Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ok, don't read this review unless you have already seen `Valhalla Rising'. Because a lot of people still don't seem to get it, here's a capsule explanation of exactly what happens in the film, from someone who examines evidence of crimes and from that puts together suspects' MOs, serial killer methodologies, etc: A mute slave, One Eye, is forced by his captors to fight. One day, he finds an old arrowhead by submerging himself in a waterpool located on some mountain upland, after having a dream about the event. Later, One Eye uses the arrowhead to free himself and kill his captors. From this, his mind forms an abstract construct about submersion in water giving him the key that unlocks his freedom. An unnamed slave boy accompanies the newly freed One Eye, and they encounter a group of Christian Scots-Gaelic warriors who are on their way to the Crusades. One Eye and the boy board the Christians' ship, and with them sail away into a dense sea fog that does not lift until they find their ship has somehow left the sea and floated inland along the course of an unnamed river. Their location is uncertain and soon becomes a point of contention among the travelers. In this unfamiliar land, One Eye and his companions encounter some signs of human habitation: raised wooden biers holding decayed corpses and tribal religious paraphernalia stand in a lightly wooded area. Pay attention here, and you can see near this location a waterpool or small pond with the trunk of a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water, or from the shore. There is a scene where the group is approaching the biers, and the waterpool/tree is there between them and the biers; another waterpool/dead tree tableau can be seen briefly for a moment behind and to the right of the leader of the Christian warriors. One Eye somehow makes the connection that these waterpool/dead tree tableaus have spiritual significance to the land's native inhabitants, else they wouldn't have chosen to honor their dead in that place. Later, the leader of the Christian warriors, who was allowed to travel through the unnamed land unmolested up until that point, is shot dead with arrows while standing waist-deep in a small pond. Note: to his left stands a dead, sun-bleached tree rising out of the water. Was the warrior-leader shot for violating the native inhabitants' "holy ground" by standing in the pond? Recall the earlier scene in which all of the characters drink some unnamed psychoactive liquor from a carved wooden bottle, and then all proceed to succumb to various kinds of drug-induced mania and/or religious ecstasy on the shores of a still lagoon. After drinking, One Eye glances over his shoulder toward a distant rocky promontory, where the native inhabitants are presumed to be hiding and watching; One Eye does this to let them know he's aware they are there. Then, standing apart from the maddened, drug-dazed crowd, One Eye constructs a column-like structure of stones on a small islet near the shores of the lagoon. Note that when he begins this task, One Eye sets the first stone atop the stump of a dead tree. He is sending the watching tribesmen the message that he understands their religion: he knows what their holy places are, where spirits are presumed to dwell. And so One Eye himself constructs a new "holy place." At the end of the film, before One Eye is beaten to death, he envisions himself (his spirit?) walking into the waters of that lagoon where he built the stone column; then he (or his spirit) is submerged, the head disappearing under the water's surface, like he did near the beginning of the film when he found the arrowhead that eventually aided him in freeing himself. Only this time, the audience is supposed to surmise that the freedom One Eye seeks (and gets, through the death of his physical body) is spiritual freedom, as opposed to his physical freedom earlier. One Eye's physical body dies, and his spirit enters the waters of the lagoon where he built the "holy place" marker, to become one of the native inhabitants' gods.