Valhalla Rising (2010)

The latest DVD from Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, produced by IFC films is Valhalla Rising, an English language period film set in the year 1000. The flick hit theaters in April of 2010 on a limited number of screens, and now this little known film is available for home viewing.

The film's plot follows the Norse warrior known only as One Eye and his struggles through captivity, his voyage with Christian crusaders, and his travels to hell and back. The story is quite simple and is noticeably without any subplots or interwoven story lines. It is a pure and simple tale of a man and his journey. The plot is constructed in a chronological yet choppy format and, although the run time is a mere 92 minutes, the viewing experience feels dramatically longer.

The casting choices are superb in Valhalla Rising, especially that of Mads Mikkelsen, who plays the warrior One Eye. Mikkeslen's performance is impressive, as he has virtually no dialogue and communicates only through facial expressions and his physicality. Mikkelsen plays it quiet and contemplative, although he has another side of vengeance and pure animalistic hate. The range of his acting in the film is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Playing alongside Mikkelsen are Maarten Stevenson as Are, the young boy who accompanies One Eye for much of his journey, and Gary Lewis, Jamie Sives and Ewan Stewart as the crusaders with whom One Eye travels.

This flick has many distinctive qualities that set it apart from any Hollywood blockbuster. Valhalla Rising is constructed Tarantinostyle into chapters: Wrath, Silent Warrior, Men of God, The Holy Land, Hell and The Sacrifice. It also gives a vast amount of credit to the viewer's intelligence in that there are long stretches without dialogue, and when there is dialogue, it does not serve the purpose of obvious explanations or unnecessary details. Instead the spoken lines offer up an atmosphere of an utterly bleak world that is vast and empty and where every man must embrace solidarity. The visuals of Valhalla Rising stand out in both their beauty and their horror. Breathtaking landscape shots contrast with brutal violence that seems excessive even for the desensitized audiences of today's cinema.

The DVD contains a minimal amount of special features, not uncommon among IFC releases, but includes both French and English language and subtitle options as well as a "making of" featurette.

If you are looking for a challenging film that pushes many media conventions close to their extremes, and an experience where you must figure out for yourself what you are watching then this is certainly the DVD for you to watch next. However if slow moving flicks with a heavy emphasis on the visuals are not quite your thing, or ultra-violent gore makes you queasy then Valhalla Rising is most likely worth skipping.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars