Valhalla Rising [DVD]

As others have commented this has been mis-sold by the promoters. It has Viking hordes on the front cover, but not in the US version, as they are not allowed to get away with such blatant false hoods.

It is an unusual film a sort of Ingmar Bergman meets Derek Jarman only with a better camera. It is supposed to be a fantasy and as such it is hard to work out what the actual plot is. Starring Mads Mikkelsen as a one eyed sort of prize fighter, he is treated like an animal; only being let out of his cage for fights to the death. He apparently is owned by Barde(I got that from the cover), who is a wealthy Scotsman who obtained him for his fighting skills. If he is such a lethal fighting machine, how was he ever caught?

Any way he escapes; killing everyone except a young lad who comes along and appears to be able to understand the mute `One Eye'. I thought it was going to be a Christian versus Pagan type thing as Christianity is a thread throughout the film. The old sort of Christianity mind, crusading and killing; not the modern sort of caring and turning the other cheek etc. They meet up with some would be crusaders and then go off on a strange voyage to either the Holy Land or to establish a New Jerusalem.

This is a slow, often claustrophobic, stylish and atmospheric film. Writer and director Nicholas Winding Refn clearly knew what he wanted to create; the studio I think had different ideas. He uses music and imagery to drive the narrative forward and whilst it works, the swift and violent changes in pace -there are snippets of violent flash backs and/or premonitions- actually break your concentration. It is like being hooked and somehow getting off the line. It is only 86 minutes long, but does seem a whole lot longer and it leaves so much unanswered that I was left undecided as to whether this is an excellent art house film, that I was unable to get; or slightly disjointed and possibly overly self indulgent. A sort of triumph of style over substance. In the end I think it is somewhere between the two, hence the three stars. Please don't get me wrong I do not think this is a bad film and I shall want to see it again, but that I cannot say that I `loved it' and that is great because I am pretty sure that is not the emotion the makers were aiming for.

Is this film a mood meditation on violence or an overblown piece of self-admiring art house fluff? I think the answer must (unhelpfully) be yes to both parts. One can see where it is going geographically long before it gets there (well you can if you have read your sagas) and I suspect much the same for the fate of our travelling men and the rather strange introduction of christianity as a hate totem. The final appearance of the Skraelings was greeted as an opportunity to end what had otherwise drifting towards becoming a shoot for Vogue without the models. As befits a mood piece the photography and sound were well constructed though the wee lad's dialect may defeat some listeners.

At times one saw bits of other, in my view better, art house films hovering over the process. As an observation of what being a viking meant it had its moments. Beowulf & Grendel is a better piece of viking film I think and just as bleak. However, one moment does stick and sticks firmly, the pile of burning bodies and the captured women neatly encapsulating a time when it really was grim oop north.

However, the short piece on the making of the film opening with a dreadful yah phoning mummy to say she'd got the job as director's assistant ("Yeah, great") and the director telling us what a wacky chappy he was lead me towards the overblown conclusion. Self love may the sincerest love but it is not the most analytical or the wisest to reveal

Movies are a lot like meals, if you think about it. Most will go in one end and - pardon me for saying so - out the other; these are sustenance of the basest variety. They keep you going, but the memory of them is never more than a trace, and not even that for long. However, there are also those films, and those foods, more about the art than the end result... those experiences which will remain with you for years to come, imprinted upon your memory like scars - fading with the passage of time, perhaps, but never to disappear entirely.

Valhalla Rising is an experience squarely of that latter variety, and it is powerful enough to leave a festering wound in its wake.

Shot entirely on location in Scotland - my own back yard at that! - Valhalla Rising is an elegaic chronicle of a quest for vengeance, and redemption. Danish writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn, whose oddball work on Bronson you will surely recall, bids us follow a mute warrior known only as One-Eye from a time spent in wretched captivity, through an escape aided by visions, and finally on a pilgrimage to the holy land. But when One-Eye arrives in the country his lurid dreams have heralded, he and the men who follow him - including Are, a boy slave of the same Norse chieftain who caged One-Eye for so long, and Kare, who hopes to see his dead sons again - they find not heaven, but hell.

Valhalla Rising is only loosely narrative-driven, and I dare say it is no more character-driven than that, though Mads Mikkelsen's bravura performance gives One-Eye an emotional arc of sorts. Rather, it's all about the land, and the life of the land; about a time and a place so forbidding that men and all they strive to do, and die for, are meaningless - so much miserable drizzle in the wind, which seems unceasing throughout Valhalla Rising.

Or perhaps not, for Refn's latest and surely greatest resists such pat understanding at almost every stage. What it is one moment is not at all what it is the next. It is, thus, a difficult film which demands a certain cerebral investment in order to appreciate on any level, but be sure your devotion will pay a handsome dividend when all is said and done.

Now I do not mean to suggest Valhalla Rising is devoid of action. Skulls are crushed, insides are aired out, and at least one head is detached from its traditional resting place and mounted on a pike. When the violence comes - in sudden, shattering bursts set to a spare soundtrack by PeterPeter and Peter Kyed momentarily swollen to an oppressive cacophony of churning - you will not mistake it, nor soon forget it.

Yet I cannot imagine action fans will come away from Valhalla Rising satisfied. Life for those folks One-Eye comes to blows with proves nasty, brutish and short, and the violence which inevitably results from these close encounters is not so much satisfying in itself as it is sickening. Add to that: there is no clear thread to grasp at in the intervening periods between one fight and another. As to how devotees of Refn's more visceral (and rather less artful) Pusher trilogy will react to this film, it's really anyone's guess.

And the hatchet swings both ways. Just as Valhalla Rising's transcendent tack is sure to dissuade one vast camp of viewers, so too will the occasional explosions of gruesome gore and industrial grinding offend such sensibilities as to inspire another - the arty and the farty - to prepare precious arguments about bad taste and the state of entertainment today.

Yet there will be those who can both stomach the sight of stomachs, and invest in the contemplative interim in the stirring sights and sounds of Scotland as was. Those folks - though there may only be a few of them - will come away from Valhalla Rising staggered, as I did, and single-handedly sold on anything Nicholas Winding Refn sets his sights on going forward, as I am.