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Burn Motherviking Burn!

What if mumblecore, the ultra-emo filmmaking doctrine that has gained popularity among the “cut yourself” crowd, as of late, was co-opted by some real gnarly Black Metal dudes who love to burn down churches while praising the virtues of a pure white Nordic bloodline? Why, then you’d have Severed Ways, the mumblecore movie that dares to hand you back your Shins CD, hurl a spiked mace in your face and force you to listen to the dissonant music of Dimmu Borgir as you lie bleeding to death on the cold forest ground.

Two young vikings, well adept in the ways of cutting trees and head-banging (no lie!), are left behind after an unseen Viking/Native American battle. They go off into the forest, looking for a way home, coming across a couple of Irish missionaries. They kill one and, just to prove what badasses they are, promptly burn down the rustic church and dance a jig on the smoldering ashes. METAL!

Now here’s where the movie left me in a quandary: sure, Vikings, being the uneducated, irrational dicks they were, probably did burn down Christian churches in the New World. But, then again, so have numerous Black Metal fans in the past 20 years. I don’t think director Tony Stone did this as a historical document; I’m pretty sure this was meant to masturbate to! Stone lovingly, pornographically, films the church fire in such a sexualized way, it becomes an obvious message of hope that the “old ways” will trump Christianity, hopefully soon. (To compound this idea, one of the special features is a piece called “Slow Burn”, in which the church burning down in shown in highly erotic slow-motion. Ahem.)

To the Vikings credit, this act though does split the two Norse knuckleheads apart, one clinging desperately to his dying Viking ways, with the other trying to learn about God and nature and love and forgiveness from the remaining priest who is silently following behind him. Of course, the film makes this Viking the “weak” one, the sell-out, and disastrous results follow.

For all my cynicism though, don’t get me wrong: the movie is actually quite good, especially if you can get past the unsettling undertones. But, if just by judging the DVD case alone, I have to say that the typical DVD consumer, not knowing what’s going on, will be sorely disappointed. With a titular subtitle added (“The Norse Discovery of America”) and blurbs describing the flick as “epic”, most people are going to go into this expecting a Pathfinder-type actioner, instead coming away puzzled with a nearly wordless Lars Von Trier-lite sojourn into gritty Viking survival and ass-grabbery, all filmed with a woefully nausea-inducing shaky camera. Oh, to see the looks on those renters faces!

Like I said, I liked Severed Ways just fine, but I don’t think it’ll go over very well with John and Jane Q. Renter. About twenty minutes in it’ll be back in the NetFlix envelope while they settle into the last five minutes of Two and A Half Men. Unless they are members of the Aryan nation, in which case, five stars, fellas! To Ass-gard and beyond!

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