Is Robert Eggers an endangered species?
The 38-year-old director gritted his teeth, making stylized art house films such as the fable with shades of horror “The Witch”, which won the Egers Award for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival and “The Lighthouse”, a black-and-white genius with starring Robert Pattinson and William Defoe. This is usually the reverse point when an idiosyncratic director either smoothes out his sensitivity to make a superhero movie, or deviates to a streaming service in search of creative control with a bigger budget.
Instead, Egers edited The Northerner, a $ 70 million Viking saga that debuted in theaters on Friday. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård as Omelet, a sword-wielding prince seeking revenge on his uncle who killed his father (Ethan Hawke) and takes refuge with his mother (Nicole Kidman) in a remote Icelandic village. Although the story is simpler than in Eggers’ previous films, filmmaking is no less high-end.
“You have to be arrogant to be a director,” Eggers told me at a coffee in Los Angeles. “It’s a crazy thing to do: you have to deny reality and make your own.”
Of course, nothing was easy in creating The Northerner, from organizing his large-scale battles in the open to the director’s clashes with production company New Regency over creative control. Even when the film was ready for filming in March 2020, the pandemic delayed production by several months.
Yet this last setback came with a few small advantages: the outdoors were allowed to last realistically and the Vikings’ beards had time to grow longer, although Eggers did not allow his own carefully maintained facial hair to spiral out of control. . “A director should never have the longest beard,” he told me. “I learned it when I was filming The Lighthouse: You Must Have an Alpha Beard.”
Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.
On the way to this interview, I passed two billboards for your film. I have to imagine that this is a new experience for you.
It’s definitely surreal. I didn’t expect in the last 10 or 15 years of my life to make a film that had such a billboard.
Why not?
Because since I started having less popular interests at about 10 years old, I didn’t think I would make a film for a wide audience. I’m excited to do it, and it was a deliberate choice.
Were you surprised by the audience that opened your first two films?
I felt that “The Witch” [2016] I will get some distribution and I hope to get good enough reviews that maybe someone will allow me to make another film. I didn’t expect a boring horror film for fans to be a success, that’s for sure.
Do you find your movie boring?
I hate The Witch, but that’s another story. But in theory, no, I don’t find such a movie boring. In fact, I watch movies that are much, much more boring than my two movies with great pleasure.
But it sounds like you have the self-awareness to be able to say, “That’s how my work can be perceived by the general public.”
The Witch got a lot [expletive] for fake horror movie marketing. I mean, I think it’s a horror movie, but I can understand how people who are looking for a certain formula weren’t happy. But with The Northman, it’s a challenge because I’m trying to do both.
So how do you thread this needle? Where do your sensibilities intersect with the mainstream?
You want something familiar enough for people to understand, but different enough for something new, and I think that’s what everyone was looking for with this movie. And what was great for me was that the source material was really legible and accessible. I know that children do not flock to Barnes & Noble to get copies of Icelandic sagas, but a lot of medieval literature is quite strange and mystical, and these things are not.
However, it is less and less common for a director with your experience to switch to such a high-budget film, unless he takes on an existing franchise.
I knew I wouldn’t have a final cut because of the size of the film. It was a risk I was willing to take, but the post-production was difficult because I had pressure and a voice from the studio that I had never had before. For The Witch, I had investor notes – good and bad – and the same with The Lighthouse. [2019]but there was a lot of pressure here. Sion, my co-author, said: “It is our responsibility to interpret the studio notes in a way we are proud of. And if we can’t do that, then we’re not working hard enough. “
I also think that without pressure from the studio, I wouldn’t be able to convey what I offered, which was “Robert Eggers’ funniest movie,” because entertainment isn’t necessarily my first instinct. In fact, with my first two films, this was my fifth or 15th priority, while here it was № 1. In the end, although it was painful and I got a lot of gray hair from it, I’m grateful for the pressure from the studio to get this film in shape. There will be no longer directorial version of Blu-ray. This is the movie I wanted to make.
What did you learn from doing this?
Everything. I feel like a director for the first time since I made this film.
Didn’t you feel that way after finishing your other films?
No. I had the feeling that I was trying to convince people that I was a director. I’m not saying I’m not – I’m actually quite proud of “The Lighthouse” – but now I feel like I could make a movie up my sleeve, and it might not be so bad. This film gave me a fuller understanding of the process in a way I have never had before.
Talk to me about the level of challenges you took on The Northerner.
We did a lot, from a massive village raid with hundreds of extras and stuntmen, horses and cows, to a storm at sea on a Viking ship at night, to a series in such a remote place that the cast had to be boarded by helicopter. As we curled up, Ethan Hawke hugged me and Jarin [Blaschke, the director of photography] and he said, “Congratulations. You guys have done everything you can in a movie, so now you can do anything. ” Of course, after he left, Jarin and I said, “Yes, we’re ready to make this movie now.”
The raid on the village is captured in a long, intricate choreography. When there is so much chaos and the actors have to hit all their punches so precisely, how do you feel when you know that you have finally succeeded?
This is the best feeling and I became addicted to knocking on the monitor to take the picture. There were a lot of scenes that were planned as three or four shots that I had turned into one, partly because I was just addicted to working like that. If it’s not the best way to tell the scene, you shouldn’t do it, but when it could be done, we did it because there is discipline in it.
And I’m sure these shots are even harder to take when you’re shooting them outside in tough times instead of a controlled sound scene.
You see, making movies is not easy. With my films, I deliberately try to find the most punitive, brutal places I can shoot them, because history demands it. It makes everything harder for everyone, but it’s worth it. I like the challenge. If it was easy, I wouldn’t want to do it.
Before you became a director, you acted in theater productions. Does this give information about the way you work with your actors now?
I have to be an acting director, but sometimes I’m naughty. Alexander Skarsgård felt treated like a robot for the first few weeks, but then he understood why I was running the way I was.
Was he disappointed that he had to hit such specific points?
Yes. And also, I don’t indulge in a lot of work at the table – to talk about your character and how all these things grew up. I’m more interested in doing than talking about acting.
This is interesting because you do so much research when it comes to creating your world. I think you would sympathize with an actor who wants to do the same research on his character.
Yes, but I also think that’s their job. With The Lighthouse, Pattinson would sometimes say, “Is this or is that?” And I said, “You know what? Choose the one that works for you, but you need to make this scene 25 percent faster.
So how did you work with Alexander Skarsgård? This is a level of madness that I have never seen on screen. Personally, he is surprisingly soft – I can go so far as to say stupid.
He is the sweetest, dumbest man. Alex has been involved with the Vikings since he was a child, so this was something he was super passionate about and he demanded perfection from himself. For the first few weeks, he tried to understand how we worked with Jarin and was disappointed, but after we did the scene where he was doing a shamanic war dance, things changed. I think the rage, madness, and vulnerability he had to show unlocked something. And then for the rest of the photos, every shot was great.
How much do you invest in the box office return on this film?
a lot. Because of Covid, people potentially expect him not to do what everyone wants to do, but the fact that this movie was made – the fact that my team and I were allowed to make a great movie that is not a superhero franchise movie – is a success in itself.
I am incredibly humble and excited that the early reviews are so positive, but even if you hate this film, I feel it is the public’s responsibility to support it a little bit, because other directors need to be given the opportunity to do so, and the audience needs to. you have the opportunity to watch things other than superhero movies. I don’t even laugh at superhero movies, but there must be room for something …
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