Crew
Directors/Screenplay – Cyrill Boss & Philipp Stennert, Co-Writer – Doron Wisotzky, Based on the Novel Hagen von Tronje by Wolfgang Holbein, Producers – Jan Ehlert, Christoph Müller & Christian Rohde, Photography – Philip Peschlow, Music – Adam Lukas & Jacob Shea, Visual Effects Supervisor – Jan Stoltz, Visual Effects – Big Hug FX (Supervisor – Walid Mouawad), Celluloid Visual Effects (Supervisor – Michael Landgrebe), Pharos (Supervisor – David Laubsch) & Rise Visual Effects (Supervisor – Sebastian Lauer), Special Effects Supervisor – Martin Pryca, Production Design – Matthias Müsse. Production Company – Constantin Film/Wilma Film/RTL+.
Cast
Gijs Naber (Hagen von Tronje), Jannis Niewöhner (Siegfried von Xanten), Lilja van der Zwaag (Kriemhild), Dominic Marcus Singer (King Gunter), Rosalinde Mynster (Brunhild), Johanna Kolberg (Alberich), Bela Gabor Lenz (Gernot), Jörg Hartmann (King Dankrat), Alessandro Schuster (Giselher), Vladimir Korneev (Etzel)
Plot
The kingdom of Burgundy in the Middle Ages. Gunter becomes the king after the death of his father. They face enemies and uneasy relationships with neighbouring kingdoms. In the capital Worms, they receive a visit from Siegfried, the king of Xanten, who offers an alliance. Gunter welcomes Siegfried but his marshal Hagen is suspicious of Siegfried’s flouting of proper military conduct and defiance of Gunter’s authority. Hagen also discovers that Siegfried has Alberich, a sorcerous Nibelungen dwarf, among his party. The neighbouring kingdom of Lombard declares war. Siegfried goes out and singlehandedly returns with the head of Lombard’s king. This has him venerated in the streets of Worms and Hagen sees that Siegfried’s popularity overshadows even that of Gunter. Hagen learns that because Siegfried slaughtered and bathed in the blood of a dragon that this makes him invulnerable to damage. Siegfried then begins an alliance with Gunter’s sister Kriemhild and asks for her hand. Gunter agrees along as Siegfried accompanies him to Isengard in the north to seek the hand of the queen Brunhild. After the marriage, Hagen sees that Siegfried’s ignoring of Kriemhild to dally with Brunhild poses a threat to the kingdom.
Siegfried is a hero from Germanic folklore (called Sigurd by the Norse). Siegfried appears in the Niebelungenleid, which was written in Germany circa 1200. It tells the epic story of Siegfried who comes to Worms in Burgundy (an historical kingdom in northeastern Germany) and seeks the hand of the king’s sister Kriemhild. Siegfried has fought and killed a dragon, bathing in its blood, which has made him immortal. Assorted in-politickings around the kingdom occur before with bitter rivalry by Kriemhild over Siegfried’s dalliance with the king’s wife Brunnhild. Hagen discovers Siegfried’s vulnerability – a spot on his back where a linden leaf fell and prevented that area being covered by the dragon’s blood – and uses this knowledge to kill him. The second part of the poem, not covered in this film, is taken up by Kriemhild’s desire for vengeance against Hagen for killing Siegfried.
The story of Siegfried and the Niebelungs has been filmed several times. The most famous and best of these was Fritz Lang’s epic two-parter Siegfried (1924) and Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924). Other versions include the Italian-made Siegfried (1957), the German-made Siegfried (1966), the German-made softcore film The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried (1971) with Sybil Danning as Kriemhild, the German-made English-language tv mini-series Ring of the Nibelungs (2004) with Benno Fürmann as Siegfried and Kristanna Loken as Brunhild, and the German comedy Siegfried (2005). There have been a considerable number of adaptations of the Richard Wagner multi-part opera The Ring Cycle (1869-76). There was even a Bugs Bunny cartoon What’s Opera, Doc? (1957), which recasts the Wagner opera with Elmer Fudd as Siegfried and Bugs Bunny as Brunhild.
Hagen comes from the directing/writing partnership of Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert who previously made The Vexxer (2007), Jerry Cotton (2010) and The House of the Crocodile (2012), as well as created the tv series Pagan Peak (2018-23), a detective story with Folk Horror elements. They adapt a Young Adult novel Hagen von Tronje (1986) by German sf/fantasy writer Wolfgang Holbein, although this does not appear to have been translated into English.
Hagen plays out more as an Historical Fantasy than it does a work of folklore or the Epic Fantasy other film versions of Siegfried have told it. If there is a near comparison you can make it is to the gritty realism of tv’s Game of Thrones (2011-9) and its grounding of the fantasy in dirt, mud, low lighting levels and the in-politicking and backstabbing around a kingdom. You could also point to the gritty realism of other recent historical films such as Kingdom of Heaven (2005), 300 (2007) and The Northman (2022).
Burgundy, Worms, Lombard, Isengard and Xanten are all existing places and historically there was a ruler named Siegbert I who ruled Burgundy between 561-575 and was married to Brunhilda of Austrasia. So such an historically grounded approach makes an undeniable sense. This is also a version that downplays the fantasy elements traditionally associated with the story – we do get one of the Nibelungen dwarfs, but the dragon is only seen in flashbacks and there is nothing of Siegfried’s traditional cloak of invisibility. (There is also the habit of the referring to the Nibelungen and dragon as Old Ones and even Great Old Ones by the subtitling, which kept jarring me out of the story and making me think we were watching an H.P. Lovecraft work).
As a work that is more historical than mythic, Hagen is undeniably fascinating. All the undercurrents and character conflicts come to the fore. Certainly, this film treats the characters far more differently than most other versions. Siegfred is less hero than someone morally ambiguous whose charisma and defiance of the king eventually proves a dangerous threat. Hagen is usually played as a villain but here becomes the sympathetic point-of-view character. Dropped is the entire later parts of the story where Kriemhild goes to war to exact revenge against him – the only hint of revenge we get is her taunting announcement in the final scene that she is pregnant.
Trailer here (no English subs)