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Acclaimed Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn follows his worldwide smash Pusher trilogy and the widely praised Bronson with his most daring film yet. Valhalla Rising is a brutally beautiful Viking film with international star Mads Mikkelsen ( Casino Royale, Clash Of The Titans ) as One Eye, a chained prisoner forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of his captors. When One Eye escapes, he stumbles upon a group of warriors headed to the Crusades. But fate has something else in store, as the men drift into the New World, where savages stalk them one by one in increasingly violent ways. Is One Eye an avenging angel or just the guiltiest of them all? The answers can be found in this ruthless, hallucinatory, one of a kind journey.
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112 of 118 people found the following review helpful
By Chris Wilson
Format:DVD
A peculiar though fascinating art house excursion, the 2009 film "Valhalla Rising" is a symbolic viking adventure about the discovery of the new world. To understand this film's aura, it should be noted it makes Terrence Malick's similarly-themed The New World feel like a summer blockbuster romp. Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn has carved a bold name for himself with such challenging works as Pusher Trilogy and Bronson (Widescreen Edition), and this expedition into the muddy and bloody age of 1000 AD continues his refusal of convention.
There is nothing pleasant about Refn's nightmarish world (filmed on location in Scotland) where men wear sodden rags, tromp through mud and wage wet battles to the death. An oppressive fog covers all, and scarred men stare quietly into space desperately searching for definition. Small campfires provide little warmth, and what few women are seen are naked and chained together as slaves. Harsh does not begin to scratch the surface of Refn's haunting imagery (aided by Morten Sřborg's brilliant cinematography and a fascinating musical score of Peter Kyed and Peter Peter). Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen displays unique presence as a one-eyed viking, appropriately named One Eye. He's evidently a captive, residing in a wooden cage and carefully fed like a lion by the orphaned blond boy Are (Maarten Stevenson). On a regular basis, he's dragged from his prison, chained to a post and forced to fight to the death versus combatants while weary warlords sit nearby and wager the outcome. There are no cheers for his victories, punctuated by the sounds of crushed skulls and broken bones.
One Eye eventually kills his captors and, with the boy gingerly trailing, silently travels cross country where they encounter a meager band of warriors who have converted to Christianity. They are preparing for a Crusade to Jerusalem, and reluctantly recruit One Eye, whose warrior legend precedes him. Soon, trapped on a meager long ship within a mysterious mist, they become hopelessly lost and depressed. The mists finally part, and before them is the ominous but sunny, tree-covered land of the new world. Quietly hiking through tall grasses, they encounter signs of Native Americans, including burial scaffolds and ghost-like arrows thumping into the bodies of unlucky comrades. These desperate vikings plant a tall, wooden cross in the virgin soil, utterly convinced they've arrived in Hell. Through it all, One Eye, with his boy sidekick in tow, silently leads the way through this mysterious world, disturbing even to him.
"Valhalla Rising" includes multiple dream sequences drenched in red, long continuous shots of wind-blown landscapes and ultimately, scenes of men sitting on rocks for minutes at a time staring into the void of quiet space. These are not spirited warriors by any stretch of the imagination, but terrified souls lost within the tides of worlds far more powerful than their swords. "Valhalla Rising" is a vision quest gone mad, completely lacking in the romantic conventions one expects from this period. Think The Vikings, or to a far lessor extent Pathfinder and the all-but-forgotten Lee Majors' B-flick The Norseman, where lusty vikings fight slow-motion battle sequences against tribes of fierce Native Americans. You'll get none of that here.
There are multiple inspirations Refn appears to be channeling, including Roman Polanski's Macbeth, the already-mentioned Malick, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and, perhaps most apparent of all, the experimental works of Kenneth Anger (The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2) including his famous film Lucifer Rising [VHS].
I have always respected Anger's purposefully obscure films, where story is sacrificed for experimental, dream-like imagery. This is the true promised land of Refin's brutal journey. With a larger budget, he's taken Anger a step further, though fueled by equally potent doses of LSD. The minimum amount of dialog, usually raising more questions than answering, further carves a moody land of mystery and death. Insisting upon multiple interpretations, "Valhalla Rising" is an example of an incredibly gifted filmmaker reworking the tired conventions of period adventure, cutting through the surface, and pulling out the bloody results beneath.
There is nothing pleasant about Refn's nightmarish world (filmed on location in Scotland) where men wear sodden rags, tromp through mud and wage wet battles to the death. An oppressive fog covers all, and scarred men stare quietly into space desperately searching for definition. Small campfires provide little warmth, and what few women are seen are naked and chained together as slaves. Harsh does not begin to scratch the surface of Refn's haunting imagery (aided by Morten Sřborg's brilliant cinematography and a fascinating musical score of Peter Kyed and Peter Peter). Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen displays unique presence as a one-eyed viking, appropriately named One Eye. He's evidently a captive, residing in a wooden cage and carefully fed like a lion by the orphaned blond boy Are (Maarten Stevenson). On a regular basis, he's dragged from his prison, chained to a post and forced to fight to the death versus combatants while weary warlords sit nearby and wager the outcome. There are no cheers for his victories, punctuated by the sounds of crushed skulls and broken bones.
One Eye eventually kills his captors and, with the boy gingerly trailing, silently travels cross country where they encounter a meager band of warriors who have converted to Christianity. They are preparing for a Crusade to Jerusalem, and reluctantly recruit One Eye, whose warrior legend precedes him. Soon, trapped on a meager long ship within a mysterious mist, they become hopelessly lost and depressed. The mists finally part, and before them is the ominous but sunny, tree-covered land of the new world. Quietly hiking through tall grasses, they encounter signs of Native Americans, including burial scaffolds and ghost-like arrows thumping into the bodies of unlucky comrades. These desperate vikings plant a tall, wooden cross in the virgin soil, utterly convinced they've arrived in Hell. Through it all, One Eye, with his boy sidekick in tow, silently leads the way through this mysterious world, disturbing even to him.
"Valhalla Rising" includes multiple dream sequences drenched in red, long continuous shots of wind-blown landscapes and ultimately, scenes of men sitting on rocks for minutes at a time staring into the void of quiet space. These are not spirited warriors by any stretch of the imagination, but terrified souls lost within the tides of worlds far more powerful than their swords. "Valhalla Rising" is a vision quest gone mad, completely lacking in the romantic conventions one expects from this period. Think The Vikings, or to a far lessor extent Pathfinder and the all-but-forgotten Lee Majors' B-flick The Norseman, where lusty vikings fight slow-motion battle sequences against tribes of fierce Native Americans. You'll get none of that here.
There are multiple inspirations Refn appears to be channeling, including Roman Polanski's Macbeth, the already-mentioned Malick, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and, perhaps most apparent of all, the experimental works of Kenneth Anger (The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2) including his famous film Lucifer Rising [VHS].
I have always respected Anger's purposefully obscure films, where story is sacrificed for experimental, dream-like imagery. This is the true promised land of Refin's brutal journey. With a larger budget, he's taken Anger a step further, though fueled by equally potent doses of LSD. The minimum amount of dialog, usually raising more questions than answering, further carves a moody land of mystery and death. Insisting upon multiple interpretations, "Valhalla Rising" is an example of an incredibly gifted filmmaker reworking the tired conventions of period adventure, cutting through the surface, and pulling out the bloody results beneath.
62 of 68 people found the following review helpful
By PJS1975
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ok, don't read this review unless you have already seen `Valhalla Rising'. Because a lot of people still don't seem to get it, here's a capsule explanation of exactly what happens in the film, from someone who examines evidence of crimes and from that puts together suspects' MOs, serial killer methodologies, etc:
A mute slave, One Eye, is forced by his captors to fight. One day, he finds an old arrowhead by submerging himself in a waterpool located on some mountain upland, after having a dream about the event. Later, One Eye uses the arrowhead to free himself and kill his captors. From this, his mind forms an abstract construct about submersion in water giving him the key that unlocks his freedom. An unnamed slave boy accompanies the newly freed One Eye, and they encounter a group of Christian Scots-Gaelic warriors who are on their way to the Crusades. One Eye and the boy board the Christians' ship, and with them sail away into a dense sea fog that does not lift until they find their ship has somehow left the sea and floated inland along the course of an unnamed river. Their location is uncertain and soon becomes a point of contention among the travelers.
In this unfamiliar land, One Eye and his companions encounter some signs of human habitation: raised wooden biers holding decayed corpses and tribal religious paraphernalia stand in a lightly wooded area. Pay attention here, and you can see near this location a waterpool or small pond with the trunk of a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water, or from the shore. There is a scene where the group is approaching the biers, and the waterpool/tree is there between them and the biers; another waterpool/dead tree tableau can be seen briefly for a moment behind and to the right of the leader of the Christian warriors. One Eye somehow makes the connection that these waterpool/dead tree tableaus have spiritual significance to the land's native inhabitants, else they wouldn't have chosen to honor their dead in that place.
Later, the leader of the Christian warriors, who was allowed to travel through the unnamed land unmolested up until that point, is shot dead with arrows while standing waist-deep in a small pond. Note: to his left stands a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water. Was the warrior-leader shot for violating the native inhabitants' "holy ground" by standing in the pond?
Recall the earlier scene in which all of the characters drink some unnamed psychoactive liquor from a carved wooden bottle, and then all proceed to succumb to various kinds of drug-induced mania and/or religious ecstasy on the shores of a still lagoon. After drinking, One Eye glances over his shoulder toward a distant rocky promontory, where the native inhabitants are presumed to be hiding and watching; One Eye does this to let them know he's aware they are there.
Then, standing apart from the maddened, drug-dazed crowd, One Eye constructs a column-like structure of stones on a small islet near the shores of the lagoon. Note that when he begins this task, One Eye sets the first stone atop the stump of a dead tree. He is sending the watching tribesmen the message that he understands their religion: he knows what their holy places are, where spirits are presumed to dwell. And so One Eye himself constructs a new "holy place."
At the end of the film, before One Eye is beaten to death, he envisions himself (his spirit?) walking into the waters of that lagoon where he built the stone column; then he (or his spirit) is submerged, the head disappearing under the water's surface, like he did near the beginning of the film when he found the arrowhead that eventually aided him in freeing himself. Only this time, the audience is supposed to surmise that the freedom One Eye seeks (and gets, through the death of his physical body) is spiritual freedom, as opposed to his physical freedom earlier. One Eye's physical body dies, and his spirit enters the waters of the lagoon where he built the "holy place" marker, to become one of the native inhabitants' gods.
A mute slave, One Eye, is forced by his captors to fight. One day, he finds an old arrowhead by submerging himself in a waterpool located on some mountain upland, after having a dream about the event. Later, One Eye uses the arrowhead to free himself and kill his captors. From this, his mind forms an abstract construct about submersion in water giving him the key that unlocks his freedom. An unnamed slave boy accompanies the newly freed One Eye, and they encounter a group of Christian Scots-Gaelic warriors who are on their way to the Crusades. One Eye and the boy board the Christians' ship, and with them sail away into a dense sea fog that does not lift until they find their ship has somehow left the sea and floated inland along the course of an unnamed river. Their location is uncertain and soon becomes a point of contention among the travelers.
In this unfamiliar land, One Eye and his companions encounter some signs of human habitation: raised wooden biers holding decayed corpses and tribal religious paraphernalia stand in a lightly wooded area. Pay attention here, and you can see near this location a waterpool or small pond with the trunk of a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water, or from the shore. There is a scene where the group is approaching the biers, and the waterpool/tree is there between them and the biers; another waterpool/dead tree tableau can be seen briefly for a moment behind and to the right of the leader of the Christian warriors. One Eye somehow makes the connection that these waterpool/dead tree tableaus have spiritual significance to the land's native inhabitants, else they wouldn't have chosen to honor their dead in that place.
Later, the leader of the Christian warriors, who was allowed to travel through the unnamed land unmolested up until that point, is shot dead with arrows while standing waist-deep in a small pond. Note: to his left stands a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water. Was the warrior-leader shot for violating the native inhabitants' "holy ground" by standing in the pond?
Recall the earlier scene in which all of the characters drink some unnamed psychoactive liquor from a carved wooden bottle, and then all proceed to succumb to various kinds of drug-induced mania and/or religious ecstasy on the shores of a still lagoon. After drinking, One Eye glances over his shoulder toward a distant rocky promontory, where the native inhabitants are presumed to be hiding and watching; One Eye does this to let them know he's aware they are there.
Then, standing apart from the maddened, drug-dazed crowd, One Eye constructs a column-like structure of stones on a small islet near the shores of the lagoon. Note that when he begins this task, One Eye sets the first stone atop the stump of a dead tree. He is sending the watching tribesmen the message that he understands their religion: he knows what their holy places are, where spirits are presumed to dwell. And so One Eye himself constructs a new "holy place."
At the end of the film, before One Eye is beaten to death, he envisions himself (his spirit?) walking into the waters of that lagoon where he built the stone column; then he (or his spirit) is submerged, the head disappearing under the water's surface, like he did near the beginning of the film when he found the arrowhead that eventually aided him in freeing himself. Only this time, the audience is supposed to surmise that the freedom One Eye seeks (and gets, through the death of his physical body) is spiritual freedom, as opposed to his physical freedom earlier. One Eye's physical body dies, and his spirit enters the waters of the lagoon where he built the "holy place" marker, to become one of the native inhabitants' gods.
65 of 72 people found the following review helpful
By Xalora
Valhalla Rising is beautifully shot, the acting is crazy good, and the sound and score are amazing.
This is not your conventional movie - so if you're looking for a mindless action flick - look elsewhere. This feels more like a painting or a poem - check it out if you're sick of the formulaic stuff coming out of Hollywood.
This is not your conventional movie - so if you're looking for a mindless action flick - look elsewhere. This feels more like a painting or a poem - check it out if you're sick of the formulaic stuff coming out of Hollywood.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great film
Dark, moody, gritty, and well shot. Oh yeah and lots of graphic violence :-)
Not for the person of weak stomach.
Not for the person of weak stomach.
Published 14 days ago by Anon
4.0 out of 5 stars
You almost need a degree in history to watch it.
This piece is very steeped in Scandinavian mythology and folklore. A very violent film, but I enjoyed the locations and some of the mythology and the main actor was excellent.
Published 15 days ago by Douglas W MacMartin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Interesting Movie
Stunning visuals and great acting. The story of this movie is very engrossing, so much so that you get sucked right in and don't mind the slow pacing. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Hardcore Kid
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for everyone, but haunting and powerful
The first time I watched this movie I felt traumatized. The violence and unrelenting intensity are nearly unbearable. This film is meant to make you uncomfortable, and it succeeds. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Me Gustan Libros
3.0 out of 5 stars
I'm confused.
I don't know how I feel about this movie. The action/fight scenes were very good, yet I can't make up my mind whether there was an actual plot or not. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ed Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kill or Die
This was a strange film if you compare it to most mainstream movies. Not a lot of talking. I can't remember ever hearing more a a few hundred words. Read more
Published 1 month ago by CaCow
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too Esoteric
Great photography and acting. Other than that there is not much to recommend this movie. I'm not a critic, I just know what I like. If there was a point to this movie I missed it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Swampgto
1.0 out of 5 stars
Valhalla Rising
Less dialect than Quest for Fire. Mind numbing to say the least. Good to watch before bed. Will most likely put you to sleep!
Published 2 months ago by Steven A. Mullen
4.0 out of 5 stars
"not a word is spoken by One-Eye"
I saw this first on a cable channel after 23:00 (11:00 pm) and did not fully understand what the whole picture was. Read more
Published 2 months ago by John J. Salafia
4.0 out of 5 stars
OK.....I think.
Would recommend it. Have to say more...Have to say more...Have to say more...Have to say more...Have to say more...Have to say more...
Published 2 months ago by Edward J. Marion
