Valhalla Rising
Short description
Set around the year 1000, the film follows a mute warrior of extraordinary strength known as One-Eye, who has spent years imprisoned by the Norse chieftain Barde and forced to fight other men to the death for his captors' amusement. A young slave boy, Are, has cared for him throughout his captivity. When One-Eye finally breaks free and kills Barde, he and Are escape together and join a group of Vikings bound for the Holy Land. Their voyage takes them into a dense, unending fog, and when it lifts they find themselves near an unfamiliar shore, where the travellers face a fate they never expected and One-Eye learns who he really is.
Nicolas Winding Refn directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Roy Jacobsen. The film sits between Bronson, his 2009 study of a violent convict, and Drive, his 2011 crime story, in a run of seven features he had directed up to that point. Mads Mikkelsen plays One-Eye, with Gary Lewis as Kare, Jamie Sives as Gorm, Ewan Stewart as Eirik, Alexander Morton as Barde and Callum Mitchell as a pagan Viking guard. It is a British-Danish production made for about six million dollars.
On IMDb the film holds a critics' rating of 6.6 out of 10 from 62 reviews, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.1 out of 10 from 1,371 votes, so the two are fairly close and suggest a modest, mixed reception rather than strong enthusiasm.
What's left behind the scenes
- On the film's official website, Mikkelsen's character is named Harald, but in the film itself he is only referred to as One-Eye.
- Originally, the film was supposed to be shot in Scotland and America, but due to the small budget, all filming took place only in Scotland.
- Mads Mikkelsen, agreeing to the role, believed it would be easy to film, as he wouldn't have to learn any lines, seeing as he wouldn't have any dialogue. However, the filming turned out to be very physically demanding in the Scottish locations.
- To enhance realism, the director eschewed computer graphics, relying solely on high-quality makeup. £8,000 was spent on the severed head.
- Mads Mikkelsen was the only candidate for the role of One-Eye from the very beginning, as he is an old friend of the director.
- The appearance and war paint of One-Eye suggest that he himself is not a Scandinavian, but a Pict. The Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, inhabited by the Picts, were conquered by Scandinavians as early as the 9th century.
- Throughout the entire film, all the characters have approximately 120 lines of dialogue.
- Originally, Refn planned a different ending for the film: a spaceship descends from the sky, One Eye boards it and flies away. However, Refn rejected this option. Later, he wanted to end the film with an epic battle scene in which One Eye would defeat an entire army of Native Americans. Refn had already secured funding for filming this scene, but by that time he decided that One Eye would sacrifice his life for the boy.
- The main character's blind eye was made in the image and likeness of Kirk Douglas's eye in the film «The Vikings» (1958).
- The idea for the film came to director Nicolas Winding Refn when he learned about the discovery of ancient runes in the American state of Delaware. Scientists debated how they could have ended up in a place so remote from Scandinavia, and Refn decided to come up with his own explanation.
- All scenes were filmed in chronological order.
- Initially, Refn wanted the Scottish rock band Mogwai to compose the music for the film, but they had a very busy schedule and couldn't fit the project in.
- The film's title coincides with the title of Clive Cussler's popular adventure novel, but has no relation to it.
- Refn was simultaneously casting actors for two film projects – *Valhalla Rising* and *Bronson*.
- As the director confessed, the film is based on a book his parents read to him as a child. Wishing to preserve the book's idea, Refn and Jacobsen decided to divide the story into six chapters, to make One-Eye's journey more tense as the story progresses.
- The idea of One-Eye being mute came to Nicolas Winding Refn in a dream, where One-Eye was unable to speak. After he woke up, he called Roy Jacobsen and told him about the idea.
- During the scene about "God's Servants", the sea was made from black plastic bags.
- Maarten Steven, who plays Are, is the son of Gary Lewis, who played Kåre.
- Filming took place in Scotland from August to December 2008.
- Nicolas Winding Refn conceived the film as a kind of LSD hallucination.
- One-Eye was a nickname for Odin, who in one of the Scandinavian legends sacrificed one of his eyes to Mimir, the master of the well of great wisdom, for a single drink from it in order to gain wisdom. The sacrifice also gave him the power to see hidden things.
- Refn drew inspiration from Mario Bava's classic horror film *Planet of the Vampires* (1965), Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult Western *The Mole* (1970), and the avant-garde films of Kenneth Anger, *Invocation of My Demon Brother* (1964) and *Lucifer Rising* (1972).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
