Margrete: Queen of the North - Denmark's Historical Monarch is One Tough Mother
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
If you were never interested in medieval Danish history, it’s unlikely that director Charlotte Sieling’s historical drama, Margrete: Queen of the North, will change your mind.
Still, there are rewards to be found in this lavishly produced and well-acted costume drama, led by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm. Besides giving one of Europe’s first important woman leaders her due, this period drama by Sieling (who’s done TV episodes of Lovecraft County and Homeland) offers a dramatized feminist and maternal angle to private and international intrigues that took place centuries before Netflix’s The Crown.
Trine Dyrholm is Margrete: Queen of the North.
The film opens in 1402. The middle-aged Queen Margrete has ushered in new era of peace and unity by masterminding the strategic Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. She rules the joint kingdom as regent, through her great nephew and adopted son, King Erik (Morten Hee Andersen).
To solidify the union with a defensive alliance, Margrete has arranged a marriage between Erik and Philippa, the daughter of English King Henry IV, and has plans to build a new army to deter a potential military invasion from Germany.
The internal tensions in the union, and resentment at a woman leader, come to a head when an unkempt stranger (Jakob Oftebro) is suddenly presented to the court claiming to be the true heir.
The man says he is Oluf, Margrete’s son who reportedly died of the plague at the age of 17, some 15 years previous. Though the new Oluf can barely speak Danish and appears to be mentally ill, the Norwegian emissary has already recognized him as the rightful heir to the throne.
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There’s evidence that the stranger has been put up to the claim by insurrectionists, and the Queen has him tossed in jail and denounced as a fraud (historically, that seems to have been the case.)
The first hour, introducing the sagacious queen and her court, is plodding. Gut the dramatic stakes rise sharply when Margrete begins to doubt her first judgement.
Could this confused man really be the son for whom still grieves? As she opens an investigation, King Eric, afraid he’ll lose his job, sets himself in opposition to his mother.
Nobles, the church and politicians line up on each side as the union is at risk of being torn apart. Margrete struggles with her divided loyalties and obligations, as a mother and a queen.
Apart from impressive craft credits — the imposing production values, elaborate costumes and d.o.p Rasmus Videbæk’s foreboding candle-lit interiors — this is a film carried by the quietly skillful performance of Dyrholm, a much-awarded Danish star, known to the wider world through roles in Susanne Bier’s Oscar-winning In a Better World and films of Thomas Vinterberg (The Commune, The Celebration), Especially in the film’s second half, she sustains a tantalizing ambiguity, between the compassionate matriarch and Machiavellian politician, ready to use any means to achieve a desired end.
Margrete: Queen of the North. Directed by Charlotte Sieling. Screenplay by Charlotte Sieling, Jesper Fink and Maya Ilsøe. Stars Trine Dyrholm, Søren Malling, Jakob Oftebro, Morten Hee Andersen, Paul Blackthorne and Agnes Westerlund Rase. Margrete: Queen of the North is available on VOD/digital from Dec. 21.