Valhalla Rising has less dialogue than any movie you are likely to see. What the movie is about, you will have to decide. Its focus is a silent man, who lives chained to a rock in a cage, is taken on a neck tether to a post, where he is tied by the neck and then forced to fight for his life. The post fights are worth the price of the movie. This is not a combat heavy movie. But when it comes, it comes with an authentic intensity that makes you cringe.

The setting seems to be Northern Scotland or the Hebrides—definitely Norse. Valhalla Rising is Viking grunge. The movie proceeds in a seething silence. The entire tenor of Valhalla Rising is literary—not to say wordy. The best thing about this movie was the demonstration to us modern noise-consumed people of the kind of silence humanity has known for most of its existence. The photography and sound is riveting.

The movie unfolds in six parts:

1. Wrath

2. Silent Warrior

3. Men of God

4. The Holy Land

5. Hell

6. Sacrifice

Mads Mikkelsen, as the silent man, plays his role with a brutal ambiguity that drags the rest of the cast down to their doom like a lead weight. The story line is at once simple, indirect, and indistinct—but drags the viewer along. Norse paganism is shown in the naked brutal half-light of its end. Christianity is exposed as the murderous excuse of the ages that it has so often been. For the entire length of the movie I was riveted, but could not really tell why. Having seen the movie, I am still at a loss as to what it was that so entranced me.

I must see it again.