This is one of my favorite movies. One of the best parts was when the arab learned the norsemen's language, by listening to them speak.
My favorite part was near the end, when Bullvye, poisoned, weak, and dying, stands up and says "Lo there do I see my father..." and each remaining member of the original 13 says a line from the saying that was spoken by a woman early in the film just before she was burned on a funeral ship with her dead husband.
This evening, I was a bit bored, but not quite tired enough to go to sleep, so I went to Wikipedia to see what might sound interesting. I found an article on viking funerals.
There I found an account of a viking funeral written by an arab scholar named Ahmad ibn Fadlan...sound familiar? A great deal of the movie comes from this man's writings. Then I followed the link to the Viking Answer Lady's page going into more detail about the book, the movie, and the original writings, which are called the Risala.
In any case, it was interesting to read.
5 years ago
1 comment:
I feel obligated to respond to this because of how much I like this movie. It feels cliche to call this a "thinking man's hack-n-slash" but I thought it hit a really refreshing zone between visceral action and visual story telling.
The only weak part is when they go back to the old lady scryer and (in an obvious bit of post filming fakery) says, "blurble blurble oh and you have to kill this OTHER baddie too."
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