Valhalla Rising (2009)

    Nicolas Winding Refn strips his world down to the bare essentials; Earth and Death.  In the mist of the Scottish Highlands is caged a mute, one-eyed animal.  The beast is taken out for regular bouts of carnage, both in the vein of jugular tearing and skull-bashing.  The collar and leash that confine his movements are but minor disadvantages with mortal benefits.  One-Eye’s graying beard and neatly contained crop of lengthy hair quickly become matted in the mud of his battleground.  The only reward he receives for his kill count is a ladle of watery soup from the hands of a young, androgynously blond-haired boy.
    This child becomes his mouth; speaking more in a single word than the mute does from start to finish.  One-Eye talks with his eyes and with his body.  His red-saturated hallucinatory premonitions provide his escape.  In a matter of seconds he breaks his collar and slays his captors, making habitual use of a diving leg smash and finishing his opponent whence they have fallen to the earth.  The mute ties his final captor, as if to crucify, to a large rock only to disembowel the living man.  He continues through the thin air being tailed by the child.
    The unlikely, almost affectionately paired duo arrives at the aftermath of crusading Christian Vikings.  The small village’s men are slaughtered, the naked women chained, the huts burned.  One-Eye and the boy join the Vikings as they return to Jerusalem; a journey guided by God through the fog covered waters of the ocean.  Their faith in God will surely return them to the Holy Land.
    The river they abruptly find themselves in, and the land they soon set foot on, is surely more Hell than Heaven.  The first Viking is killed by an obsidian arrowhead of unknown origin; the first sign of primal inhabitants.  The open-air burials on raised scaffolding display withered and decaying bodies.  The forests have no end.  The mud is thick.  Their world is a wicked hallucination.  The Christians continue to delude themselves with visions of grandeur in building their New Jerusalem devoid of women or food.
    Valhalla Rising finds Refn at his most meditative and, despite my unrelenting adoration for Bronson (2009), perhaps his most masterful.  The savage brutality and violent masculinity is echoed yet is stripped of its societal incarnations and individual motivations.  Here, it is survival at its purest.  It is no small fact that One-Eye is both caged and collared and tied to a post like a dog.  He is fed from a bowl without spoon and used only for fighting.  And he doesn't talk. Unlike the violent nature of Bronson, One-Eye’s violence is not spurred on by challenging authority and immortalizing identity but by prolonging the physical life. 
    It is a life born from the earth and never separated from it.  His cage, the only time he is ever inside, is an extension of a massive boulder.  His battleground is but a textured and dirty mess of mud.  The rock cairn he erects on the edge of the water where he commits his final cleansing comes tandem with the bloodstained premonitions of his body beaten to death on a rocky outcrop.  While he bathes his body for the last time, the final Christian leader does the same, only to be penetrated by three arrows that leave his body floating in the dark water.
    It is unclear just what One-Eye has sacrificed in the final chapter.  Nor is it certain that he didn't lead the Christians astray, as he was accused.  It is certain that no New Jerusalem is to be formed in the primordial land. 
    Refn’s Death Trip is written in six chapters that suggest an easy reading but do not provide a concrete solution.  The child is all that remains after One-Eye is beaten by natives covered in dry mud who would undoubtedly admire their victim’s martial talents, enduringness, and affection for dirt.  The Christian faith is darkly portrayed and leaves very little reason to believe in God.  It is not surprising that Refn has exhausted himself with a pair of violent films soaked in masculinity and seeks explorations entirely surrounded my women.  Likewise, it should be noted that the film at hand demands multiple viewings.