Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising is like Michael Keaton's life in Tim Burton's Batman. It's.....complex. I saw it several months before Drive came out, and without that more initially palatable aesthetic touchstone, I was somewhat lost. I knew it's poetic barbarism appealed to me on an elemental level, but felt at arms length from this Danish auteur's peculiar stylistic approach. Frankly it struck me as underwhelming and more than a little boring. After seeing Drive three times in the theater and drooling all over Refn's shot compositions, I felt that I was beginning to grasp what this preternaturally gifted film maker was going for. Perhaps it took witnessing his virtuosic milieu grafted on to a more recognizable genre to acclimate me to the manner in which he presents a story, especially in the case of one as compelling, distant and esoteric as Valhalla Rising.

This week, I purchased the film and began re watching it in manageable chunks each night before sleep. Some nights I would watch half of it or more. In all, I'd say I've seen the film 3 times now and have developed a need to view at least some of it before succumbing to slumber. No longer simply to utilize its leisurely pace as a cure for insomnia, but to solemnly study, to contemplate and to savor. I suffered from sudden cardiac death in early august of this year and was technically dead for several minutes before being revived. Since rejoining the land of the living and beginning my long road to recovery, I've been preoccupied with my own mortality, the meaning of life and the potential for a level of existence beyond the corporeal. Needless to say, Valhalla Rising is a much more striking proposition to me now for reasons beyond a heightened understanding of how its director works. If you're at all curious, I saw no light at the end of no tunnel during my ordeal. Take from that what you will.

In any case, the film concerns a mute, one eyed warrior held captive by a tribal chieftain in an unnamed Scandinavian setting. He is forced to fight other men to the death until he breaks free of his bonds, slays his captors and takes a young boy under his protection. The pair come across a group of "holy men" looking to travel to New Jerusalem and reclaim it for the Christian God. They join up with them and the quest becomes a convoluted, meaningless descent into the hell of the new world at the ends of the earth. I detest synopsizing and clearly have no skill at it, but it bears spelling out to effectively highlight the strange, meandering path this hallucinatory tone poem takes. The characters motivations are unclear, the exact time and place are open to interpretation and its overall meaning is as much a mystery as whether or not a meaning even exists. So, the film is a lot like life.

Mads Mikkelsen (the best name this side of Dieter Laser) is so visually arresting as One Eye, you can be forgiven for not understanding how remarkable his performance is the first few times around. He somehow can imbue every look with a million possible meanings, all the while retaining an air of unknowable, alien indifference. Like Gosling in Drive, the films efficacy hinges entirely on his presence, yet unlike Driver, Mikkelsen's One Eye has no lines whatsoever and is so unearthly it's difficult to relate or sympathise with him at all. Yet, like the misguided men who claim righteousness as their guide, you would gladly follow him into hell. A large part of my fascination with this film is wrapped up in attempting to interpret what exactly this character symbolizes. Like so many elements in the Refn oeuvre, it is not blatantly explained and you are allowed to use it as a mirror to reflect your own preconceived notions and beliefs.

The film is a litmus test in some ways for what you expect out of cinema. It's a colossal undertaking in the same way that reading Nietzsche or Moby Dick is. People can bellow about its pretension all they want, but you get out of it what you put into it. I really don't mean to come across with that lamentable "You don't like it cause you didn't understand it" attitude. Valhalla Rising is not necessarily a smart movie. It's primal, barbaric and structurally simplistic. You can choose to engage with it or not. The same option is presented to us whether we watch 2001 or The Chronicles of Riddick, and as Vin admonishes a group of Crematoria slam inmates before attempting escape in the latter, "Don't step up if you can't keep up". You have to want it with Valhalla, and considering how I've been drawn back to it time and again, I apparently want it a great deal.

There is a scene toward the end that is perhaps one of the most beautifully haunting I've ever had the privilege to see. One of the party following One Eye who has been bleeding out after suffering an unexpected incision is seated atop a hill overlooking a stunning tableau of mountains and valleys. The camera hold on the mans face in profile for what seems an eternity as his life force ever so slowly ebbs and eventually dissipates. Then.... cut to a shot of the seated man from behind with the grandeur of nature spread out before his empty vessel. It's a transition and an image so breathtaking it hurts the eyes with its forceful, nearly vulgar purity. In a film chock full of caustic moments that make life seem a hellish struggle for survival, it is this instance of aquiescence to nature that stays with you longest.