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. I think they figured that out pretty quick, but they were patient with me and I learned how to ride." Apparently, the experience wasn't too traumatic for Dafoe to relive it a few years later: He'd play the leader of a biker gang again in Walter Hill's cult masterpiece "Streets of Fire.What is the true essence of a weird little guy? I go riding through the backyards of some fancy neighborhood in Connecticut.
So when he saddled the hog, he says, "It takes off with me. Is it one down, two up?"īy the time the moment of truth rolled around, Dafoe still didn't know the back end of a motorcycle from the front. Dafoe told GQ, "I don't want to lose the part, so they say, have you ever ridden a motorcycle? O course, classically, what does an actor do? They lie." He was eventually found out when shooting began and he was called upon to ride a "1955 big Harley hog." He scrambled to find someone to teach him before he started filming, without any success: "That's before the internet, so I'm going to the library to get a book on how to shift.
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