From Richard Brody‘s New Yorker review of Robert Eggers‘ The Northman (“Just a Bunch of Research and Gore“): “To tell this story, which Eggers co-wrote with the Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, the director creates a pictorial world of visions and wonders, muck and gore, to evoke the crudeness and the cruelty, the mystical tenor and animistic passion, of the Viking realm — of rural Northern European medieval society over all.
“The cinematography conjures wetness and chill in a monochrome palette that’s interspersed with color images which are most notable for the mossy green of hilly fields. The prettiness of the pictures—the careful lighting, the calculated reflections, the gentle drift or dramatic rush of the camera—undercuts the roughness, the cruelty, the gore (decapitations, disembowelments, hacked-off limbs, bloody slashes and beatings), the freeze, the mud, the ice. The images undercut the movie’s sense of physicality altogether.
“[And yet] with its prettification of the bodily world, The Northman offers no synesthesia, no evocation of any sense beside vision.”
Posted on 7.2.20: “Synesthesia is when you hear music, but you see shapes. Or you hear a word or a name and instantly see a color. Synesthesia is a fancy name for when you experience one of your senses through another. For example, you might hear the name ‘Alex’ and see green. Or you might read the word ‘street’ and taste citrus fruit. The word ‘synesthesia’ has Greek roots.”
