Valhalla Rising (film)

Valhalla Rising

A bearded tattooed man against a foggy mountainous background

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Produced by
  • Johnny Andersen
  • Bo Ehrhardt
  • Henrik Danstrup
Written by
  • Nicolas Winding Refn
  • Roy Jacobsen
Starring
Music by
Cinematography Morten Søborg
Edited by Mat Newman
Production
company
Nimbus Film Productions
Distributed by Scanbox Entertainment
Release dates
  • 4 September 2009 (2009-09-04) (Venice)
  • 31 March 2010 (2010-03-31) (Denmark)
Running time
 92 minutes[1]
Country Denmark
Language English
Budget $5.7 million
Box office $30,638

Valhalla Rising is a 2009 English-language Danish adventure drama film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, co-written by Refn and Roy Jacobsen, and starring Mads Mikkelsen. The film takes place in 1000 AD and follows a Norse warrior named One-Eye and a boy as they travel with a band of Christian Crusaders by ship in the hopes of finding the Holy Land. Instead, they find themselves in an unknown land (actually North America) where they are assailed by unseen forces and dark visions.

Shot entirely in Scotland,[2] the title is derived from the combination of Kenneth Anger's films Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising with a Viking theme.[3] While the film garnered generally positive reviews, it only made back a fraction–about $31,000–of its $5.7 million production cost.

Plot

Part I - Wrath

The prologue states that at the dawn of time there was man and nature. Then men bearing crosses drove the heathens to the fringes of the earth.

A mysterious mute Norse warrior, known only as One-Eye, is held captive in cold, windy, misty Scottish highlands by a Chieftain where he is forced to fight to the death against captives of other clans. During his imprisonment One-Eye receives his meals from a young boy. In between contests One-Eye is put to work with arduous tasks that serve to keep him physically strong. He has the ability to foresee impending events. A dream of bathing amongst large rocks leads him to discover an old iron arrowhead on the bottom of a small natural water basin. Using the arrowhead to secretly free himself from restraints during a journey to a neighboring encampment, he slaughters two men and captures a third. One-Eye disembowels this last man when he defiantly shouts that One-Eye will soon find himself back in hell. The Chieftain then has a monologue in which he predicts One-Eye's return for more vengeance. This is because it is hatred that motivates One-Eye and has allowed him to survive through all of his many ordeals. One-Eye impales the Chieftain's head on a nithing pole in a magical rite Norse Pagans used to place a curse upon someone.

Part II - Silent Warrior

Whilst leaving the land, One-Eye soon realizes that The Boy is pursuing him. They reach a small group of Crusaders, Christians fresh from killing male pagans and holding all the women as naked hostages. As they are preparing to go on a crusade to Jerusalem, the leader of the group, The General, asks One-Eye to join him. He says he could use a good fighter for their cause. The Priest further argues that, live or die, One-Eye may thus free himself of his inner pain and cleanse his soul of sin by committing to the Crusades. The General asks The Boy if he knows about One-Eye's origin. The Boy tells him that One-Eye was brought up from hell which, he has been told, lies on the other side of the ocean. He does not say if he means the Christian hell or hel: the underworld of Norse mythology.

Part III - Men of God

Unknown to The Crusaders, One-Eye has agreed to accompany them only because of a vision in which he saw himself riding in their boat before ever having met any of them. He seems to follow these premonitions unquestioningly. They set sail South-West, presumably intending to round Spain and reach the Holy Land via the Mediterranean, but before long the voyage is beset by disaster. A thick fog descends and remains for weeks leaving them lost and unable to navigate, while food and water supplies dwindle. The crew begins to believe that the voyage is cursed. Some of them blame it on The Boy. Before embarking on their voyage the Crusaders had agreed that The Boy might bring them luck. Mutiny nearly arises as a crew member who attempts to murder The Boy is killed by One-Eye. Sensing a change in the motion of the boat later on, One-Eye takes a drink from the water and discovers that they are actually in an estuary and no longer at sea. With the fog dissipating, the crew catches the first sight of land off in the distance.

Part IV - The Holy Land

Upon landing, to their surprise, the Holy Land is not the semi-arid place they expected the Near East to be. Rather, it resembles a taiga with vast forests full of lakes and mountains. The crew sets out to explore the area, finding neither animals to hunt nor fruit to eat. Nearly starved, the crew continues until coming across some Indian burial sites. One of the crew members leaves the group to venture out on his own. The group searches for him for hours and some blame One-Eye for his disappearance. The General argues that there is no proof that One-Eye killed him. Finally realizing they have not reached Jerusalem, the crew prepares the ship to depart and head home. While on the water, the group is taunted by a single arrow which almost seems to come flying in from nowhere and kills one of their men. Terrified, they soon come to believe that they are actually in Hell.

Part V - Hell

Upon returning to shore the men drink a psychotropic brew given to them by The General. This is his dubious method of ".....claiming the land in His Name." Subsequent events demonstrate that The General has gone insane. One-Eye has a vision of his ultimate fate. He wades to a small island to construct a cairn. Meanwhile, the other men split up and experience a variety of perceptions and emotions including apathy, desperation and despair. One prays, one attacks and rapes another, others wander or wait. One-Eye and the group are then confronted by the lost crew member who emerges from the forest barechested and his skin covered in orange-brown mud in which runes are drawn. This lost Viking (Gary McCormack) says he can hear One-Eye's thoughts now and translates that the warrior is saying they are in Hell. One of the crew members (Gordon Brown) then accuses The General of lying to them, and One-Eye of bringing them there. He disavows the existence of God and attacks One-Eye, who kills him and another of the survivors.

Arrows from the forest continue to harass those left behind soon after the band breaks up. As The Priest (Gary Lewis) prepares to follow One-Eye, The General stabs him in the side for leaving and declares that he himself will stay and create a "New Jerusalem" for the men of faith.

Part VI - The Sacrifice

Upon the General's subsequent appointment of The Lost One as his chief spiritual adviser, however, even the orange mud-stained Viking merely laughs at him. The wounded Priest and The General's Son (Jamie Sives) follow One-Eye up the mountains. The General is then hit by several arrows, slipping into the water as he dies. They stop to rest and question their fate, turning to One-Eye. Though The Boy seems to hear him, it is unclear if either of the others do. The General's Son decides that he must go back to his father, knowing the man is probably dead and that he too will die. One-Eye and The Boy continue on, but the Priest does not follow. Mortally wounded, he sits with flies buzzing loudly nearby, viewing the misty valley landscape.

One-Eye and The Boy reach the coastline and are soon met by over a dozen clay-covered warriors. One-Eye regards them knowingly, as he has already foreseen this event in a vision. He puts his hand on The Boy's arm, then walks into the middle of the tribesmen. He drops his axe and his knife and closes his eye. One of the warriors fells him with one blow to the back of the head, before the other warriors finish him off. One-Eye's spirit walks into the estuary next to his cairn and disappears below the surface. On the beach, the remaining tribe members quietly withdraw back into the forest, leaving the boy looking out at the ocean. The sky grows dark.

Scene with Mads Mikkelsen

Cast

Nicolas Winding Refn deliberately did not give formal names to the film's characters save for One-Eye. Names were assigned in the script to differentiate parts. This article addresses the characters as they are addressed by Refn on the DVD-commentary.

Release

Nicolas Winding Refn and Mads Mikkelsen at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of the film

The film premiered at the 66th Venice International Film Festival where it was shown out of competition on 4 September 2009. The Danish premiere followed on 31 March 2010. Vertigo Films released it in the United Kingdom on 30 April the same year.

Reception

The film has been met with generally positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 71% based on reviews from 55 critics.[4] Metacritic gives the film a "generally favorable" average score of 61% based on reviews from 15 critics.[5]

The reaction from Danish critics was split. Berlingske Tidende gave the film a rating of two out of six and called it "unbearably self-important".[6] B.T. on the other hand called it a masterpiece and handed out a perfect score of six out of six.[7]

Soundtrack

The score of the film was composed by Refn's frequent collaborators Peter Peter and Peter Kyed. Originally Refn had intended Mogwai as the composers of the score. The soundtrack was commercially released on 7 October 2013 by Milan Records who also released the score to Refn's films Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon . The soundtrack contains the complete score as well as unused cues and sections of the soundscapes sound designers Giles Lamb and Douglas MacDougall created for the film.[8][9]

Track listing
  1. "Introduction" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (1:03)
  2. "Caged" - Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (1:41)
  3. "One Eye Fights" - Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (0:53)
  4. "Montage" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (4:22)
  5. "Arrowhead" - Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (4:19)
  6. "Escape" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (1:02)
  7. "Return" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (3:03)
  8. "Free" - Peter Peter (1:56)
  9. "Christians" - Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (4:03)
  10. "Men of God" - Peter Kyed & Peter Peter (4:49)
  11. "The Boat" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (12:02)
  12. "Into Hell" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (3:40)
  13. "Hell" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (9:34)
  14. "Forest'" - Giles Lamb & Douglas MacDougall (2:14)
  15. "Valhalla Rising (End Credits)" - Peter Peter & Peter Kyed (5:33)

References

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