MOVIE DIARY 2023: HE'S ALWAYS IN HIS CAR.
Welcome back to MOVIE DIARY 2023! I’ve been excited for this one because my special guest this time is George Matthews, a filmmaker and the musician behind one of my favorite black metal releases from last year, Calvaria. George is writing about one of my favorite movies, so I was very happy that he wanted to go long on it. It’s a really great MOVIE DIARY debut, you’re gonna be into it!
Conan The Barbarian (1982) - dir. John Milius
SPECIAL GUEST WRITER: GEORGE MATTHEWS
I first saw Conan The Barbarian (1982, Dir. John Milius) when I was 9 or 10 years old, at the behest of my mother. She rented it for me from Blockbuster, having seen it once on a hotel TV after a grateful dead concert, and remembered it as “mostly appropriate” and aligned with my aesthetic interests at the time. Reeling from the recent end of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, I was eager for anything that stunk of broadswords and prophecy. My mother, sensing an opportunity to save herself the hour-plus of agonizing decision paralysis that came with bringing me to rent a film, picked it up on her way home from work on a Friday. I had no preconceived notion of the character Conan from comic books or cultural osmosis. The only Conan I knew was a late night host. This was immediately before blockbuster started to include the box art with rentals (behind that signature frosted plastic panelling) so I wasn’t even afforded a glimpse at Renato Casaro’s iconic poster art. It was a perfect storm; I was at an impressionable age and allowed to go into the film totally blind. It remains one of the defining experiences of my life. These experiences come only so often, less so the older you get and the more films you’ve seen. Sometimes it’s a piece of cinema with such a grasp on the narrative and aesthetic possibilities of the medium that it reframes the way you think about motion pictures. Sometimes it’s a comfort classic, rock solid and reliable, sticking with you through different stages of life like an old friend, and sometimes it’s a bad flick that just happened to hit you at the right time. I make these distinctions because I want you to be aware of the fact that I know of other ways to deeply connect with a film besides calling it “one of the great works of the medium” and I am choosing to say that about Conan anyways.
If you think Conan The Barbarian is a “cheesy, fun movie” and not one of the great works of cinema it is either because you have not seen it in a very long time, or because you are a feeble coward, terrified of engaging in good faith with the film’s overwhelming sincerity and grandeur. It is profoundly weird, melancholic. The passage of time has unfairly lumped Conan in with the throngs of inferior imitators that dominated the non-horror B and DTV cinema space of the 1980s. Cheesy fun? You must be thinking of the exploitative grit of Deathstalker, or the ribald, punny fun of Deathstalker II, or Lucio Fulci’s foggy stoner-doom classic Conquest or the glittery ‘airbrush van mural’ vibes of Albert Pyun’s The Sword and The Sorcerer. These are silly films, full of low budget, adolescent charm that cements them as products of the 1980s. Conan The Barbarian has none of these trappings. It is profoundly weird, melancholic; paced and structured in a way that feels closer to the epic poetry of the bronze and iron ages than the mathematically perfect screenwriting of other genre-adventure classics of the era.
We open on a black screen. Before a single frame of action, we are treated to a furious two punch combo of an attributed Nietzsche quote, an opening monologue that starts with “Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of…”, delivered in Mako’s signature guttural vocal timbre. Wind howls. The stage is set.
The peal of a hammer striking an anvil. As the opening credits roll, a young Conan, clad in roughly stitched furs, assists his father in forging a sword. Red hot steel glows in the dark. A skull is lovingly chiseled into the hilt. Leather cord is painstakingly wrapped around the handle. It would be easy to call this a work of art, but it is more. The forging of a sword is a religious act. When the sword is finished, Conan’s father immediately takes him to the top of a holy mountain and imparts to Conan a significant religious lesson, that of the god Crom’s ‘Riddle Of Steel’, stolen by the Giant Kings of yore. What is the riddle? Conan must discover this for himself. “We who found [the riddle of steel],” his father says, “are just men. Not gods, not giants; just men…”
Immediately after this lesson, Thulsa Doom’s (James Earle Jones) vicious snake cult slaughters Conan’s family and enslaves his village. Conan is forced to watch in impotent horror as his mother, gripping the sword Conan made with his father, is beheaded by one of the cult’s top lieutenants after she falls prey to the bewitching mind control of Doom’s gaze. Conan is sold into slavery, where he is made to push a large wheel in the barren Hyborean steppe until he is made strong enough to be sold again, becoming a gladiator who shows great enough prowess in the fighting pits that he is brought to lands far and wide to train in the arts of combat and strategy. Eventually, Conan is freed by his master, who has either grown to love Conan like a son or else fear the greatness of his power. The intrepid barbarian sets out with nought but the world in front of him and the clothes on his back. He meets friends, enemies, lovers. He tries drugs for the first time, punches a camel, steals, drinks, sees the world… But all the while, he is haunted by his thirst for vengeance and purpose granted to him by his father atop the mountain all those years ago; to find the riddle of steel.
The film may appear to be a standard revenge tale on first watch but subsequent viewings reveal the rich spiritual depth that makes up the film’s core. Conan’s task is extraordinarily complex. At one point, when discussing religion with his friend Subotai, thief and archer (professional surfer Gerry Lopez), Conan says “If I die, I have to go before [Crom], and he will ask me, 'What is the riddle of steel?' If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me!” He must first discover the question, the riddle itself, before he can answer it in a satisfactory manner. Although couched in pseudo-nordic window dressing, the mechanics of this spiritual journey more closely resemble the buddhist test of the Koan. Will revenge satisfy Conan? Give purpose and closure to his life? Perhaps, but only if it will teach him the riddle of steel.
In his seminal 1956 work The Forge And The Crucible, Mircea Eliade puts forth the largely forgotten idea of metallurgy as an act of extreme magickal import. Modern man, with his easy access to earth-scarring machinery and stainless steel kitchen utensils, has become wholly disconnected from the profundity of taking the deep tissue of the earth and molding that flesh into something that can be used to conquer the earth’s surface. In a time of intrinsic, animistic spirituality, the successful forging of a blade and it’s subsequent use in warfare would’ve been loaded with as much religious significance as birth, death or music. The ore needed to craft weapons of war would’ve been found in the same inhospitable caves where early man would toil for hundreds of hours in near-darkness to paint visions of bison hunts and sorcerers.
Entire books could (and should be) written on the symbols in Conan The Barbarian. Unpacking everything in the film goes beyond the scope of this movie diary, but I want to quickly draw attention to some other stuff that I think is really heavy: there is an extended sequence of Conan seeking refuge from wild dogs in the cave of an ancient king. He picks up a scaly, rusted sword from the dead king’s skeletal hand. “Crom,” exclaims our hero. In the next scene, the rusted, sword has been made new by some off-screen magical happening. In a different scene Conan is captured, tortured, crucified to death, and returns from the dead. Thulsa Doom transforms into a lizard person, drawing on the same primal Jungian archetypes that would go on to inspire the conspiriological cosmologies of David Icke and obscure Q-Anon offshoots. The film so often seems to conjure forth a version of the past as alien and magical to us as an iPhone might seem to a Sumerian laborer.
The film is laden with spirituality and philosophy, rich with hidden meaning and ripe for interpretation? Cool. That’s well and good, you say, but there are plenty of bad films that are enriched by (intentional or otherwise) subtextual elements. A few were mentioned in the sword and sorcery roundup in the introduction to this movie diary. What sets Conan apart is its full-throated commitment to these themes, and the way such commitment is bolstered in every element of the filmmaking. John Milius’ militant direction, Duke Callaghan’s beautiful widescreen cinematography and Chris August’s inspired, meticulously detailed production design all compliment a tremendous array of performances. In the years since Conan, films like Predator, True Lies and Commando have tricked the general population into thinking that The Terminator from The Terminator is Arnold’s only ‘serious’ role. It’s easy to forget that Conan was Arnold’s star-making performance, and it works because, like the Terminator, it’s tailor-made to his dramatic strengths. I would never call Arnold a great actor (though he is undeniably a capital M, capital S ‘Movie Star’), but Conan The Barbarian is able to position him in such a way that the character comes to life, fully realized in Arnold’s hands.
James Earle Jones doesn’t slouch either; He and Max Von Sydow are the heavyweight talent, counterbalances to the relative unknown leads of Arnold, Lopez and Bergman, and both of them play expertly on the razor sharp edge that separates serious theatrics from scenery-chewing. Jones’ otherworldly Thulsa Doom is one of the great villains of fantastical cinema, full of little character moments that bring him into the third dimension. I am obsessed with his wry tenderness he uses when addressing the captive, tortured Conan. “The Riddle of Steel!” Conan wails.
“Yesssss! You know it, don’t you boy,” responds Doom, with the smiling affect of a proud father.
Sandahl Bergman transforms what could be a thankless role of Valeria into something equally well rounded. Her impassioned monologue to Conan to take the money and run at the halfway point of the film is so full of genuine love and desperation, it takes my breath away every time, and brings tears to my eyes if I’m on an edible or am a little bit sleepy or seeing it on the big screen.
I haven’t even touched on the fact that Basil Poledouris’ score for the film is one of the best of all time, or how fucking GOOD the special effects are (you’ll believe a snake can be giant and bleed), so I will attempt to wrap this up by simply asking you, dear reader, to give Conan The Barbarian a watch; and try as hard as you can to take it seriously. Fantasy, like Horror, is a genre that requires a contract between the film and it’s viewer. In order for a horror film to be scary, the viewer must first be willing to be scared. They must watch it at night, with the lights off, far away from the safety of phone screens and snide remarks. That is your end of the contract. Similarly, a fantasy film, especially one dealing with such lofty themes as Jungian Archetypes and Animism in the Ancient World, shouldn’t be seen with a rowdy group who have no desire to engage with it in good faith. Try to get in a headspace where you can take the film up on all it has to offer.
So I implore you, as Sleep bassist Matt Pike implored record executives when he was shopping the band’s seminal Holy Mountain to labels: “If you smoke pot, do so before pressing play.”
George Matthews (he/him) is a designer, filmmaker and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. His short film Low Tide: A Newly Restored Work by Thomas Wright will be available online later this year. You can find his music at https://calvaria.bandcamp.com or get in touch at georgematthewsfilm@gmail.com
Dream Lover (1993) - dir. Nicholas Kazan
Let’s start with a confession: I don’t “get” James Spader. I know a lot of people are attracted to him, but I think his whole thing just isn’t for me, and I’m sorry. I really am. I really feel like I’m missing out on some big shared experience like all those people who never went to their senior prom. I do think he always delivers a really fun and interesting performance to his roles, but I guess I just don’t get that kind of attraction to him, and maybe it’s not for me to get. I have made peace with this and I hope you can forgive me.
Anyway, Dream Lover, huh? The build up in this movie is kind of fun and suspenseful, but the second it all starts coming together, it really kind of blows it. James Spader plays Ray, a recently divorced architect. After a convoluted meet-cute, he starts seeing the mysterious Lena (Mädchen Amick). They fall in love, they get married, but Ray starts to discover that something is off about his new wife. Things she’s told him about her past don’t really add up, and as Ray investigates, he learns that she’s not from where she says she’s from, she never went to the college she claims she went to, and Lena isn’t even her real name! When he confronts her, she owns up to it, telling him that she hated her small town upbringing so much that the first chance she got she moved to the city and got a new name so that she could reinvent herself. Fine, sure, ok. Then things start to take a turn. Lena’s taking suspicious phone calls, she’s never around on Wednesdays, etc etc, you get it, the whole thing still stinks. We come to find that Lena has been gaslighting Ray for years, carrying on with an affair, hoping to drive him to a violent outburst. He finally cracks and slaps Lena then storms out of their penthouse apartment. When he returns, he finds that Lena has covered herself in bruises and trashed their living room, staging it to look like his outburst was way more violent. Lena’s also called the cops and a psychologist to come pick up Ray and have him institutionalized because of what she’s set up to look like psychotic behavior. Lena’s able to pin all this on Ray because he has a history of being violent with his ex-wife. When Ray is put on trial to determine whether he will remain institutionalized, he doesn’t stand a chance. He has a violent history, and whenever he tries to explain what Lena has actually done, he looks insane. And with Ray put away, Lena’s got total control of all of their money. We should have seen this coming, it’s a classic thing that women do in these things!
At this point, the movie is still playing out like a passable erotic thriller, which I like, but the end game of it is where I kind of lost patience with all of this. After Ray’s lost his trial and been committed, he hatches a plan to get his revenge on Lena. His big plan? Get her to visit him at the institution, ditch the security guards and get Lena alone by having one of his new, mentally unstable friends create a big distraction, then……… strangle Lena to death. And he’ll get away with it because thanks to Lena, he’s been diagnosed as clinically insane, which means the court won’t hold him responsible for his actions. It’s fucked up (and honestly it’s pretty small time thinking! Ray just doesn’t have the capacity for creative malice that Lena does, I guess). Our guy has a history of violence against women and his big plan is to do some violence to his wife, and we’re supposed to root for that? Lena is simply gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girlbossing and honestly I think being strangled to death is a pretty disproportionate response to that. It’s difficult to think that Ray is in the right about any of this, though I think the movie wants you to be on his side and think that Lena’s getting no less than what she deserves. It’s an even tougher sell I think because James Spader’s performance never to me felt like he was sympathetic. He’s a rich asshole architect who hits women, and James Spader plays it like Ray is just constantly annoyed, talking to everyone with a tone of slight but still very noticeable contempt (that usually works in other Spader movies, but it didn’t really do it for me here).
The movie also has these weird sections where we’re seeing Ray’s dreams set in a circus and it’s all a tiresome metaphor for his self doubt and his anxieties over his relationships and blah blah blah. It’s just so weird and out of place. Completely unnecessary and too self indulgent, but not in a fun, celebration of excess way. Mädchen Amick is doing a nice job through all of this, and she’s really great at keeping us guessing about what her deal even is. You know that something fucked up is going on because you know this is an erotic thriller (and something is always fucked up about the leading woman in an erotic thriller), and it’s really fun watching her move from mysterious crush to sketchy wife with secrets to cunning mastermind. She nails all those different tones and different beats. Personally, if I stumbled on some inconsistencies in my wife Mädchen Amick’s personal history, I’d simply put it out of mind (I probably misheard her, or maybe I’m remembering it wrong anyway, you know?) and instead direct my energy and focus on not fumbling the bag so hard that I get institutionalized. But that’s just me, I’m built different.
Taxi Driver (1976) - dir. Martin Scorsese
You guys ever see this movie? It’s pretty good. Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, an insomniac taxi driver and former Marine who’s decided it’s gonna be up to him to be a hero and clean up New York. You know the story, everyone knows the story, everyone has seen one million parodies, homages, and pale imitations of the story. It was my first time watching this, and it felt like finding the ur-text of the modern delusional incel vigilante archetype. I thought it was really great, really gripping stuff. It’s kind of fun but it’s mostly harrowing to get pulled into Travis’ worldview. We spend so much time with him and his journal (classic Paul Schrader device), and we get to know Travis pretty intimately. We see how he sees himself, and we also see how others see him. The disconnect between the two is concerning, and later, very unsettling. I don’t want to frame my post on this movie as a “Now more than ever…” kind of thing, but, you know, people are still out there feeling lonely and alienated and disconnected from a sense of self, a sense of purpose, a supportive community, so yeah, Taxi Driver is still relevant. You get it, you watch the news.
From the onset of this movie, there’s tension. At first it’s small, easy to wave away. Then as the movie continues, the tension and the pressure keep building. We hear about it in Travis’ journal, we see it in Travis’ tired eyes that are unable to rest, we sense it in Travis’ body language as he picks up his fares. Each fare he picks up gives us a little window to see how anyone will just say whatever they want, no matter how fucked up it is, when they’re with a cabbie. Travis is invisible to these people, and the constant exposure to every New Yorker’s depravities is wearing on him, stirring something violent in him. We see Travis pushed to his breaking point then we watch him transform into something else entirely and we can’t look away.
One thing that really surprised me in this movie, that I don’t think I’ve heard a lot of people bring up when they talk about Taxi Driver, is a quiet scene between Travis and “Wizard,” (Peter Boyle) an older cabbie that he sees on his breaks at a diner. During this one scene, Travis pulls Wizard aside to talk to him. Travis tells him that he’s been going through a tough time and he’s been having dark thoughts and he tells Wizard that he’s coming to him with this because he’s older, more experienced with this job, and maybe he has some advice for him. Wizard recognizes these feelings, but it’s clear he’s not equipped to deal with what Travis is talking about. He gives Travis some generic “We’re all fucked, don’t worry so much!” advice and sends him on his way.
I found this scene kind of heartbreaking because for this one moment we see Travis have enough self awareness to know that he’s in trouble, and he seeks help. Not only is Wizard not very helpful, but he starts his rambling advice with a bit about how a man takes a job and that job becomes what he is, which I imagine is kind of crushing for Travis to hear since we know that Travis, in his heart, wants so badly to do great things and to be respected. It’s sad to see that the only person that Travis can open up to about his feelings of creeping dread and darkness is Wizard, a guy he only kind of knows from work.
I feel like I’ve seen so many iterations of beats from Taxi Driver, and I was worried that watching this movie now, I would feel like the impact of this movie was somehow diluted. I’m very relieved that that wasn’t the case after seeing this for the first time. Every scene felt impactful, and even the often repeated/parodied scenes (ie “You talkin’ to me? etc.”) were compelling, especially now that I was able to watch them within the context of the actual full movie. There are so many great shots in here, and it all serves to build the tension throughout the movie. I loved that scene where Travis is watching TV and he’s leaning back in his chair pointing his gun at the TV as he rocks it back and forth with his foot. I felt like I was maybe clenching my fists during that whole bit. That famous shot near the end where Travis is holding his bloody fingers to his head like a gun as the score swells is an image I remember from things like dorm room posters or aesthetic tumblrs, but seeing it in the movie, I think it’s maybe one of the coolest and most terrifying shots that I’ve ever seen (way more meaningful than seeing the still image on your most worrying acquaintance’s Facebook profile pic). Then Scorsese follows it up with that overhead tracking shot of the shot up apartment and the dead bodies and the cops frozen in place in the entryway, it’s just incredible. What a movie! I can’t believe you haven’t seen this!
Jeez, I didn’t even get around to talking about the end of Taxi Driver! What’s your take on it? Pop into the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord and let me and the rest of your peers in the MOVIE DIARY 2023 community know about it!
I’m also still very much open to any and all sponsorships from any major brands interested in giving me money or products, so please pass that around. I’m easy to get in touch with. Actually, someone out there might know how to do this, how do I convince studios to send me screeners? I promise this is a legitimate publication that holds a lot of influence over the movie-going public. I’m sure my website stats will back me up on this once I am able to figure out how to check in on those. I SWEAR IT.