Robert Eggers' Viking revenge epic taps into Kidman’s weird side, where she does all her best work.
At her best , Nicole Kidman is untamed . She ’s a perky weather girl willing to murder if it have in mind achieving her TV dreams ( To decease For ) . She ’s crawling around her bedroom floor stoned , taunting her husband about sexual fantasies that do n’t involve him ( Eyed all-embracing Shut ) . She ’s holler in a train station ( The hour ) or bathing with a unseasoned male child who claims to be her reincarnate spouse ( Birth ) or climbing a rotting tree diagram ( Margot at the Wedding ) orurinating on Zac Efron ’s jellyfish sting(The Paperboy ) or hunting down an amiable bear in hopes of taxidermying the hell out of him ( Paddington ) .
late , however , Kidman has mostly kept her freak sword lily at half - mast . Big Little Lies , Lion , The Upside , Boy Erased , Bombshell , The unfastening , Being the David Ricardo — by Nicole Kidman standards , this is mediate - of - the - route poppycock , calendered and docile . EvenNine Perfect Strangers , in which she played a Russian scammer - guru who runs a health heart where she dope client without their knowledge , resulted in a relatively subdued twist . And in her episode of Apple TV+ ’s new anthology seriesRoar , a deliciously extreme assumption ( woman use up photographs ) somehow lead in the tamest performance of her career . Someone should sue for malfeasance .
Kidman , with her classic Hollywood glamor , can dally fine-tune like the best of them ( see : The Others , The Beguiled ) . But when she untie her physique and get that madcap spark in her eyes , her charm becomes napalm ; you never have intercourse when she must erupt next .
Nicole Kidman in ‘The Northman,’ in theaters April 22.|Focus Features
gratefully , that ’s whereThe Northmancomes in . Robert Eggers ’ third feature , following his spick indie breakoutsThe WitchandThe Lighthouse , is a Viking spin onHamlet , cast off Alexander Skarsgård as a warrior prince seeking revenge on his two - faced uncle Fjölnir ( Claes Bang ) for having bolt down his founding father ( Ethan Hawke ) and abducted his female parent ( Kidman ) when he was a son . ( Technically , Eggers is adapting the fable that inspired Shakespeare ’s tragedy . ) Kidman is the movie ’s queen , in more style than one . As Gudrún , she is introduced as brace , supple , and uneasy about the approximation of her 10 - twelvemonth - quondam Logos being train in the art of war . In theory , her subsequent kidnapping would render Gudrún a damozel in distraint — a Gertrude without agency . But when Skarsgård ’s adult Amleth indicate up to rescue Gudrún and assume his rightful place on the stool , he has no mind what interlingual rendition of his former guardian awaits him .
There ’s no need to describe theNorthmanplot ’s minutia to compose an appreciation of Kidman’sperformance , but consider this a spoiler warning . Gudrún , you see , is no victim . If anything , she is pleased to be rid of her belated husband , under whom she was stiffen — not that guiltless Amleth could have known that when he vowed to free her . Next to Fjölnir , she harbour her own , insofar as any woman can hold her own opposite a bestial 10th - century Norse supplanter . Kidman , with her menstruate Cate - Blanchett - in - Lord - of - the - Ringsgoddess hair , is full of glares and come - ons that defy the weakness Amleth expects to feel when he boards a slave ship headed for Fjölnir and Gudrún ’s Icelandic small town .
Kidman ’s performance sneaks up on you . She is muted in the movie ’s first half and furious in its second , as if Gudrún ’s shackles have been unclasped . Amleth greets her in the dead of Nox , raising a presentiment silver sword to her pharynx . “ Your blade is farsighted , ” she coo , the first in a serial of barbed flirtations that advise Gudrún might sooner rend her boy ’s clothes off than soothe him . Their exchange result in a few things worth noting : a grim revealing that reframes Amleth ’s full puerility , the pronouncement that Gudrún does not see Fjölnir as some foe to be vanquished , and — most importantly — a long , witchy cackle so decadent it sounds like mania substantiate . ( Kidman has portray witches before , inPractical MagicandBewitched , but they were decent Wiccan . Someone needs to write her a demented witch , or maybe a trippy prophesier like the one Björk plays inThe Northman . )
Oscar Novak, Ethan Hawke, and Nicole Kidman in ‘The Northman.'|Focus Features
Kidman has done phenomenal piece of work in many of her late prestige labor , especiallyBig Little Lies , which chance to co - star Skarsgård ( this time as her husband ) . But staid actorly dramas are a waste of Kidman ’s strengths ; why view her lather over her wartime lover inCold Mountainwhen you may see her in cold blood tell her girl she “ ca n’t wait to determine life tear you apart ” inStoker ? Kidman ’s power to strip forth the elegance she exudes off - projection screen deepens our family relationship to her on - screen . She could , at any import , let loose the discharge see in thoseinfamous paparazzi photostaken the twenty-four hours she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise .
The simplicity Eggers and co - author Sjón ( Dancer in the Dark ) bring toThe Northmanbenefits Kidman and the other performing artist . Despite theextensive Viking researchthat went into the motion picture , what ensue is a straightforward , if passably hallucinogenic , retaliation epic for the most part unburned by esoteric trivia . And so when Kidman lets her eccentric crackling fly , it ’s almost disgraceful in its grotesquerie , her entire trunk flailing forward as she jeopardise Amleth . What sort of female parent would do that to her firstborn ? One play by Nicole Kidman .
