Remembrance, Reflection, and Red Sonja

Yesterday I celebrated my 30th birthday, and the unavoidable cliche of using such a milestone to reflect on the past and present is something I imagine I share with most people. There was a time in my life where I couldn't even imagine living to twenty, much less thirty -- through a series of accidents, intentions, luck and hard work, I've made it here today, and I'm still planning on sticking around, that is what I am certain of.

I saved M.J. Bassett's new adaptation of Red Sonja for myself as a birthday treat -- I had been monitoring the film's stop-start development for several years, and despite the length it took to get here, I felt that the film really earned its place in the small-but-sturdy canon of fantasy films -- Bassett has a natural enthusiasm and passion for this space, as evidenced with her 2009 Solomon Kane adaptation. She gets the spirit of sword & sorcery, but is willing to make her own changes to the characters to give them a cinematic gloss over their rough and sometimes contradictory literary origins -- Sonja herself has always been a shifting amalgam, moving across timelines and creators and companies, and this new film adds to that legacy. Bassett removes the skeezy 1970s origin of the character from the Roy Thomas era, which conceived of her as an ancient rape-revenge heroine -- I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring such issues, but I also think a lot of sword & sorcery fans have become tired of having the female characters of these stories being defined by sexual violence instead of their own power. Bassett instead gives Sonja an updated role as a wandering guardian of the natural world, connected to the divine in a way that Conan never was, struggling with her past trauma but fighting for a wider collation of the oppressed tribes and animals against the imperial-industrial archons.

I didn't intend this, but there is a sort of 'closed circle' here -- my love of film was partially inspired by watching Conan the Barbarian with my father when I was very young, a movie which I still hold as one of my absolute favorites to this very day, and now I've manged to live to see Conan's female counterpart get her own epic story in proper fashion. There is a part of me that finds something to critique here -- 30 years, and my taste has barely changed in some ways, I still love sword & sorcery stories, adventures and magick and monsters, there is a corner of the world that asks us to feel ashamed of and discard such things even when we are kids. But my appreciation of them and understanding has not remained static -- if anything, the opposite. My father grounded me in the fantastic worlds of Jules de Grandin, Conan and King Kull, but on my own I then went into the library and read H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe and Alexandre Dumas, authors that expanded my consciousness across time and space and gave me a foothold in the wider universe of literature, through the pulp stories of the 20th century I was able to comprehend their literary context as an evolution of Romantic and Decandent literature, how there really wasn't any such thing as 'highbrow' or 'lowbrow', that these definitions hindered a true engagement with the artform. Those same lessons have always been linked in my mind with the cinema and with philosophic concerns: you cannot begin from a zero-point of absolute knowledge, you have to begin where you can and then broaden your horizon bit-by-bit until you can recognize the depths of beauty that you could only vaguely intimate as a child. So I scoff at myself for my skepticism -- if I still enjoy 'immature' art, it is not at the expense of 'mature' art, both of them are connected in my world, the reason I am able to love an Antonioni or Chantal Akerman film is because I started with stories that made me ask questions and seek out new truths -- 1982's Conan the Barbarian and 2025's Red Sonja are powerful in this way for the same reason, they are linked to the vital bloodstream of cinema that stretches all the way back to westerns, wuxia, jidai-geki, the fantasies of Lang and Méliès.

So where do I now stand in regards to the cinema? Well, I still have a long way to go -- I've been actively watching every film I can for nine years now, yet I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface; so many classics unseen from so many different cultures and contexts. What I think HAS happened is that I have been moving away from a sensibility rooted in whatever the trends of the moment are, and have instead replaced that with more research into the darkened corners of moviemaking, whether that's the neglected classicists of Japan or the oddball termite artists of the 21st century. I feel that I have moved past the anxiety of not knowing what 'the canon' is -- because there really isn't one. There are topics, there are artists, but 'the canon' is a loose and arbitrary definition that is rooted in the consensus of a certain generation -- to look at the Sight & Sound poll is to see how certain movies which were touchstones for earlier generations of cinephiles have now ceded ground to acclaimed works from the 1970s and even right up to the present releases. That 'canon' is a moving target, and says more about the tastemakers and education system we've constructed around the cinema than it does about cinema itself -- an artist is no less worthwhile just because they don't make it on to every list, and in fact, I would say they are more valuable for that omission, because it means that we have a responsibility to care that much more about their work if we want to safeguard it for future generations.

This topic of preservation is something that is always on my mind -- yes, there are no shortage of good causes to advocate for, but this one is a task that I think we are up to. Before there are roadshow screenings, before boutique Blu-Ray companies can put out releases, before someone can write a book about a director's filmography, there needs to be two crucial factors which allow us access to this artform: public availability, and criticism. The first part is something that I think we're doing a good job of, and will only get better at as time passes: next year, all movies from 1930 will become part of the public domain here in America, the first major year of talkie film dominance. if I am 30 now, let's assume (God willing) that I have at least 30 more years left in me -- that means that I will live to see every film made up until 1960 enter the public domain, free for everyone to see, a people's history of the artform available for whoever wants it. That's a great fact, because it means we are finally destroying the patina of private property that the studios have held over their work for so many decades -- now the majority of film's golden age belongs to us to do with it what we will.

Which is why the second part is especially important: we need to continue to do the work of creating and sustaining a connection to the entire body of the cinema, especially the older or enigmatic corners. That means actively engaging with whatever we find that speaks to us, whether it's Tubi auteurs or studio journeymen or simply building a how-to guide for where to begin for those on the outside, not just praising the same few directors of the past 50 years but putting the whole shebang into a seamless unity that emphasizes the continuity of this artform with as little gaps as possible.

We need annotated filmographies, interviews, bibliographies, analysis of formal choices and themes, all the usual stuff -- this isn't anything new. But I no longer take it for granted that there is this surplus of information and interest that I can personally extract assistance from -- after Peter Bogdanovich died, only then did I come to see how perhaps his greatest achievement, even as he made many masterpieces, was that he made himself into a bridge that kept us in dialogue with Orson Welles, with John Ford and Howard Hawks and all those directors who he painstakingly took the time to interview and share with us -- even Joseph H. Lewis! He devoted as much time to championing what he cared about as he did because he understood that those who came after him deserved access to this knowledge he had a unique access to -- good or bad, here was the past in an open book. That doesn't happen on its own, and sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

So whatever I'm doing with my writing, I want it to serve this end, so that someone can read my work and use it as a road they can then walk to their own destination. If they don't agree with me on a movie like 2025's Red Sonja, great! I might not even agree with myself in a few years. But what matters is that they can then go and do what they want, now being able to bounce off of what has been done before, in the same way that my father showed me the stories he loved as a child and silently said "make of this what you will". He gifted me a chance to elevate my conception of what life and art was by freely sharing what inspired him, and I think that is the most important job that you can do with your love of art, to carry forth the duty we have to preserve of it what we can so that the sense of purpose and beauty can continue to resonate with those to live hundreds or even thousands of years from now -- this is our connection to not only the past, but to the future.

I'm far from the first person to emphasize this kind of stuff, and I'm nowhere near the smartest or most qualified to write and speak on the things that I care about, it is not about individualism or iconoclasm or being famous, it is about surrendering yourself over to the work and using your perception as a lens to say what only you can say -- that is all that any of us can do. I am long past the period of seeing movies as 'mere entertainment' -- there is nothing 'mere' about being entertaining, and nothing unserious about fun or pleasure, all of that is where you find it, and the more you get into this, the more you can experience it everywhere: to me, a Lav Diaz movie is a riot, a playground of political commentary and surprising humor that belongs to his amazing style.

Not everything is going to be for everyone, but I think the people who truly care about cinema are taking an active hand in preserving it in whatever fashion is available to them -- some have podcasts where they have an open conversation, some compile academic books, and right now, I do the work of writing film reviews. When I say it is work, that is not a burden or a denigration, it is a privilege and a joy -- I have my regular job working nights at a grocery store, that job which pays for my apartment's rent, but this is my real work, this is the work I would gladly do for the rest of my years.

Thank you all for sticking around with me as I fumble in the dark, figuring out the ancient foot-trails beneath the jungle canopy of cinema -- as long as I can, I will keep searching, keep illuminating what I see, and if any part of it provides someone with help on their voyage, that will justify thirty years of life. Red Sonja's adventure is the model for my own: stay the course, be forthright and honest, take it on the chin, and live to fight another day.