.
Eggers' next film, The Northman, is by far his biggest yet, with a whopping $90 million budget. The film is an epic-revenge story focusing on a Viking warrior played by Alexander Skarsgard who seeks to avenge his murdered father. The film also stars Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Icelandic musician Bjork in her first film role in 17-years. In December of last year, Focus Features released the epic first trailer for the film, which featured an absolutely ripped Skarsgard cutting down foes on his quest for revenge.
Cuaron knows a thing or two about creating epic films that focused on survival. On top of Gravity, Cuaron also directed the acclaimed dystopian sci-fi filmChildren of Men, which portrayed a grounded and brutal future where humanity has become infertile. Cuaron is also known for inventing new techniques and technology to create his films, so calling Eggers' approach to The Northman "complicated" and "complex" is especially high praise.
The Northman is set to premiere in theaters on April 22nd, 2022.
Source: The New Yorker