In The Lighthouse, Dafoe gets to spout dialogue like, “HARK, TRITON! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury!” Watching that movie, I felt like I was falling off the mental deep end right along with the two prisoners. His previous work, 2019’s The Lighthouse, starred Dafoe as yet another weird little guy, Thomas Wake, who spent the movie driving Robert Pattinson’s Winslow absolutely batty. It’s not as if Eggers doesn’t realize what he’s working with here. At least give him a solid death to remember him by! He only appears in the banquet scene in Viking-Jester regalia and then in the hallucinogenic initiation scene before making an exit off the mortal coil… offscreen. He clearly knows that Dafoe is an ace in the hole, yet he doesn’t utilize the actor to his full potential. If only Heimir’s antics had actually been that lengthy. Send me updates about Slate special offers. happening” as a loinclothed, prancing Dafoe tapped into the primal energy of nature’s savage side for what felt like an hour straight. The notes I took while watching the movie were a scrawl of “what. So explicit, in fact, that there’s even a scene later in the film when Prince Amleth (get it?) beholds Heimir’s skull and sighs, “Poor Heimir.” Although Hamlet never shows Yorick alive, The Northman ensures that we absolutely get to see Heimir in the prime of his lifetime-making dick jokes and officiating psychedelic “werewolf bar mitzvahs.” It’s fantastic stuff, powered by Dafoe unleashing a level of weird-little-guy energy previously unknown to man. Differences aside-there are plenty of them-Eggers and cowriter Sjón add an explicit Yorick reference in the form of Heimir. The Northman is based on the old Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet, albeit with a significant increase in guys wearing wolf pelts. Despite having the epitome of little-guy weirdness at his disposal, however, director Robert Eggers quickly squanders his film’s crown jewel-to the detriment of both the audience and The Northman itself. My friend told me it’s “a combination of magnetism and revulsion.” But I propose an alternative: It’s Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, The Northman’s secret weapon. What is the true essence of a weird little guy?
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