Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America

Well I wouldn't be nearly as brutal as some of the reviewers. I actually ended up liking this movie quite a bit. I didn't bail out on the initial shaky cam beach scene once I started recognizing this as an art statement more than anything. The movie is quite haunting if you allow yourself to feel what these poor lost vikings might have really felt in such a distant forlorn place. The sense of desolation is something I empathize with (I'm a big Alaska tourist fan) and the medieval history is also something I'm quite fond of. So yes, maybe your average movie goer is probably going to quickly bail out on the viewing. For me, the movie is quite a different experience, shows brutally honest depictions of some natural acts, and ends on a complete note of frustration as it should. I felt the writer/director had a complete sense of the psychology of this historical experience that I enjoyed watching.

One guy I know of said it was one of the worst movies he's seen this year. I don't think it is, but it's still bad. Basically, two Vikings find themselves stranded in North America in 1007, there's a lot of beautiful scenery, little dialog, a soundtrack that borders of great (Judas Priest! Brian Eno! Popul Vuh! Queens of the Stone Age! Morbid Angel!) and bad (Prison era Burzum), we see one of the characters defaecate in graphic detail, and we get lot's of silence interrupted by Ambient music, particularly Burzum's "Tomhet" (one of his pre-prison works, so it actually works.)

I can see what the director was aiming for (kind of an "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" for Black Metal fans), but it's just so ponderous, dull and uneventful that it becomes a chore to sit through. There are several themes (particularly Pagan Religion vs. the rise of Christianity) that are touched upon, but left mostly unexplored. Plus, the whole thing lacks confidence-again, you get a feeling of what the director is aiming for, but the whole thing is just so boring.

On the plus side, at least it has a first in cinema: A Viking head banging while the music of Dimmu Borgir serves as a soundtrack. Plus, it's better than "Last Days."

As I was saying just the other day, you simply don't see enough good, old-fashioned Viking dramas these days, do you? Then, lo and behold, what should appear but "Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America" to help fill the void and make us all wiser as to just how brutal and savage life could be at the turn of the last millennium (the movie is set in 1007 A.D.). However, let it be noted for the action fans in the audience that "Severed Ways" is, if anything, an "art" Nordic drama, a documentary-style, largely wordless cross between "Quest for Fire" and "The New World" - with even a bit of "The Blair Witch Project" thrown in for good measure (the palsied camera-work is what reminds us most of that film).

Orn and Volnard (don't ask me which is which) are two young Norsemen who have embarked on an expedition to North America with other members of their tribe. When their compatriots are killed in a battle with some natives called Skraelings, the two strapping lads flee to the forest where they hide out, search for food, build a makeshift shelter and fight off packs of ravenous animals. They also encounter a couple of Christian monks and more of those dreaded Skraelings. Heck, there's even a doe-eyed squaw named Abenaki who drugs and kidnaps one of the boys and makes passionate love to him in her thatched wigwam.

I must admit I kind of admire the sheer lunacy of producer/writer/director/editor Tony Stone's vision (he also plays Ork, which makes him pretty much a one-man show on this film). After all, it isn't often one comes across a movie set in the 11th Century that also features a highly eclectic and utterly anachronistic musical soundtrack ranging in style from pseudo-headbanger to ersatz-Rachmaninoff to quasi-Enya to flat-out monster truck rally commercial. Just for the record, however, the actual recording artists include Popul Vuh, Dimmu Borger, Judas Priest, and Burzum, among others. Actually, the score is probably the single most intriguing aspect of the movie.

I'm not sure of the wisdom of having these ancient warriors speaking in subtitled modern slang ("This fish is killer," "We're toast if we stay here," etc.), since it encourages us to giggle right at the moments when we should be taking the story most seriously.

Nevertheless, the movie does earn itself some points for its complete lack of sentimentality as well as for its refusal to shy away from depicting the harsh, brutal realities of life at that time (one does wonder, though, just how many trees and animals may have been hurt in the making of this film). Yet, even here Stone goes too far at points. Stark realism is one thing, but watching an actor literally emptying his bowels in full view of the camera is quite another. Still, I guess that's one way of ensuring for yourself and your work a permanent place of record in the annals of motion picture history.

"Severed Ways" may be easy to poke fun at, but it's so utterly out-there and loopy - and so doggedly sincere in that loopiness - that you simply can't help but be drawn into it. In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about "Severed Ways," but I am sure that I will never forget it.

There obviously were some major exploratory discoveries unrecorded in history that no human being alive today knows about. This movie depicts one of them and the subtitle gives it its significance. The two lost Vikings represent two elements that have created the American character, the heathen and the Christian, both so western in character. Here we see the first dude on our soil. We graphically see the most important defecation in the history of North America, the first human waste to touch and fertilize its soil and perhaps ultimately to make it toxic. The defecation becomes a ritual act. If guns, germs and steel conquered the North American wilderness, here we have only steel and no long term conquest; The sound of steel on wood is an underlying rhythm in the film. And it is very prescient that some of the chopping is mindless. The sound of the axes is woven into the incredible sound track. The film is very much about music. It is the exquisite lyrical blending of music and image that make this movie totally mesmerizing. Very little dialogue is needed and very little is supplied. This movie is not for film illiterates who think that the best of the best of the Dogma films is just unsteady camera work. This film will polarize the audience and separate the mindful from the mindless. The mindful being those who will love this genre creating movie.

I saw Severed Ways in theater a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. Of course it has it's flaws but keep in mind this was the director's (Stone) first feature and an extremely ambitious one at that.

I'm so sick of seeing the same old independent garbage. Boy loves girl. Girl doesn't love boy but she loves Belle and Sebastion. Somebody makes a phone call on the hamburger phone to someone else who is a dying and pregnant and its official everyone loves Zooey Deschanel. Severed Ways is a Viking period piece made by a crew of about 8 people. How's that even possible. The soundtrack has Norwegian Black Metal and Judas Priest. Amazing!

I thought the use of low def digital video wouldn't work for a period piece but the way it allowed the film to be shot with little to no lighting made it feel more authentic. The cinematography was beautiful even though sometimes the high shutter speed made it a little hard on the eyes.

All in all Severed Ways is a step in the right direction for independent cinema. It's something new and different and I appreciate that. I know people will have trouble with pacing of the film but it's obvious that its deliberate and an attempt to show how two men would try to live off of a land they are not accustomed to. Sometimes the film took a comedic turn which took me out of the film a bit but it would eventually pull me back in.

I'm excited to see what's next for these extremely independent young filmmakers.