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"Let me tell you of the days of high adventure." During the opening credits a sword is forged from cauldron into blade thrust at the heavens, thus "the discipline of steel" and the John Milius aesthetic. Silent Lang, Die Nibelungen in particular, informs the symphonic treatment—the leader of the Nordic marauders removes his helmet to reveal none other than James Earl Jones, the little orphan endures bondage on the Wheel of Pain until he's as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Sense of worth" in the gladiatorial pit, civilization "wicked and ancient" traversed in vengeful pursuit. A full priapic saga, you gotta climb the tower before you can carve the serpent. "Life and death... the same." Comic-strip panels turned into burnished frescoes, just the thing for visualizing Robert E. Howard's Cro-Magnon mayhem for the Reagan years. (Oliver Stone's screenplay takes note of the thin line between medieval and post-apocalyptic.) Sects fill the void of the desert, Thulsa Doom's followers are basically the wimpy hippies from Big Wednesday, even Mako's bumbling wizard scoffs at them. Crucifixion on the Tree of Woe before resurrection amid demons (cf. Kwaidan), paradise is a cannibalistic bacchanalia in a hollow mountain. Splendiferous eye and reptilian brain, thunderous pulp ennobled by Basil Poledouris' evocations of Prokofiev and Holst. Every performer is keyed to the timbre: Schwarzenegger flexes his sinewy drollness ("I'm afraid and I'm shy," he says to the cultist he's about to wallop), Sandahl Bergman was born to don Valkyrie gear, Max von Sydow makes King Osric a Lear of his own. "For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm." All the body-worship and blood rites in Milius' Fascinating Fascism build to the finale's slaying of Father and God, Triumph of the Will by way of Apocalypse Now. With Gerry Lopez, Cassandra Gava, Valérie Quennessen, Ben Davidson, Sven-Ole Thorsen, and William Smith.
--- Fernando F. Croce |