Robert Eggers’ The Northman doesn’t shy away from nudity, and towards the end of the film, there is one big battle and, well … let’s just put a spoiler warning first.
SPOILERS FOR THE NORTHMAN.
The Northman tells the story of Viking Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) trying to get revenge on his murderous uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang). Yes, it is the story that Shakespeare pulled for his play “Hamlet” but with a few differences. No, Eggers’ movie is not a totally faithful adaptation of the original, but it is well acted and beautiful (although it’s weird to see Skars playing the son of Nicole Kidman’s character since they played husband and wife in Big Little Lies).
During the big fight at the end of the film, Amleth and Fjölnir strip naked and have an epic battle on top of a volcano, a.k.a. the gates of Hel. Both men are naked-naked, but the smoke and angles make sure you never see anything more than butt. Why? Apparently, airplanes are to blame.
“A film of this stature needs to be able to play on airplanes, and you’re not allowed to have penises on airplanes,” director, Robert Eggers told Polygon. “I’m just kind of ashamed—I think that if some of the berserkers in the raid had been entirely naked, that would have been really excellent.”
“I think if we had bits swinging around in the end fight, maybe that would have been distracting,” he continued. “They were wearing thongs when we actually shot it, just for modesty. And safety. [laughs] And so we actually had to put CG genital enhancement in, to make them look less Ken doll-like. So while we’re having smoke make sure it’s always covering stuff, occasionally we needed to break away from the smoke and show some testicles really quickly, just to help keep the illusion alive.”
Maybe my screening at the Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse didn’t have the balls edit, or maybe the smoke obscured a little too well, but this feels rather silly to me. The game of “hide the dong” reminds me a lot of the CGI Beowulf adaptation, and it ends up sort of making you want to focus on that, rather than just be taken in by the whole prestige of it all—especially since, in context, it is not sexual at all, and it is actually pretty positive to remind people that the human body being naked doesn’t always have to be for sexual purposes.
Plus, Alexander Skarsgård wants to be naked for his art. “Alexander Skarsgård takes off his clothes at the drop of a hat,” Eggers said. “So, you know, it was easy.”
(via Polygon, image: Focus Films)
