How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Let's suppose I owned a fancy machine: one that could, with just the touch of a button, transform a song into a film. After turning 'Surf City' into 'Beach Blanket Bingo,' 'Heroin' into 'Trainspotting,' and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony into 'Smokey and the Bandit,' my eyes would drift toward my brother's black metal collection, and I would start to feed my contraption glorious Nordic wrath. The picture that would emerge would be 'Severed Ways - The Norse Discovery of America.'
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BY THE HAMMER OF THOR!: Writer/Director/Producer Tony Stone as Orn, his lead.
An epic of the early days of the first failed American conquest, this nearly wordless film hits every mark on the awesome-stuff-Vikings-do checklist. The heroes - two Vikings left behind when their party came under attack by Native Americans - swing swords and hurl axes. They hunt, tell stories and attack a couple of Catholic priests they bump into on their way home. They set afire a pyre and a church, since the film wouldn't be metal if it weren't proudly pagan. (Indeed, the movie was produced by Heathen Films.)
In between eruptions of violence, 'Severed Ways' is quiet. The press materials describe it as a 'DIY Epic,' and while it is admirably low-budget, it is also something of a how-to-survive-in-the-woods instruction manual. There are several long sequences of writer/director/producer/star Tony Stone chopping wood, lashing wood, and building a shanty out of wood. We watch the Vikings hunt, fish and cook; we enjoy a lengthy scene of Orn (Stone) turning the scenic forest into a bathroom and some handy leaves into toilet paper. That moment would be disgusting and strange - who writes a script so that he can film himself shitting? - if it weren't so fucking metal.'
It is that immersion in the landscape that turns Stone's baby into a six-person epic. His fetishistic recapitulation of Viking stereotypes is not fanboyism but homage to a lifestyle that no longer exists. That Stone has us cheer for the senseless murder of a lost priest is testament to just how removed Orn and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) are from today. They respect the Indians they fight as another group threatened by history. The real enemy is the Christians.
Between violence and carpentry, Stone plays with our preconceived notions of Vikings. Orn and Volnard are separated after the attack on the church, and Volnard ends up walking around with the one priest they didn't kill. Their walkabout becomes homoerotic fast, and when Orn catches up with them, his jealousy is palpable. Though nobody ever kisses, it is obvious that these guys are not the raping-maidens type.
But the bizarre love triangle takes a back seat when there is fighting to be done or wood to be chopped. No matter what the critical implications are, a berserker is just happy to go berserk.
W.M. Akers is arts editor. E-mail him at wakers@nyunews.com.
