One might think that films about the clash between the old Norse beliefs and the new christian waves from the south at the turn of the first millennium, would be a somewhat common theme in Nordic cinema, but that is not the case as far as i am concerned. Valhalla Rising deals with this topic to some extend and i was hoping, that this was the main theme.
One-eye is a mute prisoner who is used in a small viking version of gladiator fights in the scottish highlands. He manages to escape his imprisonment aided by a boy slave, who also escapes. One-eye has some vivid visions of what is going to happen in the future and he acts them out uncritically when he recognizes persons or places he has already "seen". On their journey, the join a christian party, who are on their own little pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But they really have no clue where they are or what direction they are going, and meanwhile they become more and more desperate and are also killed of by one-eye when he fulfills his visions. The boy is able to receive one-eyes thoughts and he stays alive by being the medium of communication. The party is slowly disintegrated and then one-eye encounters a new strange people that ends his journey.
At times this is an extremely violent and gory experience and it is unnecessarily so. There is also a constant depressing mood, enhanced by a picture that has been given excessive contrast and often a very dark tone. The characters do not evolve and therefore the story is not really there. The plot is vague or misleading i felt, and that is annoying. Is it a road movie or is it just a gore fest? One-eye is a psychopath, who acts out his crazy delusions, while the kid just follows after him like a dog. Why is that interesting? We do not get any hints at all. At lot of effort has been put into finding remote locations and looking grim, in a sort of artistic way. But it feels too much like a viking version of "300" in its cinematic style and obsessive focus on meaningless violence. There are no emotions whatsoever in any of the dialog. It is like a hellish nightmare dream, that describes the clash between two incompatible, but equally crazy beliefs. Or at least that is the best suggestion for a theme, that i can give you. I am actually at a loss about what this movie is trying to tell me.
Too much effort has been put into visualizing violence and windy, Nordic looking locations and too little on the main characters emotional development and incentives for being where they are and acting the way they do. Technically there is not much to put a finger on, except that there are too many scenes of One-eye looking around at ... well nothing really. I do not think the obvious saying "In the realm of the blind, the one-eyed is the king" is a deliberate point of the film, but i could be wrong. My two eyes tells me this is too much form over matter, and that counts the wrong way in my book.
Rating: 3/10
