Conan the Barbarian

This is a Neanderthal film without conversation, a plot or any performance

The voice of Morgan Freeman, which opens this movie, is the high point of Conan the Barbarian. In his wonderful baritone, he tells us of the ‘Hyborean Age’, a time when barbarians ruled the world. He narrates it wistfully and nostalgically, like he once did describing a community of Emperor Penguins in March of the Penguins. You would think, for all the world, that he was talking about a unique lost civilisation.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The film is about a savage bunch called ‘The Barbarians’ whose primary activity is cutting off the heads of  gentlemen from neighbouring club wielding tribes. Corin (Ron Perlman) is the Chief Barbarian and he pretty much rules this age because he knows the art of sword making, apparently a subtle combination of fire and ice, a balance between heat and cold. Corin quotes this ‘fire and ice’ theory often as his general philosophy of leadership as well.

But a mastery of weapons of the iron age is not enough to protect him from a rampaging warlord called Khalar Zhym (Stephen Lang), who adds sorcery and witchcraft to his armoury. He murders Corin and pretty much wipes out the Barbarian village, leaving just one significant survivor, Corin’s son, Conan.

By the time Conan (Jason Momoa) grows up to be a young and muscled swordsman, we have moved from the iron to the information age, and through the Barbarian version of Google Earth, the torture of likely informants, Conan closes in on his father’s murderer. Later, through a hole in the face of a man whose nose he had earlier removed, and through heads lopped off on photo updates, he gets to Khalar Zhym.

Conan the Barbarian is an extraordinarily crude and violent movie, a stone-age product made with CGI sophistry, a Neanderthal  film without conversation, a plot or any performance.

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Ajit Duara