Who Was The Real Barbarian In The Film: Barbarian has made its way to HBO Max and this Zach Creggor’s film about the human condition and internal malice is both thrilling and deep to understand. The film makes itself heard when the title “Barbarian” not only stands for the physical deformity of a person but for someone who is considered a “civilized human” on the outer side but what on the inside?

If you look to watch the film closely, you’ll find that answer. If we want to specifically find out who’s the “Barbarian” in the film, well here’s what we think

The Old Man (Frank)

[Most Obvious Choice]

Frank, as shown in the movie, lives at 476 Barbary in Detroit and as we see, is preparing for a home birth and is taking supplies for the same where he starts to follow a woman into her house disguising himself as DWP Worker going inside the house and unlocking the window. We see that Frank has a lot of videos that are labeled with the person who he killed or made babies with, and recorded in the basement room we saw.

He kept making babies with the women and then babies with the babies, repeating the process and then he got “the woman” we saw in the film. So, someone who is as evil as kidnapping women and raping them, making them into his pet just to multiply is a real barbarian for us.

The Tall Woman

Well, the Tall Woman who is the child of Frank, she does look like a Barbarian from the looks of it and that’s only it. She is the product of internal breeding who has been confined to that basement tunnel all her life, 40 years to be precise, and has been only watching the video on breastfeeding so it has gone into her subconscious that she thinks of whoever she meets as her baby and tries to feed them her breastmilk.

In the end, we see her jumping from the tube well to save Tess after AJ pushes her and she does save Tess whom the woman considers her baby in the end after she embraces her with a kiss when she knows that Tess has a gun on her face but she lets her do it anyway.

AJ Gilbride

Played by Justin Long, AJ is a man who doesn’t know if he’s a good or bad person but wants to be good then his actions don’t say it so and the explanations that follow are ridiculous at best and feel like he’s trying to make it seem like its nothing major and the other person understands.

AJ is under fire and in an investigation for raping a colleague who he feels he didn’t do but when he’s explaining it to his friend, it does seem like he did. He says “She took some convincing. She was like “No!” at first but then she was into it”. AJ has been fired from his job and doesn’t have enough money to get through for more than 4 months he seems like he’s trying to do better and apologize but then his actions speak otherwise.

Him running to the top of the tube well faster than Tess, who is slow because AJ shot her, accidentally but he isn’t even trying to help her instead he asks her to go faster and then he pushes her off the roof without any notice and when he does find her alive on the ground in the arms of “The Woman”, he tries to give an explanation that he did it on a whim and says that “You understand!”. It feels like the man is trying to reason for his misdeeds that he clearly did out of his character.

Well, this is our take on who’s the real Barbarian. But please feel free to let us know who you feel is the real one.


 

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"I'm just a humble cinephile with a knack for stringing words together. My reviews may not be as fancy as "The Grand Budapest Hotel" but they'll give you a good idea of whether a movie is worth the ticket price. I may not be a "Casablanca" of criticism, but I'll always give you my honest opinion. So join me on this journey of cinematic discovery, it's sure to be "One for the Ages."

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