Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America (2009)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I've seen better home videos that parents took of their children singing off key. For the love of Pete, why do I need to see someone take a poo? Really!!!! Each scene seemed to drag on endlessly without giving the viewers anything to look forward to. I get it they were chopping down trees. If someone would just give them a chainsaw... I hope the actors didn't plan on moving on with their careers. After shooting something like this they will never be able to be apart of anything big. How this ever made its way into movie stores is beyond me. Well I can honestly say if I ever had the chance to produce a movie Tony Stone is NOT going to be the person I choose to direct or write it. Awful quality, terrible story.

Severed Ways is a film that reminds me of a fable, of the story books I read as a child, the ones with big images of a dark and imposing forest spilling out across the page, split by the spine of the book. Before the forest is the hero. He might be walking into it or standing at the edge, but the implication was always this: his destiny lay in the woods, the weird wilderness. The narrative was always straight, speaking of determined and unrelenting action rendered in simple typeface "He traveled on..." or "Once into the woods...." And, upon turning the page, there would be a sudden shift, an amazing passage of indeterminate time would find the hero suddenly confronted by a fantastic witch full of temptation and secrets or he might just as well be forced to fight a strange enemy upon an empty place.There is no new story to tell, the fables, the allegories stay with us. The Sagas, folk tales, the Baba Yaga, Aesop, Grimm. In these disparate branches of allegory lie the template for Severed Ways.In many ways, what we see in this film is at once the most happenstance and anthropological examination of an event that never was, it feels as if the drive of the narrative is to paint large, language-free landscapes of simple action. Travel. Eat. S#@t. F#@k. Fight. Die. And yet, there is a subtler language operating, one that doesn't speak in words, forsaking speech for the language expressed in the mountains, streams, trees and sounds of the forest, a forest that once stretched unbroken from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, from south of Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. A forest that had no name, no history in written words.Travel. Eat. S#@t. F#@k. Fight. Die. That is the simple ethos of this film.Watch this film like you are reading a fable and get over your clichéd expectations already.

It is nearly impossible to achieve the epic natural scope and primordial realism of Severed Ways without a massive budget, limitless location potential, heavy machinery (as in 'copters and cranes), and unimaginable set builds. What has been achieved here by a small team of independent filmmakers is truly above and beyond in both cinematic beauty and raw yet researched realism. This film immediately transports you into it's fantastical yet wholly natural world via the empathy one feels for the very real plight of the 2 highly believable Viking characters lost in the new world. In a second achievement of the seemingly impossible Tony Stone manages to fuse together the much hinted at and referenced viking/metal association in popular culture in a majestic and seamless way. This incredible and fitting soundtrack supports the rough epic grandeur of two characters from a lost culture struggling to survive while lost in a new world. Random encounters with forest dwelling Jesuit monks and First Nation warriors add depth to the Vikings search for understanding in their fight to survive. From the epic triumphs of enduring spirit to the sometimes comical/playful details of the human experience this movie sails the metal churned seas with grace and depth.

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.