Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen fifty two finish folk horror film The
Speaker 3: White Reindeer, starring Miryami Quosmanan and directed by Eric Blomberg.
Speaker 3: If I may say, I think this is the finest
Speaker 3: ware ungulate movie I have ever seen.
Speaker 2: It may be the finest ware ungulate movie I can envision,
Speaker 2: because the concept to many of you, I imagine were
Speaker 2: wolf fans to the last of you, I'm assuming you
Speaker 2: might struggle to get excited for a ware reindeer picture.
Speaker 2: And yet this one is really good. It's classy, it's
Speaker 2: basically art house and has some, you know, almost kind
Speaker 2: of documentary vibes to it at times. It's very well
Speaker 2: done and ultimately makes you buying completely to this concept
Speaker 2: that I have to admit that on the surface, too
Speaker 2: many of us might seem a little silly.
Speaker 3: Oh by the end, I was terrified of reindeers. Is
Speaker 3: that a correct plural would not be Reindeer's it'd still
Speaker 3: be reindeer. That's plural. You just to say the dear Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: but yeah. So this movie is set in the culture
Speaker 3: of pre Christian Lapland today the northernmost region of Finland,
Speaker 3: and The White Reindeer tells a story of love and loneliness,
Speaker 3: of women's dependence and independence in culture, of longing and desire,
Speaker 3: of witchcraft, of transformation, and of murder. It's got all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff going on. So the basic premise of
Speaker 3: the story is that Pirita, a woman of the north
Speaker 3: married to a hard working reindeer herder Lapland, finds herself
Speaker 3: unhappy with life, and she seeks the help of a
Speaker 3: wizard who prescribes for her a ritual that will make
Speaker 3: her irresistible to men. But unfortunately, this magic spell has
Speaker 3: a toxic interaction with the pre existing condition of her
Speaker 3: being a genetic witch since birth, and instead of merely
Speaker 3: becoming the bell of the Ball, Pirita is transformed into
Speaker 3: a kind of seductive, somnambulist and reindeer version of a werewolf,
Speaker 3: assuming fur and antlers by the light of the moon
Speaker 3: and luring unsuspecting herdsmen to their deaths. Now, Rob, there's
Speaker 3: one little random claim I read on the Internet that
Speaker 3: made a lot more sense of the story to me
Speaker 3: after I read it. I don't know this is true,
Speaker 3: but it seems likely given the story here. It's not
Speaker 3: explained in the story itself, but apparently the Sami people,
Speaker 3: whose culture is depicted in this story. Among the Samni people,
Speaker 3: it was a common folk belief that there was something
Speaker 3: special about a white or albino reindeer, and if you
Speaker 3: could catch a wild white reindeer, it would bring you
Speaker 3: great fortune.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that does help flash things out a little bit.
Speaker 3: So the white reindeer has a kind of interesting release history.
Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about it in a book
Speaker 3: called one hundred European Horror Films, edited by Stephen J. Schneider,
Speaker 3: and apparently it's nineteen fifty two debut in the Finnish
Speaker 3: capital of Helsinki happened during the summer Olympics in Helsinki,
Speaker 3: which resulted in what the author calls near vacant screenings.
Speaker 3: Nobody was gone to see it, but so not a
Speaker 3: good way to start. But it caught on domestically after this,
Speaker 3: in a second run later that summer or maybe in
Speaker 3: the fall and it started getting good press and would
Speaker 3: eventually become something of an international hit, receiving a number
Speaker 3: of wards, including at the con Film Festival. We'll get
Speaker 3: into more on that later, but it's kind of interesting
Speaker 3: that this was a sort of sensation at the time,
Speaker 3: and I think for most of my life I'd never
Speaker 3: even heard of it. I never became aware of it
Speaker 3: until just recently.
Speaker 2: I was not aware of it until you texted me
Speaker 2: over the weekend and said, I have chosen for this week.
Speaker 2: It's the White Reindeer. And I at the time I
Speaker 2: was I was like, of course, you know, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, let's do Let's do the white Reindeer.
Speaker 2: But I was also thinking, this is an interesting summer choice.
Speaker 2: But of course we just did a cour Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blowy Night episode on skiing, so it's not out out
Speaker 2: of keeping with us to do something that seems seasonally opposite.
Speaker 2: But oh, ice skating, Yeah, ice skating, Sorry, not skiing.
Speaker 2: We haven't done skiing yet, but we should skiing.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of skiing in the movie.
Speaker 2: She But but now that you mentioned that this originally
Speaker 2: came out in the summer, it is fitting that we're
Speaker 2: talking about it in the summer.
Speaker 3: I mean, I happen to personally love counter seasonal programming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's just me.
Speaker 3: Now. I think it could be interesting to compare this
Speaker 3: film to other Rare Beast movies we've covered on the show,
Speaker 3: But maybe we should come back to that later or
Speaker 3: just as it occurs to us throughout. One thing I
Speaker 3: do think we should talk about briefly at the top
Speaker 3: is this movie's visual stylistic virtue, As many reviewers mentioned
Speaker 3: this as a real highlight of the film, the bold,
Speaker 3: stark way that it looks. It was shot on location
Speaker 3: in real snowy landscapes of northern Finland, in Lapland, And
Speaker 3: so you get these the fells, you know, these kind
Speaker 3: of like like low sloping or rounded mountaintops or hilltops,
Speaker 3: many of which are bear some of which have just
Speaker 3: kind of I don't know, sad looking like snow covered
Speaker 3: tree limbs poking out.
Speaker 2: Like every portion of the tree, trees iced over in
Speaker 2: ways that those of us in more southern climate's scared
Speaker 2: can imagine. Like it looks almost Sussian, you know, the
Speaker 2: way these trees are iced over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, true Arctic strangeness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jack frost hit this landscape hard, but also.
Speaker 3: Like herds of reindeer stretching to the horizon in some shots,
Speaker 3: those are quite striking. And then these little and then
Speaker 3: the way that the movie deals with both absolutely empty
Speaker 3: expanses and then these little closed boxes in the homes.
Speaker 3: You know that. So you'll go out in this field
Speaker 3: and it's just like seeing far to the horizon and
Speaker 3: there's nothing there but a few like you know, leafless
Speaker 3: shrubs or this, you know, this train of animals just
Speaker 3: stretching over the horizon and there's like nothing else to see.
Speaker 3: But then you arrive at the Wizard Shack and you
Speaker 3: go inside and it looks like it's about like eight
Speaker 3: feet by eight feet. Inside it's like tiny but crammed
Speaker 3: with evil magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that you mentioned it that way reminds me
Speaker 2: of some past discussions we had on the on the
Speaker 2: Core and stuff to blow your mind episodes about the
Speaker 2: art of Tibet and like in tear spaces into Bet
Speaker 2: interior sacred spaces versus the exterior world where you have
Speaker 2: like huge sky and sweeping vistas, And we have a
Speaker 2: similar vibe going on here, you know, with these these
Speaker 2: little enclosed often you know, very dark, cozy spaces, and
Speaker 2: then outside it's just like a white wasteland, but in
Speaker 2: the most beautiful sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these things filmed in a way that is both
Speaker 3: frightening and beautiful.
Speaker 2: If we haven't mentioned it already, this is a black
Speaker 2: and white film, which, especially in these shots of the
Speaker 2: of the landscape, seem very fitting.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's like everything is very very white, and the
Speaker 2: shadows have this this depth to them, and then the
Speaker 2: indoor scenes, especially at night, also feel it feels appropriate.
Speaker 2: I will say there are a few scenes of just
Speaker 2: sort of normal everyday life or celebration within the community
Speaker 2: that I kind of wished we could have seen in color,
Speaker 2: because I feel like those were Yeah, I just kind
Speaker 2: of wanted to see the colors there. But on the whole,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, the black and white and this is absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3: I just realized there's really no way around it. But
Speaker 3: we're gonna say the words reindeer and snow so many
Speaker 3: times in this episode. I was just like going through
Speaker 3: my notes trying to think of synonyms, so I wasn't
Speaker 3: repeating myself so much. But in a way it's fitting
Speaker 3: because this movie is just it's just plowing straight into
Speaker 3: your brain with reindeer and snow, there's so much of both.
Speaker 2: Most of the location is snow, and there are far
Speaker 2: far more reindeer in the picture than human beings. Like
Speaker 2: it's just it's just a fact. There's just so many
Speaker 2: reindeer on the screen at different points. But in a
Speaker 2: way that is again, it feels very when you see
Speaker 2: people interacting with the reindeer. When you see it feels
Speaker 2: almost like a documentary, like a snapshot of life. There's
Speaker 2: not a sense of like, all right, let's get the
Speaker 2: reindeer wrangler out there so we can get this shot.
Speaker 2: Like this, this film feels very real.
Speaker 3: I believe the director of it had made documentaries and
Speaker 3: maybe even on this subject right correct.
Speaker 2: His first short picture as well, we'll discuss here in
Speaker 2: a minute, was about Lapland reindeer herders, So it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very fitting. I should also point out that this
Speaker 2: film is in many spaces very light on dialogue. It
Speaker 2: has almost a silent film sensibility.
Speaker 3: That's notable in multiple ways. It does contribute to the
Speaker 3: mood of the film because there are long silent stretches
Speaker 3: where there's just music, no talking in between the dialogue scenes,
Speaker 3: and that I think that does contribute to the kind
Speaker 3: of lonely, eerie feeling that they're attempting to conjure, especially
Speaker 3: when we're just alone with Perita. Yeah, but in addition
Speaker 3: to that the lack of dialogue, it shows a real
Speaker 3: what seems to me to be a conscious choice of
Speaker 3: narrative restraint that keeps many things about characters motivations and
Speaker 3: thoughts a mystery very different than I think most other
Speaker 3: movies at this time would have done.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: I feel like if this same kind of subject had
Speaker 3: been approached by an American filmmaker at this time, there
Speaker 3: would have been a lot more voiceover explaining the interior
Speaker 3: thoughts of characters of perioda and aslock. But we don't
Speaker 3: get that, so very often we're just sort of left
Speaker 3: wondering what they're thinking about what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has a very European art house sensibility in
Speaker 2: that respect. And yeah, and there will be no transformation
Speaker 2: scenes in this in the way that you get them
Speaker 2: in a certainly American and many European examples of ladder
Speaker 2: monster movies and so specifically were Wolf movies. But then again,
Speaker 2: you don't need a transformation scene for a great shape
Speaker 2: shifter movie.
Speaker 3: That's right, I mean, And in fact, this movie it
Speaker 3: doesn't really have a lot in the way of special effects,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't really need them because the way it
Speaker 3: handles its subject matter is just very natural and graceful.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 3: So, there's a character who transforms into a reindeer in
Speaker 3: these in the murder scenes, and you'll see her just
Speaker 3: sort of leap out of frame, and in the next frame,
Speaker 3: the reindeer leaps into frame. And it's a very simple
Speaker 3: way to depict this kind of transformation without showing it
Speaker 3: in frame, and it works just fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this reminds me I want to mention really quickly.
Speaker 2: When I was looking up the reviews on letterbox for
Speaker 2: this film, one of the people I followed, John from
Speaker 2: Video Drum here in Atlanta, made the comment somehow this
Speaker 2: is one of those low budget or enormous budget watching
Speaker 2: experiences which I can totally I can totally feel, because again,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 2: that naturalistic vibe, this kind of like documentary feel to it.
Speaker 2: At times, you can feel like, well, all they did
Speaker 2: was turn on the camera and this is just this
Speaker 2: is just what it is there. This is life. But
Speaker 2: then again, when you start thinking about, like, you know,
Speaker 2: any documentary about filmmaking you've seen, like, no, maybe this
Speaker 2: was absolutely an enormously expensive picture. It's just hard to tell, especially,
Speaker 2: you know, being so far from this environment, and from
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 3: I agree that it feels that way, though, I guess
Speaker 3: we should just flag that I don't necessarily want to
Speaker 3: vouch for this film's cultural authenticity and how it depicts
Speaker 3: the Sami culture and all that, because I don't really
Speaker 3: know how well it captures that. I didn't find sources
Speaker 3: addressing this. It clearly is trying. It seems to me
Speaker 3: to be trying to capture a kind of cultural authenticity,
Speaker 3: but I don't know how well in reality it actually
Speaker 3: did that.
Speaker 2: Right, We can point to other examples from the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and different cinema editions where there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of finesse shown in sort of cultural depictions. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we would. I think it's reasonable for us to have
Speaker 2: a healthy amount of skepticism, all right. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't know if this had a trailer, or if whatever
Speaker 2: kind of trailer it originally had in Finland, if it
Speaker 2: exists online anywhere, we may the air just a little
Speaker 2: bit of what I think is a modern trailer for
Speaker 2: it that Eureka Entertainment put out. Eureka Entertainment is responsible
Speaker 2: for what I believe is the main Blu Ray option
Speaker 2: for this picture. I did not watch it on this
Speaker 2: Blue ray. I streamed it. It's widely available for streaming
Speaker 2: wherever you get your streaming pictures. But it looks like
Speaker 2: the Blu ray is a really nice package with a
Speaker 2: number of extras and menuima, a lench line and.
Speaker 3: Yellow and took.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's let's get into the uh casting
Speaker 2: crew here a little bit. And I always want to
Speaker 2: apologize for any pronunciation errors with names and such. We
Speaker 2: haven't done really any finish films before. We've done some
Speaker 2: Russo finish co productions.
Speaker 3: Yeah Rose Russo finished things, right, yeah, yeah, But this
Speaker 3: is I think that this is our first like purely
Speaker 3: finished film from the golden age of Finnish cinema.
Speaker 2: And don't understand. And I want to note I'm going
Speaker 2: to refer several times to the Juicy Awards Jussi. There
Speaker 2: may be more USY Awards. They're essentially like Finnish Academy
Speaker 2: Awards and I think maybe there's a little Emmy energy
Speaker 2: in there, because I think they also recognized television projects,
Speaker 2: or at least came to at some point. They've been
Speaker 2: held since nineteen forty four, and I'm going to refer
Speaker 2: back to them several different times here. Okay, so the
Speaker 2: key individuals, as we've already noted, are going to be
Speaker 2: Eric Blomberg, who is credited as the director, one of
Speaker 2: the writers, certainly the cinematographer, and also the editor, as
Speaker 2: well as his wife mir Jammi Kuzmannin And She Is
Speaker 2: Our Star, she is also credited as one of the writers.
Speaker 2: But I was reading about her specifically on a website
Speaker 2: called Nordic Women in Film dot com, and in this
Speaker 2: this write up they mentioned just how closely these two
Speaker 2: work together their projects. I think the quote is from
Speaker 2: one of them, is that when it came to projects
Speaker 2: they worked on, you would have to use a pair
Speaker 2: of tweezers to separate what each one did. So this
Speaker 2: division of labor here we get is in many ways
Speaker 2: maybe just a reflection of what their backgrounds were. Her
Speaker 2: background wasn't acting. His background was in cinematography and was
Speaker 2: behind the camera, and therefore they're credited as such, and
Speaker 2: it's also been pointed out that there were very few
Speaker 2: female directors in Finnish cinema at the time, so maybe
Speaker 2: that was another reason that her name wasn't at the top.
Speaker 2: But like they work so closely together, just keep that
Speaker 2: in mind as we're talking about these divisions, because it
Speaker 2: seems like this whole project was a collaboration.
Speaker 3: Right, so it should be kind of thought of as
Speaker 3: that them as co filmmakers.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and they were very open yeah about this.
Speaker 2: So let's start with Eric though he lived nineteen thirteen
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety six, Finish cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director,
Speaker 2: not to be confused with the Swedish poet of the
Speaker 2: same name. This Blomberg started off as a cinematographer with
Speaker 2: credits going back to nineteen thirty six, and he was
Speaker 2: a producer from nineteen thirty eight onward. His first directorial
Speaker 2: credit was a nineteen forty seven documentary short titled With
Speaker 2: the Reindeer about the reindeer of Lapland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as we alluded to earlier, that is not surprising
Speaker 3: if you've seen the film that he had shot documentary
Speaker 3: footage about reindeer herding or about reindeer in general. There
Speaker 3: is a I don't even know how to identify what
Speaker 3: the points leading to this impression are, but there's just
Speaker 3: a feeling of familiarity with the subject, if that makes
Speaker 3: any sense.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, and it was well received. This documentary short
Speaker 2: won a USYE Award. I'm going to go ahead just
Speaker 2: say ucy instead of juicy, just because it sounds better
Speaker 2: to me. But that may also be incorrect, okay. He
Speaker 2: followed this short up with a handful of additional shorts
Speaker 2: before tackling this his first feature length film, again a
Speaker 2: collaboration with his wife. She co wrote it, and again
Speaker 2: that they were you'd have to use a tweezer to
Speaker 2: separate what they were each working on in their own words.
Speaker 2: As you pointed out, nobody seemed to go to see
Speaker 2: it at first because they released it during the summer Olympics,
Speaker 2: but then it began to pick up steam domestically and
Speaker 2: then ultimately was very well received internationally. Not only did
Speaker 2: it earn them a UC for cinematography, it was nominated
Speaker 2: for the Grand Prize of the cons Film Festival in
Speaker 2: fifty three, and it won in its fairy Tale Film category,
Speaker 2: which excited me and I had to research this. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what else won? What else was nominated? I don't think
Speaker 2: this category existed previously or afterwards, So I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what the story is here. If they were if they
Speaker 2: invented a category to honor this film, which if that's
Speaker 2: the case, great, this film totally earned it, or if
Speaker 2: they were like, yes, fairy tale films they need their
Speaker 2: own category, and then it just they decided not to
Speaker 2: keep doing it. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I'm getting out of the pitch. Bring it back, Bring
Speaker 3: it back to the Cohn judges. We need a fairy
Speaker 3: tale film category.
Speaker 2: Do it? Yeah, and maybe you'd encourage even more fairy
Speaker 2: tale films. I don't think we have enough of them.
Speaker 2: So Blomberg followed this up with a handful of feature
Speaker 2: link films, some more short works, and finally a couple
Speaker 2: of TV movies in sixty six and sixty eight. Of these,
Speaker 2: his nineteen fifty five film Killouse also won a Ucy
Speaker 2: for cinematography, but The White Reindeer I Believe remains his
Speaker 2: most well known film, certainly internationally, and continues to resonate
Speaker 2: not only as an example of Finnish cinema, during it
Speaker 2: from the golden era of Finnish cinema, but also as
Speaker 2: a rich entry in Global full car.
Speaker 3: I've read that Blomberg did not do a lot else
Speaker 3: in this sort of magical category.
Speaker 2: Right, that's I'm to understand that as well. Looking at
Speaker 2: his other pictures, I don't think anything else could qualify
Speaker 2: as you know, specula as having a speculative element.
Speaker 3: Okay, but that was Eric Blomberg. Let's talk Miriami Kosmanan.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Kospannen lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: She plays our Witch Reindeer, Finnish actress, writer and longtime
Speaker 2: wife of Eric Blomberg. I was reading her this profile
Speaker 2: of her in her work on Nordic Women in Film,
Speaker 2: and they point out that she was like a real
Speaker 2: wild child as a kid, like she played sports with
Speaker 2: the boys. She loved swimming and fishing. There's some story
Speaker 2: about her putting out a fire in their house. So yeah,
Speaker 2: she seemed to be a real spirited individual. And she
Speaker 2: was active from thirty seven through fifty six. And they're
Speaker 2: a good I think a dozen collaborations between her and
Speaker 2: her husband. She is often credited as a writer and
Speaker 2: sometimes she is an actress, but this film, in particular,
Speaker 2: I'm to understand, was a case where it was at
Speaker 2: least partially inspired by a dream she had of a
Speaker 2: woman turning into a reindeer. And I think it's also,
Speaker 2: you know, as we'll discuss, based on some existing bits
Speaker 2: of folklore and Bret and Sagas and so forth, but
Speaker 2: also there's a dream element, something that you know, that
Speaker 2: emerges personally from her. There's also a quote in that
Speaker 2: article about how like they had a unified vision for
Speaker 2: this picture and that they each could see every scene
Speaker 2: before they shot it. So she's a really beautiful thought,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Especially for a film that has deadly premonitions within it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they yeah, they saw the vision together.
Speaker 2: Other notable films of hers include nineteen thirty eight's The
Speaker 2: Song of the Scarlet Flower, which, like much of her filmography,
Speaker 2: was a romance drama. Again, I don't think there are
Speaker 2: any other films in her filmography that you could think
Speaker 2: of as being horror, fantasy, or certainly sci fi. I
Speaker 2: think The White Reindeer stands alone. She won a UC
Speaker 2: for Best Leading Actress for her role in The White Reindeer.
Speaker 2: And yeah, she's amazing in this It's a captivating performance.
Speaker 2: You know, she's often silently channeling these intense feelings of loneliness,
Speaker 2: of love and hope and eventually otherworldly power.
Speaker 3: She really carries the film. I mean, it is her
Speaker 3: burden to carry, and she takes it up that snowy hill.
Speaker 3: We spend huge amounts of the movie just alone with her,
Speaker 3: with nobody else, and even in scenes where she's with
Speaker 3: other people, often it's just sort of the audience in
Speaker 3: her and the other people are kind of peripheral. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so we have and it's a really interesting way
Speaker 3: to render a protagonist in this way because we our
Speaker 3: main relationship is with her, and we spend all this
Speaker 3: time with her. But also she remains so mysterious through
Speaker 3: the entire film, and we even at the end of
Speaker 3: the story, I think there are many questions we can
Speaker 3: still have about her that aren't really answered directly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you know, ultimately she gets some great Dracula moments,
Speaker 2: and in a sense it's going to follow some the
Speaker 2: trajectory you might expect from a were wolf picture. But
Speaker 2: yet at the end there's not this feeling of Welp,
Speaker 2: she was a monster and thank goodness, we killed her.
Speaker 2: It feels a lot, a lot sadder than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very it's tragic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more. If I'm going to compare it to
Speaker 2: just an easily referred to werewolf, picture reminds me maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit of American Werewolf in London, like that
Speaker 2: kind of vibe where it's it's yeah, the monster's dad,
Speaker 2: but we don't feel great about it.
Speaker 3: I would say, yes, but it's even more tragic than that,
Speaker 3: because of course, you know, she has to be killed
Speaker 3: by the man she loves, uh, and he doesn't even
Speaker 3: know it's her. So it's just tragedy all around. And
Speaker 3: then there's an even more kind of bleak layer, which
Speaker 3: is that the guy an American werewolf in London. He
Speaker 3: just had bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. He was
Speaker 3: out on the moor and he got scratched. He got
Speaker 3: bitten by a werewolf. That's no good.
Speaker 2: She.
Speaker 3: It seems that our main character here is is doomed
Speaker 3: from ages past. She was like doomed before her birth
Speaker 3: to this life of unnatural witchcraft. And it's like there
Speaker 3: is something that the other characters recognize about her that
Speaker 3: is evil. But it's almost like it's an evil that
Speaker 3: is not of her choosing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's an Yeah, it's fascinating. We'll have more
Speaker 2: to say about this character and this performance as we proceed,
Speaker 2: but let's move on to Aslek. This is Parita's young
Speaker 2: reindeer herder husband, played by Finnish actor and TV director
Speaker 2: Kalervo Masilla, who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: I say young reindeer herder husband. The actor was I believe,
Speaker 2: like forty here, and you know, kind of looks like
Speaker 2: a forty year old guy. But I have to say
Speaker 2: he has a very sympathetic face. It's a good performance.
Speaker 2: And while you could argue, well, he looks maybe a
Speaker 2: little older than he should be, and this is not
Speaker 2: unique to this film. We see this in all sorts
Speaker 2: of pictures, just in every decade. But I ultimately kind
Speaker 2: of liked the fact that he looked a little older. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and she does too in certain scenes, because I kind
Speaker 2: of got this perhaps accidental vibe of them both being
Speaker 2: slightly older members of the community who just hadn't found
Speaker 2: love yet until now for various reasons.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. I didn't really think of it that way.
Speaker 3: I guess I interpreted. I mean, he does look older
Speaker 3: than I think he's supposed to be. Just based on
Speaker 3: the narrative, I would have guessed these characters are both
Speaker 3: supposed to be like twenty or something, and they're actually
Speaker 3: both I guess in their you know, thirties or forty.
Speaker 3: But you could you could buy it, I think, especially
Speaker 3: with Aslac, because he's like he's a Reindier herder. I
Speaker 3: mean he's out there in the weather, like he's getting
Speaker 3: you know, the snow's beaten on him every day. You
Speaker 3: can imagine, Yeah, you'd imagine that he would look distinguished
Speaker 3: and mature even at a younger age, and he does.
Speaker 3: And so he he has a kind of rugged handsomeness
Speaker 3: but also kind of a baby face at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like I say, he has a very
Speaker 2: sympathetic face that works well here. Now, someone who does
Speaker 2: not have a sympathetic face, as the character messenjutscha. I'm
Speaker 2: probably not saying that correctly. This is like a forester
Speaker 2: who shows up in the rag. Yeah, he has a
Speaker 2: real threatening air to him. I was looking him. He's
Speaker 2: an interesting character played by Aki Lindman, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight through two thousand and nine. He was a
Speaker 2: professional Finnish football player turned actor and eventually writer and director.
Speaker 2: He started acting I Believe in nineteen forty nine, started
Speaker 2: directing in sixty one, and was active behind the camera
Speaker 2: till two thousand and seven and in front of it
Speaker 2: till two thousand and three. He won a Ussy for
Speaker 2: acting in fifty six for The Unknown Soldier. He won
Speaker 2: one for directing in nineteen eighty eight, and then he
Speaker 2: received a Lifetime Achievement Award in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: His various credits include nineteen fifty nine's Moonwolf, which is
Speaker 2: a rocket movie, a werewolf movie, nineteen seventy seven's Telephone,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one's Reds that's directed by and starring Warren Beatty.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen Reds, but that one is filmed on
Speaker 2: location in Finland, so you had some Finnish actors appearing
Speaker 2: in some smaller supporting roles. And then he's also in
Speaker 2: a nineteen eighty eight film called The Moon God.
Speaker 3: Wait, he was in moon Wolf and moon God. Yeah,
Speaker 3: unrelated films.
Speaker 2: Though unrelated decades apart, different I can't remember. I think
Speaker 2: The Moon God might have a speculative element to it.
Speaker 2: But it's not a rocket movie. Moon Wolf is a
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties rocket movie.
Speaker 3: Does seem like a coincidence. How many movies are like Moon?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: How many would there be?
Speaker 2: Lots? Yeah, okay or something moon? There are lots of
Speaker 2: like yeah.
Speaker 3: Death moon. That's right, We've covered some on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like modifier moon is more common than moon noun.
Speaker 2: Probably so in the long run, all right. We also
Speaker 2: we mentioned that there's a wizard. May we'll get into this.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's more of a shaman, but in the subtitles
Speaker 2: he does call himself a wizard. This is the character Salkunila,
Speaker 2: played by Arvo Alesma, who lived nineteen oh one through
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, Finnish actor who seems to have worked
Speaker 2: a lot in supporting roles, and he's really great in
Speaker 2: this playing this kind of kind of drunken wizard or
Speaker 2: shaman that lives in a hut. I would say, out
Speaker 2: at the edge of the town. But there's not really
Speaker 2: a town so much, but he's kind of out on
Speaker 2: the outskirts of the outskirts here.
Speaker 3: The scene in his hut is really interesting. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to talk about that later, especially for the way, like
Speaker 3: the tables get turned. Like in his scene, Karita arrives
Speaker 3: and it's like he's the scary one and she's kind
Speaker 3: of supplicant, and she's like, oh, what's it going to
Speaker 3: be like here, you know, meeting the shaman. But then
Speaker 3: by the end of the scene, the tables are completely
Speaker 3: turned and like she is scary and he is scared
Speaker 3: of her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And finally, the composer for this was Einar England,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety nine. Finished composer.
Speaker 2: He won an USI Award in fifty two for this score,
Speaker 2: which I think, I'm on The whole feels very much
Speaker 2: of its time, but I think it gets nicely dramatic
Speaker 2: as the film progresses.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think the music's wonderful. I think it really
Speaker 3: underscores the drama very well. There's, uh, there's these certain
Speaker 3: themes that recur when like when Pirita is losing her
Speaker 3: mind or when she's sort of going to another place,
Speaker 3: we get this nice uneasy these these chords come up
Speaker 3: and yeah, and there's some dissonance and uh, there's sort
Speaker 3: of a theme of the stone God when we get
Speaker 3: to that. Music's really good.
Speaker 2: I think that's when it its best. There's some early
Speaker 2: parts where it's there are a lot of horns, and
Speaker 2: it maybe feels a little fashion, you know, from a bag. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but but when it gets into the darker and
Speaker 2: more dramatic parts, the composer totally brings it here. And
Speaker 2: I should also add that the film also makes great use,
Speaker 2: particularly in one segment early on, of what I take
Speaker 2: to be authentic folk songs, which adds nice flavor.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Let's do it. So.
Speaker 3: We open on a shot of a winter landscape covered
Speaker 3: in snow, striped with lines of bear trees and shrubs
Speaker 3: stretching to the horizon. And then at the horizon we
Speaker 3: see these fairly low, gently sloping mountains in the distance,
Speaker 3: and in the foreground we see a pair of forked
Speaker 3: reindeer antlers belonging to an animal whose head is below
Speaker 3: the frame. And then standing next to the reindeer, there's
Speaker 3: a person facing away dressed in furs, and there's music.
Speaker 3: The music is just a woman's voice singing an eerie,
Speaker 3: high pitched melody that sounds cold, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like this music, like it makes you want a blanket.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: As we pan away from the reindeer and the person
Speaker 3: over the landscape, a title comes in to tell us
Speaker 3: that this is a story from Lapland, and we get
Speaker 3: the title telling calling it the White Reindeer, Vlcoyne and Peura.
Speaker 3: After the credits, a new song begins, and this one
Speaker 3: sounds like a folk song, also sung by a single
Speaker 3: woman's voice, and the lyrics are little girl child of Lapland,
Speaker 3: born in a snow drift. And then here we see
Speaker 3: there's like a shot of the sky and it's very
Speaker 3: strange and beautiful. There are these gray clouds and there's
Speaker 3: like a glare of the sun piercing through the clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And the song goes on saying grew to girlhood straw
Speaker 3: stuffed shoes like a reindeer dough. And then we see
Speaker 3: wind blowing over the top of a deep snowfield with
Speaker 3: these black tree limbs barely peeking out of the drifts.
Speaker 3: And this is something that the director they will the
Speaker 3: directors will like to show you again and again is
Speaker 3: shots of a snowy field with wind blowing and the
Speaker 3: blowing snow like these sort of these sheets of snow
Speaker 3: being picked up off the top of the field and
Speaker 3: then blowing along. They look like curtains being dragged across
Speaker 3: the land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a real visual poetry to these sceness.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The lyrics to the song go on, she did
Speaker 3: not know as a child, nor when she was married,
Speaker 3: that she was born a witch, evil in her belly.
Speaker 3: And then we see wolves running in the snowfields and
Speaker 3: a woman on skis with a long stick as a
Speaker 3: push pull. She's going alone over a hill, looking exhausted
Speaker 3: and in pain. She's facing down the wolves that are
Speaker 3: running from across the field. You don't know are they
Speaker 3: threatening her, are they running with her? What's going on?
Speaker 3: But then the lyrics continue. They say she offered to
Speaker 3: the stone god to modern aka, she gave a white fawn,
Speaker 3: then ranged the fells as a deer till the appointed hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was reading that this modern aca was like
Speaker 2: a traditional goddess, that is, a goddess of the earth,
Speaker 2: of goddess of the beginnings of life, a protector of
Speaker 2: children as well.
Speaker 3: And then eventually the woman approaches a conical structure in
Speaker 3: the snow. I think this is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: Sammi LaVoo, which is kind of similar to a North
Speaker 3: American tepee. It's a conical shelter made with poles braced
Speaker 3: against one another, and then it would be covered in
Speaker 3: reindeer hides. Inside this structure, you've got people gathered together
Speaker 3: cooking a meal, and one of them sees the woman
Speaker 3: coming outside and pokes her head in to tell the others.
Speaker 3: And then the woman comes inside the lavo and collapses,
Speaker 3: and the lyrics go on to say iron pierced the
Speaker 3: white dough. Then the lap girl slept chill shawl for
Speaker 3: a coverlet snow drift for a pillow, and inside the
Speaker 3: lavo we see a baby next to the woman, so
Speaker 3: it seems she's given birth, and then an elder figure
Speaker 3: in traditional Sami clothing holds the baby, and I think
Speaker 3: it's implied that the mother died. It wasn't exactly clear
Speaker 3: on that, but I think she's supposed to die. And
Speaker 3: then afterwards we pull out to another landscape shot of
Speaker 3: a massive steep, lonely hillside covered in snow, and again
Speaker 3: just the wind blowing sheets of frost over the top
Speaker 3: of the pack, and then that's the end of the
Speaker 3: opening montage. The whole thing is very I don't know
Speaker 3: it's got a light touch, but it's also a good
Speaker 3: bit haunting. And so we kind ahead in time after
Speaker 3: that to a very different mood. Now the image is
Speaker 3: sharper and the music is more lighthearted, and we see
Speaker 3: lots of people gathered for what looks like some kind
Speaker 3: of winter games or festival. Throughout this movie, you will
Speaker 3: see a common form of individual transportation in this region,
Speaker 3: which is a person riding in a kind of ground
Speaker 3: level sled pulled by a single reindeer. So when we
Speaker 3: say sled, don't imagine like a big, high up sleigh
Speaker 3: like often people are just sort of lying back in
Speaker 3: this sled's basically right there on the top of the
Speaker 3: snow with a single reindeer pulling them. And in this
Speaker 3: scene we see lots of happy people being pulled around,
Speaker 3: pulled all around, and crowds gathered. These people are lying
Speaker 3: back in their one seat reindeer sleds. You got dogs
Speaker 3: running around barking, and we see reindeer herders in their
Speaker 3: traditional clothes standing around just cruising the vibes.
Speaker 2: Now, did we mention this already? If not, I want
Speaker 2: to drive home that I don't think this is supposed
Speaker 2: to take place in the nineteen fifties, but I don't
Speaker 2: know when exactly in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. So I read online sources
Speaker 3: saying this is supposed to take place in like pre
Speaker 3: Christian times that you know, so this would make me think,
Speaker 3: you know, at least hundreds of years ago. But also,
Speaker 3: like the character one character has a fairly modern looking rifle.
Speaker 3: And there's another scene where characters are in a building
Speaker 3: that I don't know, looks to me kind of like
Speaker 3: a Christian church, and they may seem to be attending
Speaker 3: maybe church, or maybe I'm misunderstanding what's happening there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Likewise, like the shamanistic traditions and the old religion
Speaker 2: don't feel as old and as removed from the people,
Speaker 2: which doesn't necessarily rein in exactly when this would be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so its hard to nail down.
Speaker 3: I truly, Yeah, I truly don't know when this is
Speaker 3: supposed to be set. But certainly, like the characters don't
Speaker 3: have TVs or anything, right. Yeah, anyway, so we've got
Speaker 3: these these reindeer festival games going on, and in this sequence,
Speaker 3: we're going to meet a couple of our main characters.
Speaker 3: We meet a beautiful young woman Parita and a handsome
Speaker 3: young man Aslock. And then Rob I pulled in a
Speaker 3: screenshot of Parita and the first time we really see
Speaker 3: her face here. She is the grown up version of
Speaker 3: the baby we saw featured in the opening folk song,
Speaker 3: and Oslock is a local reindeer herder and an eligible bachelor.
Speaker 3: And when we first see Pirita's face, she is angelic
Speaker 3: with a big, wide grin, and her eyes are sparkled
Speaker 3: in the sun. You can see they really set it
Speaker 3: up to like so that her eyes capture the light
Speaker 3: and it glints on her. You know, they look like wet.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's a good gross, but like she's sparkling.
Speaker 3: She's sparkling, and you can even see a little sparkle
Speaker 3: on her cheeks. I think there's like snow melted catching
Speaker 3: the light there. Yeah, and Parita is taking part in
Speaker 3: the reindeer sled race here. She's having a great time.
Speaker 2: She's happy, yeah, just beaming with life.
Speaker 3: But also credit to Miriami Kosmanin's performance here, because she
Speaker 3: always manages to make Parita seem a little bit strange
Speaker 3: and mysterious even when she's happy and when times are good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, even early on, there's
Speaker 2: something else there. I don't even know. Is it a
Speaker 2: deep loneliness. Is it something else. We'll have to think
Speaker 2: about it as we perceive.
Speaker 3: But asloc is also in the running here in this race,
Speaker 3: he seems to command his beast with confidence and pleasure
Speaker 3: as Luck's he's a big ball of fun here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One visual theme I started noticing right around this sequence
Speaker 3: that I thought I should flag Rob. The movie has
Speaker 3: lots of shots of mostly empty snowfields that foreground, a
Speaker 3: single tree all by itself, piled up with snow, sometimes
Speaker 3: even bent over sideways under the weight of allD frost.
Speaker 3: And I think that is probably an intentional pattern, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of a subtle visual cue that communicates something
Speaker 3: about loneliness. Loneliness is a theme of the film, and
Speaker 3: it shows it as loneliness as this kind of cold
Speaker 3: and heavy burden that smothers you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And then just in general, like
Speaker 2: the world is this vast, cold landscape and you find
Speaker 2: warmth and community and in very small packages here and there.
Speaker 3: Yes, I totally agree with that, though I would say
Speaker 3: that like the focus is on something about the physical
Speaker 3: world and the necessities of life creating these things. It's not,
Speaker 3: it seems to me, not really a comment on anything
Speaker 3: about the community being alienating or isolating. Is more just like,
Speaker 3: these are the realities we have to deal with to survive.
Speaker 2: Right right, And you know, they get out in the
Speaker 2: snow and they have some fun. They they're laboring in
Speaker 2: the snow. They don't you know, obviously it is an
Speaker 2: environmental hurdle for life. But they're doing their best. And yeah,
Speaker 2: just there are multiple scenes where our main actors are
Speaker 2: like iced over, but they're smiling. So I think that's
Speaker 2: telling and it matches up with some things I've heard
Speaker 2: about surviving in cold environments, where like people say, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you just got to find a reason to
Speaker 2: go out in the snow and live your life.
Speaker 3: So eventually Parita and Aslak seem to have become separated
Speaker 3: from all the other contestants in the race. I don't
Speaker 3: know if they stopped caring about the overall race course.
Speaker 3: Now they're just playing together. It's just the two of
Speaker 3: them dashing over this big hillside, treating each other flirtatiously,
Speaker 3: and eventually as Lac makes a move he throws a
Speaker 3: rope and Lasso's Parita, pulling her off her sled, and
Speaker 3: he says, a reindeer is fast, but a wolf is faster,
Speaker 3: and they embrace, laughing, and they tumble down the hill
Speaker 3: in their furs, rolling over each other, and there's a
Speaker 3: shot here where when they come to rest, Aslac cradles
Speaker 3: Parita in his arms and she looks up at him
Speaker 3: with this big, toothy smile, and it really shows off
Speaker 3: this angel witch duality that Cosmondin brings to the role, Like,
Speaker 3: if you look at her face here, Rob, she's looking
Speaker 3: so happy, but also if you just change your mindset,
Speaker 3: she could look so dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and she will totally have those those Dracula
Speaker 2: moments later on.
Speaker 3: And so as Lac leans down to kiss her. And
Speaker 3: there's also something funny about the way he looks here.
Speaker 3: They've done him up so that his eyebrows are just
Speaker 3: spiky with ice, so he's got like icicles over his eyes. Anyway,
Speaker 3: after the games are done, we see Parita and Aslac
Speaker 3: canoodling together in a reindeer drawn sled and riding around
Speaker 3: outside the festivities. Clearly they are falling in love, and
Speaker 3: Aslak asks, do you like me, and she smiles and
Speaker 3: leans on him, but doesn't say anything. So soon after this,
Speaker 3: Parita is at home with her family. I believe these
Speaker 3: are her adoptive parents, and we see Aslac and his
Speaker 3: father coming in his sled to visit the house. I
Speaker 3: don't know if this was supposed to mean anything, or
Speaker 3: even if it was intentional, but Rob, did you notice
Speaker 3: in this scene that as Aslac is coming down the road,
Speaker 3: a black cat runs across his path?
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't notice this when I watched the film,
Speaker 2: but it's a great point. I'm not sure what it means, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the black cat's role might be
Speaker 2: in the folklore of northern Finland. But in absence of that,
Speaker 2: maybe it's just like cinematic tradition of black cats. Or
Speaker 2: sometimes you just have a cat that is going along
Speaker 2: and mining its own business and does not care that
Speaker 2: you're shooting a film.
Speaker 3: Get that cat out of the snow. Speaking to Parita's parents,
Speaker 3: I think this is Aslak's father, and he says this
Speaker 3: must be some kind of metaphor. He says, we have
Speaker 3: a merchant, you have a bird, sell us the bird,
Speaker 3: and this is a marriage proposal, and Parita's father asks
Speaker 3: Aslak if his intentions are honorable, and he promises they are.
Speaker 3: He makes a pledge that he will treat their daughter well,
Speaker 3: and then the parents unfold a cloth containing the bride price.
Speaker 3: It's several coins and pieces of jewelry, and you get
Speaker 3: the sense that within their community, these people they're not rich,
Speaker 3: but they can lead a rich life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's not a sense of the people here
Speaker 2: like barely scraping by in the edge of civilization or
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, there are environmental hardships, but this is their way
Speaker 3: of life and they make it work, so there is
Speaker 3: it's not commune udicating it seems to me anything about
Speaker 3: like poverty or hardship of that kind. But yeah, so
Speaker 3: we see that, and then the next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: we're at the wedding and it's a rock and party,
Speaker 3: like friends and relatives come to poor gifts onto the
Speaker 3: pile on the table and they're drinking from this frothy
Speaker 3: booz booze chalice. Actually it's mostly just one guy drinking
Speaker 3: this chalice and they're dancing around in the warmth of
Speaker 3: the fire. Eventually, this might be Aslac's father I think,
Speaker 3: who says the drink is drunk bread and salt eaten.
Speaker 3: And then there's this interesting thing where like Parita and
Speaker 3: Aslac are kept behind a curtain. They're hidden from everybody
Speaker 3: else at the party, and one drunk guy keeps peeping
Speaker 3: through the curtain and tells them they look just like
Speaker 3: a couple of lovebirds. And then at the end that
Speaker 3: there's a funny shot where they're like closing up shop
Speaker 3: at the end of the wedding party, and like everybody's
Speaker 3: still like trying to peek in the door, and somebody's
Speaker 3: trying to force the door shut.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is the sequence where I kind of
Speaker 2: wish I had color because I feel like this is
Speaker 2: a This is a colorful in its own way, you know,
Speaker 2: rosy depiction of traditional life. Is it accurate, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it has an accurate feel to it, at least
Speaker 2: in my viewing.
Speaker 3: I think the clothes in the scene alone would have
Speaker 3: had a lot of cool colors. Yeah yeah, But after this,
Speaker 3: now our main characters are married and time passes. Of course,
Speaker 3: Aslac is a reindeer herder, which is a job that
Speaker 3: requires travel. He has to take his stock around I
Speaker 3: guess to different feeding grounds. Probably, so he's often gone,
Speaker 3: leaving Parita home alone for long periods. And when Aslac
Speaker 3: is gone, we learn Parita is lonely. We see her
Speaker 3: excitement in one scene where he returns with a giant
Speaker 3: train of animals. This was shot with a real reindeer herd,
Speaker 3: and it's just amazing to see this ocean of antlers bobbing.
Speaker 3: Is this column of like hundreds or maybe even thousands
Speaker 3: of animals clops.
Speaker 2: On by, Yeah, so many reindeer.
Speaker 3: So Parita and Aslac race to meet each other, and
Speaker 3: she just collapses into his arms. There's not just love
Speaker 3: but relief when he comes home. But the night of
Speaker 3: their reunion, that's when the vibes first start getting a
Speaker 3: little dark. We see the couple together in their bed
Speaker 3: and the camera slowly zooms in on them as we
Speaker 3: hear these uneasy, dissonant chords swelling up on the soundtrack,
Speaker 3: and we see that Aslac is asleep, but Parita is awake.
Speaker 3: She's laying there and her eyes are open, and she
Speaker 3: turns to her husband and she rubs his chest and
Speaker 3: tries to rouse his attention, but he's you know, he's tired,
Speaker 3: he's sound asleep, and he rolls over, turning his back
Speaker 3: to her. And then Parita rises up from the bed
Speaker 3: and slowly walks over to the fireplace to warm her hands.
Speaker 3: And she turns and sees a man not aslac staring
Speaker 3: at her from a bedroll on the floor. First time
Speaker 3: I watched it, I was like, wait, who is this?
Speaker 3: But I think this is one of the other herders.
Speaker 3: I think they're all just sleeping in the same house here,
Speaker 3: and you know, one of her husband's coworkers here. And
Speaker 3: the man looks at her and she smiles, and then
Speaker 3: she climbs back into bed with oslock. This little encounter,
Speaker 3: in this exchange of looks feels significant, but I truly
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what to make of it, Like was there
Speaker 3: supposed to be some kind of sexual tension with this
Speaker 3: other man or is he frightened of her for some reason?
Speaker 3: You could kind of read the scene that way at stage,
Speaker 3: like that could be what it means. She hasn't really
Speaker 3: done anything overtly creepy yet, but she is just I
Speaker 3: don't know, there's something in the music and the way
Speaker 3: she looks at him that is a little maybe off
Speaker 3: and we don't know like what exactly is going on,
Speaker 3: but there's something she has a moment with this other man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was wondering, is the man's supposed to be creepy?
Speaker 2: Year Like, I'm thinking to some of the themes here
Speaker 2: that are not all that overret I guess, But you know,
Speaker 2: we begin with this scene where her mother played by
Speaker 2: the same actor, is chased by wolves there, So is
Speaker 2: this guy sort of like are we thinking about like
Speaker 2: he's kind of a wolf himself? Is he like looking
Speaker 2: at her with predatory eyes? I'm not sure. Again that
Speaker 2: the film is kind of leads it to your interpretation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And so we have this question like ultimately,
Speaker 3: what is it that Parita wants? We know, and we'll
Speaker 3: explain more about this in following scenes, but we know
Speaker 3: she's unsatisfied in her marriage somehow. But is this only
Speaker 3: because she misses her husband and wants more attention from him,
Speaker 3: or is it because she desires other men as well?
Speaker 3: I think you could or is it something else? I
Speaker 3: think you could interpret it multiple ways. And Parita herself
Speaker 3: never says in the film. Later in her wear reindeer form,
Speaker 3: she does seduce other men, but I wonder should we
Speaker 3: take that as like her true to herself, as her
Speaker 3: desire or is that just like the curse, the evil
Speaker 3: magic acting through her.
Speaker 2: Yeah? In either case, like, I think more communication was
Speaker 2: necessary its marriage.
Speaker 3: So later there's a scene where Aslak is preparing to
Speaker 3: leave with his herd once again, and before he goes,
Speaker 3: he gives Perita a gift, a young white reindeer, which
Speaker 3: he says she can have as a pet. So it's small,
Speaker 3: with soft looking fur, and it's asymmetrical. It only has
Speaker 3: one antler on one side of its head, no antler
Speaker 3: on the other side. And then Parita says, kind of sadly,
Speaker 3: off you go again, and who knows for how long
Speaker 3: I'll miss you, And he hugs her and he tries
Speaker 3: to comfort her. He says he'll be back soon, but
Speaker 3: you can see that she is not happy in the
Speaker 3: way that like as he pulls away, she's still just
Speaker 3: reaching after him. So now is alone again, alone with
Speaker 3: her one antlered white reindeer dough and we see her
Speaker 3: feeding it from a big ball of lichen. I think
Speaker 3: that's what it is. She's got, like this big wad
Speaker 3: of something that she feeds it. And then later, she
Speaker 3: sits in her house staring out the window at this
Speaker 3: bleak landscape with gray clouds, and there's like a beam
Speaker 3: of sunlight cutting through the gray clouds, like we saw
Speaker 3: earlier in the opening montage. She's obviously yearning for something.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly a switch is flipped, A change comes
Speaker 3: over Parita, and she has decided to do something, So
Speaker 3: she hurriedly packs some items in a bag and ventures
Speaker 3: out into the snow. She goes over a hill, across
Speaker 3: a plane, all the way to a tiny, isolated cottage
Speaker 3: in the fells, and I thought this was an interesting
Speaker 3: choice for the equivalent of what you would get in
Speaker 3: other movies. The witch's hut, which is often in the
Speaker 3: movies I'm more familiar with, is in a four story
Speaker 3: is in a swamp, and here it is the only
Speaker 3: vertical feature we can see in an otherwise completely empty
Speaker 3: expanse of snow.
Speaker 2: And it itself is covered in snow. This is snow everywhere.
Speaker 3: So Parita goes to the door and lets herself in.
Speaker 3: The cottage is filled with smoke, the floor is filthy.
Speaker 3: There is a goat chained to a post in the
Speaker 3: middle of the room, and then squatting on the floor
Speaker 3: tending to a fire. Is Salkunila the shaman, the wizard,
Speaker 3: kind of the cunning man? I wondered if you had
Speaker 3: a thought on this, rob do you read Salkunila as
Speaker 3: an inbounds or an out of bounds practitioner of magic
Speaker 3: from the society's point of view? Is he more like
Speaker 3: the village priest or the village shaman, or is he
Speaker 3: more like some kind of outsider warlock.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Yeah, because if in other films
Speaker 2: where we have this character sort of character show up,
Speaker 2: you know, generally in the form of a witch, you
Speaker 2: can have different more they may lean more old religion,
Speaker 2: more pagan, or they may lean more satanic dark magic. Right,
Speaker 2: and in either case kind of like position a sort
Speaker 2: of spiritual distance from the mainstream. But then here we
Speaker 2: get the sense that whatever the spiritual distance, there is
Speaker 2: a there is an actual physical distance from the rest
Speaker 2: of the people. I'm not sure how we're to take that,
Speaker 2: so I don't know. I I guess I got the
Speaker 2: overall impression that the shamanistic traditions that he represents are
Speaker 2: at least not that far from the mainstream. But for
Speaker 2: whatever reasons. What he does is a little removed from
Speaker 2: the rest of the community. He is kind of an
Speaker 2: individual corner. Yeah, he is an individual with with influences
Speaker 2: in the other world, and that's why you come to him.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's in a place where like you could buy
Speaker 3: beer at the store, but he's a home brewer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe so salkut Nila. He turns his eyes up to
Speaker 3: uh Pirrieto when when she comes in, and he says,
Speaker 3: I knew you would come, And then he hangs a
Speaker 3: pot over the fire. It looks like maybe it's a
Speaker 3: pot of soup.
Speaker 2: I thought.
Speaker 3: It looks like it's got a big bone sticking out
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Parita quickly begins digging into her bag and
Speaker 3: pulling things out to lay before the wise man. She
Speaker 3: has brought. She has brought gifts. This is I guess
Speaker 3: how she's going to pay for his services. First of all,
Speaker 3: she pulls out these round loaves of bread that look
Speaker 3: like giant bagels. Rob, I understand you figured out what
Speaker 3: kind of bread product this is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was curious, maybe a little hungry at the time,
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's I'm not going to attempt to
Speaker 2: pronounce its finished name, but it's apparently a traditional finish
Speaker 2: rye bread and that hole in the center it has
Speaker 2: to do with the way that they're they're they're hung
Speaker 2: on poles at some point in the process of making them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so some sort of finish rye red here.
Speaker 3: So you sent me an article. It's like after you
Speaker 3: bake them, you hang them up on a pole over
Speaker 3: the oven, and that like keeps them warm or dries
Speaker 3: them or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're not donuts or bagels. They're something unique.
Speaker 3: But so yeah. She pulls out these large bagel shaped
Speaker 3: loaves of bread and then a wedge of cheese. That's
Speaker 3: got to be reindeer milk cheese.
Speaker 2: Right, it's or goats. I mean this guy, but this
Speaker 2: guy's got goats and he doesn't have cheese, so that's true.
Speaker 3: He wants that cheese, I think. She also pulls out
Speaker 3: a dried piece of meat, and then finally the good stuff,
Speaker 3: a bottle of clear spirits. This could be vodka or
Speaker 3: maybe some kind of traditional sammy liquor. Alandi Salku Nila
Speaker 3: sees what he wants. When she produces the bottle, he
Speaker 3: snatches it and immediately just starts chugging, and after a
Speaker 3: good long chug he turns back to Parita and he says,
Speaker 3: love potion is it?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 3: Women young and old the same? And then while he's talking,
Speaker 3: he also keeps doing this bizarre, slow, high pitched laugh,
Speaker 3: and he says, your man off in the fells. Salkunila
Speaker 3: knows the cure. And then here he pulls out a
Speaker 3: leather pouch and begins to pinch things out of it
Speaker 3: and sprinkle them into the pot. He says, herbs from
Speaker 3: beyond ten fells, beside ten streams, some graveyard salt, the
Speaker 3: balls of ten bull moose, the strength of ten bull moose.
Speaker 3: Salcunila the Wizard can bring back lost reindeer. Salcunila the
Speaker 3: Great Wizard can raise the dead. And then I love
Speaker 3: this part. He pulls out a divination object. It is
Speaker 3: a drum with a skin loosely stretched over the top
Speaker 3: as its head, and all over this skin are illustrations
Speaker 3: and drawings, these patterns, And then he places a small
Speaker 3: stone or bone dye of some kind on the drum
Speaker 3: and then starts beating the drum with a clawed mallet,
Speaker 3: and this makes the little die object like bounce up
Speaker 3: and down, and land on different parts of the drawings
Speaker 3: on the drumhead. Yeah, I like this, so I assume
Speaker 3: where the bone piece bounces on the drum here. Tells
Speaker 3: her what she must do, and Sulkuneila explains the message.
Speaker 3: He says, you must sacrifice to the stone god, the
Speaker 3: first living thing you meet on your way home. Then
Speaker 3: no reindeer herder will be able to resist you this winter.
Speaker 2: You will.
Speaker 3: But then he trails off. He stops talking, and he
Speaker 3: leans back, looking frightened, like he's frightened of Pirita. And
Speaker 3: she tells him to go on. But now she's looming
Speaker 3: over him with this menacing posture and this crazed look
Speaker 3: in her eyes, and she reaches out a hand flexed
Speaker 3: like an animal's claw and presses it down against the
Speaker 3: painted drumhead. And now the drum begins to sound, releasing
Speaker 3: this new, deep, deeper, echoing beat, and the bone and
Speaker 3: the little object starts to dance, even though Salcunila is
Speaker 3: not touching the drum. Nobody's beating the drum, but we're
Speaker 3: hearing a drum beat and it's it's reverberating. So there's
Speaker 3: some kind of terrible power radiating out of Parita herself
Speaker 3: into the drum and Rob, I don't know if you
Speaker 3: have a way of describing the way her face looks
Speaker 3: in this scene, but it's intense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the lighting is totally different, you know, of course
Speaker 2: this is a darker environment to begin with. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: she has this kind of sinister look on her face,
Speaker 2: like something has awoken inside her. The spell. It kind
Speaker 2: of comes back to what you said earlier. This spell
Speaker 2: has has interacted with a pre existing condition that was
Speaker 2: unknown to our wizard here, that she herself is a
Speaker 2: born witch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he announces it now he Salconela screams witch
Speaker 3: and Parita looks possessed. And then also an interesting distinction
Speaker 3: to wonder, like, so he's doing something like some kind
Speaker 3: of magic or witchcraft, but there's a different thing he
Speaker 3: means by her being a witch. Maybe it's that like
Speaker 3: he knows the the magical arts, but she's got something
Speaker 3: you know, inborn in her, like she has powers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I get the sense that like he is
Speaker 2: one who has reached into the other world and has
Speaker 2: some degree of power. And it's probably over selling his
Speaker 2: ability saying he can raise the dead and so forth,
Speaker 2: And you.
Speaker 3: Know what's that vodka.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's kind of a mess. And at this point
Speaker 2: he realizes, oh, she's the real deal though. She has
Speaker 2: powers that emerge from within the other world, and yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe he even has some some notion that there are
Speaker 2: going to be some interactions with how his magic and
Speaker 2: her magic are now going to manifest.
Speaker 3: Right, So Parita looks possessed, and then finally the drumhead
Speaker 3: rips open and Salku Nila shouts in terror as he
Speaker 3: like falls back into the corner of the room. He
Speaker 3: reaches for his goat for safety, and Parita stares into
Speaker 3: the fire as it climbs higher, and then the scene's over.
Speaker 3: After this, Parita, we see her back outside heading home.
Speaker 2: Now did she get a love potion at all? It
Speaker 2: was just well, she was given a ritual to a
Speaker 2: ritual to carry out, so there's not so much a potion,
Speaker 2: but yeah, a ritual to carry out in order to
Speaker 2: achieve this effect.
Speaker 3: Right, So she's going back home and she's come out
Speaker 3: of her trance, but she as she's crossing the distance,
Speaker 3: she hears the words of the shaman again. She has
Speaker 3: to sacrifice to the Stone God, the first living thing
Speaker 3: that she meets on her way home. But when she
Speaker 3: arrives home, oh no, there's Oslac outside the house. He's
Speaker 3: home early, but fortunately before she reunites with her husband,
Speaker 3: Like the pet reindeer with the one antler, he lets
Speaker 3: go of it and it runs ahead of him into
Speaker 3: her arms. So the white reindeer now is the thing
Speaker 3: that she has to sacrifice. Aslac tells her that he
Speaker 3: missed her and he had to come home early to
Speaker 3: see her. And at this point I wondered, oh, man,
Speaker 3: should you interpret that as like I made the trip
Speaker 3: to the shaman for no reason, like he came back anyway,
Speaker 3: this was the thing I wanted? Or did it already work?
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's a good question. I also had a question
Speaker 2: about how there's not, again, not a lot of dialogue
Speaker 2: in some of these In many of these scenes, so
Speaker 2: like the wizard is just saying like, oh, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: got what you want. You want a love potion, No
Speaker 2: reindeer herder will be able to resist you. And then
Speaker 2: but she doesn't say no, no, no, just my husband.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to make my husband more attracted any reindeer.
Speaker 3: Well, it's unclear again, I think it we don't fully
Speaker 3: know whether she is just wanting the attention of her husband,
Speaker 3: or whether she's interested in the attention of other reindeer
Speaker 3: herders as well. It could be either one. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I think it is clear she misses as locks.
Speaker 2: So absolutely that that's at least a part of it.
Speaker 3: Yes. Anyway, later we see Sipurita remembering what she has
Speaker 3: to do, so she packs up and she harnesses the
Speaker 3: young reindeer and she sets out for a journey to
Speaker 3: the place of the Stone God. This is one of
Speaker 3: my favorite parts of the movie. So like, she passes
Speaker 3: these strange landscapes while she's on the way. There's one
Speaker 3: part here, Robert, I don't know if you know what
Speaker 3: we're looking at. There's this big ice field and then
Speaker 3: there are these regularly spaced vertical structures that are totally
Speaker 3: covered in snow and ice, and I was like, are
Speaker 3: these just like really narrow trees that are regularly spaced
Speaker 3: this way or is this something man made? I truly
Speaker 3: have no idea.
Speaker 2: I mean I took them to be trees when I
Speaker 2: was watching the film, but I could be wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they could be structures of some sort, but they've been
Speaker 2: blasted by the snow and are now just encrusted with it.
Speaker 3: So the atmosphere and the music become much more frightening.
Speaker 3: As she nears the place of the Stone God. It
Speaker 3: is a giant, dark stone monolith looming over a field,
Speaker 3: topped with a reindeer skull and massive antlers, and then
Speaker 3: below the stone there is a reindeer graveyard, though all
Speaker 3: we see is snow with just hundreds of reindeer antlers
Speaker 3: sticking up out of it. It's a wonderfully composed scene,
Speaker 3: absolutely yes. So Parita reaches the altar and then she
Speaker 3: kneels down with her pet, and she raises the knife
Speaker 3: and then plunges the knife in to complete the sacrifice.
Speaker 3: And here some power comes over her. Yet again. Parita
Speaker 3: is overwhelmed, maybe possessed in some way, and she passes
Speaker 3: out and has all these visions. She has visions of
Speaker 3: her life, of her meeting with the Shaman, of there's
Speaker 3: a vision of a reindeer running across a field in
Speaker 3: photonegative and something now has changed, and I think maybe
Speaker 3: this is a good point to you kind of zoom
Speaker 3: out and speak in a more summary way about the
Speaker 3: rest of the plot of the film, and then we
Speaker 3: can I don't know, focus on anything that stands out
Speaker 3: to you that you want to talk about. So after
Speaker 3: this point the ritual seems to have worked, but at
Speaker 3: a terrible cost. It sort of it comes with a twist.
Speaker 3: It's like a monkey's paw sort of thing. She is
Speaker 3: indeed now irresistible to the reindeer herdsman, but at night
Speaker 3: she transforms bodily into a wild white reindeer and roams
Speaker 3: the fells committing murders. So in her reindeer form we
Speaker 3: see this first scene where she attracts the attention of
Speaker 3: a herder one night and he wants to catch her,
Speaker 3: not as parita, but as a reindeer, to add her
Speaker 3: to the herd. I guess. And this is funny because
Speaker 3: it plays on this duality of like, she will be
Speaker 3: irresistible to the reindeer herdsman, and sometimes what they're interested
Speaker 3: in is business they want, you know, they want this reindeer,
Speaker 3: or maybe there's it's playing on this full belief that
Speaker 3: like catching a wild white reindeer is like something that
Speaker 3: brings great fortune.
Speaker 2: Right right. But then the other side of that, of course,
Speaker 2: is that on one level or the other she is
Speaker 2: a woman pursued by.
Speaker 3: Men, yes, exactly. And then so when this guy does
Speaker 3: catch her, she transforms back into her human form and
Speaker 3: then she kills him. And this cycle repeats several times
Speaker 3: with these different sort of lurings out and murders in
Speaker 3: where she will alternate between her reindeer form and her
Speaker 3: human form.
Speaker 2: And she kind of has vampire teeth to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we see that, and it's freaky.
Speaker 3: And in response to the killings, the villagers get very
Speaker 3: upset and they try to come up with solutions to
Speaker 3: combat the evil witchcraft in their midst. The solution favored
Speaker 3: by Aslak, not knowing that the witch is his wife,
Speaker 3: is cold iron, and that is the only way to
Speaker 3: kill a witch. So you see these forging scenes where
Speaker 3: these guy, you know, people who are I think not
Speaker 3: professional blacksmiths, are just doing the best they can. They're
Speaker 3: like beating out these iron tips into spearheads so that
Speaker 3: they can kill the witch with cold iron.
Speaker 2: Isn't there one scene where he's making one in the
Speaker 2: room with his wife, Yeah, yes, she's in there, yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and she's kind of like recoiled in the corner. Because
Speaker 2: this is like an instrument of death for her, but
Speaker 2: he doesn't know that she is the witch. She is
Speaker 2: the reindeer.
Speaker 3: So at one point you mentioned the ranger with the
Speaker 3: rifle that shows up from the south. He is not
Speaker 3: part of the culture of the film and is not
Speaker 3: impressed by stories of magic and devils. He tracks the
Speaker 3: reindeer and he tries to shoot it, but I think
Speaker 3: some magical trickery goes on and the rifle explodes in
Speaker 3: his face, and then he sees the animal transform back
Speaker 3: into a beautiful woman and he sort of loses his mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After more killings, the villagers form a mob to hunt
Speaker 3: down the wear reindeer, and in this final in the climax,
Speaker 3: he Parita is frightened and she flees. She keeps transforming
Speaker 3: back and forth between her reindeer and human forms. She
Speaker 3: tries to go back to get help from the wizard
Speaker 3: from Salkunela, but finds that he has been killed in
Speaker 3: his cottage. Rob, how did you interpret that? Who killed him?
Speaker 3: Do you think it was the villagers?
Speaker 2: I don't know, because he's in there, like it's cold
Speaker 2: and frozen. It's unclear when he died exactly, so I
Speaker 2: mean it's it also doesn't seem and he was necessarily
Speaker 2: practicing a lot of self care. So, like, did he
Speaker 2: drink himself to death in that hut? Is it because
Speaker 2: of what he saw after?
Speaker 3: Did she kill him? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did she kill him? Yes? She may have. She may
Speaker 2: have killed him sight unseen, you know, off off off camera,
Speaker 2: off screen after that initial encounter. I don't know, it's again,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a bit ambiguous, but it's clear that
Speaker 2: like he cannot help her in the same way that
Speaker 2: this ranger from the south cannot help the villagers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so she also she's seeking help wherever it
Speaker 3: can come. She tries to go back to the place
Speaker 3: of the Stone God to ask for mercy, but no
Speaker 3: mercy will be given. And then finally, in her reindeer form,
Speaker 3: she's caught by Aslac, who gores her with a cold
Speaker 3: iron spear, after which she transforms back into herself, leaving
Speaker 3: Aslac mortified and he kneels down over her, realizing he
Speaker 3: has killed his wife, and he brushes her hair tenderly
Speaker 3: while she's dying, and then we just see the snow
Speaker 3: blowing from the slope of the fells and the cold wind,
Speaker 3: and that's the end. It's a very bleak ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't even get at the end. We close
Speaker 2: out and then we get the studio, the logo, and
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 3: So so many interesting questions. I've raised this a couple
Speaker 3: times now, but I want to come back to evidence
Speaker 3: we can look at in the film for what is
Speaker 3: Parita's attitude? Like, so much of her inner life is
Speaker 3: left mysterious, and that's part of what makes the film
Speaker 3: and the character so alluring. She's clearly feeling and thinking
Speaker 3: so much, but we get hardly any dialogue or voiceover
Speaker 3: to share the details of those thoughts and feelings with
Speaker 3: the audience. So, like, what is her attitude towards the
Speaker 3: killings that she's doing in the form of the White Reindeer.
Speaker 3: I found this commented on in a book entry I
Speaker 3: was reading about the movie. This was in a book
Speaker 3: about werewolf films called The Werewolf Filmography by an author
Speaker 3: named Brian Sen, and in the entry on The White Reindeer,
Speaker 3: A sin writes quote it remains ambiguous as to what
Speaker 3: triggers the change in Perita, nor is it clear whether
Speaker 3: she embraces the metamorphosis. At times, she seems distraught over
Speaker 3: what she's done in her bewitched reindeer form, while at
Speaker 3: others she appears to revel in it, even sporting vampiric fangs.
Speaker 3: In one scene, like you mentioned Rob as her witch
Speaker 3: half seemingly takes over. It's as if she has two personalities,
Speaker 3: the innocent Parita and the evil Witch. So I think
Speaker 3: that's a correct scription. I wonder what we're supposed to
Speaker 3: take away from that. And likewise, the other question we
Speaker 3: raised about Parita's motivations, what is at the root of
Speaker 3: her unhappiness and her desire at the beginning of the film,
Speaker 3: What exactly is it she wants to be different? And
Speaker 3: also like, what does she feel about her transformations? Is
Speaker 3: she desiring a kind of violent liberation from some aspect
Speaker 3: of her life or is it more just that she
Speaker 3: desires love and companionship. It could go either way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I suspect it's getting to
Speaker 2: some degree into this idea of like how does she
Speaker 2: fit into this masculine world around her and the desires
Speaker 2: of men, including her husband, you know, like she wants
Speaker 2: to be loved, she doesn't want to be murdered. But
Speaker 2: that's that's where we end up with the slaying of
Speaker 2: her monster self as perceived by the commune unity and
Speaker 2: the murder of her human self. And you know, this
Speaker 2: is also a case that the ending. We can point
Speaker 2: out that this matches up with were wolf and shape
Speaker 2: shifting tales from ancient times, the idea that the monster
Speaker 2: is killed, and in the killing of the monster it
Speaker 2: is revealed that they were actually this individual, or if
Speaker 2: not a particular individual, than a human being. They are
Speaker 2: revealed in the death. Sometimes there's another form of the reveal,
Speaker 2: which we've all seen in werewolf movies before, where it's
Speaker 2: the wound. The beast is wounded, then later we see
Speaker 2: the wound on the human individual and we realize that
Speaker 2: the two are one.
Speaker 3: Can I point out another variation. Often in were wolf movies,
Speaker 3: the character transforms into the werewolf, not only to in
Speaker 3: this transformed state get the desire to kill, usually as
Speaker 3: a kind of tragic thing, where the werewolf in their
Speaker 3: human state doesn't want to do violence to anyone, but
Speaker 3: they transform and then the wolf side of them takes
Speaker 3: over and it wants to do these killings. But it's
Speaker 3: also the wolf side of them is the kind that
Speaker 3: can do the killings. It has the physical power and
Speaker 3: the teeth and the claws and all that. So it
Speaker 3: is through the wolf body that the violence is done.
Speaker 3: That's not always the case in The White Reindeer. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think am I remembering it right? That Perita usually
Speaker 3: seems to like she will take the form of the
Speaker 3: White reindeer at some point in the luring of these men,
Speaker 3: or at some point in the pursuit, or at some
Speaker 3: point in the escape afterwards. But like when she does
Speaker 3: the killing, she often is in her human form, isn't she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point this. I was reading about
Speaker 2: this a bit in some of the information I was
Speaker 2: reading a few months ago about the female where wolf
Speaker 2: in in folklore, in mythology and in cinema, and the
Speaker 2: authors made a point that, Yeah, you'll often see that
Speaker 2: the female turns into a werewolf, and in turning into
Speaker 2: a werewolf, they turn into a masculine or more masculine
Speaker 2: form of themselves in order to be this dominant monster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then here and in this film, yeah, she seems
Speaker 2: to generally kill in human form. And we should also
Speaker 2: point out again that it is not a graphic picture.
Speaker 2: So when people are killed and animals are killed, it's
Speaker 2: generally not shown. It's left to our imaginations.
Speaker 3: But I have the impression, based on having watched it
Speaker 3: a couple of times, that most or all of the killings,
Speaker 3: the last thing we see of her is like, she's
Speaker 3: about to do it, and she's in human form, and
Speaker 3: then maybe she warps away and you know, runs off
Speaker 3: in the white reindeer form.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It seems like the white reindeer form
Speaker 2: itself is more about mobility, yeah.
Speaker 3: But also about attraction.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, attraction, mobility. Yeah. I'm also reminded of other
Speaker 2: folkloric traditions in which there is some inhuman threat that
Speaker 2: may take on the form of two different things that
Speaker 2: may attract a male, one being a female woman and
Speaker 2: the other being a horse. Those kind of traditions kind
Speaker 2: of seem akin to what we're seeing here in the
Speaker 2: modes of attraction that are employed. You know, the men
Speaker 2: are like, oh, there's a great rangeer, I need to
Speaker 2: catch that from my hurt, or there is a beautiful woman,
Speaker 2: I want to go see what she's up to, chatter
Speaker 2: up a little bit, that sort of thing. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how we might completely factor that endo our calculations here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a kind of duality of attraction along
Speaker 3: those lines.
Speaker 2: I should also point out I don't have materials put
Speaker 2: together to really go in depth on this, but we
Speaker 2: should also acknowledge that like a dear woman or a
Speaker 2: dear lady is also a part of different Native American
Speaker 2: mythologies and traditions, and I think there is like some
Speaker 2: amount of overlap in the way that that figure is
Speaker 2: sometimes presented in what we have here in this film.
Speaker 2: There's any actual connective tissue between these, but maybe they
Speaker 2: speak to some common threads in the human psyche. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. If nothing else, you know, we might view
Speaker 2: it in the same way that we have different werewolf
Speaker 2: traditions and other shape shifting traditions that have popped up
Speaker 2: in different parts of the world, some influenced by each other,
Speaker 2: but some with no connections. But they sometimes end up
Speaker 2: embodying some of the same ideas, the same attitudes, the
Speaker 2: same relationships between the wild world and the domesticated world,
Speaker 2: between civilization and the wilds, and so forth.
Speaker 3: One more question about Pirita. Do you see any element
Speaker 3: of her getting her comeuppance in the film or do
Speaker 3: you think it's purely tragic, just tragic? What happens to her,
Speaker 3: Like is it not really her fault or is it
Speaker 3: partially her fault?
Speaker 2: Oh? I mean, in my viewing of the film, it
Speaker 2: felt tragic. It felt like the path of doom that
Speaker 2: was like writ from the day she was born. You know,
Speaker 2: if I go back and piece it together, like you know,
Speaker 2: in question where her mind was and all of this,
Speaker 2: I could maybe lean more into the retribution view, But
Speaker 2: I know, I think the pure cinematic experience is one
Speaker 2: of doom and tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel the same way. I was just wondering though,
Speaker 3: because I mean, it has structural elements that would lend
Speaker 3: themselves to a kind of, you know, punishment of hubris
Speaker 3: in some way, that there's something this character really should
Speaker 3: have done differently, that they did wrong and they're being
Speaker 3: punished for it. But I don't know, when you think
Speaker 3: of the content of it scene to scene, it doesn't
Speaker 3: quite feel that way. It feels more like the evil
Speaker 3: magic is sort of acting through her rather than an
Speaker 3: expression of herself. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The weird thing though, is like we tend to side
Speaker 2: with her because she is the character we know the
Speaker 2: most in the movie, and yet at the same time
Speaker 2: we really don't know her at all. We have very
Speaker 2: limited information about where her mind is and all of this.
Speaker 3: But again, I think that's one of the things that
Speaker 3: makes the movie so exciting, is like, is the mysteriousness
Speaker 3: of this character. I can't stop thinking about her in
Speaker 3: a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's an art house ambiguity to this and
Speaker 2: a dreamlike quality, fitting since it seems that this film
Speaker 2: at least in part emerged from the mist of dreams.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think that's all I've got on the
Speaker 3: White Reindeer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the White Reindeer. Yeah, highly recommend it. It's easy
Speaker 2: to get. This is not one that, as of this recording,
Speaker 2: is super hard to find, so we recommend it, especially
Speaker 2: if you want some counter season programming.
Speaker 3: Like we were saying, freeze out your mind while your
Speaker 3: body sweats.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, just a reminder to everyone that's stuffed about.
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: You can get the Weird House Cinema episodes in the
Speaker 2: main Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, but we're
Speaker 2: at least experimenting with Weird House Cinema as its own playlist,
Speaker 2: which appears as a feed wherever you get your podcast.
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Speaker 2: If you are on letterbox dot com, which is a
Speaker 2: great place to be if you're a film fan, you
Speaker 2: can find us there. We are a weird House. There's
Speaker 2: a list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
Speaker 2: and sometimes a glimpse ahead of what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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