How ‘Northman’ Production Designer Used Dried Blood Tones to Build Viking World
A.D. Amorosi Without a doubt, Robert Eggers’ “The Northman” traffics in his now-usual brand of haunted atmospherics and wonky mysticism, a signature whose intensity is upped by the savage bloodlust of its characters and the vastitudes of his first big-budget epic with a price tag reportedly hovering between $70 million and $90 million.The only thing more intensely stressed than the dilemma of a Viking prince in the year 895 (avenging the death of his father, the king, at the hands of his jealous uncle who stole the prince’s mother as the spoils of war — or did she go willingly?) played to brutal, muscular perfection by Alexander Skarsgård, is the all-consuming dedication of its tactile production design, its brooding, cinematographic ambiance and the craftsmanship of its furry, hierarchical costuming.