Conan the Barbarian (1981)

"Conan, what is best in life?"

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!"

I love this movie. I have seen it probably a dozen times. It's a classic. I can think of no better movie to really kick off this blog with.

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I watch my personal movie collection in alphabetical order. I have modified this OCD urge to only watch movies I'm in the mood for as they come up so I'm not watching the exact same things in the same order. Sometimes I just throw on an old favorite while I'm puttering about the house doing chores that are long overdue.

Today, I sat down and really watched Conan the Barbarian after having not seen it in quite a while. What struck me most this particular time was how silent it was. I can't say that I've ever noticed that particular aspect before, but today, I was made aware.

Everyone made a big deal about how there's no spoken dialogue for the first 15 minutes of WALL-E and I'm sure that says something about our society as a whole, that we found a quarter of an hour without talking something noteworthy, but I'd like to point out that there's only a voiceover for the majority of the first half of Conan. Not counting the screams of the dying. After Daddy Dearest's little lecture on the way of steel and being a man, no one speaks a word for almost twenty minutes. It's practically a pantomime show. It reminded me most of the old spaghetti westerns, all jangling score and wide-angle panoramic shots.

I could probably disparage the roles for women in this film: dead, dead, broodmare, slutty sorceress, slutty priestess, slutty brainwashed princess but I'm not gonna because they're not really characters. Even the mom at the beginning is only there to look wide-eyed and pretty while holding a sword in the snow. I love this film for many reasons. Gender equality is not one of them. Mad props to Sandahl Bergman, though, for giving little girls hope at being treated as an equal in the evil-ass-kicking department. She's really the only fully-formed character in the bit. No wonder Conan gifts her with a goose-egg sized ruby, how do you not fall in love just a little with such joie de vivre? "Do you want to live forever?" she cries cheerfully, before throwing herself off the top of a building to avoid pursuit. Oh, Sandahl, you plucky miscreant! You stole our protagonist's heart as well as all the loot lying readily to hand. Her death was such a major thing, it carried over as the plot for the sequel, Conan the Destroyer. Arnie would never have put up with that bratty princess if he didn't think he was going to get some spell to bring Valera back. The fact that it was so much snake oil is our loss as well as his.