Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Today we are rerunning an episode that originally published three
Speaker 1: twenty two, twenty twenty four. It is Dead Mountaineers Hotel.
Speaker 1: This is a weird one. This is very thought provoking.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking this movie out.
Speaker 1: Either way, we hope you enjoy our episode on Dead
Speaker 1: Mountaineer's Hotel.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: So it's time to check another country off of the
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema list. You know, we can imagine our
Speaker 1: global map and we're putting pens in the different countries
Speaker 1: that we've visited via the cinematic output of set Nation.
Speaker 1: This time we're going to Estonia and sorry, rants, we'll
Speaker 1: get to you with it.
Speaker 3: That's right. Today we're going to be talking about the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine Estonian Soviet sci fi detective film Dead
Speaker 3: Mountaineers Hotel, directed by Grigory Kromanov, based on a story
Speaker 3: by the brothers Boris and Arcati. Strugatsky, who also wrote
Speaker 3: the source material for another one of my favorite weird
Speaker 3: Soviet films, which is Tarkovsky's Stalker. In fact, that movie
Speaker 3: was released the same year as this movie. Both came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen seventy nine, so a big year for
Speaker 3: the brothers Strugatsky. I had never seen Dead Mountaineer's Hotel
Speaker 3: before this past week. I was attracted to it after
Speaker 3: I saw some very intriguing stills online featuring weird sets
Speaker 3: full of mirrors and some very striking shot composition with
Speaker 3: interesting use of color. And then I read reviews characterizing
Speaker 3: this movie as a bizarre but generally quite well liked
Speaker 3: Eastern European film noir with subversive science fiction themes and
Speaker 3: several heaping spoonfuls of what is going on? So this
Speaker 3: is the sort of pull toward the film was was
Speaker 3: amplified when I went to Videodrome and I saw the
Speaker 3: employees there had posted a recommendation on this film, so
Speaker 3: I decided that I had to get it check it out.
Speaker 3: So it was Estonian sci fi detective week for me.
Speaker 3: And you know, despite all of that, Prepper I was
Speaker 3: still incredibly surprised by this film I'll do a short
Speaker 3: synopsis of the setup, the sort of first third of
Speaker 3: the movie. It is about a police inspector named Glebski
Speaker 3: working in some country in capitalist western Europe. Did they
Speaker 3: ever specify what country it is? I think it's unnamed.
Speaker 1: I think it is unnamed. It's just miscellaneous European country,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes my favorite country to go to in cinema.
Speaker 3: Right. So, he's a policeman working somewhere further western Europe,
Speaker 3: in some alpine region, and he is called to a
Speaker 3: remote ski lodge up in the mountains known as the
Speaker 3: Dead Mountaineers Hotel. But once he arrives, it seems he
Speaker 3: was summoned on a false alarm. The other guests at
Speaker 3: the hotel behave very strangely and something is not what
Speaker 3: it seems. Then suddenly there is at the same time
Speaker 3: an avalanche cutting the guests off from the rest of
Speaker 3: the world and a murder putting Inspector Glebsky, sort of
Speaker 3: taking him out of vacation mode and putting him back
Speaker 3: into on duty mode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because initially he's like, well, it took me so
Speaker 1: long to get up here, and it's a little misty
Speaker 1: out I'm clearly going to have to spend the night
Speaker 1: here and drink something exactly. But then yeah, back on
Speaker 1: duty when the murder occur.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to dance to some really good Estonian
Speaker 3: proud rock. Now at this point, I think we're gonna
Speaker 3: have to go ahead and deal with something, which is
Speaker 3: that this film has major surprises that develop across its
Speaker 3: run time, and it would be rob I think you'd agree,
Speaker 3: basically impossible for us to talk about this movie without
Speaker 3: spoiling its big twists.
Speaker 1: Right right, And we were talking about this a little
Speaker 1: bit off Mike beforehand. This is not a film that
Speaker 1: is so dependent upon the twist that you cannot enjoy it.
Speaker 1: In fact, you might enjoy it a little bit more
Speaker 1: knowing the sort of territory you will get in.
Speaker 3: I read a blog post somewhere online where the writer
Speaker 3: was reviewing the film and said that they thought that
Speaker 3: it actually worked better if you went in already knowing
Speaker 3: what the twist would be. I'm not sure about that,
Speaker 3: but that could be the case. I went in already
Speaker 3: knowing the twist and still greatly enjoyed the movie. But
Speaker 3: if you suspect that might not be the case for
Speaker 3: you, you want your chance to duck out and not know
Speaker 3: what happens later in the film. Here's your moment. Let's
Speaker 3: do some spoiler avoidance, walk out music, flee and terror
Speaker 3: from the revelations to come.
Speaker 2: Your mind is not ready, Your mind is not ready.
Speaker 3: Your mind is okay. But here you are with us
Speaker 3: to know what happens later in the film. But you know,
Speaker 3: part of the difficulty is that even the genre designation
Speaker 3: of the movie spoils the twist because it is called
Speaker 3: like a neo noir or detective science fiction film, and
Speaker 3: there is nothing science fiction about the movie until the
Speaker 3: twist is revealed, which is that well, one part of
Speaker 3: the twist is not necessarily sci fi. It's more sort
Speaker 3: of crime thriller themed, and that is that some of
Speaker 3: the hotel guests are secretly gangsters and or terrorists. I
Speaker 3: wasn't quite sure exactly what kind of criminal this is
Speaker 3: supposed to be. But then beyond that, some other hotel
Speaker 3: guests are robots, and yet other guests are aliens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I have to add, like, knowing that
Speaker 1: we selected this for weird House Cinema, you might already
Speaker 1: suspect that there will be something speculative in the plot.
Speaker 1: But I also have to highlight that the movie is
Speaker 1: weird enough in its texture and its tone that I
Speaker 1: think we could have covered it even had it not
Speaker 1: involved robots in aliens.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because people have pointed this out about especially
Speaker 3: like the sets and the music created very otherworldly atmosphere
Speaker 3: before any technically speculative plot elements are introduced, like this
Speaker 3: is a ski resort in the mountains, but it feels
Speaker 3: like a set from Blade Runner.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then the score is very abstract and electronic.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a bit too, But all
Speaker 1: of this sort of you know, sets the board, and
Speaker 1: by the time aliens and robots come around, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that even if you didn't know they were
Speaker 1: going to occur, they it would not feel completely out
Speaker 1: of left field. You would be like, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, a number of human beings have
Speaker 1: to be robots and aliens. That's where I am in
Speaker 1: my worldview after experiencing this much of the film.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the characters are acting incredibly weird,
Speaker 3: and so it seems something would have to be up
Speaker 3: to explain the way they behave and the films I
Speaker 3: would say the film's themes don't fully come into focus
Speaker 3: until the final act, when, after the revelation of the
Speaker 3: presence of aliens and robots, the policeman Glebski is put
Speaker 3: in a position to think independently given new information, even
Speaker 3: unprecedented information, and he has to choose whether to blindly
Speaker 3: charge ahead, deferring his individual judgment and performing his official duties,
Speaker 3: or to think for himself and act as a human being.
Speaker 3: And we see Glebsky really struggling with this choice. He
Speaker 3: feels very strongly pulled to just act out his official
Speaker 3: duties as a policeman, even if they don't really make
Speaker 3: sense in the scenario, and it would spell disaster for
Speaker 3: visitors from another world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the making of Retrospective feature at on
Speaker 1: the Blu Ray edition that we both watched more than
Speaker 1: that in a minute. It shed some interesting light on
Speaker 1: the production. So, first of all, just a bit of background,
Speaker 1: since we're dealing with Estonian cinema here. At the time
Speaker 1: Dead Mountaineer's Hotel was made, Estonia was the Estonian Soviet
Speaker 1: Socialist Republic. This is essentially what it was known as
Speaker 1: nineteen forty through nineteen forty one and then nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four through around nineteen ninety one. The asterisk by that
Speaker 1: date I'll explain in a second. And while Estonia had
Speaker 1: its own distinct film, TV and theater scenes, there seems
Speaker 1: to have to a large extent been a shared ecosystem
Speaker 1: with Moscow based film production at the time. You know,
Speaker 1: you seem to have a very Soviet film bureaucracy in
Speaker 1: place governing the production of this film and other films
Speaker 1: that were occurring throughout the than Soviet Union. For instance,
Speaker 1: composer sim Gruenberg talks about composing music for the film
Speaker 1: on the train back to Moscow, where he then would
Speaker 1: record in the same studio that like later in the day,
Speaker 1: another composer was going to be using to score nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine Stalker, a Soviet Russian production that we just referenced.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, And so given this context, one thing
Speaker 3: that I've read about the film that makes it kind
Speaker 3: of interesting is that, despite its the weirdness, and I
Speaker 3: would argue subversiveness of the final product, this is a
Speaker 3: film that was made under, from what I understand, a
Speaker 3: heavy hand of censorship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The film was seemingly the product of
Speaker 1: very bureaucratic film production process. In some ways it does
Speaker 1: seems like it held it back, and we'll discuss examples
Speaker 1: of that, but it also meant that it seems like
Speaker 1: they had everything lined up when they were about to shoot,
Speaker 1: Like when they actually went out there, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty well oiled machine to a large extent, very streamline production.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like it maybe did limit and
Speaker 1: in case in other cases almost limited the creativity of
Speaker 1: the project as well.
Speaker 3: I was reading about the making of the film in
Speaker 3: a piece by an Estonian film critic named Carlo Funk.
Speaker 3: It was an article published by the Estonian Film Institute,
Speaker 3: and Funk was sort of writing about how there were
Speaker 3: certain things you could do if you wanted to tell
Speaker 3: a certain kind of story under this environment, that you
Speaker 3: could have more leeway with your storytelling. For example, setting
Speaker 3: it in the West rather than setting it like in
Speaker 3: Estonia or something allowed more freedom allegedly to depict characters
Speaker 3: as sort of like flawed and conflicted in their official duties.
Speaker 1: Because you could you essentially be saying like this is
Speaker 1: the kind of potential depravity that can be going on elsewhere,
Speaker 1: but not within these four rides. Just to a quick
Speaker 1: cap on the note about Estonia. Estonia became I believe,
Speaker 1: the first of the then Soviet controlled countries to declare
Speaker 1: independence from Moscow and the Soviet Union, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, I believe the sixth of September nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union recognized Estonian independence. Now key to all
Speaker 1: of this, of course, is the hotel, the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into. We'll talk a lot about this hotel,
Speaker 1: and and you know, it's film, So you have exteriors
Speaker 1: and interiors at this place. And I think if you
Speaker 1: know anything about a filmmaking at all, you know that
Speaker 1: these don't have to necessarily match up. Sometimes the place
Speaker 1: where a film is shot the interiors, we are also
Speaker 1: using the exteriors of set location. Sometimes you'll have the
Speaker 1: have exterior shots for a particular place in your film,
Speaker 1: and the inside of that place you're utilizing via another
Speaker 1: location or perhaps sets. So in this film, we have
Speaker 1: the exterior of the hotel, which does have its own
Speaker 1: kind of character. It has this kind of like boxy
Speaker 1: look that I quite like. It doesn't look completely rustic.
Speaker 1: It has sort of a modern flare to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an asymmetrical architecture that does look like
Speaker 3: I don't know, some modern homes you would see that
Speaker 3: are like a you know, a rectangle rising up here
Speaker 3: and a slanted roof there. And it's not just like
Speaker 3: your standard sort of boxy resort hotel shape right right.
Speaker 1: And of course it is very remote and surrounded by
Speaker 1: all of these snowy mountains and all very captivating. But
Speaker 1: instead of using this location or some other kind of
Speaker 1: like ski lodge location for the interiors, and instead of
Speaker 1: engaging in perhaps the kind of expected rustic or perhaps
Speaker 1: well worn interiors of an actual remote ski lodge, they said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is a science fiction film. This film deals with
Speaker 1: futuristic ideas. We need to have a futuristic set, and
Speaker 1: so they ended up building out these sets, and what
Speaker 1: we have is this highly stylized like black and mirrored interior.
Speaker 1: There's neon and the featurette on the disc describes this
Speaker 1: as all being very much in line with Estonian hyperrealism
Speaker 1: of the time period.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what that is, but it's hyper something.
Speaker 3: It's yes, yeah, it it doesn't feel like a real hotel, like,
Speaker 3: it doesn't it does not at all suggest hospitality. Instead,
Speaker 3: it is an environment that suggests mystery and doubt. And
Speaker 3: yet despite this, it does still have some of the
Speaker 3: features that can make a hotel or resort an exciting
Speaker 3: location for a mystery story, like the maze like nature
Speaker 3: of hallways and a hotel like that you never really
Speaker 3: understand like what part of the building you're in or
Speaker 3: which direction you're facing. You're just going around corners, and
Speaker 3: this movie does. The sets do have that feeling. There's
Speaker 3: a kind of like confusing layout of the place and
Speaker 3: it almost suggests that it's like not physically plausible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it sounds like the set itself had this
Speaker 1: kind of like maze like quality. They were talking about
Speaker 1: like there being lots of places that crew members could
Speaker 1: sort of hide and you know, have a drink or
Speaker 1: snack and so forth. And it was apparently quite a
Speaker 1: struggle to get everybody to be quiet for the for
Speaker 1: the shoot. But yeah, it was a pretty elaborate build.
Speaker 1: It wasn't cheap and on the other end, and so
Speaker 1: I have to stress that it does not feel like
Speaker 1: a set in that it feels like a real place,
Speaker 1: like even though we are getting into this hyper realistic
Speaker 1: idea of what a remote ski lodge could be. It
Speaker 1: totally works within the context of the film, and you're
Speaker 1: never like, oh, look at this set, unless you know,
Speaker 1: unless I guess you're engaging in the film, you know,
Speaker 1: outside of the film's context. But it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: this film having the same impact or the same flavor
Speaker 1: at all if it were set in a more traditional
Speaker 1: or rustic ski lodge setting, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: like well worn, perhaps not as easily maintained environment that
Speaker 1: some of us may have experienced in one form or
Speaker 1: another in remote locations. It just I can't help but
Speaker 1: suspect that if that had been the case with this movie,
Speaker 1: even if it still had the terrific score, the terrific
Speaker 1: performances and this weird plot, this film might have been
Speaker 1: more easily forgotten and it wouldn't stand out as this
Speaker 1: kind of shining gem of Estonian film from this time period.
Speaker 3: When you read people talking about this movie, they will
Speaker 3: end up saying a lot of things, but often the
Speaker 3: first thing they say is something about the striking visual
Speaker 3: nature of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And we'll keep touching on more specific examples
Speaker 1: of that as we go. I'll also point out that
Speaker 1: the featurette described this as being part of the first
Speaker 1: and only, at least at the time that this featurette
Speaker 1: was produced, wave of Estonian science fiction of the mid
Speaker 1: and late nineteen seventies. So there's like this brief blip
Speaker 1: where suddenly, and we'll touch on why some why this
Speaker 1: might have been the case where suddenly Estonian cinema was
Speaker 1: more concerned with science fiction and then it kind of
Speaker 1: dies off. Though just looking around a little bit, it
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like in recent years we have
Speaker 1: seen more Estonian science fiction come out. So it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, Estonian creatives completely abandoned the idea of science fiction.
Speaker 1: It's more a question of, like what was being funded,
Speaker 1: what was being produced, especially during this time period in which,
Speaker 1: like we already we discussed like there were a lot
Speaker 1: of bolts in place on what sort of films would
Speaker 1: see the light of day.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's your elevator pitch for the movie?
Speaker 1: It's simple, it's ski lodge madness, Estonian style.
Speaker 3: In a world where the ski lodge is full of robots,
Speaker 3: one man will be a cop and not think too
Speaker 3: much about it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know, there's a lot of thinking. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of contemplative characters in this. Well, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead in here just a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 1: This is from the I believe, the the Estonian trailer,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to play all of it, but
Speaker 1: maybe just a little bit to give you some flavor.
Speaker 1: Milli Luma. All right, Now, before we go into the
Speaker 1: rest of the episode, let's talk about where you can
Speaker 1: watch this movie as well, especially if you want to
Speaker 1: watch it before listening to us talk about all the
Speaker 1: details of the plot. I can't speak for other regions,
Speaker 1: but currently over here it looks like the only way
Speaker 1: to stream it legit is perhaps via cultpic dot com
Speaker 1: looks like they have it. I'm not familiar with cultpick,
Speaker 1: but it pops up on letterbox as being a place
Speaker 1: you can stream it. We watched it on the all
Speaker 1: region Blu ray from Camera Obscura, which also features an
Speaker 1: optional German dub. It has English subs and an interesting
Speaker 1: making op documentary that I've referred to already and I
Speaker 1: may refer to again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a good disc I liked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I had no problem playing it on an Xbox,
Speaker 1: for example, which sometimes isn't the case with international blu
Speaker 1: rays and so forth. All right, let's get into the
Speaker 1: people who made this film, starting at the top with
Speaker 1: the director, Grigory Kromanov, who lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four Estonian director and occasionally actor, best known
Speaker 1: internationally for this film, which was also his last of
Speaker 1: six films. I believe this was his only genre film.
Speaker 1: Other films included the nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy historic
Speaker 1: drama also described sometimes as a swashbuckler, the last.
Speaker 3: Relet, Yeah, that's how I've seen it, described as sort
Speaker 3: of historical adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the screenplay. The screenplay is credited to
Speaker 1: Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky, who also wrote the novel upon
Speaker 1: which it is based. So they adapted their own novel
Speaker 1: here Okay. Arcatti lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one and Boris lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: So they were Soviet Russian science fiction authors and brothers
Speaker 1: who collaborated throughout their careers. Their best known novel is
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two's Roadside Picnic, which Tarkovski adapted into the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine film Stalker, which we already mentioned here.
Speaker 1: This movie is based on the nineteen seventy novel Dead
Speaker 1: Mountaineers Hotel, a detective story that veers increasingly into the
Speaker 1: into weird territory. Both of these books, by the way,
Speaker 1: are widely available in English translation. I think you can
Speaker 1: even get audiobooks of them, so you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're available out there, along with other works of theirs
Speaker 1: and by the way, in two thousand and nine, the
Speaker 1: novel Dead Mountaineers Hotel was adapted into a point and
Speaker 1: click mystery video game. What Joe, I sent you the
Speaker 1: trailer for this and we were looking at this earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I watched this trailer for the game. I would
Speaker 3: not have imagined this would this adaptation would take place.
Speaker 3: That was a surprise for me, So, you know, it
Speaker 3: got me thinking about how oh Man, back in the day,
Speaker 3: I really did enjoy some of those those point and
Speaker 3: click adventure games like you know, The King's Quest and
Speaker 3: Maniac Mansion and things like that. This could be a
Speaker 3: lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and giving the source material, I guess it
Speaker 1: could be like I wonder, what's if you had a
Speaker 1: video game that was not only adapted from the source material,
Speaker 1: but based on this particular cinematic vision of said book, Like,
Speaker 1: what would it look like? What kind of choices would
Speaker 1: you have when you pointed and clicked on characters? You know,
Speaker 1: would you always have the option to drink and or smoke?
Speaker 3: Hold on? I'm just thinking, was there at some point
Speaker 3: a Blade Runner point and click adventure game?
Speaker 1: That sounds right. I never played any of the Blade
Speaker 1: Runner video games, but there certainly were some video games
Speaker 1: I think some PC game of Nah, I mean, it
Speaker 1: is a it seems like a genre of video game
Speaker 1: that is well adapted to you know, detective story and.
Speaker 3: You click on the little clues and apply things to
Speaker 3: other things in the environment. But yeah, so that's an
Speaker 3: interesting So, as you said, this game was adapted from
Speaker 3: the novel, so it doesn't actually pull in a lot
Speaker 3: of the aesthetic choices from the movie adaptation. So I
Speaker 3: was looking at it and I was like, this doesn't
Speaker 3: seem familiar. Actually, m.
Speaker 1: All right, So we have our inspector here, Inspector Peter Glebski,
Speaker 1: played by Oldest Poopsies who lived nineteen thirty seven through
Speaker 1: to the year two thousand. Yeah, this is one rugged detective. Like,
Speaker 1: we get a lot of close ups of this guy's
Speaker 1: face and it's perfect. It is the perfect like hard
Speaker 1: boiled detective's face. The lines, the almost like geologic texture
Speaker 1: to his face, you know, the depths of his eyes.
Speaker 1: Everything you want out of a noir detective who's having
Speaker 1: troubled thoughts. This is the guy for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he I mean we talk about square jaws on
Speaker 3: this show. Sometimes this is a jaw that is like
Speaker 3: fractally square. I'm trying to think what actor I'm more
Speaker 3: familiar with to compare him to. He's almost got a
Speaker 3: kind of Jack Palin energy, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he reminded me a bit too of Sean Bean.
Speaker 1: He has just facial features and also the kind of
Speaker 1: like stern, distant eyed characters that that Bean has sometimes played.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can see that because he does there
Speaker 3: is a weariness about him. Has He very well does
Speaker 3: that thing that's familiar to us from a lot of
Speaker 3: movies now of the the police detective who's just sort
Speaker 3: of worn out and tired of it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's so ripe, he's about to fall off the trip.
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's what that line means. That's the
Speaker 1: line will we'll come back.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that means, but that could be. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I accept that interpretation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So this is easily this actor's best known
Speaker 1: film internationally, but he was active in TV and film
Speaker 1: of the region from the late seventies to the late
Speaker 1: nineties and he was a Lappvian MM. Okay, so again,
Speaker 1: absolutely strong presence in the film, you know, a nice
Speaker 1: central performance and physical performance to base everything.
Speaker 3: I read somewhere online somebody saying that the casting in
Speaker 3: this movie has almost the sensibility of like a caricaturist,
Speaker 3: that the cast is really selected for extremely distinctive looks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I would say that's the case of the next
Speaker 3: actor and character we're going to talk about, the hotel manager,
Speaker 3: Alex Snavar.
Speaker 1: That's right, played by Yuri Jarvitt, lived nineteen nineteen through
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, playing the owner, the weird owner of
Speaker 1: the hotel, weird owner of a weird hotel. Estonian actor
Speaker 1: who was also in the Last Relic and played the
Speaker 1: lead in a nineteen seventy adaptation of King Lear, which
Speaker 1: I think fitting given that he has a very haunted
Speaker 1: look at times in this production and he is most
Speaker 1: famously in Tarkowsky's nineteen seventy two science fiction film Solaris.
Speaker 1: I believe he actually had third billion in that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't remember exactly, but I think he's one
Speaker 3: of the scientists on the base.
Speaker 1: He's a doctor character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy. What I'm about to say
Speaker 3: might feel like it doesn't make any sense, but stick
Speaker 3: with me. I would almost describe his energy as sweet,
Speaker 3: cuddly Kinsky, Like if you could imagine a mirror image,
Speaker 3: like like, suck all the evil and poison out of
Speaker 3: Klaus Kinski and make like a sweet, nice version of him,
Speaker 3: That's what this guy makes me think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that. I can definitely see that,
Speaker 1: all right. The next character is Simone Simonet. He's our
Speaker 1: wall crawling physicist played by Limbeth Peterson born nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: Estonian actor and once more, this is probably the actor's
Speaker 1: best known film internationally.
Speaker 3: This guy's got a very nervous kind of high strong
Speaker 3: energy and you really don't know what his deal is
Speaker 3: for most of the movie. But I liked him all right.
Speaker 1: And the next character is Hinkus. This is the only
Speaker 1: name that has ever attributed to him, played by Mick Mickever,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty seven through two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Estonian actor whose credits include some of the expected sort
Speaker 1: of dramas you would imagine, because again there are a
Speaker 1: lot of more traditional dramas, less speculative work that you've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of these actors work during this time period,
Speaker 1: but also another key player in the short lived Estonian
Speaker 1: sci fi wave as well as some Russian science fiction.
Speaker 1: He appears in the Russian nineteen eighty seven film The
Speaker 1: End of Eternity based on the work of Isaac Asimov,
Speaker 1: as well as the bonkers looking Estonian Indiana Jones esque
Speaker 1: sci fi adventure The Curse of Snake Valley from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight.
Speaker 3: He sent me a link to this one. It looked
Speaker 3: I gotta see this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one looked It looks less great. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: some respects like it looks like it's more like bonkers
Speaker 1: and kind of like B cinema in its flavor, but
Speaker 1: also looks just irresistible. So if I, if I, if
Speaker 1: you said, okay, you have to do another Estonian film
Speaker 1: next week, it would it would have to be the
Speaker 1: Curse of the Snake Valley. I'm not sure how widely
Speaker 1: available this one is, though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got to see it at some point. I
Speaker 3: don't know if we'll talk about it, but I've got
Speaker 3: to see it.
Speaker 1: Mick of Her is quite great in this and has
Speaker 1: numerous places where he really gets to shine.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Next we have a couple of Moses to consider. There's
Speaker 1: mister Moses and there's miss missus mos uh okay, and
Speaker 1: I I'll start with mister Moses played by Carlos Cebus
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen through two thousand and nine, Latvian born actor
Speaker 1: who played Gloucester in that King Lear adaptation that I
Speaker 1: referenced earlier. And then we have Irena Crazati born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two as Missus Moses, Lithuanian actress best known for
Speaker 1: this film. But she really gets to run wild with
Speaker 1: a kind of weird performance.
Speaker 3: Here, does she ever? Yeah, she was one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Like her. Her character's fashion sense in general demeanor is
Speaker 1: basically that of a post a zule Dana from Ghostbusters.
Speaker 3: I would yes, and she really loves daredevil cops.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you're a cop. You must be a daredevil.
Speaker 1: Next we have Lurevic played by Sue lev Luik, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen fifty four through nineteen ninety seven, Estonian actor again.
Speaker 1: This was this was his first film, but he worked
Speaker 1: up until his untimely death in nineteen ninety seven. His
Speaker 1: other credits include nineteen ninety three's Tear Up the Prints
Speaker 1: of Darkness, a horror film concerning a cursed ring in
Speaker 1: the days before the outbreak of the Second World War,
Speaker 1: and that one, by the way, is from the director
Speaker 1: of Curse of Snake.
Speaker 3: Valley sounds thematically loaded. Yeah, this actor brings an intriguing
Speaker 3: sort of doomed mime energy.
Speaker 1: Yes us and I believe by the time we really
Speaker 1: sing a lot from him.
Speaker 3: I'm like, this.
Speaker 1: Dude's a robot, there's no way this yeah, or an
Speaker 1: alien or both.
Speaker 3: Wait, but he's actually not a robot. He's an alien.
Speaker 3: The other guy's a robot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I feel like the line between robot and
Speaker 1: alien is kind of gray in this film, especially since
Speaker 1: we never get to see alien faces or like robot interiors,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, this is not that
Speaker 1: kind of film. It could have leaned into that a
Speaker 1: little bit, and I would have totally would have been
Speaker 1: okay with it, but it doesn't need it.
Speaker 3: Agreed, But yeah, you are correct that even though this
Speaker 3: guy is said to be an organic alien, he does
Speaker 3: behave like the robots. Speaking of robots, this ski lodge
Speaker 3: also has like hot robots.
Speaker 1: That's right. The first character is this guy, old Off,
Speaker 1: played by tit Harm born nineteen forty six, acclaimed Estonian
Speaker 1: ballet dan turned actor who also went on to be
Speaker 1: a ballet master, ballet manager, ballet choreographer. Like this is.
Speaker 1: This is a guy that's actually pretty big in the
Speaker 1: Estonian ballet scene and I think probably well known internationally
Speaker 1: if you were like into ballet. This is his best
Speaker 1: known film. He did some acting here and there, and
Speaker 1: we do get to see him dance, and he's good.
Speaker 1: You can you can easily knowing that he's a dancer
Speaker 1: and watching him move you're like, yes, this checks out.
Speaker 1: But he does mention in the extras that the set
Speaker 1: was really cramped and so they didn't give him a
Speaker 1: lot of space to work with, so he's having to
Speaker 1: figure out how to move his body in a space
Speaker 1: that is not enabling him to do much.
Speaker 3: His dancing choices, though, are intriguing and a lot of
Speaker 3: fun because he's essentially doing ballet ish kinds of moves
Speaker 3: to the sounds of Estonian prog rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about these these limitations.
Speaker 1: You know, all right, you're a famous ballet dancer. We
Speaker 1: want you to dance, but this is the space you
Speaker 1: get to do it in. And I'm also guessing they
Speaker 1: might not have even had the finish music. They'll be like,
Speaker 1: we don't know what you're dancing to yet, but just
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it. Do it in a way
Speaker 1: that's not going to harm your reputation.
Speaker 3: Imagine you're an intergalactic robot dancing to King Crimson.
Speaker 1: Yeah he pulls it off though, all right, So that's Oloff,
Speaker 1: and Oloff is kind of running around with this character Brune.
Speaker 1: Brune is played by Lithuanian actress n Joel Oslet born
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. I don't have much to add about
Speaker 1: her career, but she's very good in this. And again,
Speaker 1: this is a film that generally lets a lot of
Speaker 1: its actors play a range of different emotions, you know,
Speaker 1: from just sort of detached modern living to like a
Speaker 1: robot or alien level of detachment, and also getting into
Speaker 1: fear and horrors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the character of brune High behind sunglasses for most
Speaker 3: of the runtime, but then later reveals her emotions and
Speaker 3: they're quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then finally we have this character called Keza
Speaker 1: I believe, and she's she's like the housekeep, the housekeeper,
Speaker 1: and so she's mostly in the background in a lot
Speaker 1: of these scenes. But she's played by Karen Rad who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen, an Estonian theater
Speaker 1: director and actor. And then the music, this is this
Speaker 1: is a this was again the music in this film.
Speaker 1: The score is just exceptionally effective. And this is the
Speaker 1: work of Spin Grunberg born nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: We've summoned the spirit of Spin a number of times.
Speaker 3: Now we have to explain who he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the score here, it is. It's contemplative, it's
Speaker 1: suggestively astral in its vibes. It's an electronic score, definitely
Speaker 1: a synth score by Estonian synth masters Vin Grunberg, whose
Speaker 1: career has also taken him into the realms of prog
Speaker 1: rock and also Tibetan Buddhism. Prior to watching this film,
Speaker 1: I listened to his nineteen eighty one album Hingus or Breath,
Speaker 1: which is widely available on music streaming platforms. So this
Speaker 1: is not somebody whose work is like, you know, super
Speaker 1: hard to find. He really made a name for himself
Speaker 1: and it is And yeah, Hingus is quite a wonderful
Speaker 1: collection of ambient electronic tracks, and it's kind of in
Speaker 1: keeping with the music we see here. His work is
Speaker 1: typically abstract and experimental. He's well worth looking up if
Speaker 1: you're into this sort of sort of sound like I am.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of a lot of ambient DNA
Speaker 1: in his work. And and Dead Mountaineer the hotel, his
Speaker 1: music plays again a huge role in establishing the atmosphere
Speaker 1: both inside of this strange hotel and its mini twists
Speaker 1: and mirrors, but also when when we're we're contemplating the exteriors,
Speaker 1: when we're like looking up at the mountains and these
Speaker 1: just like haunting pure blue skies and these like gleaming
Speaker 1: snow banks and so forth. Yeah, the score here is
Speaker 1: just highly effect.
Speaker 3: It's a great example of musical compositions that somehow, without
Speaker 3: even having lyrics, sound like the themes you're trying to
Speaker 3: get the audience to think of. So there is a
Speaker 3: sort of recurring synthesizer theme that sounds so it'll be
Speaker 3: it'll happen when you're like panning up over the mountaintops
Speaker 3: and seeing the snow drifts and the glaciers, and it
Speaker 3: will sound like ice in a way, almost like snow
Speaker 3: or like kind of a freezing process, ice crackling. It
Speaker 3: has a kind of high drone. But then also as
Speaker 3: the camera sort of pans to include the sky, it
Speaker 3: morphs to suggest cosmic themes, and it's really as you say, yeah,
Speaker 3: it evokes the themes with the sounds quite well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so it's it's interesting, like you know, went
Speaker 1: into this having a taste for his music, then you know,
Speaker 1: really appreciating the score itself, and then knowing about how
Speaker 1: other aspects of the production we were, you know, so
Speaker 1: planned in advanced and all. It was kind of surprising
Speaker 1: to read then on Deepbaltic dot com this is a
Speaker 1: culture blog centering in on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that
Speaker 1: Gruenberg was kind of a last minute replacement in this
Speaker 1: production for esteemed Estonian composer Arvaux part and as a result,
Speaker 1: and since no work had apparently been done on it yet,
Speaker 1: he had a great deal of freedom. So it's like
Speaker 1: everything was already late nothing like, none of the music
Speaker 1: had been turned in. They needed music. He didn't have
Speaker 1: much time, but it also meant that he got to
Speaker 1: really open up and try whatever he wanted.
Speaker 3: I read in one of those articles I was looking at,
Speaker 3: I think it was the one by Carl Funk from
Speaker 3: the Estonian Film Institute, saying something about Soviet censors being
Speaker 3: concerned that the movie was trying to trying to get
Speaker 3: some like slip some Pink Floyd in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I read this on the Deep Baltic article as well.
Speaker 1: The author here writes, quote, the tiny budget only allotted
Speaker 1: him a few precious moments with an EMS synth one
Speaker 1: hundred in Moscow, and even then what he created almost
Speaker 1: got barred by Soviet censors who are convinced that Ball
Speaker 1: was a lesser known track by Pink Floyd Ball, I guess,
Speaker 1: being one of the titles or one of the tracks
Speaker 1: on the score.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's the sort of proggy sounding track
Speaker 3: that tit harm and everyone are dancing to.
Speaker 1: I guess so. Yeah, I kept looking around to try
Speaker 1: and find it. I would love to see the score
Speaker 1: and or soundtrack, you know, featured as a release. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's released anywhere. I couldn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: of it, so I also couldn't find a listing of
Speaker 1: what tracks were actually called. But yeah, this, this might
Speaker 1: be that prog rock dance number that everybody's grooving out to.
Speaker 1: And it is a great number, all right. One on
Speaker 1: that note, let's start get into the plot here.
Speaker 3: All right. So the opening shot is ridges and peaks
Speaker 3: of the high Alps covered in snow, and there is
Speaker 3: eerie music. This synthesizer music that we were talking about
Speaker 3: already sounds kind of like drops and wheezes panning from
Speaker 3: one side to the other. And we see the lonely
Speaker 3: mountaintops and very cold feeling sunlight, and we zoom in
Speaker 3: on a snow covered road winding through the rocks, and
Speaker 3: a car comes around the corner, and here begins the voiceover.
Speaker 3: This is a man's voice. It's gruff, weary. This is
Speaker 3: the voice of Glebsky, the detective, and he tells us
Speaker 3: I was on a call driving to a mountain lodge
Speaker 3: called the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. It was quite a difficult drive.
Speaker 3: Many years have passed now, but on dull shifts or
Speaker 3: during sleepless nights, I often recall what happened, and even
Speaker 3: now I cannot decide whether I was right or not.
Speaker 3: And as he narrates, we see him driving through the
Speaker 3: mountains and here. One thing that I really like is
Speaker 3: that there are some shots that include the sun facing
Speaker 3: directly into the camera. And this is obviously this is
Speaker 3: not something you would normally do, you know, when you're
Speaker 3: shooting outside, as aim the camera right at the sun,
Speaker 3: But it works here and it happens throughout the movie.
Speaker 3: These shots with the camera just like blasting the or sorry,
Speaker 3: with the sun just blasting the camera lens. They capture
Speaker 3: the way the sun sometimes feels when you're on a
Speaker 3: snowy mountaintop, where the sunlight seems colder and weirder, and
Speaker 3: it lacks that quality of gentle warmth that you might
Speaker 3: get on like a nice sunny day at sea level. Instead,
Speaker 3: it feels like just a bombardment, a blasting source of pale,
Speaker 3: hostile radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it really makes this whole landscape feel alien
Speaker 1: and other worldly. Quite fittingly.
Speaker 3: So, there's also another shot Rob I don't know if
Speaker 3: you noticed at the beginning here, but I liked it
Speaker 3: a lot. There's like a framing of a gap in
Speaker 3: a giant rock face that suggests gates or a gateway.
Speaker 3: And when we see this mountain gate, the soundtrack suddenly
Speaker 3: explodes with heavy synth and an emerging beat, and the
Speaker 3: narration goes on to say, what's strange is I can
Speaker 3: tell no one how it actually happened, not my wife,
Speaker 3: my friends, or the authorities. Only I know the whole truth.
Speaker 3: So we start with this idea already that Glebsky is
Speaker 3: isolated in his knowledge of what we're about to see unfold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, luckily he's going to tell us what's happening.
Speaker 3: So as Glebsky approaches the hotel in his car, the
Speaker 3: narration died away, and instead we just get the ambient
Speaker 3: sounds of the car ride, the sedan bumping and jostling
Speaker 3: over uneven mountain road, and there's a tiny voice chattering
Speaker 3: on the radio. It sounds like it's speaking French, so
Speaker 3: made me wonder if this is supposed to if it's
Speaker 3: suggesting this is taking place in France, or I guess
Speaker 3: also in Switzerland, where parts of Switzerland they speak French. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Globski arrives, he walks the snow covered path to the entrance.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in a brown leather trench coat, and I
Speaker 3: have to say, I think he looks very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Like I said, this guy's perfect, and he's
Speaker 1: the costuming's great. He is our weary detective who just
Speaker 1: had a grueling drive up into the mountains on indeed
Speaker 1: some very snow covered and terrifying looking roads. Now he
Speaker 1: has to look into some sort of perhaps a murder.
Speaker 1: I just love somebody get this manager.
Speaker 3: I just look at this guy and I think, you
Speaker 3: know what, he's gonna end up taking it too personal.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, yeah, yeah, you know. Oh.
Speaker 3: And during this moment, interesting thing like we look up
Speaker 3: in the sky we see hang gliders. We see them
Speaker 3: swooping around, sometimes apparently upside down, though it's possible that
Speaker 3: I guess the film is just upside down. And it
Speaker 3: suggests like, are these hang gliders watching him approach the hotel?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think they are. I think that the footage
Speaker 1: is inverted here to make it feel all the more haunting. Also,
Speaker 1: this is we'll find out later that this is old
Speaker 1: Off and Brun up there in the sky tearing around.
Speaker 1: I have questions about how they got up there, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I take it for granted that they
Speaker 1: knew how to do it, but yeah, it's an excellent
Speaker 1: weird sequence very early in the film here, especially as
Speaker 1: it is combined with the music to create this kind
Speaker 1: of horror of the empty blue sky feel that I
Speaker 1: know I've personally long connected with since I was a child,
Speaker 1: you know, there being something about like a perfect blue
Speaker 1: sky that feels kind of overwhelming in a little uncanny,
Speaker 1: So a very creepy moment at least for me.
Speaker 3: Totally. Yes, So Glebsky goes inside. The lobby of the
Speaker 3: hotel is empty, it's cavernous. His footsteps echo. This doesn't
Speaker 3: feel like what you'd think of when you think a
Speaker 3: mountain ski lodge, which you know you think cozy, roaring fire.
Speaker 3: I don't know that kind of stuff. No, this place
Speaker 3: feels cavernous and dank, and it's just a vibe. Like
Speaker 3: Rabbi attached a screenshot from the lobby that we can
Speaker 3: talk about here. There are sickly green tones over the
Speaker 3: white marble tile. There is black darkness in the recesses
Speaker 3: of the room. In the middle of the lobby, there
Speaker 3: is a prominent portrait. It's a man with shaggy hair
Speaker 3: wearing sunglasses with what looks like a neon orange tube
Speaker 3: light tracing the outline of the top of his head,
Speaker 3: suggesting a sort of tech noir halo. And the inspector
Speaker 3: stops to examine the portrait and again, something about this
Speaker 3: place feels not quite like a hotel. It feels like
Speaker 3: some other kind of place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really feels like this could be a corporate
Speaker 1: headquarters from an early Cronenberg film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but something you pointed this out in the in
Speaker 3: the notes, Rob, there's something about the portrait of the
Speaker 3: mountaineer here, because we will find out that the face
Speaker 3: we see in this portrait is the titular dead mountaineer
Speaker 3: of the Dead Mountaineer's hotels. It suggests not just like
Speaker 3: a portrait, but something almost kind of like religious or
Speaker 3: there's like, yeah, it's like a shrine or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally so.
Speaker 3: Glebsky's wandering around in this weird lobby and suddenly somebody
Speaker 3: starts to speak from the shadows behind him. It's a
Speaker 3: man's voice, and he says, speaking of the portrait, that's
Speaker 3: the mountaineer. He was caught in an avalanche. He was
Speaker 3: carried five hundred meters to his death. And there's a
Speaker 3: reverse shot and see the man speaking, and again this
Speaker 3: is just like what is going on? I guess this
Speaker 3: is the front desk of the hotel, but it could
Speaker 3: not be less hospitable. There's an old man in sort
Speaker 3: of a black turtleneck standing in the shadows in front
Speaker 3: of a window shutter. He looks like count Orlock. And
Speaker 3: there's a cherry red lamp in the foreground. Something about
Speaker 3: it gives it suggests blood. And then also there is
Speaker 3: a Saint Bernard panting on the in the right of
Speaker 3: the frame. Just a dog sitting there like what's a
Speaker 3: leak and drool.
Speaker 1: Enormous, enormous dog, which turns out to be a real sweetheart.
Speaker 1: But you know, initially it's just like that.
Speaker 3: Dog's here, yes, And this man who looks like maybe
Speaker 3: he just drank someone's blood. He introduces himself as Alex Snavar,
Speaker 3: owner of the hotel as well as the valley and
Speaker 3: the surrounding mountains. That's what he says. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: you can own a mountain. I guess he can, but
Speaker 3: you know he actually the same thing happens with Alex
Speaker 3: Snavar that happens with the dog, because Snavar looks kind
Speaker 3: of threatening at first, but he will turn out to
Speaker 3: be a sweetheart. Yeah, we learned that the Saint Bernard
Speaker 3: is named Lel, and he goes to sit underneath the
Speaker 3: portrait of the mountaineer. Snavar explains that the dog was
Speaker 3: the mountaineer's faithful companion before the accident, So the accident
Speaker 3: can have happened all that long ago, and Lel now
Speaker 3: likes to sit and gaze at the image of his
Speaker 3: old friend. So Glebsky, of course, he wants to know
Speaker 3: why he was summoned to the hotel. Somebody called the
Speaker 3: police and here he is, but Snavar has no answers.
Speaker 3: He claims he never called them. It must have been
Speaker 3: a guest. So Glebsky he rings up his captain and
Speaker 3: tells him, you know, it's too late to return through
Speaker 3: the mountain fog. He's gonna have to stay the night
Speaker 3: at this resort hotel, and he's gonna have to try
Speaker 3: some of the hotel's famous Adelweiss vine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, like we were saying earlier, he's kind of
Speaker 1: going into vacation mode. It's like, all right, false alarm,
Speaker 1: but I've at least got the night.
Speaker 3: No taking it to person. And for me tonight I'm
Speaker 3: gonna I'm gonna relax. Oh and I like how well
Speaker 3: the Saint Bernard is the bell hop here at the
Speaker 3: hotel like snae Bar tells the dog Glebsky's room number,
Speaker 3: and the dog picks up his bag and his big
Speaker 3: slobbery mouth and takes it to the room.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: So we see the inspector settling in outside his window,
Speaker 3: he sees a shadow in the snow. It looks like
Speaker 3: the silhouette of someone on the roof of the hotel
Speaker 3: drinking and throwing bottles over the edge. So here we
Speaker 3: start to get glimpses of the other guests. Those two
Speaker 3: people hang gliding from earlier. They come in after they
Speaker 3: finish their hang gliding, and we learned that these are
Speaker 3: Olof and brune. Olof Is is the man played by
Speaker 3: played by the dancer tit Harm and brune Is is
Speaker 3: the woman. Uh. And then also up on the roof
Speaker 3: there is a man in a fur coat admiring the mountains.
Speaker 3: He's in like a sort of lawn chair, and we
Speaker 3: meet him and learn that his name is Hincus. And
Speaker 3: I wanted to add a note about this. You know,
Speaker 3: there's that Spinn Greenberg album called Hingus, which, as you said,
Speaker 3: is Estonian for breath. So I'm wondering if this is
Speaker 3: actually different or if it's basically suggesting that this character's
Speaker 3: name is breath.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, it's a you can't help
Speaker 1: him make that connection.
Speaker 3: And it would be thematically appropriate because Hinkus tells Glebski
Speaker 3: that he is here at the hotel because he has
Speaker 3: tuberculosis and the doctors have told him that he must
Speaker 3: breathe fresh mountain air in order to recover. Now Here
Speaker 3: comes a funny moment next, because Glebsky hears the dinner
Speaker 3: bell and so on the way down to dinner with
Speaker 3: all the other guests, he encounters a man wedging himself
Speaker 3: between the walls up near the ceiling and the staircase,
Speaker 3: and the guy hops down and introduces himself. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm Simone Simine, commander of the cyber Forces. But then
Speaker 3: he says he's a he's a physicist, actually, and this
Speaker 3: is his first vacation in four years. He says, Project
Speaker 3: Midas heard of it top secret, then why would you
Speaker 3: have heard of it? But Simone Cimine says that he
Speaker 3: came here to climb the mountain, but there's too much snow,
Speaker 3: so he can't climb the mountain, so he climbs the
Speaker 3: walls instead. He says that the doctors prescribed him sensory pleasures.
Speaker 3: Now at the dinner table, here Snavevar introduces Glebsky to
Speaker 3: the other guests. There is a young lady in an
Speaker 3: orange top wearing huge, weird sunglasses. This is the woman Brune.
Speaker 3: Next to her is this handsome young man in a
Speaker 3: blue shirt and an orange ascot with a shaggy mulletish haircut.
Speaker 3: This is Olof again, Brun and Oloff for the hang gliders,
Speaker 3: and they seem to be an item. They're kind of
Speaker 3: just smooching and cuddling. At the dinner table, we also
Speaker 3: meet missus Moses, a woman in a lavender outfit with
Speaker 3: a first hole, curly hair and sort of frightening makeup.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, roughly post zul Dana and Ghostbusters. That's her fashion.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right right on the nose. And so Glebski
Speaker 3: comes in and she's like, she says, I love Policeman, heroes,
Speaker 3: Daredevil's are you a daredevil inspector and he's like, nope,
Speaker 3: just just regular and she says, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: any man who looks like you must be a daredevil.
Speaker 3: And the next here comes mister Moses. He's sort of
Speaker 3: a boring seeming older man with gray hair and a
Speaker 3: gray card. Again, he he almost kind of blends into
Speaker 3: the background. It's like you're you're not really supposed to
Speaker 3: notice him. Yeah, And then there's also the housekeeper at
Speaker 3: the hotel here, this is Kaisa. So everybody settles in
Speaker 3: and the hotel manager is like, anyway, as I was
Speaker 3: saying before you arrived, I am in total agreement with
Speaker 3: mister Eric von Danakin. Aliens have repeatedly visited Earth, and
Speaker 3: I was I could not believe what we were in
Speaker 3: for here was I did not know we would get
Speaker 3: an Eric von danik and reference in the movie. This
Speaker 3: is in the real world. The author of the book
Speaker 3: Chariots of the.
Speaker 1: Gods, Yeah, with the with the question Mark, which.
Speaker 3: Is a famous book alleging on the basis of incredibly
Speaker 3: poor evidence and reasoning that aliens have repeatedly visited Earth
Speaker 3: in the in the past and are responsible for I
Speaker 3: don't remember exactly what he connects it to probably the
Speaker 3: various ancient stories and monuments and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole alien astronaut hypothesis situation, which which we
Speaker 1: recorded a few episodes of stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: about a few years.
Speaker 3: Back, analyzing from a from a skeptical perspective, and then
Speaker 3: we ended up talking about like Carl Sagan's point of
Speaker 3: view on like if aliens had visited Earth, what kind
Speaker 3: of evidence you would actually expect to see and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, so yeah, so Snaevar, He's like, I
Speaker 3: love Eric Vondanakin. Aliens have been here, I know it,
Speaker 3: and Simone and the physicist is like, Fondanakin is a Charlott,
Speaker 3: no way, and Stevar rebukes him, basically saying that his
Speaker 3: opinion doesn't count because he is a scientist and thus biased,
Speaker 3: and he says that the question of aliens is one
Speaker 3: of poetry.
Speaker 1: I kind of like that. I feel like we would
Speaker 1: be better off if all alien conspiracy theorists were so
Speaker 1: honest and self reflective where they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't a fact based thing. This is about This
Speaker 1: is about feelings, This is about art. Yeah, Like, I know,
Speaker 1: this doesn't actually connect with reality. This is about like
Speaker 1: a mythic understanding of the world.
Speaker 3: Or something, right, Yeah, this is I'm talking about this
Speaker 3: for fun, because it's you know, it's interesting and exciting
Speaker 3: to my emotions, not because you know, I'm insisting that
Speaker 3: the evidence is it must be real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but already we get a little flavor here of Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like, on one hand, the logical, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: something that seems illogical, but also might conform to a
Speaker 1: different reality or different expectations of reality.
Speaker 3: They ask the police inspector's opinion, and Glebsky identifies himself
Speaker 3: as a rationalist, and I guess that means he agrees
Speaker 3: with simone he doubts Eric Vandanakin. So later some time
Speaker 3: passes and there are a few different scenes of the
Speaker 3: guests hanging out together. One is some kind of billiard's game.
Speaker 3: I assume this is not, unfortunately snooker. The billiards game
Speaker 3: featured in what was it called Billy the Kid in
Speaker 3: the Green Bays Vampire, a previoushouse pick. I don't could
Speaker 3: you recognize what game they're playing round?
Speaker 1: I don't have a good good eye for these related games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked like they were playing with all white balls
Speaker 1: at one point. I don't know if that means anything.
Speaker 3: I don't know what all white balls means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pool enthusiast and write analysts.
Speaker 3: But they have this conversation about whether or not the
Speaker 3: inspector is going to turn Oloff into food. But then
Speaker 3: interesting thing is that like Oloff is so good at
Speaker 3: the game that it's like not any fun because he
Speaker 3: just like Snink, he sinks every shot with absolute precision.
Speaker 3: So Olof is like the ultimate Billiard's hustler here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he's like I'm out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it'd be great to see him go up
Speaker 3: against the Green Bays Vampire Alan Armstrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been a logical sequel, right, Green
Speaker 1: Bays Vampire versus a robot versus tit.
Speaker 3: Harm Yeah yeah, Okay. So later that night we get
Speaker 3: the scene where this is the dancing scene we've referred
Speaker 3: to a few times where everybody's like dancing to heavy
Speaker 3: prog rock. Oloff and Brun are dancing with these jerky
Speaker 3: whipping movements with their arms going out. Mister Moses is
Speaker 3: playing chess with somebody I wasn't sure who, and then
Speaker 3: Glebsky talking to Snavar, is he has questions. He's like,
Speaker 3: who is this mister Moses, and Snavar says, he's registered
Speaker 3: as a traveling businessman, but I have no idea where
Speaker 3: he's traveling. The road ends here. The only way is back.
Speaker 1: It's a good points, great little party. We gotta say, like,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to go to this party. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's some cool dance and great music. And if
Speaker 1: you don't want to dance, well, you know, have yourself
Speaker 1: a drink and play some chess. We've got activities for everyone.
Speaker 3: Extroverts and introverts are welcome. Yeah. Yeah, So Glebsky dances
Speaker 3: with missus Moses here again. She's she seems very into him.
Speaker 3: She's got like a big white feather in her hat
Speaker 3: or on her head. He seems kind of hypnotized. I
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what this was supposed to mean. Did you
Speaker 3: get the same impression that Glebsky's like sort of out
Speaker 3: of his mind here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I assumed he was drunk. That was
Speaker 1: where I was at it.
Speaker 3: That would make sense because.
Speaker 1: He did say he wanted to have that wine, and
Speaker 1: he at this point he's just like I'm off the clock.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no there's no crime to investigate here,
Speaker 1: I might as well have a good Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so basically everybody at the hotel's partying except for
Speaker 3: Hankas they say, he's still up on the roof. He
Speaker 3: just doesn't come down to party. He's on the roof
Speaker 3: all the time. And there was somewhere in here there's
Speaker 3: a shot I really like this creepy shot of a
Speaker 3: big evergreen tree back lit by the moon.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky was dancing with miss and Moses, but then
Speaker 3: Simone comes in for his dance. He's like, hey, you
Speaker 3: want to dance with a with a cyber commander of
Speaker 3: cyber forces, And so she dances with Simon a and Globsky,
Speaker 3: admitting in the narration that he was drunk, he steps
Speaker 3: away from the party. He goes outside for some night air,
Speaker 3: and then he discovers that someone he doesn't know who
Speaker 3: has slipped an anonymous note into his pocket. He opens
Speaker 3: the note to read it on this snowy pathway lit
Speaker 3: by these globe shaped lamps, and the note is cut
Speaker 3: and pasted with letters from a magazine like those ransom
Speaker 3: notes in the movies, and it reads, Hincus is part
Speaker 3: of a criminal organization. He is a dangerous terrorist called
Speaker 3: owl owl o w L.
Speaker 1: That's fitting creepy nightbird with you know, various supernatural connotations
Speaker 1: in different cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this this struck is funny. When I was watching,
Speaker 3: just because my daughter is currently obsessed with owls. She
Speaker 3: loves to tell us what an owl says. It says
Speaker 3: who who?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's correct.
Speaker 3: But anyway, the note goes on to say a murder
Speaker 3: is planned. Do something. So Glebski is troubled by this,
Speaker 3: and he looks up on the roof to see the
Speaker 3: outline of Hinkas still in the chair up there, and
Speaker 3: he calls out to him. He yells hink OUs hing oos.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately this shout seems to trigger something. There is
Speaker 3: some kind of rumbling in the snow covered peaks above.
Speaker 3: This was an unfortunate Hincus and the ominous like, there's
Speaker 3: this ominous droning sound, Matt, this pad underneath everything that
Speaker 3: begins here, and Hinkus from the roof does not respond.
Speaker 3: So Glebski runs up there, and when he arrives, he
Speaker 3: finds that the silhouette in the chair that he believed
Speaker 3: to be Hinkas is actually just Hinkus's coat stuffed with
Speaker 3: balls of snow. It was like a decoy snowman. So
Speaker 3: where is Hincus. Well, the rumbling which started after Glebsky's
Speaker 3: shout begins to reach a sort of peak of intensity,
Speaker 3: and then the hotel guests see out the windows an
Speaker 3: avalanche coming down the mountain side.
Speaker 1: Oh man, So first he's Ferris buellerd by Hinkas here,
Speaker 1: and then we get the avalanche. And I have to
Speaker 1: point out they apparently induced avalanches for the sequences we
Speaker 1: see in the film. They weren't relying on stock footage
Speaker 1: or anything. No, I don't know the full details. They
Speaker 1: may have aligned that with like planned induced avalanches that
Speaker 1: were done for safety reasons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it looked totally real. I was like,
Speaker 3: these aren't special effects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are terrifying because at least later in the
Speaker 1: picture I can't remember this sequence so much. But later
Speaker 1: in the picture we get one where it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's coming right at the camera and like, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of snow, that's a lot of mass coming out.
Speaker 3: You totally agree, Yeah, very effective shots. So when the
Speaker 3: avalanche happens, the power goes out at first, and we
Speaker 3: will discover that the avalanche has blocked the road and
Speaker 3: trapped them on the hotel grounds. It has also knocked
Speaker 3: out the telephone lines, and according to Snavar in a
Speaker 3: later scene, it will probably be days before the authorities
Speaker 3: can clear the road and they can leave. So Glebsky's
Speaker 3: sort of on the case. He's trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what's going on. He investigates Hnkas's room and finds it empty.
Speaker 3: He searches through Hankas's belongings and finds a small pistol
Speaker 3: in his suitcase, and then Glebsky narrates though that this
Speaker 3: is not the weapon of a career criminal. He thinks
Speaker 3: somebody must be trying to set Hankas up, but who
Speaker 3: next thing, Snavar and Kaisa brings someone in from outside
Speaker 3: the hotel, someone who appears to be unconscious, and Glebsky
Speaker 3: goes to help and they're like, who is this. We
Speaker 3: don't know what's wrong, possibly hypothermia, And they're like, get brandy,
Speaker 3: gotta have liquor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those movies where hard spirits
Speaker 1: are essentially potions of healing, you know what. They're two called,
Speaker 1: get him some liquor. Oh, the injured liquor, the delirium, unconscious,
Speaker 1: and whatever it is. Surely hard spirits can can solve
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know why Hinkus is not just
Speaker 3: taking cotton candy flavored vodka for his for his tuberculosis,
Speaker 3: you know. Anyway, so Snaevar guesses maybe this is a
Speaker 3: friend of Hincus because he heard Hinkus dictating a telegram
Speaker 3: earlier telling someone to come quickly to join him at
Speaker 3: the hotel. Sohnkus has summoned someone earlier in the day,
Speaker 3: and we don't know who, but maybe this is who
Speaker 3: he called. Anyway, they give the guy some brandy and
Speaker 3: get him to say a couple of words. But all
Speaker 3: he can say is the name of Oloff.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Remember, Olof's already a guest here at the hotel. This
Speaker 3: is this is the dancer guy. So they go to
Speaker 3: check out Oloff's room. But when they get there, uh oh,
Speaker 3: they find him lying out on the floor, pale, motionless. Dead.
Speaker 1: Oloff is dead, all right, So now we really have
Speaker 1: a murder story going on here. It's time for our
Speaker 1: inspector to get back on the clock. He's got some work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, Oloff is not just dead, like his
Speaker 3: head is twisted around unnaturally. It's kind of the Exorcist
Speaker 3: going on here. So of course Glebsky concludes what strength
Speaker 3: the killer must have had, and we see him like
Speaker 3: lie down on the floor and try to mimic like
Speaker 3: twisting his head around. But they also see that Olof's
Speaker 3: hand was stretching out toward the handle of a suitcase,
Speaker 3: so it's like he was reaching for the suitcase when
Speaker 3: he died. In another room, they find Hinkus finally, but
Speaker 3: he is found tied to a bed. He says he
Speaker 3: was attacked by someone and he does not know who,
Speaker 3: and then the weird behavior just continues. We encounter Simone.
Speaker 3: Simone Simone, a physicist. He's running around in his tidy whiteies,
Speaker 3: trying to hide behind a sheet that he's like holding
Speaker 3: up with his hands. That's not gonna work, buddy, And
Speaker 3: we get a confession from him. Missus Moses is dead.
Speaker 3: He swears he didn't kill her. He says that he
Speaker 3: went into her room and she was already lying cold
Speaker 3: on the floor when he went in there. The wait, no,
Speaker 3: not lying cold on the floor, she was standing upright,
Speaker 3: but cold and dead. And then her wig fell off,
Speaker 3: revealing a bald head. Things are getting stranger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're getting a kind of a Blue Sunshine
Speaker 1: vibe going on in this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe she took the Blue Sunshine acid
Speaker 3: and now she's ready to activate. But then they go
Speaker 3: to missus Moses's room to check this out, and she's
Speaker 3: not dead. She's in there, alive, reading a book. She's fine.
Speaker 3: She smiles at them. So something really weird is a
Speaker 3: foot now, and Glebsky is starting to get frustrated because
Speaker 3: I think when it was just a murder, he was
Speaker 3: sort of like, he was like, Okay, I'm on the case,
Speaker 3: But now everything's so weird. He's like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on, and I don't like it. So back
Speaker 3: in Semone's rooms, Semine showers, he tries to sober up,
Speaker 3: and Glebsky shows him a strange contraption that he found
Speaker 3: with Olaf. It's this weird device inside the suitcase that
Speaker 3: Oloff had been reaching for. It has this soft pulsing
Speaker 3: light and it emits low beeping sounds, and Simone says
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what it is, but it could be
Speaker 3: something military or from outer space. Better be careful. Then
Speaker 3: he runs away in fear, so they I think they
Speaker 3: like lock up this contraption in a cabinet under the
Speaker 3: dog bed, and Glebsky has the only key, so he's
Speaker 3: the only person who can get to this suitcase. Now
Speaker 3: he goes and tries to talk to Brune, and the
Speaker 3: mystery just keeps developing. He tries to talk to Brune
Speaker 3: about what happened. She apparently Sawhnkas walking in the hall
Speaker 3: after he claimed to have been attacked. And then we
Speaker 3: go and check with Hinkus about this, what was going on?
Speaker 3: You know, were you lying? And he says that it
Speaker 3: was him that he tied himself up. The implication here
Speaker 3: is that there is another one of him.
Speaker 1: And this is a great scene. It's especially a great
Speaker 1: place for the actor Mick mcavver playing Hinkus to really
Speaker 1: shine because it's he's not just saying oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I encountered me and I tied him up, like no,
Speaker 1: this the character is clearly confronting this moment of horror,
Speaker 1: this moment of duplication where he encountered like his own double,
Speaker 1: his own doppelganger here and had this kind of violent
Speaker 1: interaction with them and is clearly just traumatized and confused
Speaker 1: by the whole incident.
Speaker 3: Yes, agree that Micaver is great in the scene, and
Speaker 3: Glebsky is totally disturbed at this point. He wanders through
Speaker 3: the hotel by himself thinking over the case. Like here,
Speaker 3: there's a visual motif of flickering lights, Like often somewhere
Speaker 3: in the background a light will flutter on and then
Speaker 3: flutter off on a loop throughout a scene. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: also a moment in here where somebody is watching TV,
Speaker 3: or at least there's a TV on somewhere, like in
Speaker 3: the lobby of the hotel, and it looks like what
Speaker 3: it's showing is like news clips of people falling out
Speaker 3: of buildings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was very disturbing. So this is like in
Speaker 1: a I think this kind of like circular room with
Speaker 1: one of these neat like central circular stoves warming everything up,
Speaker 1: and there's a TV. And Yeah, it was disturbing because
Speaker 1: on one hand, I kind of have to assume this
Speaker 1: is real footage of people falling to their deaths here,
Speaker 1: So it's outside of the context of the film, it's
Speaker 1: disturbing to see that kind of thing. But even within
Speaker 1: the context of the film, why is it playing here
Speaker 1: in the lobby of the hotel. Did they just play
Speaker 1: Faces of Death on repeat here?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do they tune into the outlaw videodrome snuff channels in
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's video drama film gets It's just weird and strange
Speaker 1: and just adds to that level of uncertainty about where
Speaker 1: we're going in this film. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there were more interrogation scenes where Glebsky's trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what's happening. He interrogates Brune about what
Speaker 3: happened earlier when she went to Oloff's room. She said
Speaker 3: that they were they're dancing, kissing, having a wild time,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly they see the avalanche beginning outside the
Speaker 3: window of the room, and Oloff panics and throws Brune
Speaker 3: out of the room into the hall, and then later
Speaker 3: he's found dead. Glebsky and Alex sort of talk over
Speaker 3: the mystery together. Snaevar's sort of Glebsky's confidant. He's playing
Speaker 3: his doctor Watson, and Alex says that Glebsky's rational investigatory
Speaker 3: tools are useless here. He says, like time at greater
Speaker 3: than light speed, that's a strange comparison, but then he says,
Speaker 3: there is nothing we can do. You are not ripe yet,
Speaker 3: And this is the moment when Glebsky says, I'm so
Speaker 3: ripe I will fall off the trees soon.
Speaker 1: I love this exchange. It's I assume something is lost
Speaker 1: in translation here, like it doesn't fully translate into English
Speaker 1: from the original Estonian, but I still sort of get it,
Speaker 1: like it's still it still feels very true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: In the scene also they talk about the concept of zombies,
Speaker 3: and Snavar wonders if perhaps zombie is the third state
Speaker 3: of living organisms, beyond life and death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very high.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky falls asleep listening to Snavar talk about zombies,
Speaker 3: and then he has dreams of skiing down a vast
Speaker 3: snow covered mountain side and he's going so fast. He
Speaker 3: seems to be smiling at first, but then maybe it
Speaker 3: seems his expression is actually one of fear. There are
Speaker 3: weird tones on the soundtrack that sound like animals wheezing.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly in the dream, Glebsky goes off the
Speaker 3: edge of a cliff and he falls and falls into
Speaker 3: the snow down below, and then from up above a
Speaker 3: figure looks down at his body. We zoom on the
Speaker 3: figure and there are two figures. In fact, it is
Speaker 3: the dead mountaineer from the portrait and his dog Lell.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Really great moment, you know, haunting and also makes
Speaker 1: us think back to that kind of the shrine like
Speaker 1: qualities of the dead mountaineer's portrait. You know, is the
Speaker 1: dead mountaineer like a even in the context of dream here?
Speaker 1: Is it like a ghost? Is it a divine force?
Speaker 1: And I also have to point out this may be
Speaker 1: the only sequence in the film where anybody does any skiing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is within a dream.
Speaker 3: No, there is some skiing later, but it happens without
Speaker 3: skis and in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and by by robots.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: I guess. Well, we did see the hang gliding earlier,
Speaker 1: and I guess maybe that involves skiing. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they got up there. Maybe they skied off of something.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. We'll come back to that in a minute. So,
Speaker 3: So Glebski is woken up by the saint Bernard Lell
Speaker 3: like slobbering on his face, and the dog has brought
Speaker 3: him something. It is a gun covered in drool. So
Speaker 3: Glebsky's like, where did it come from? Boy? And lel
Speaker 3: leads him outside into the snow and shows him where
Speaker 3: the gun was. Glebsky deduces that it must have been
Speaker 3: thrown from the roof, so did it belong to Hinkus? Next,
Speaker 3: Snaevar brings news, I remember that unconscious guy we found outside.
Speaker 3: He's conscious now, so they go to interrogate him. And
Speaker 3: now that he's awake, he really looks like death. There's
Speaker 3: this dark makeup under his eyes. His skin is pale,
Speaker 3: even kind of blue in places. The whites of his
Speaker 3: eyes are bloodshot, and he just stares ahead in a daze.
Speaker 3: And Glebsky interrogates him, finds out that his name is Lurevic,
Speaker 3: mister Lurevic, Luarvic. He is looking for Oloff, and he
Speaker 3: won't say a whole lot. Glebsky's like, who are you?
Speaker 3: Are you a foreigner? And the man says, yes, a foreigner.
Speaker 3: And also in this scene, mister moses remember him. He
Speaker 3: was kind of like nondescript earlier on. He tries to
Speaker 3: sneak in on the interrogation, but Glebsky chases him away
Speaker 3: and Lurevic, on finding out that Oloff is dead doesn't
Speaker 3: seem all that concerned. He says, well, he still needs
Speaker 3: to see Oloff anyway, to conduct some business with him.
Speaker 3: And Glebsky's like, no, he's dead, and Lurevic is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: let me talk to him. But in this whole scene,
Speaker 3: Luorovic is dreamy, languid, kind of unconcerned, but does look
Speaker 3: like he's in a bad state, and he does identify
Speaker 3: Oloff's body. He says, he recognizes he recognizes him, and
Speaker 3: he knew him from elsewhere. And this was one scene.
Speaker 3: Yet again, this is all throughout the movie. But I
Speaker 3: really noticed the presence of like the modular mirrors in
Speaker 3: the sets in the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's fitting, especially at this point in the picture,
Speaker 1: because we have already come head to head with this
Speaker 1: with a theme of duplication here, of doppel gangers and doubles,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I feel like we're constantly seeing characters
Speaker 1: in mirrors or multiple mirrors, and the hotel eventually feels
Speaker 1: like a place that's not only in the edge of
Speaker 1: the wilderness, but also in the edge of the known universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So Lurevic says he's looking for the suitcase
Speaker 3: that olof had and Glebsky says, I'm not just going
Speaker 3: to give it to you. You got to answer questions first.
Speaker 3: But of course Luvic he doesn't want to answer questions.
Speaker 3: He just wants the suitcase instead of answering questions. He
Speaker 3: gets very slow and says that he must lie down,
Speaker 3: and then he just sort of slumps back and appears
Speaker 3: to go to sleep with his eyes open. Somewhere in
Speaker 3: here there's a scene with Snavar playing the organ and
Speaker 3: he's not good at it, and Glebsky's just kind of
Speaker 3: lounging stoically, smoking a cigarette and listening to the bad
Speaker 3: organ concert. And so, you know, they again have one
Speaker 3: of their detective consultation sessions. They talk to each other
Speaker 3: about what could be going on, and Glebsky says, you know,
Speaker 3: he's nearly convinced that Lurevic Oloff and mister Moses, or
Speaker 3: either mister or missus Moses, maybe both of them. He
Speaker 3: doesn't say who. He says they belong to the same gang,
Speaker 3: which doesn't want publicity, and he thinks Hnkas is somehow
Speaker 3: connected to them as well because of the gun he found.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky comes up with a plan. He says he's
Speaker 3: gonna stop detaining Hnkas and set him free, quote like
Speaker 3: a fox into a chicken coop to see what happens. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Glebsky is busy playing with a metal wind up robot toy.
Speaker 3: I don't know about this plan, Glebski. Is that a
Speaker 3: good police police work plan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, seems like this is more like rogue cop territory. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So everybody comes down for breakfast the next morning.
Speaker 3: I guess when he's gonna set Hankus loose. And Simon
Speaker 3: A says, I sense the smell of death in here,
Speaker 3: and Bruin says, beautiful weather today. Poor Olof didn't live
Speaker 3: to see it. And Lurevic is now at breakfast with
Speaker 3: the rest of him. He has to be guided to
Speaker 3: his breakfast chair and he eats some piece of fruit,
Speaker 3: like letting this juice run all over his face. I
Speaker 3: think Hinkas arrives to breakfast wearing a tuxedo. That's kind
Speaker 3: of that's a choice. But Glebsky says, you know, quote,
Speaker 3: it appears some crooks selected this hotel as a place
Speaker 3: to settle their scores. With the help of mister Snavar,
Speaker 3: I sent word to the police by pigeon. The police
Speaker 3: helicopter will arrive shortly, the criminals will get their just desserts.
Speaker 3: I advise that criminal activity be ceased. Of course, what
Speaker 3: is Missus Moses's reaction to this going to be? Of course,
Speaker 3: she's like, oh boy, how exciting killers among us? I
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 1: Stop doing crimes, everybody, because the helicopter will shoot.
Speaker 3: Yes, I got the pigeon to bring a helicopter that
Speaker 3: will stop you from doing crimes. Of course, the pigeon
Speaker 3: thing was actually a bluff. Glebsky knows he is on
Speaker 3: his own now. This leads up to the interrogation of
Speaker 3: Hankas scene. Hankas is like the last one eating breakfast,
Speaker 3: and then Glebsky watches him and pulls him aside. He's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I know about you from the note I received. You're
Speaker 3: this criminal called Owl, and Hankas says, no, I'm not Owl.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about. He's asked about
Speaker 3: the gun. He denies that it's his, but then suddenly
Speaker 3: he sort of busts out and unleashes martial arts that
Speaker 3: he would not have seemed prepared to deliver, Like he's
Speaker 3: been playing like he's in poor health, but he easily
Speaker 3: beats up Glebsky, knocks him nearly unconscious, takes the gun
Speaker 3: with him, and then while the inspector is lying on
Speaker 3: the floor, we hear Hankas fighting with someone else off camera,
Speaker 3: and somehow I guess it is Simone the physicist. Like
Speaker 3: Simon a beat bestshnkas and then helps Glebski up. That's unexpected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now it's time to interrogate Hankas once.
Speaker 3: Yeah, round two here and Hankas finally spills the beans.
Speaker 3: He's like, okay, here's the deal. Have you heard of
Speaker 3: the hit squads? That's what he says. I was a
Speaker 3: member of one of them. Something terrible is going on here.
Speaker 3: Supernatural forces are at work. He explains that quote. Half
Speaker 3: a year ago, some guy approached us. No one knew
Speaker 3: his name. They called him Master. They assigned him the
Speaker 3: hardest jobs, remember the second National Bank job. That was
Speaker 3: his doing. But then he quit working for us, left
Speaker 3: us high and dry. Oh. Yes, he was always a
Speaker 3: bit eccentric. Wouldn't let us kill hostages or anyone. He said,
Speaker 3: we shouldn't. That's why we had a fight with the
Speaker 3: boss and then he disappeared, along with his assistant and
Speaker 3: his wife. I was ordered by the boss to find them,
Speaker 3: And Glebsky says, and you found them here? Who are they?
Speaker 3: And Hankas says, no, you tell me who they are.
Speaker 3: What man could get the better of me as if
Speaker 3: I were a kitten. So you think he's talking about
Speaker 3: Semone here because Simine just like beat him up after
Speaker 3: the first interrogation, and we look at Semine. But actually
Speaker 3: it goes in a different direction. Hankas says, this woman
Speaker 3: Moses knows I would not let him live, so he
Speaker 3: set his wife against me. She was coming right at me.
Speaker 3: You don't believe me, but I was approaching myself. And
Speaker 3: so we see in Hankas's flashback Missus Moses in her
Speaker 3: fur coat seeming to transform into a doppelganger of Hnkas
Speaker 3: and then attack him by pushing him out a glass window.
Speaker 3: So what's going on? I don't know, But missus Moses
Speaker 3: apparently can become can like transform her appearance and become
Speaker 3: copies of people and attack them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have shape shifters among us now.
Speaker 3: Sohnkus admits he's here to hunt down this guy, the
Speaker 3: Master and his assistant and his wife. Now, Hinkas says
Speaker 3: he doesn't actually know what happened to Olaf. He says
Speaker 3: he never laid a finger on him. But his gang
Speaker 3: boss is coming with three or four guys to finish
Speaker 3: the job, to kill mister Moses, who, in fact, the
Speaker 3: nondescript mister Moses, who seemed so innocent and you know,
Speaker 3: not even very remarkable, was in fact this this criminal mastermind,
Speaker 3: the master who did the second National Bank job, and
Speaker 3: except he got into some kind of squabble with this
Speaker 3: terrorist or criminal gang and now they're looking for revenge.
Speaker 1: All right, So we've reached the secret mob members level
Speaker 1: of the big reveal here.
Speaker 3: But then there's going to be another reveal, which is
Speaker 3: so there's a confrontation where Glebsky goes into a room
Speaker 3: with Snaevar and Simone. They're all here gathered in the room,
Speaker 3: and when Glebsky enters the room, he sees himself what
Speaker 3: but then the other hymn transforms back into someone else.
Speaker 3: He realizes that here in the room are mister and
Speaker 3: missus Moses and someone else. Luarvic sitting doubled over in
Speaker 3: a chair, and Glebsky tries to say, okay, based on
Speaker 3: the testimony of Hincus, mister Moses, you are guilty of
Speaker 3: the robbery of the Second National Bank and of the
Speaker 3: murder of Oloff, and I'm going to have to arrest you.
Speaker 3: But Simone is there and he explains, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you don't get it, Inspector, these are not humans. They're
Speaker 3: aliens from another planet. He says, I don't know where
Speaker 3: they're from, another dimension or galaxy, but they're in trouble
Speaker 3: and we have to help them. He says, mister Moses
Speaker 3: arrived here as an observer, but he made a fatal mistake.
Speaker 3: He should not have contacted humans. And mister Moses explains that.
Speaker 3: He says, it's true. I wasn't supposed to interfere with
Speaker 3: human life, but when I saw how you were living,
Speaker 3: I broke the rule. I wanted to help you so much,
Speaker 3: but your life proved to be too complex for me.
Speaker 3: So somehow this part is a little murky for me.
Speaker 3: But somehow mister Moses, being an alien observer of Earth
Speaker 3: who was supposed to look at human life but not
Speaker 3: interfere with it, decided that he took pity on us
Speaker 3: because of all the human suffering and got involved. But
Speaker 3: the way he got involved was with some kind of
Speaker 3: criminal gang. I'm not quite sure I'm making the connection there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe there's some sort of robin Hood thing going
Speaker 1: on there, or maybe he was like, crime is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of damage. I'm going to get in there
Speaker 1: and do crime really well, but not hurt anybody. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and that why so I don't know, you know, he's
Speaker 1: going up against very difficult societal and yeah, yeah, problems
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: So but given all the backstory we already got from Hinkas,
Speaker 3: now we know that the gang bosses are hunting down
Speaker 3: these these fugitive aliens, and so mister Moses is here
Speaker 3: at the hotel so he could leave the planet. They say,
Speaker 3: here in the mountains is our launch pad, but the
Speaker 3: avalanche destroyed the generator that powered our robots. So Missus
Speaker 3: Moses and Oloff are the robot helpers of mister Moses
Speaker 3: and Luarvic. The man they discovered outside is the pilot
Speaker 3: of the alien spaceship, and he was severely injured to say,
Speaker 3: his spacesuit is torn. He's becoming weaker every second. So
Speaker 3: so what I mean this reveal is very sudden, and
Speaker 3: it's just kind of like poured on Glebsky and like,
Speaker 3: how is he supposed to react?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again it doesn't come with reveals of robotic
Speaker 1: interiors to human bodies or anything like.
Speaker 3: Right, but they say that remember that suitcase Olof was
Speaker 3: reaching for, It actually has another battery and if they
Speaker 3: return it, if they if Glebsky will return the battery
Speaker 3: to them, Oloff can be revived and then he won't
Speaker 3: be dead at all. He's just a robot who's on
Speaker 3: low power and they'll give him more power and he's fine,
Speaker 3: so this won't actually be a murder. But Glebsky thinks
Speaker 3: this is all madness. He says that every crime can
Speaker 3: be explained by appealing to fantasy, and this leads to
Speaker 3: arguments between Glebsky and Semone. Simina is saying like, look,
Speaker 3: you're being offered proof right now, see for yourself. But
Speaker 3: Glebsky says, interestingly, quote, I'm not a scientist, I'm a
Speaker 3: police officer. I've heard too many lies about the suitcase.
Speaker 3: So he's sort of saying that he operates not just
Speaker 3: on physical evidence, but by primarily suspicion of motive, which
Speaker 3: can even override physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Hmmm. Oh.
Speaker 3: We also find out here that mister Moses is the
Speaker 3: one that called the police and slipped the note into
Speaker 3: Glebsky's pocket, and it's because he wanted to be rid
Speaker 3: of Hinkus and he knew Hankus was there. He was
Speaker 3: the criminal who was hunting him. And so at one
Speaker 3: point in this conversation, mister Moses laments. He's like, it's
Speaker 3: it's troubling that you won't be convinced because our robots
Speaker 3: are too convincing as humans. You know, if they were
Speaker 3: just obviously robots, then maybe you'd believe us. He says,
Speaker 3: it's a pity I can't show you my real face.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is kind of getting to my earlier
Speaker 1: point about this is not the sort of film that
Speaker 1: is that that needs to show you the alien face
Speaker 1: that the robotic interiors. Again, I wouldn't have said no
Speaker 1: to it, but you can understand this choice based on
Speaker 1: this interaction. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but here we get this this conflict with Glebsky
Speaker 3: where he's like, no, I must turn you into the law.
Speaker 3: So he's he's conflicted, and he wanders around the hotel alone.
Speaker 3: At one point he even picks up a phone receiver
Speaker 3: and then says in voiceover narration that he wishes the
Speaker 3: phone would simply give him orders to follow because he
Speaker 3: sort of feels like he can't think for himself, he
Speaker 3: can't decide what's the right thing to do. So he
Speaker 3: walks out into the snow and he meets Brune out there.
Speaker 3: Remember Brune was the one who was in love with Olaf,
Speaker 3: and Brune begs him to give the battery to them
Speaker 3: so they can revive Oloft. So she's read into the
Speaker 3: whole theory now and she believes it. He's like, Glebsky
Speaker 3: tries to tell her this is nonsense, it's a fairy tale,
Speaker 3: but she says, if there's something that even might help him,
Speaker 3: you've got to give it a try. And she says,
Speaker 3: if Olof is an android, maybe she's an android too.
Speaker 3: She says, how could I know? So this all finally
Speaker 3: leads to a conclusion where Glebsky is trying to arrest
Speaker 3: mister Moses and won't give the battery back, but eventually
Speaker 3: he is sort of overpowered and overruled by Simone and
Speaker 3: by Snaevar, who both they are aware of the aliens
Speaker 3: and robots, and they want to help them, so they
Speaker 3: sort of restrain Glebsky, and they get the suitcase and
Speaker 3: they give it to the Aliens so that Oloft can
Speaker 3: be powered back up. And there are these moments in
Speaker 3: here where Semine is reflecting on the tragedy of the situation.
Speaker 3: Simone says, here is the first encounter between two worlds.
Speaker 3: Think of how amazing this is, but think that they
Speaker 3: arrive from god knows where. First they meet terrorists, and
Speaker 3: then they meet a police officer like you, Glebsky, sort
Speaker 3: of saying like you're showing them the worst side of humanity.
Speaker 3: But finally, as the Aliens get the battery back and
Speaker 3: they are allowed to escape, like the whole building starts
Speaker 3: shaking and rumbling like something huge is coming. Glass shatters
Speaker 3: in the windows and we hear a voice echoing saying
Speaker 3: goodbye humans. Real contact is yet to come. And then
Speaker 3: we get one of the most striking shots the movie,
Speaker 3: which is the aliens departing. They're like cloaked figures seemingly
Speaker 3: skiing uphill without skis to the top of the mountains
Speaker 3: so they can get in their spaceship and leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just robots, moving swiftly, unnaturally over the surface of.
Speaker 3: The syn Right, so Missus Moses is carrying mister Moses,
Speaker 3: Olaf is carrying Luarvic and they're gonna escape to the stars. Unfortunately, Oh,
Speaker 3: here comes a helicopter. And at first you might think, oh,
Speaker 3: the helicopter, that's that's gonna be their rescue, right, No,
Speaker 3: it's the gang. It's the gang members. It's Hnkas's gang arriving,
Speaker 3: and the helicopter buzzes over their heads. Finally, after Snavar
Speaker 3: sees it and says God forgive us all, the helicopter
Speaker 3: unleashes its guns and it kills the two Aliens and
Speaker 3: the the androids and they lie dead in the snow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, blows them right up. Aliens robots completely destroyed.
Speaker 3: So the helicopter we see like the Saint Bernard howling
Speaker 3: in pity. The hell copter leaves Silent Mountain peaks with
Speaker 3: this with again the creepy, squeaking synthesizers playing out the story,
Speaker 3: and in the end, the camera zooms in on the
Speaker 3: sun and then zooms out from the hotel. There is
Speaker 3: a lot of zooming of the camera in this film,
Speaker 3: and a huge avalanche approaches billowing over the mountain side,
Speaker 3: finally enveloping the camera. This is one of these avalanche
Speaker 3: shots we talked about earlier, and the final shot of
Speaker 3: the film is actually Glebsky later in black and white,
Speaker 3: suddenly staring directly into the camera and he asks why
Speaker 3: you're looking at them looking at him. He insists that
Speaker 3: he acted correctly. He says, by upholding the law, he
Speaker 3: performed his duty and the law is sacred, and he's
Speaker 3: sort of like he gets defensive and angry, and it
Speaker 3: just repeatedly insists directly into the audience's face that he
Speaker 3: was right, he did the right thing, and considerations to
Speaker 3: the contrary are just being illogical.
Speaker 1: Now corning to the feature D, this scene, this apper
Speaker 1: at the end in black and white, with him speaking
Speaker 1: directly to the camera. This is actually footage from this
Speaker 1: is casting footage for the film, and they added it
Speaker 1: in post because the studio thought that the ending wasn't
Speaker 1: clear enough.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, which which.
Speaker 1: Is Yeah, I mean I think it still works. You know,
Speaker 1: it reminds me a bit of you know, some of
Speaker 1: those those fourth wall breaking moments in Baraka or the
Speaker 1: ending of the mission. You know, there's a and and
Speaker 1: it makes sense. It's not completely out of contact with
Speaker 1: the film, because we get those scenes where he's narrating,
Speaker 1: he's speaking to us, and then it seems kind of
Speaker 1: fitting that at the end he is looking at us,
Speaker 1: He is addressing us directly about this strange encounter that
Speaker 1: he had and these choices that he had to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess that does it for Dead Mountaineer's Hotel.
Speaker 3: But I found this a really interesting film. It does
Speaker 3: actually raise interesting themes in the end, but they kind
Speaker 3: of come late in the film, these themes about like,
Speaker 3: can this bureaucratic functionary, this policeman make a decision that
Speaker 3: makes sense given what he's just encountered, or can he
Speaker 3: just like not accept what's in front of him and
Speaker 3: sort of act as a as almost as a machine,
Speaker 3: as a robot himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating film. I really enjoyed diving
Speaker 1: into it. I enjoyed getting into this realm of Estonian cinema.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll throw it out to our listeners there.
Speaker 1: If you've seen Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, or if you've read
Speaker 1: the source material, or are you yourself listening of from Estonia,
Speaker 1: do you do you have additional insight about Estonian culture
Speaker 1: and cinema locations, actors, and so forth, write in We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Just a reminder of
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 1: and culture podcast, with new episodes, core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 1: but then on Fridays, we just set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. If you want a full list of the
Speaker 1: movies we've covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 1: That's L E T T E R B O x
Speaker 1: D dot com. Our username is weird House. You'll find
Speaker 1: a list there of everything we've covered so far, and
Speaker 1: sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Our regular audio producer Jjposway is out this week, so
Speaker 3: huge thanks to our guest producer Andrew Howard for helping
Speaker 3: us out today. Appreciate it, Andrew. If you would like
Speaker 3: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 3: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 3: or just to say hello, you can email us as
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