Review of Valhalla Rising (2009) by Wade L — 12 Jan 2014

At university, I took a poetry writing course, and I recall once that someone brought in a poem that was exceedingly ambiguous. Insofar as it was about anything, it was about bongos dancing down the street. It was one of those poems all image, no meaning, all language, no thrust. "What does it mean?" my fellow students asked. The poet smirked and replied, "It means whatever you want it to mean.".

This bothered me, and I replied: "If your poem's interpretation is entirely up to the reader, then your poem means nothing. If I'm doing all the work to interpret your poem, to get insight and beauty and feeling from it, then what need have I of your poetry? It's all coming from me. Would I not be better served simply taking a stroll through a park? Watching a butterfly land on a flower? Studying my lover's face? By courting ambiguity so thoroughly, you will render yourself superfluous.".

Which was my way of saying that he was lazy.

Valhalla Rising is also lazy. It's like the writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn (of the vastly superior Drive) couldn't be bothered to make a coherent plot, which can be difficult to do after all. This film is incredibly austere, incredibly slow. There are maybe 100 lines of dialogue. The movie consists of a group of men wandering around lost, having disjointed conversations. And there's some cinematography. And some brief, impressive bursts of brutality.

I respect ambiguity as a tool for pulling in the viewer, for allowing freedom of interpretation and encouraging independent thought. I appreciate restraint in film-making, but something needed to happen in this movie. There needed to be some pay-off, but it simply goes and it goes and it goes and then the credits roll. Where was the hook? Why was I supposed to care?

It was like the smell of a freshly baked pie. You enjoy the scent - you can't eat it sure but it smells damn good. And if you follow it to its origin, you will find a pie you CAN eat. Well in this film, there was no pie. It was all smoke. There was nothing to sink your teeth into.

Final Say: An exceedingly austere, ambiguous film that simply lacks the meat to make it worthy of a watch for anyone except the most hardcore Refn fans or film students.

How to Watch It: With a pretty girl/guy with whom you can make out, instead of watching it. I feel like it'd be a pretty great background movie for that experience because any time you look up, you'd be like, "Wow I have no idea what the fuck is going on!" and then you can return to tasty tasty lips & groping. Or you can watch the Thirteenth Warrior which, despite its flaws, is basically the same movie, except with a plot.

Trivia: The main character's name "One-Eye" is a reference to Woden (or Odin, as he's usually called). Outside of that, of course, I saw no actual connection to Odin, but still, kind of interesting.