WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Quest (1984) 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:03.519 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.000 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:15.320 And this is Joe McCormick. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.560 And today's episode feels like a perfect fit in a 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.239 number of ways. For starters. We've been discussing mystery cults 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:24.440 on our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:30.160 and the concept of an imagistic religion has been key 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:34.200 to our discussions. There infrequent high sensory rights of passage, 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:36.800 and I feel like today's film matches up with that 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.960 concept on a couple of levels. Furthermore, to understand, we 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.080 potentially have more eyes on the podcast feed this week, 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.519 and it seemed proper to maybe lean a little more 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.160 into science fiction. Plus, we've also been saving this one 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.280 for a week when we had maybe a little less time. 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:56.760 This is one of the shorter pictures we've looked at 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.560 on Weird House Cinema. It's only a half hour long, 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.440 but that's fitting given the subject matter, and boy does 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:04.280 it pack a lot. 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:05.759 In So what's the movie? 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.640 The movie is the nineteen eighty four short film Quest. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.080 I note that I am going to mistakenly refer to 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.119 this film as Conquest at least once during the course 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:20.319 of this podcast. But not to be confused with Luccio 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.200 Fulci's Conquest. This is Quest. It is adapted for the 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:28.040 screen written by Ray Bradbury, and it is directed by 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.120 Saul and Elaine Bass. 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.600 Now this is not our first Bass film. We talked 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.080 about Saul and Elaine Bass when we covered the movie 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.360 Phase four, which was about super intelligent ants. That was 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.320 a very interesting movie. But one thing I remember thinking 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.559 about it was that it felt somewhat constrained by realism 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.520 for most of its run time, except in like the 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.840 very last couple of minutes where it got super weird, 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.080 and it almost felt like, you know, that level of 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:02.040 weirdness was being held back for much of the run time. 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.120 I think that is not something you could say about Quest. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:05.840 Now. 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.520 This film is all abstract and surreal weirdness. It is 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:14.799 not held back by the necessities of for the most part, 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.480 the necessities of genre or plot or character, or any 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:23.480 of the conventional trappings of narrative filmmaking. It is instead 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:27.080 more like an initiation into a great mystery. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.800 That's right. I mean, its plot is very basic. It 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:32.960 is essentially a there's a premise which We'll explain more 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.440 as we go on, but it essentially has to do 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.760 with characters whose life spans are unnaturally short. And then 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.079 from that premise, there is a character who must make 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.720 a journey through a difficult sort of hero's journey in 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.519 order to cure the people of this condition of having 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:50.720 shortened life spans. 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.000 Yes, yes, we have a chosen one, we have a quest, 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:56.799 and yeah, it's quite an adventure. 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.720 But so with the plot itself being quite simple, what 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:03.280 is left to fill in the kind of uniqueness of 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.120 the movie is the series of images that it supplies. 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:11.200 This is a movie that is about creating weird scenes, 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:17.240 and I really like the the variable tone of of 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.079 the the sort of settings that we get. Because there 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.240 were sort of natural settings. We see our hero wandering 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:28.640 through rocky landscapes and you know, mountain mountain passes and 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.040 planes and things like that. But then also we get 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:37.560 not even artificial but almost geometric, like abstract landscapes that 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.440 couldn't really exist in reality. They're they're like illustrations from 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:42.720 an mc escher drawing. 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:49.280 Yeah, yeah, increasingly surreal landscapes and environments. You know, you 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.600 go from from some settings that have like a very 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:57.680 like dark fantasy, Sword and Sandals kind of feel into 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.080 settings that feel like they have apps been stripped from 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:02.200 tron somehow. 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.920 Yes, yes, it starts a tour and ends esher. 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:09.440 Yeah all right, my elevator pitch for this one, I 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:13.120 just dug up a quick Bible verse, teach us to 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.960 number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:16.760 Ah. 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:18.000 Yeah, that'll come up later. 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.240 Now. As for the trailer for this one, there's seemingly 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.840 no true trailer for this film, which isn't surprising, as 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.080 we'll get into some of the reasons here. It only 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.919 played in festival competitions and never received a theatrical release. 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.039 But maybe we can just have a brief audio sample 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:37.479 of JJ's choosing here. 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:43.800 Is this the one? 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.560 One day from now, you'll be a grown boy, two 0:04:51.680 --> 0:05:02.400 or three, young man, five, middle aves seven old. In 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.560 eight days, you'll stop and die. 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:16.520 Listen to our heart's race. Listen to your own heart race. 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:21.920 We are locked away in the world where our lives 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:25.400 speaks through time. In eight days, no time to see you, 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.560 to feel, to know. 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:49.800 It's time. Ah, Now the teaching begins. 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.719 Listen to them, learn quickly, listen to. 0:05:54.680 --> 0:06:07.919 Them all right now? If you want to watch Quest 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.520 from nineteen eighty four before proceeding here. Well, DVD and 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:16.719 VHS releases have apparently been available. There's some evidence I've 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.760 found that you can order some sort of a DVD 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:23.200 of this movie, but for the most part, I can't 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.480 tell that it has benefited from a high quality physical 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.760 media release, at least not yet. Hopefully there's some sort 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:34.240 of collected short films of Saul in the Lane Bass 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:36.200 disc that will come out in the future, and when 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.640 it does, we will certainly promote it here on Weird 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:43.400 House Cinema. As of right now, you can easily find 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.599 this film on YouTube. There's at least one version that 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.320 claims to be some level of remastering. I'm never sure 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.479 how that works when you have a unofficial remastering of films, 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:58.279 so I'm not completely certain on that. I think that 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.640 Eternal Family, which you can find an Eternal dot TV, 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.960 I believe they have offered it in the past, but 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:07.560 I'm not sure that it is currently offered, but check 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.480 out Eternal Family either way, their catalog often matches up 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.920 with Weird House Cinema tastes. But I'm confident that if 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.400 you were interested in watching Quest, out there, you can 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:21.160 find a stream of it somewhere, and then hopefully down 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.960 the road we'll get that high quality release that we 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:25.360 all clearly need. 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:27.480 All right, Should we talk about the connections? 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.440 Yeah, let's start at the top with the directors and producers. 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.400 It's Saul and Elaine Bass, husband and wife design power couple. 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.800 We discussed saw Bass previously in our episode on nineteen 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:45.920 seventy four's Phase four. That was his only his slash there. 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.080 I may go back and forth from referring to him 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.600 and referring to he and his wife. They work together, 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.360 I believe on most of these projects after a certain point, 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.560 but she wasn't always credited right at there at the top. 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.320 On Quest they are co directors and are credited as such. 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:10.120 But yeah, Phase four was their only feature length directorial credit. 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.000 A film that, yeah, we might describe as the two 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.840 thousand and one a space odyssey of ant movies, an 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:20.600 increasingly weird man versus Nature film that reaches a fever 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:24.440 pitch of an ending and its theatrical cut, but absolutely 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:27.600 explodes in a cinematic acid trip if you watch the 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:31.960 original ending, which is even weirder and stranger. 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:36.280 Yeah, the spoiler for this movie is that humanity is 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.840 sort of being, would you say, competed with by hyper 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.800 intelligent ants, and the ants win in the end, and 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.160 when the ants, when there's an ending where it's I recall, 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.960 it's sort of implied that humans aren't all just like 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:53.960 killed by the ants. Like life goes on, but life 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:59.920 is increasingly completely incomprehensible because we are unable to understand 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:04.480 the intelligence or desire or what is meaningful to the 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.720 ant powers that are governing our lives. 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.240 Yeah, it's kind of unclear if it's a downer ending 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.040 or a happy ending, because it's that surreal and out there, 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:17.959 like it's beyond your human expectations of good and bad endings. 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.880 You cannot imagine an ant ruled world. You just can't 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:23.520 even get there now. 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:28.040 Saalbass lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six. Elaine Bass 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:30.600 was born in nineteen twenty seven, and as of this 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:34.280 recording is still around now. We talked a bit about 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:40.040 sal Bass on our episode regarding Phase four again. He 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.480 was the title sequence slash title design guy of his era. 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.320 A Bass title sequence is often credited as a perfect 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.000 condensation of the feel of a picture, just taking the 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.120 whole vibe of that picture and condensing it down to 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.160 just a mere couple of minutes. So you'll hear a 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.160 lot of filmmakers, even contemporary filmmakers, just talk about his 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:07.600 mastery of this. He crafted title sequences for major films 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.240 from the mid fifties all the way through the mid nineties. 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:15.959 We're talking about the likes of the Seven Year Itch, Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus, 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:20.240 West Side Story, Seconds, which we covered on Weird House Cinema, 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:25.959 Broadcast News, Big Goodfellas, Kate Beer, and Casino. The credits 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.040 to Mad Men on TV this was an homage to 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.480 his work. He did logos for a number of big 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.520 name companies throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.360 also did some pretty famous movie posters as well, including 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.640 the aforementioned films as well as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.600 I consulted a book for a little more detail about 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.000 Saul and the Lame Bass, a book titled saw Baths, 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:53.280 Anatomy of Film Design by Jan Christopher Horrock, which of 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.520 course has a great deal to say about their approach 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.760 to art, everything from title and logo design work to 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:05.240 of course their cinematic output. And again from about nineteen 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:11.880 sixty onward. Elaine was his longtime creative partner who worked 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.400 with him on pretty much most of these projects, so 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.439 she's not again. She's not always credited earlier on, but 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.400 certainly by the time of today's film, she shared official 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.360 credit with her husband. Their first short film was nineteen 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.920 sixty four. Is the Searching Eye, a contemplation of visual 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.600 awareness in the unseen world. This one was narrated by 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.560 Vic Perrin, who recently talked about the Voice of the 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.920 Outer Limits and also the Gargoyle. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.160 The narrator at the beginning of Gargoyles and dubbed in 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.480 on Bernie Casey's Gargoyle King. 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:49.080 Yes, The Searching Eye was followed by From Here to 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:53.080 There the same year, and Why Man Creates in nineteen 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:56.640 sixty eight, a meditation on creativity and nature. Did won 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.920 an Oscar the following year for Best Documentary Short Subjects, 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:03.880 and this paved the way for Phase four, which we've 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:08.040 previously talked about. Two other short films followed, seventy eight's 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.920 Notes on the Popular Arts and nineteen eighties The Solar 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:16.280 Film that was an OSCAR nominated documentary produced by Robert Redford. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.280 About the perils of fossil fuels and the need for 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.240 humanity to pivot to clean solar energy, and all of 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.520 this leads up to their final film project, and that 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:31.280 is nineteen eighty four's Quest. As Horrick relates, the origin 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:35.160 story on this one is super interesting. So bear with 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.200 me here. This is a lot. I was not expecting 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.040 it to be this rich. So this was a Japanese 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:47.000 funded production funded by the Church of World Messianity, a 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.520 new religious movement founded in nineteen thirty five by Mokichio 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.800 Kata who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty five. 0:12:55.960 --> 0:13:00.640 A religious movement that promotes spiritual cleansing via the light. 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.079 WHOA, I did not expect it to take this turn. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.760 Yeah, so apparently, as I understand it based on reading 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:11.560 Horrock's book, here people affiliated with the church at this point. 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:13.560 I think the Church was kind of going through like 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.200 some you know, rebranding a little bit redesign, like entering 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:20.400 a new era, and they were really taken by the 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.600 Bass's design work. This work had recently been featured in 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.080 a nineteen seventy nine issue of Idea, and so they 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.840 approached him about creating a visionary film to play in 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.959 the church's temples and spaces. So Saul Bass apparently wasn't 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.360 really all that interested in creating an overtly religious work, 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.760 but was drawn to the idea of quote a purely 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:47.880 metaphoric vision without proselytizing for the church, and quote, a 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.560 positive film that doesn't view life as a prelude to disaster. 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:54.720 Okay, so the Basses and the funders here may have 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:59.160 had totally different visions about what made this project appealing, 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:01.959 but nevertheless they could both get what they wanted out 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:02.240 of it. 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.520 That does seem to be the amazing thing about it, 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:11.560 because they did reach an agreement here. So I think 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:16.800 basically Saul Bass had worked with some big corporations before 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:20.440 funding his other works and was able to keep a 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:24.440 great deal of creative freedom over the final product. And 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.480 he thought, really, I mean, it seemed like it would 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.240 be kind of almost naive to think this, but he thought, well, 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.000 we can do the same thing working with a religious organization. 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.600 But he was right that it seems like it basically 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:37.520 worked out like that. 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.560 It's like when the Baptist Church of la funded Plan 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:41.640 nine from Outer Space. 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.240 Yeah, pretty much. So, yeah, they funded this for the 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.800 tune of I Believe a Million dollars was the overall budget, 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.240 and again this was back in the eighties, and it 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.400 does feature strong themes of light, which line up with 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.760 some of the doctrines the land stand them of the 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:06.920 church in question here, but otherwise the plot the finished 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.360 film is detached from the church's teaching, so again kind 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.040 of a secularization of maybe some of their core values, 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.800 but in a way that doesn't lean too heavily into 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.120 preaching the gospel of this particular faith. 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.280 Kind of like if you could get a I don't know, 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:26.280 just some mainstream Christian church to sponsor you by creating 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:29.920 a story about sacrifice and redemption that didn't have any 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:35.400 overtly Christian terms or ideas in it apart from the themes. 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:39.120 Yeah, yeah. So the film never received a theatrical release 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:41.520 in the United States, but it did play at plenty 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.400 of festivals, winning at least one award. It attracted a 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.760 number of fans, including George Lucas, which is not surprising. 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.360 Lucas praised its effects, its music, and its use of 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:56.680 the hero's journey. Meanwhile, back in Japan, it played eight 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.240 times a day at the church's headquarters for a period 0:15:59.280 --> 0:15:59.960 of four years. 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.800 Wow, does that beat Rocky Horror for the longest theatrical 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.040 run just in terms of total number of plays? 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:13.440 I don't know. I mean, that would be an interesting 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:15.520 question to actually get into. Because, of course, at the 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:21.920 Studio ghibli Museum in Tokyo they play various short films 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.720 of Miyazaki's exclusively there. It's the only place you can 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.800 see most of them outside of maybe catching them at 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.120 a festival or a special showing. But that being said, 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.960 I don't think they're playing the same film every day, 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.760 four times a day. So, but then again, this is 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:38.360 only a period of four years, so I don't know 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:40.880 how many total viewings they were able to chalk up 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:44.360 during that time. There was a read in Horror's book, 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:47.120 though there was apparently some concern on the Japanese side 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.240 here that if the film were commercialized too much, it 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:55.120 would cause political problems for the church, which allegedly this 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.560 allegedly stifled some of its reach, So there may there 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.280 might have been some tension over that fact. But still 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:05.080 it did play in festivals, people did get to see it, 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:09.000 people continue to see it, and again, hopefully we'll get 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:10.879 to see some sort of proper release of it in 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:11.400 the future. 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:13.359 Wow, that's really interesting. 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.320 So they agreed to the basic terms of this film, 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:18.960 but then they still needed somebody to write it, so 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.920 they reached out to legendary author Ray Bradbury, who lived 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.160 nineteen twenty through twenty twelve, the author of such famous 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:31.639 works as The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit four fifty one, The 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:35.480 Illustrated Man, The October Country, and so forth. He was 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.560 also a successful screenwriter in his own right, having written 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.640 the screenplay for the nineteen fifty six adaptation of Moby Dick, 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:44.920 and his work was also adapted for TV and film 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.600 going back to the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold's It 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.280 Came from Outer Space in fifty three, which we may 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:51.960 come back to in Weird House Cinema. 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.560 You know, this makes me think I've never seen a 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.520 film adaptation of Moby Dick, and I'd be very curious 0:17:57.560 --> 0:17:59.520 how they do it, because that's one of my favorite 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.520 novels and it doesn't seem like it would adapt to 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:04.879 the screen very well. So much of it is just 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.639 in the you know, it's in the weirdness of the narrator. 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.000 It's in like the kind of essays about seatology and 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:13.920 things like that. It seems like it would be hard 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.320 to turn into a movie, but I don't know, Maybe 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:17.160 they do a good job. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:19.920 I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a kid, 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:25.200 but I remember really enjoying Gregory Peck in the adaptation 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.680 from fifty six. And since Ray Bradbury did the screenplay, 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:30.880 maybe we can do it on weird house cinema. That's enough. 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.040 It's basically sci fi, so yeah, Saul and Elaine Bass 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:38.120 reached out to Bradbury to script Quest, and Bradbury adapted 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.080 his own nineteen forty six story, Frost and Fire. Now, 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.800 there were a number of changes made, apparently here, as 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.080 Bradbury updated the structure of that old story for this 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:53.320 new project. So first of all, Saul was wary of 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.560 overreaching with their budget and requested that it be set 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:59.200 on Earth, or at least an earth like world, rather 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.520 than an overly alien planet. That seems like a reasonable 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.280 budgetary request, though having seen the full film, I feel 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:08.560 like we get very unearthly. 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:10.240 Yeah. 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.600 Yeah, at least half of it's taken place in you know, 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:19.000 geometry textbook illustrations, not on any landscape I would recognize. 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.280 Right, So I don't feel like they really held back 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.920 too much there. Also, while the original story is more 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.360 hard science fiction, in the original story of the characters 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.160 depleted life spans are apparently due to radiation, and they're 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:35.440 able to depend on some sort of race memory. They 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.399 have to convey the essentials of the quest, as we'll 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:44.040 get into to each subsequent generation, Whereas the version of 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:46.800 the story that we get in the Quest has a 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.960 more mythic vibe to it. It feels more like fantasy 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.879 or sword and Sandals, but then gets increasingly stranger and 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:54.680 more surreal. 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.200 Yeah, that's funny. I seem to recall in the past 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:02.840 at some point Bradbury making some kind of derisive comments 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.840 about science fiction and saying that he preferred to write 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:08.960 fantasy because that was, like, I don't know, he thought 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:12.320 it was like less bound by realism or something. Maybe 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:13.960 I'm misremembering that. 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:15.119 That way, they would kind of match up with what 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.800 we see here, Like you can well imagine Bradbury seeing 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.080 this as the opportunity to take what interests him the 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.600 most about that old story that was written, you know 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:27.880 very much for the sci fi publications of the day, 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.480 taking the essence of that and updating it and making 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:34.800 it more mythic, freeing it from the shackles of the 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:39.480 science fiction. Perhaps because clearly caveat, I have not read 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.560 the original Bradbury story, but I get a strong hint 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.280 here that Bradbury wasn't really interested in the effects of 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:51.480 radiation human beings. It's more about issues of mortality and 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:57.960 you know, cross generational efforts and so forth. Now, as 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.440 for the human cast of Quest, there are a bunch 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.480 of people in this and everyone is just bolk credited 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.760 at the end. They don't specify who plays who, and 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.440 it leaves the task to your humble podcasters to try 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:14.040 and figure out exactly who's who in this picture. We 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:16.719 are not going to single out everyone, but I do 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:18.880 want to mention just a few of the players here 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.040 who are notable because of their work elsewhere, and my 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:27.240 apologies to anyone that I did leave out because of this. 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.480 Multiple actors, for instance, play are chosen one our hero 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.639 of the tale, because he's going to start We cover 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.320 most of his life over the course of the narrative. 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:40.840 He begins as a baby and we'll end with him 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:45.080 as a mature adult man. But we have different actors 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.120 playing him, and it's not a makeup effect. 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:49.040 That would have been a good choice though, if you 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.359 had a baby the whole time with just makeup and 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:52.600 the older. 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.280 Yeah, or win in both directions. You know, have like 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.680 a twenty five year old actor and then age him 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.320 and dage him all the way down to baby. All right. 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:06.720 One of the early characters we encounter in this is 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:10.520 an unnamed character that I thought of as the Elder, 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:16.600 some sort of a wise older individual who is looking 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:19.840 for the chosen one and finds the chosen one. 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:22.840 And this the monklike guy who does the palm reading 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:25.520 on the baby at the beginning. Yeah. 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:28.560 This character is played by John Abbott, who lived nineteen 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.200 oh five through nineteen ninety six, an English Shakespearean actor 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:36.120 with very expressive eyes, known for roles and let's say 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:39.080 nineteen forty eight's The Woman in White. He had an 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:42.360 appearance on the original Star Trek, the original Lost in Space, 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.280 and his other credits, of which he has a lot, 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:49.800 include nineteen forty four Is The Mask of Demetrios. This 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:51.760 is one I've looked at before because it's a Peter 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.800 Lorrie movie. He's also in Cry of the were Wolf 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.679 from the same year, and he was the voice of 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:01.080 Akella the Wolf in Dizzy Needs the Jungle Book back 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:05.119 in nineteen sixty seven. All right, again, multiple actors play 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.119 the chosen one, our hero, but at one point the 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:13.280 hero is played by Noah Hathaway born nineteen seventy one. Fittingly, 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:15.240 this is, of course, the actor who also played a 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.240 Treyu in nineteen eighty four. Is the never ending story 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:21.840 which we covered on a previous episode of Weird House Cinema. 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:26.040 I thought he looked familiar. Yeah, is this the day too, boy? 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.400 Yeah, this is the boy that I believe begins the journey. Right, 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:33.720 He's passed his tests and is then setting out on 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:34.280 the journey. 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:37.520 He graduated at Harvard College j L where he got 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:39.919 an A and then he gets to go out on 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:40.440 the journey. 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:43.800 Now, another actor that shows up in this is Bill Irwin. 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:47.280 I think he plays an old man that is encountered 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:50.159 late in the picture. That is another monk like figure. 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:54.040 Oh, the hooded guy at the Egyptian temple. 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:58.000 Yeah, yeah, I believe this is Bill Irwin. I could 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:01.280 be wrong on this. Bill Irwin of nineteen fourteen through 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:04.199 twenty ten an American character actor who appeared in more 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:07.120 than two hundred and fifty television and film roles, including 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:09.760 the one that earned him an Emmy nomination in nineteen 0:24:09.840 --> 0:24:13.960 ninety three. Retiree Sid Fields on the sitcom Seinfeld. 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:16.920 You know, I wonder with actors like this, who are 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:20.760 they're the character actor who just always plays a cantankerous 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:23.800 old man. What did he do before he was old? 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:25.120 Just always old? 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:26.280 Yeah? 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:30.959 Yeah, it's like William Hickey late in life, you played 0:24:32.000 --> 0:24:35.360 cantankerous old men, and also early in his career. So 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:39.439 all right. The music in this film is also a 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:43.760 real delight. It's you'll have Maybe you can explain the 0:24:43.880 --> 0:24:46.560 music and the sound of this film better than I can, Joe, 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:49.240 But I just think of it as a soothing, other 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:52.840 worldly cascade of electronic bliss and intrigue. 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:57.879 Oh yeah, yeah, just whipped butter. Synthesizer auras a really 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:02.800 good stuff, a lot of great you know contrast along 0:25:02.840 --> 0:25:06.160 the dynamic range. So there's a lot of synth bass 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.439 that sends to me might be like a mog Taurus 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:14.639 or something, you know, the strong, pulsing based tones, and 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:18.439 then like synthesizer flutes that I don't know if you 0:25:18.480 --> 0:25:20.960 really get that sound much anymore. It was a big 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:23.639 thing in the eighties where you would you would evoke 0:25:23.720 --> 0:25:27.840 a sense of mysticism by having a synthesizer flute that 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:30.879 I feel like if you were composing a track now 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.560 and you went to put in that same synth flute voicing, 0:25:34.600 --> 0:25:37.040 it would sound really tinny and hokey to you, so 0:25:37.080 --> 0:25:40.160 you would use something else. But if you go back 0:25:40.160 --> 0:25:43.080 to these compositions that feature it, it's actually great. 0:25:43.920 --> 0:25:46.320 Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about here, 0:25:46.720 --> 0:25:49.440 and I think that the music it has this kind 0:25:50.040 --> 0:25:54.919 So again, we have this purifying light that is important 0:25:54.960 --> 0:25:58.480 to the faith that funded this picture. And then also 0:25:58.520 --> 0:26:00.960 there's a kind of purifying light that is key to 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:05.119 the plot of our story, and the music feels like 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:08.640 a fitting sonic incarnation of that light. 0:26:10.040 --> 0:26:14.000 I see what you're saying. Yeah, the music shimmers a lot. 0:26:13.240 --> 0:26:17.040 It often expands to fit. You know, It'll be very 0:26:17.119 --> 0:26:19.480 quiet at first, and then as the light floods into 0:26:19.560 --> 0:26:23.680 the scene, the music floods onto the soundtrack, and yeah, 0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:26.040 it's it's a good use of sonic textures. 0:26:26.359 --> 0:26:28.959 So the people behind the music here, well, Elaine Bass 0:26:29.160 --> 0:26:31.399 is credited on the music. She was of not a 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:35.200 professional singer, with some musical training prior to her design career. 0:26:36.200 --> 0:26:41.280 But then also we have credited Barrington Van Campen who 0:26:41.520 --> 0:26:44.120 I looked him up. I can find a birthday for him. 0:26:44.160 --> 0:26:47.119 But he is apparently still active on the San Francisco 0:26:47.240 --> 0:26:50.280 music scene. If you look up, if you go to 0:26:51.280 --> 0:26:57.160 the dbduo dot com, this is the website for Van 0:26:57.280 --> 0:27:00.919 Campen and Dale LeDuc. They haven't a stick act together, 0:27:01.000 --> 0:27:03.600 and there's a They also have some some some some 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:07.960 brief bio information about Van Campen. Van Campen is a 0:27:08.040 --> 0:27:14.000 multi instrumentalist. His instruments include the melotron and various synthesizers. 0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:17.000 Uh and there's a lot of like session work and 0:27:17.040 --> 0:27:19.280 production work in his background as well. 0:27:19.640 --> 0:27:22.960 I just looked at Wait No l a Beatles tribute band. 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:26.360 Yeah yeah, at one point, Uh yeah, I think, I think, 0:27:26.480 --> 0:27:28.080 and I think they still do a lot of covers 0:27:28.119 --> 0:27:30.520 of Beatles songs. I was looking at. They're still doing gigs. 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:32.640 If you're in in San Francisco, you can go out 0:27:32.640 --> 0:27:36.800 and catch these guys. Tell them we sent you. 0:27:37.080 --> 0:27:41.280 Please request a Beatles tune and then request the theme 0:27:41.400 --> 0:27:44.400 from Quest Now. 0:27:44.440 --> 0:27:47.119 Prior to this film, Van Campen had worked as a 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:50.680 musician on the Jerry Lewis film Slapstick of Another Kind, 0:27:51.160 --> 0:27:53.520 adapted from the work of Kurt Vonnegut and also co 0:27:53.640 --> 0:27:57.720 starring John Abbott, but Quest was seemingly his first credited 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:01.200 film or TV composition. UH followed in nineteen eighty eight 0:28:01.800 --> 0:28:05.160 with a score for the film In Dangerous Company. He's 0:28:05.200 --> 0:28:08.680 also credited as composer on Faces of Death Volumes four 0:28:08.720 --> 0:28:12.480 and six in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety six. I 0:28:12.520 --> 0:28:15.080 have not and we'll never see the Faces of Death. 0:28:15.160 --> 0:28:18.320 My window for having watched Faces of Death has long passed. 0:28:19.080 --> 0:28:21.520 But he did some sort of work on there, and 0:28:21.560 --> 0:28:23.359 he also did a lot of work with you know, 0:28:23.480 --> 0:28:26.600 such clients as AT and T, various TV channels and 0:28:26.640 --> 0:28:29.360 film studios. So I know, I just think he did 0:28:29.359 --> 0:28:31.000 a lot of a lot of a lot of like 0:28:31.080 --> 0:28:34.000 mercenary sound work, you know. And so I don't want 0:28:34.040 --> 0:28:36.439 to I don't want to single him out for Faces 0:28:36.480 --> 0:28:38.479 of Death. Somebody had to do the music for Faces 0:28:38.520 --> 0:28:40.400 of Death might as well have been this guy. 0:28:40.920 --> 0:28:43.440 They could have also just sourced pre existing composition. 0:28:43.640 --> 0:28:46.200 That's true. That's true. That's very possible. And I don't 0:28:46.240 --> 0:28:49.000 know the full story on his involvement in Faces of death. 0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:52.360 So don't don't put any of that on him, because again, 0:28:52.400 --> 0:28:54.240 at the end of the day, the music in Quest 0:28:54.400 --> 0:28:56.960 is amazing and I loved every minute of it. 0:29:05.920 --> 0:29:08.560 Okay, you want to talk about the plot, Oh, let's 0:29:08.600 --> 0:29:11.440 experience it all right. So when we first come up 0:29:11.480 --> 0:29:14.920 and get our title sequence, the camera seems to be 0:29:15.360 --> 0:29:20.280 navigating a cave or a megalithic structure of some kind. Cold, 0:29:20.520 --> 0:29:25.000 dark stone walls. We've got shadows cut by shafts of light. 0:29:25.440 --> 0:29:28.400 Everything's kind of green and gray in color. There is 0:29:28.440 --> 0:29:33.240 a generally pale, cold kind of color scheme that defines 0:29:33.400 --> 0:29:37.480 most of the movie until the last couple minutes. It's greens, blues, whites, 0:29:37.600 --> 0:29:40.960 and grays. And when we first come in, also there's fog. 0:29:41.080 --> 0:29:43.400 The air is thick with fog. It's kind of swirling 0:29:43.480 --> 0:29:48.200 and suggesting a dark age in a way. And then 0:29:48.200 --> 0:29:51.560 there's a voiceover that says, before the gate was closed 0:29:51.640 --> 0:29:54.760 and the light began to fail, the ancients lived a 0:29:54.800 --> 0:29:59.000 long and fruitful life. Now our lifespan. 0:29:58.680 --> 0:29:59.680 Is eight days. 0:30:00.520 --> 0:30:05.120 Yes, for us, there is no time. The minutes, the hours, 0:30:05.200 --> 0:30:09.640 and the days fly away, and our lives along with them. 0:30:10.080 --> 0:30:11.680 And so all of this is being said is the 0:30:11.720 --> 0:30:16.360 camera is panning and traveling through these caverns and stone corridors, 0:30:16.880 --> 0:30:19.400 and then there's a thing that I liked that struck 0:30:19.440 --> 0:30:22.440 me as a kind of scale twist. So the cameras 0:30:22.600 --> 0:30:25.280 it's going through these stone caverns, and I had been 0:30:25.320 --> 0:30:28.080 assuming the spaces we were looking at were supposed to 0:30:28.080 --> 0:30:31.239 be roughly like human hall sized, with the camera at 0:30:31.280 --> 0:30:34.320 normal eye level for a person. But then suddenly we 0:30:34.520 --> 0:30:38.040 zoom in on a little crevice in a stone facade 0:30:38.240 --> 0:30:41.160 that looks like it's the size of a mousehole. But 0:30:41.200 --> 0:30:44.120 then you realize there are tiny stairs leading up to 0:30:44.200 --> 0:30:47.360 the crevice, and then you see a human form standing 0:30:47.400 --> 0:30:50.680 inside the doorway, and it becomes clear we're either looking 0:30:50.720 --> 0:30:53.720 at like a two inch tall human or the original 0:30:53.720 --> 0:30:56.960 reference scale you had in mind was wrong, And I 0:30:56.960 --> 0:30:59.560 think it's the latter, though there will be similar kind 0:30:59.600 --> 0:31:02.560 of scale versions that happen later in the story as well. 0:31:03.600 --> 0:31:03.840 Yeah. 0:31:03.920 --> 0:31:06.840 Yeah, to just a certain degree, it's like this is 0:31:06.880 --> 0:31:10.480 a an artifact of how the techniques they use to 0:31:10.480 --> 0:31:13.719 shoot it, but also it feels fittingly surreal in this 0:31:13.800 --> 0:31:14.600 picture as well. 0:31:14.920 --> 0:31:18.000 Yeah. So from here we move into the cavern and 0:31:18.080 --> 0:31:20.880 come upon a group of people who are dressed in 0:31:21.000 --> 0:31:25.200 plain peasant clothing. There is again going along with the 0:31:25.280 --> 0:31:29.080 kind of dark age feeling. There is a since when 0:31:29.080 --> 0:31:31.760 we come to these people that they are living abject 0:31:31.880 --> 0:31:38.280 lives of kind of darkness and ignorance and want. But 0:31:38.440 --> 0:31:40.720 the first thing we get to with these people is 0:31:40.800 --> 0:31:43.880 a scene of childbirth there. So there are all these 0:31:43.880 --> 0:31:47.480 people in peasant clothing assisting a woman in childbirth. The 0:31:47.520 --> 0:31:50.200 baby is born, and a man in a sort of 0:31:50.280 --> 0:31:53.480 monastic beard holds the child up to this audience of 0:31:53.520 --> 0:31:56.680 elders some kind of counsel and they're asking is this 0:31:56.800 --> 0:32:00.640 the one? And a debate starts. The elder say it's 0:32:00.640 --> 0:32:03.480 too early to tell, and then another says, no, we 0:32:03.560 --> 0:32:06.840 cannot wait, we must chance it. And so they check 0:32:06.880 --> 0:32:09.600 the infant's hand. They have this monk like man look 0:32:09.640 --> 0:32:12.000 at the hand, and the baby's palm opens and yes, 0:32:12.040 --> 0:32:14.600 we see some crinkles there, but I think they're actually 0:32:14.640 --> 0:32:17.560 doing a palm reading. The monk like man says, yes, 0:32:17.640 --> 0:32:21.040 the line is strong. I think talking about the lifeline. 0:32:21.520 --> 0:32:24.480 Now. I love the way that the plight of the 0:32:24.520 --> 0:32:26.720 people here is presented because it's one of those things 0:32:26.720 --> 0:32:29.440 where on one level, yes, it's fantastic, But on the 0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:33.800 other it's like, yeah, that's how our subjective experience of 0:32:33.840 --> 0:32:37.200 time sometimes goes. It feels like it is flowing faster 0:32:37.400 --> 0:32:40.360 than it should and we have no time, or we 0:32:40.400 --> 0:32:42.640 have far less time than we wanted. And at the 0:32:42.680 --> 0:32:44.960 same time, given the sort of again you said, like 0:32:45.000 --> 0:32:47.120 the dark age vibe we have here, this kind of 0:32:47.200 --> 0:32:51.400 archaic vibe. I'm also reminded of things we've discussed on 0:32:51.400 --> 0:32:54.720 stuff to blow your mind in the past about various 0:32:55.200 --> 0:33:00.640 historian historians an anthrop anthropologists reflecting on what life was 0:33:00.880 --> 0:33:05.640 like for our ancestors before people were able to specialize more, 0:33:05.680 --> 0:33:11.520 before various cultural and technological advancements opened up more time 0:33:12.280 --> 0:33:16.560 in people's days to allow different types of experiences and 0:33:16.600 --> 0:33:18.680 different types of knowledge to accumulate. 0:33:19.720 --> 0:33:22.720 Yeah, that is interesting, and and that kind of desperation 0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:25.160 about the time. The sense of I want more life 0:33:25.320 --> 0:33:29.640 is a fantastic premise to start with, for one thing, 0:33:29.720 --> 0:33:32.400 because it's not a you know, it's it's a very 0:33:32.560 --> 0:33:36.680 relatable feeling but accelerated for the purpose of the narrative. 0:33:37.240 --> 0:33:41.520 And it's also something it's like an unpersonified villain. It's 0:33:41.560 --> 0:33:44.480 not it's not a beast you can fight, though there 0:33:44.480 --> 0:33:47.560 will be some beasts to fight in the story. It's 0:33:47.600 --> 0:33:51.880 just like we we we can't accept the way time 0:33:51.960 --> 0:33:55.040 flows around us, or the way our bodies flow through time. 0:33:55.120 --> 0:33:57.320 It's it's it's a terror to us. 0:33:57.760 --> 0:34:00.520 Yeah, And it's one of the things that makes it 0:34:00.560 --> 0:34:02.840 fitting that this film is thirty minutes long and not 0:34:02.960 --> 0:34:04.840 an hour or an hour and a half or two hours, 0:34:05.600 --> 0:34:08.359 And it is a film where there there is no 0:34:09.320 --> 0:34:12.640 true personified villain, if there is any. There are adversaries 0:34:12.680 --> 0:34:15.520 to overcome, but there's also a case to be made 0:34:15.560 --> 0:34:19.200 that all of those adversaries are perhaps aspects of the self, 0:34:19.440 --> 0:34:24.880 you know. So that's yeah again. The film itself has 0:34:24.920 --> 0:34:28.840 a great mythic vibe. It feels like an initiation into 0:34:29.080 --> 0:34:30.000 some great secret. 0:34:30.760 --> 0:34:33.239 So they go on to observe that the child is 0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:37.920 already seeing and hearing them. That's pretty quick, and the 0:34:37.960 --> 0:34:40.560 elders all seem to agree, Okay, the teaching must begin 0:34:40.719 --> 0:34:42.840 at once. So the child is carried out of the 0:34:42.920 --> 0:34:45.560 room where he was born. How are you going to 0:34:45.600 --> 0:34:47.680 start teaching a baby that was born two minutes ago? 0:34:47.920 --> 0:34:50.120 That I think that baby is not ready for school, 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:53.520 But they disagree, so here we go, it says day one, 0:34:53.760 --> 0:34:56.719 and the elders move down a shadowy corridor, carrying the 0:34:56.719 --> 0:35:00.319 baby with them. The narrator says, as we watch you 0:35:00.360 --> 0:35:04.040 grow and change, as you watch us we grow old, 0:35:04.200 --> 0:35:07.239 Your life, like ours, is destined to be short. In 0:35:07.320 --> 0:35:10.640 eight days we're born, we mature, and we grow old 0:35:10.800 --> 0:35:13.400 and die. And then the monk like man and the 0:35:13.440 --> 0:35:16.040 others bring the baby to what looked to me kind 0:35:16.040 --> 0:35:19.240 of like a shop counter in a fantasy game general store, 0:35:20.400 --> 0:35:22.960 but this is, I think, actually supposed to be a school. 0:35:23.719 --> 0:35:26.880 So they tell the baby one day from now, you 0:35:26.920 --> 0:35:30.920 will be a grown boy, two or three, a young man, five, 0:35:31.200 --> 0:35:35.000 middle aged, seven old. In eight days you will die. 0:35:35.880 --> 0:35:36.120 Oh. 0:35:36.160 --> 0:35:38.520 And then there's a strange moment where the man says, 0:35:38.680 --> 0:35:41.800 listen to our heart's race, and one of the elders 0:35:41.840 --> 0:35:46.040 holds the baby against her chest, and then they say, 0:35:46.080 --> 0:35:49.520 listen to your own heart race. And this, like accelerated 0:35:49.560 --> 0:35:53.120 heart rate, is a thing that comes back in the story, 0:35:53.160 --> 0:35:56.239 but it does just remind me of like, you know, 0:35:56.320 --> 0:35:59.400 putting my ear to the hearts of pets and hearing 0:35:59.480 --> 0:36:02.400 their faster little heartbeats. You know, there's small bodies and 0:36:02.760 --> 0:36:03.880 little metabolisms. 0:36:04.480 --> 0:36:08.640 Yeah yeah, and it also will have another example of 0:36:08.680 --> 0:36:10.480 this as well. But it kind of ties into this 0:36:10.640 --> 0:36:14.880 idea that there is there is a cross generational, a 0:36:14.880 --> 0:36:19.560 cross generation connection between the individuals of the in this 0:36:19.640 --> 0:36:25.160 culture of these people that is maybe a bit surreal 0:36:25.239 --> 0:36:28.080 as well. That's maybe leaning a little bit into the fantastic, 0:36:28.800 --> 0:36:33.560 and it's not entirely based on real world human teaching 0:36:33.960 --> 0:36:35.400 and conveying of information. 0:36:36.000 --> 0:36:39.840 Yeah. So the old man says, we are locked away 0:36:39.880 --> 0:36:42.239 in a world where our lives speed through time in 0:36:42.280 --> 0:36:45.040 eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know, 0:36:45.880 --> 0:36:48.080 And then he just says, okay, it's time, and the 0:36:48.360 --> 0:36:53.439 baby is handed across the counter to the ShopKeep. But again, 0:36:53.480 --> 0:36:56.399 this is actually some kind of school. So they take 0:36:56.440 --> 0:36:58.240 the baby away, and the old man sort of calls 0:36:58.280 --> 0:37:02.680 after the baby's now the teaching begins. Learn quickly, little one, 0:37:03.800 --> 0:37:06.800 uh and ooh. The some kind of learning with blocks 0:37:06.920 --> 0:37:09.239 is going on. There's a lot of cool stuff in 0:37:09.280 --> 0:37:11.960 this teaching montage. I like that we start with these 0:37:11.960 --> 0:37:17.040 little stone coins and there are squares and pyramids. It 0:37:17.080 --> 0:37:19.279 looks like stuff that would be fun to handle in 0:37:19.320 --> 0:37:21.080 the same way that D and D dice are. 0:37:21.640 --> 0:37:25.600 Yeah, yeah, it's all very cactile. And yeah, I just 0:37:25.640 --> 0:37:29.720 love this montage because everything is very identifiable as teaching 0:37:29.800 --> 0:37:33.240 and principle on one level, but also feels very alien 0:37:33.920 --> 0:37:37.920 and also perhaps concerning a natural philosophy unknown to our world. 0:37:38.360 --> 0:37:39.040 Yeah. 0:37:39.160 --> 0:37:42.040 Again, it's worth noting in the original Ray Bradbury story 0:37:42.080 --> 0:37:45.919 that the short lived humans in it have a form 0:37:45.960 --> 0:37:48.800 of race memory that they're able to depend upon to 0:37:49.760 --> 0:37:53.640 pass knowledge down from short lived generation to short lived generation. 0:37:53.920 --> 0:37:56.160 And that's not what we see here, but we might 0:37:56.239 --> 0:37:59.719 think of this along similar lines. Information is perhaps being 0:37:59.719 --> 0:38:03.719 trans from teachers to student, yes, with physical manipulation of 0:38:03.760 --> 0:38:07.719 objects and some external learning devices, but also perhaps in 0:38:07.719 --> 0:38:11.320 a way that depends on something greater than human learning, 0:38:11.840 --> 0:38:14.680 and it maybe there is some sort of psychic connection. 0:38:15.040 --> 0:38:17.799 And in fact, later on, when we when our hero 0:38:17.960 --> 0:38:21.759 has commenced on his journey and he hears the voices 0:38:22.719 --> 0:38:26.560 of his teachers, I mean, perhaps that is like a 0:38:26.560 --> 0:38:28.960 psychic echo of what has occurred previously. 0:38:29.360 --> 0:38:32.920 Yeah, yeah, I like that too. It invites questions of like, 0:38:33.040 --> 0:38:35.960 is there actual telepathy going on or the or the 0:38:36.040 --> 0:38:39.600 teachers currently communicating with him as he as he goes beyond, 0:38:40.000 --> 0:38:42.279 or is it like now now part of them is 0:38:42.400 --> 0:38:44.600 in him and he just carries it with them. 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:47.200 Yeah, yeah, and this is a great film. And then 0:38:47.200 --> 0:38:50.680 it leaves you to ask those questions and they're ultimately unanswerable. 0:38:50.680 --> 0:38:51.920 It's all up to your interpretation. 0:38:52.680 --> 0:38:56.200 So already we see the child as a toddler, sorting 0:38:56.239 --> 0:38:58.840 these little shapes and blocks as the teachers look on. 0:38:59.840 --> 0:39:02.040 I love the way the blocks look. They're made of 0:39:02.080 --> 0:39:07.320 a kind of polished stone with a freckled and scarred appearance, 0:39:07.840 --> 0:39:10.120 and the child is learning to line them up in 0:39:10.160 --> 0:39:13.120 a special order, as if he were spelling words with 0:39:13.160 --> 0:39:14.680 the blocks. But what does it mean. 0:39:14.800 --> 0:39:15.160 I don't know. 0:39:15.239 --> 0:39:18.840 We're not told. There's also a metal block set with 0:39:18.880 --> 0:39:21.800 a hollow cube that you balance on a prismatic pillar, 0:39:21.880 --> 0:39:24.240 and then you start kind of like piecing them together 0:39:24.320 --> 0:39:27.360 like an erector set. We see the child working with 0:39:27.400 --> 0:39:31.480 these elements blindfolded, also doing some kind of psychic paddy 0:39:31.520 --> 0:39:34.719 cake game with his hands, like the part across from 0:39:34.719 --> 0:39:36.920 his teachers where they're like moving their hands and then 0:39:36.960 --> 0:39:40.680 slapping them together. I didn't get exactly what that was, 0:39:40.760 --> 0:39:42.799 but it seemed to me it involved maybe a kind 0:39:42.800 --> 0:39:46.799 of sense of psychic powers or premonitions about where the 0:39:46.800 --> 0:39:50.120 hands were going. We also see the training getting into 0:39:50.440 --> 0:39:54.160 He's like reading patterns of grain in blocks of wood. 0:39:54.320 --> 0:39:58.200 I liked that it was strange, and then making spears 0:39:58.280 --> 0:40:01.239 out of a kind of silvery So the spears are 0:40:01.560 --> 0:40:04.680 modular and they snap together like tent poles, and then 0:40:04.719 --> 0:40:08.040 they have these fins and barbs that snap out from 0:40:08.080 --> 0:40:11.280 the poles and he's throwing the spears doing target practice 0:40:11.320 --> 0:40:15.320 with them. There's another part where he unveils a shimmering 0:40:15.400 --> 0:40:19.760 steel cone from a covering which is a metal box, 0:40:19.840 --> 0:40:22.920 and the cone emits blinding light, and then he lifts 0:40:23.000 --> 0:40:25.360 up the cone and that unveils another level. It is 0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:29.760 like a blue glowing ball of energy that's inside the cone, 0:40:29.760 --> 0:40:32.359 and the ball of energy just floats in the air. Again, 0:40:32.560 --> 0:40:35.480 we're not told what that is. But anyway, when the 0:40:35.520 --> 0:40:37.840 training is complete, the boy now looks about ten or 0:40:37.880 --> 0:40:41.200 twelve years old, and an old man tells him it's 0:40:41.239 --> 0:40:41.840 time for you to go. 0:40:43.760 --> 0:40:46.840 Yeah. It's like you know in elementary school when you 0:40:46.840 --> 0:40:49.600 make it halfway through learning about the Civil War and 0:40:49.640 --> 0:40:51.040 then they're like, I'm sorry, now I have to send 0:40:51.080 --> 0:40:51.680 you home for summer. 0:40:51.760 --> 0:40:52.040 That's it. 0:40:52.160 --> 0:40:53.000 That's all we had time for. 0:40:53.480 --> 0:40:56.640 Yeah, I do remember that about a lot of lesson 0:40:56.680 --> 0:40:59.919 plans when I was younger, A fantastic lack of clothes 0:41:00.239 --> 0:41:03.319 about me. Things we learned. Okay, So the old man 0:41:03.360 --> 0:41:05.480 comes to the boy to tell him more about his mission. 0:41:05.560 --> 0:41:09.000 They're looking at a light pouring out from between some rocks, 0:41:09.400 --> 0:41:12.000 and the man says, that light squeezes through the crack 0:41:12.040 --> 0:41:15.400 where the doors in the Great Gate join. That gate 0:41:15.640 --> 0:41:17.960 must be opened. You will open it. 0:41:18.680 --> 0:41:21.640 Yeah, and again this possibly lines up with this idea 0:41:21.920 --> 0:41:24.760 of I believe it is that the Joe rai or 0:41:25.000 --> 0:41:29.360 jewelry purifying light that factors into the teachings of Okichi 0:41:29.440 --> 0:41:32.680 Okata often described as kind of like an energy healing 0:41:32.719 --> 0:41:37.480 doctrine hm. Okay, And I've also read that it sometimes 0:41:37.480 --> 0:41:40.000 involves like the use of some sort of reflective medallion, 0:41:40.040 --> 0:41:42.440 which we also see a version of in this picture. 0:41:42.640 --> 0:41:45.600 Oh interesting, Okay, I was wondering about that. Okay, So 0:41:45.640 --> 0:41:48.000 maybe they did get a few little like specific things 0:41:48.040 --> 0:41:48.359 in there. 0:41:48.600 --> 0:41:50.440 Yeah. 0:41:50.560 --> 0:41:53.040 Anyway, the old man says, beyond the gate is a 0:41:53.120 --> 0:41:56.279 land where life is lived for twenty thousand days and more. 0:41:56.840 --> 0:41:59.160 If the gate can be reached and opened, the light 0:41:59.200 --> 0:42:02.120 will rush out us and with it bring long life 0:42:02.280 --> 0:42:06.160 and peace. The boy asks why he has been chosen, 0:42:06.200 --> 0:42:08.960 and the old man explains, those who were sent before 0:42:09.000 --> 0:42:12.040 are left when they were too old, they left too late, 0:42:12.360 --> 0:42:15.200 and they died before they reached the gate. This time, 0:42:15.280 --> 0:42:17.239 they selected the boy to be sent when he was 0:42:17.440 --> 0:42:20.520 very young, so he would have enough time to complete 0:42:20.520 --> 0:42:23.640 his mission. And then the old man says, you've learned. 0:42:24.080 --> 0:42:26.960 You've learned your lessons quickly. You're strong and intelligent, you 0:42:27.040 --> 0:42:30.640 have curiosity. And the boy says, but have I learned enough? 0:42:31.200 --> 0:42:33.400 And the old man does not answer the question. He 0:42:33.480 --> 0:42:35.960 just says, we don't have time to teach you anymore. 0:42:36.040 --> 0:42:37.960 You'll have to learn the rest on your way. 0:42:38.840 --> 0:42:41.160 Yeah, and it really is like that. I mean that again. 0:42:41.200 --> 0:42:43.799 That's one of the great things about this film. I 0:42:43.800 --> 0:42:45.640 say it in Jess. But it's also like that's the 0:42:45.640 --> 0:42:48.360 way of life, and it encapsulates that perfectly. 0:42:48.719 --> 0:42:51.480 Yeah, have we ever learned enough in childhood to prepare 0:42:51.520 --> 0:42:56.040 us for adult life? Probably not, or can't really answer 0:42:56.040 --> 0:42:58.000 that question, but you don't really have a choice no 0:42:58.040 --> 0:42:58.560 more time. 0:42:58.719 --> 0:43:06.560 Here's your silvery space. Go out and do your best. 0:43:11.360 --> 0:43:14.719 So the boy is outfitted with again those gleaming spears 0:43:14.760 --> 0:43:17.120 and other supplies. We see them like kind of pouring 0:43:17.120 --> 0:43:20.719 out these measures of grain and stuff for him. And 0:43:20.760 --> 0:43:22.799 before he's sent out by the elders, the old man 0:43:22.920 --> 0:43:26.719 gives him this small, like mirror polished metal pendant to 0:43:26.760 --> 0:43:30.160 hang around his neck, which may be connecting to that 0:43:30.520 --> 0:43:35.120 actual religious item used by the whatever, I forget what 0:43:35.120 --> 0:43:39.319 it's called, the Church of Messianity. Yeah, And then so 0:43:39.400 --> 0:43:42.239 he takes the pendant, and then he turns to his 0:43:42.280 --> 0:43:45.040 mother and they embrace, and all she says is goodbye. 0:43:45.560 --> 0:43:46.160 Then he goes. 0:43:47.080 --> 0:43:49.839 So the boy sets out into the world. And now, oh, 0:43:49.840 --> 0:43:51.480 and this is by the way, we get a title 0:43:51.520 --> 0:43:53.640 that says day two. So day two of his life. 0:43:54.840 --> 0:43:57.120 The boy sets out into the world, and now instead 0:43:57.120 --> 0:44:01.000 of just the dark caverns, there are landscapes. First, we 0:44:01.080 --> 0:44:03.920 see the boy crossing a kind of bleak tundra with 0:44:04.040 --> 0:44:08.040 these sandy hills, fields of snow, expanses of gray water, 0:44:08.239 --> 0:44:11.640 and mountains in the background. At one point we see 0:44:11.719 --> 0:44:15.399 him wandering through bad lands full of smooth, jumbled rock 0:44:15.440 --> 0:44:19.919 formations that look like giant piles of bones. And as 0:44:19.960 --> 0:44:22.560 the boy travels on through the rocks, he hears voices 0:44:22.600 --> 0:44:24.560 whispering in his head. This is what we were talking 0:44:24.560 --> 0:44:27.840 about earlier, the voices of his teachers and the elders, 0:44:27.840 --> 0:44:30.360 and they're saying things like, go on, don't hesitate, we 0:44:30.440 --> 0:44:34.360 have prepared you well, be brave, don't worry. And the 0:44:34.360 --> 0:44:37.520 boy wanders in darkness through dis maze of stones, hearing 0:44:37.560 --> 0:44:40.160 the weird voices, and then suddenly hearing a kind of 0:44:40.200 --> 0:44:44.000 hooting in the distance, and he draws his spear in preparation. 0:44:44.760 --> 0:44:45.239 What is it? 0:44:45.280 --> 0:44:48.959 What's making this sound? And there's a stillness, feathers fall 0:44:49.040 --> 0:44:52.360 on the rocks around him, and then a monster attacks. 0:44:53.239 --> 0:44:54.640 Yeah, and it's a pretty cool monster. 0:44:54.680 --> 0:44:57.320 I have to say, that's right. So the monster, whatever 0:44:57.360 --> 0:45:00.359 it is, first thrashes around in the darkness, roaring the boy. 0:45:00.440 --> 0:45:02.640 The boy holds out his spear, and then they eventually 0:45:02.680 --> 0:45:05.640 clash and we see some elements of the monster. It 0:45:06.120 --> 0:45:09.760 appears to be a kind of giant reptilian pit bull 0:45:09.840 --> 0:45:13.960 head with a triangular or circular triangular mouth with teeth 0:45:14.080 --> 0:45:17.480 jutting in from all sides. I gotta say that the 0:45:17.520 --> 0:45:19.799 head is a little bit rancori ish. 0:45:20.040 --> 0:45:22.400 Yeah, yeah, there's definitely kind of a rain corps vibe. 0:45:22.960 --> 0:45:25.319 I also feel like it's maybe a combination of some 0:45:25.320 --> 0:45:28.439 sort of a giant sloth and a tartar grade, which 0:45:28.440 --> 0:45:31.680 would of course be a giant, a very giant tartar grade. 0:45:31.960 --> 0:45:34.680 It's actually also, in fact, to draw on two different 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:36.759 return of the Jedi. It's a little bit Rancor and 0:45:36.840 --> 0:45:39.759 a little bit Sarlac because of the circular mouth with 0:45:39.880 --> 0:45:43.439 the teeth coming in in all directions. Anyway, the boy 0:45:43.440 --> 0:45:45.480 fights the monster in the dark with his spear, and 0:45:45.520 --> 0:45:48.760 eventually he slays it, and as the beast lies dying 0:45:48.800 --> 0:45:51.200 on the ground, he approaches it and there's a kind 0:45:51.200 --> 0:45:54.960 of sadness in its eyes. And then the next thing. 0:45:55.480 --> 0:45:57.359 This was one of the few parts where I feel 0:45:57.400 --> 0:46:01.000 like I wasn't sure I was understanding what the film 0:46:01.080 --> 0:46:04.880 was trying to suggest. There's like, after he's already slayed 0:46:04.920 --> 0:46:07.520 the monster, there's a screeching in the night, and some 0:46:07.800 --> 0:46:10.759 other creature seems to be circling the boy and he 0:46:10.920 --> 0:46:13.319 raises a rock above his head and he shouts no, 0:46:13.680 --> 0:46:15.800 and then the threat seems to fade away. 0:46:16.800 --> 0:46:21.840 Yeah, this was interesting. I guess I'm on a literal 0:46:21.880 --> 0:46:24.560 interpretation level. I was thinking, Okay, maybe he's just scaring 0:46:24.600 --> 0:46:27.600 away additional monsters. You know, there are others out there, 0:46:27.640 --> 0:46:30.560 and he's saying he's just keeping them from attacking. Or 0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:33.280 you know, perhaps it's something more, and maybe he's driving 0:46:33.280 --> 0:46:35.920 away the darkness of his defensive act, like he has 0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:40.040 killed and therefore, even though he's acting in self defense, 0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:42.759 now he has to contend with like the darkness of 0:46:42.840 --> 0:46:45.240 what he has just done, and he's driving that away. 0:46:46.640 --> 0:46:49.680 Horrack in his book contends that we might think of this, maybe, 0:46:49.800 --> 0:46:52.440 you know, as again another example of mythic battle in 0:46:52.480 --> 0:46:56.279 the darkness, which we see in various sagas. But he 0:46:56.320 --> 0:46:58.719 asked some questions like is this monster real? Is this 0:46:58.800 --> 0:47:01.719 a projection of the heroes mind? Again, it's the sort 0:47:01.719 --> 0:47:04.879 of film where various interpretations are possible, the no right 0:47:04.920 --> 0:47:05.720 or wrong answers. 0:47:06.480 --> 0:47:09.840 So then we get to day three. The boy appears 0:47:09.880 --> 0:47:11.799 to be in his twenties now, and we see him 0:47:11.840 --> 0:47:14.359 come up over a hilltop to look out on this 0:47:14.719 --> 0:47:17.800 big sand flat with a sort of temple in the distance, 0:47:18.480 --> 0:47:22.319 and he hears the whispered voices again. One of them says, 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:26.439 straight ahead, you must go there looking at the temple. Now, 0:47:26.719 --> 0:47:28.600 I don't know if you have thoughts about the style 0:47:28.719 --> 0:47:31.640 of this temple. Rob there's sort of a so first 0:47:31.680 --> 0:47:34.920 of all, there's a a big haul that we just 0:47:34.960 --> 0:47:37.680 see as like a rock facade, but then out in 0:47:37.719 --> 0:47:40.040 front of it there is a rock carving of a 0:47:40.080 --> 0:47:43.360 domed head with an open mouth and these wild eyes, 0:47:43.880 --> 0:47:47.880 kind of empty wild eyes, and giant hands held in 0:47:47.920 --> 0:47:49.160 an open poem position. 0:47:50.800 --> 0:47:55.160 Yeah, the general vibe of these ruins reminding me a 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:57.200 little bit of photos I've seen of the ancient heads 0:47:57.200 --> 0:48:02.640 of the gods in Nimrout Dog Turkey. Imagine many of 0:48:02.680 --> 0:48:04.640 you out there have seen these images before, with kind 0:48:04.680 --> 0:48:07.880 of conical looking hats on the heads. 0:48:08.440 --> 0:48:10.400 Oh, I just looked it up, and yeah, I can 0:48:10.440 --> 0:48:12.440 see the comparison. That is kind of interesting. 0:48:12.520 --> 0:48:12.719 Though. 0:48:12.920 --> 0:48:16.000 It's almost like some aspects feel a little bit like this, 0:48:16.239 --> 0:48:20.000 some feel a little a little more like like Mesoamerican art. 0:48:20.800 --> 0:48:24.960 Absolutely, yeah, so I guess it. Yet, it fittingly feels 0:48:25.400 --> 0:48:31.160 akin to various examples of real world the design traditions, 0:48:31.200 --> 0:48:34.480 but it feels also removed in its own thing. When 0:48:34.480 --> 0:48:36.360 I was looking around on letterboxed, I found a pretty 0:48:36.360 --> 0:48:39.440 great little review. Someone by the name of Roland one 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:42.520 oh six said quote man walks through a series of 0:48:42.520 --> 0:48:44.920 prog album covers in order to save his people from 0:48:44.960 --> 0:48:50.120 their eight day life spans, which I legitimately laughed at 0:48:50.120 --> 0:48:52.960 that and it's kind of spot on. There are many 0:48:53.360 --> 0:48:55.680 many scenes in this picture that could easily be a 0:48:55.680 --> 0:48:56.839 prog rock album cover. 0:48:57.360 --> 0:48:59.839 Yes, yes, including the very next thing I was going 0:48:59.880 --> 0:49:02.319 to talk about, which is that as the boy is 0:49:02.480 --> 0:49:05.160 coming or I guess he's a young man now, as 0:49:05.200 --> 0:49:08.520 the hero is coming down to cross the plain of 0:49:08.640 --> 0:49:11.920 sand to get to the temple, there's another thing he sees. 0:49:11.960 --> 0:49:14.880 At first, I was confused how this interacted with the 0:49:14.960 --> 0:49:19.520 other thing. But there's like a giant teardrop shaped rock 0:49:19.880 --> 0:49:23.279 descending slowly from the sky, and there appears to be 0:49:23.320 --> 0:49:25.520 a sort of castle or something on top of it. 0:49:26.360 --> 0:49:29.360 Yeah, this is actually mentioned in the book. This is 0:49:29.600 --> 0:49:34.040 apparently an homage to one of Saalbass's favorite visual works, 0:49:34.520 --> 0:49:39.040 The Castle of the Pyrenees by Belgian surrealist Renee Margrite. 0:49:39.800 --> 0:49:42.880 This is a work from nineteen fifty nine, and apparently 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:45.400 Saul loved this image and had just been looking for 0:49:45.440 --> 0:49:50.200 an opportunity to somehow utilize it in his work. There's 0:49:50.200 --> 0:49:54.000 a Wikipedia article about this particular painting, and I included 0:49:54.360 --> 0:49:57.000 a sample of it here in our notes for you, Joe. 0:49:58.000 --> 0:50:01.120 Yeah, it looks exactly the same, so clearly, yeah. 0:50:01.239 --> 0:50:04.960 I could be wrong, but I feel like something just 0:50:05.160 --> 0:50:08.360 like this also eventually pops up in Dungeons and Dragons, 0:50:09.080 --> 0:50:12.240 So some of you dn D lord nerds out there 0:50:12.560 --> 0:50:14.960 will have to remind me what I'm thinking of, because 0:50:14.960 --> 0:50:17.560 I feel like I've seen an homage to this piece 0:50:17.760 --> 0:50:19.479 in Dungeons and Dragons art as well. 0:50:20.080 --> 0:50:22.360 I thought you were going to say Zardas, it's like 0:50:22.440 --> 0:50:24.880 the Zardas head, except it's not a head, it's just 0:50:24.920 --> 0:50:25.560 a big rock. 0:50:25.640 --> 0:50:28.440 But yeah, I mean I think there's some shared DNA 0:50:28.560 --> 0:50:30.399 between some of the design work here and the design 0:50:30.440 --> 0:50:31.560 work of Zardas as well. 0:50:32.280 --> 0:50:35.040 Okay, so the hero tries to cross the sand flat, 0:50:35.080 --> 0:50:37.920 but when he gets into the sand, he begins to sink, 0:50:38.080 --> 0:50:40.080 and at first I was like, oh, no, it's like 0:50:40.120 --> 0:50:41.919 a quick sand trap. He's gonna have to get out, 0:50:41.960 --> 0:50:45.600 but no, it goes in a different direction. Instead. He 0:50:45.800 --> 0:50:48.160 is able to move through the sand, but it's like 0:50:48.280 --> 0:50:51.160 rising up to his chest and occasionally up to his chin, 0:50:51.640 --> 0:50:54.239 but he just wades on through like its water, and 0:50:54.280 --> 0:50:56.840 he makes his way all the way across the sand 0:50:56.840 --> 0:51:00.239 flat this way, which I thought was I don't know, 0:51:00.360 --> 0:51:03.839 the strange, unexpected, and obviously I don't think you can 0:51:03.880 --> 0:51:06.239 really do that. You can't move through sand that you're 0:51:06.280 --> 0:51:09.480 that deepened, and it would just there'd be too much resistance. 0:51:09.520 --> 0:51:12.800 But it's like water, and he just passes through it. 0:51:12.880 --> 0:51:15.040 This sequence, in particular reminds me of some of the 0:51:15.120 --> 0:51:17.640 sand related imagery that we get in Phase four. 0:51:18.280 --> 0:51:21.400 Oh yeah, I agree. It also reminds me of a 0:51:21.400 --> 0:51:25.400 weird sort of sand progressing through a sand chamber scene 0:51:25.440 --> 0:51:31.000 in the Tarkowsky movie Stalker. But eventually the hero comes 0:51:31.000 --> 0:51:33.799 out the other side to stand on the stairs of 0:51:33.920 --> 0:51:36.600 the temple. I didn't mention this earlier, but next to 0:51:36.640 --> 0:51:38.600 the human head there's kind of a big eagle head 0:51:38.640 --> 0:51:42.640 as well. And then suddenly there's an earthquake. The carvings 0:51:42.640 --> 0:51:44.960 at the entrance to the temple begin to crumble and 0:51:45.000 --> 0:51:47.839 fall all around him, and the hero has to dodge 0:51:47.920 --> 0:51:51.400 some boulders, but he survives. Now I think it's suggesting 0:51:51.440 --> 0:51:55.799 the earthquake is caused by the huge tear drop asteroid 0:51:56.080 --> 0:51:59.000 settling into the sand, like it has finally touched down 0:51:59.080 --> 0:51:59.960 and that shakes the air. 0:52:00.719 --> 0:52:03.960 I think so. But again, as to exactly what all 0:52:04.000 --> 0:52:07.279 this means, I mean, we're left to ponder that, like 0:52:08.040 --> 0:52:11.320 all of this, I'm assuming all of this is somehow 0:52:11.360 --> 0:52:15.279 tied to the history of these people, that these used 0:52:15.280 --> 0:52:18.960 to be their cities, that these are their temples, they 0:52:19.239 --> 0:52:23.160 or their tombs. We're not sure. But as to what 0:52:23.320 --> 0:52:26.640 the giant tear drop asteroid truly signifies, like, is this 0:52:26.680 --> 0:52:29.000 the spaceship that brought them there? Because I know in 0:52:29.040 --> 0:52:30.960 the original Bradbury it has to do. There's like a 0:52:31.040 --> 0:52:33.759 crash spaceship that's part of the plot, and so we 0:52:33.840 --> 0:52:38.000 might see some fantastic echo of that concept here. 0:52:38.480 --> 0:52:40.640 But the voices in the hero's head they tell him 0:52:40.640 --> 0:52:42.520 to go on, so he does. He goes into the 0:52:42.520 --> 0:52:45.280 temple and then we see from inside the giant head 0:52:45.280 --> 0:52:48.200 with light pouring in through the eyes, which is very cool. 0:52:49.280 --> 0:52:51.759 And then inside the temple there is a swarm of 0:52:51.920 --> 0:52:55.759 star like particles suspended inside a blue light, much like 0:52:55.840 --> 0:52:59.000 the blue light that the boy uncovered in his schooling. 0:53:00.080 --> 0:53:02.080 But before he can make sense of it, the temple 0:53:02.160 --> 0:53:05.760 continues to crumble and it just rocks and blocks are falling, 0:53:05.800 --> 0:53:09.720 and he's driven away, driven on into a different place, 0:53:09.760 --> 0:53:14.759 a tube like corridor sort of the inside of the spaceworm, 0:53:14.800 --> 0:53:18.600 where the Falcon lands and Empire strikes back. Yea, but 0:53:18.680 --> 0:53:22.440 with a raised metal boardwalk. He's saying, I'm going through 0:53:22.480 --> 0:53:25.880 the boardwalk in the swamp or something, and he moves 0:53:25.880 --> 0:53:29.680 on down the gangway and then finally we come to 0:53:29.880 --> 0:53:33.160 a different landscape and it announces is day four. Baby, 0:53:33.200 --> 0:53:35.800 Here we are day four, and he's standing in front 0:53:35.880 --> 0:53:41.960 of massive Egyptian temple architecture with rows and rows of columns, 0:53:42.960 --> 0:53:45.680 and I forget the name of the temple I have 0:53:45.719 --> 0:53:47.919 in mind, but there is an Egyptian temple I'm thinking 0:53:47.960 --> 0:53:51.239 of that looks like this, and he's passing through the 0:53:51.280 --> 0:53:56.840 courtyard and it somehow seems to lead into a different universe, 0:53:57.480 --> 0:53:59.400 like when he comes to the other end there is 0:53:59.560 --> 0:54:03.760 a another flat sandy plain, but this one is bathed 0:54:03.800 --> 0:54:07.240 in blue light with pyramids that look like the Giza 0:54:07.320 --> 0:54:12.279 Complex in the distance, and then beyond that giant planets 0:54:12.400 --> 0:54:13.560 looming in the sky. 0:54:14.000 --> 0:54:15.400 Huge. Yeah. 0:54:15.480 --> 0:54:18.480 Yeah, So at this point I'm definitely questioning the whole 0:54:18.640 --> 0:54:22.440 Make sure you set it on Earth ray, yeah, yeah, 0:54:22.760 --> 0:54:25.359 directive here, because we really feel like we're in another 0:54:25.400 --> 0:54:27.279 world at this point. We are, at least if we're 0:54:27.320 --> 0:54:29.839 not on another planet the whole time, then we are 0:54:30.080 --> 0:54:31.520 somewhere else at this point. 0:54:31.960 --> 0:54:35.080 Yes, you know, I don't mean to diminish it by 0:54:36.120 --> 0:54:38.719 by this comparison, but it's hard not to feel some 0:54:38.760 --> 0:54:42.880 Star Wars influence on this. For one thing, he like, 0:54:42.920 --> 0:54:45.400 he comes up to a hooded man resting against one 0:54:45.440 --> 0:54:48.239 of the columns. He's almost in a kind of either 0:54:48.320 --> 0:54:51.560 obi wan kenobi or jahwa outfit. The hooded figure in 0:54:51.600 --> 0:54:54.759 the desert and he comes up to the sky. No 0:54:55.239 --> 0:54:58.279 face is visible, but the hero is looking out on 0:54:58.360 --> 0:55:01.200 this blue landscape with the pyramid and the planets like 0:55:01.280 --> 0:55:03.840 passing into and out of alignment in the sky. The 0:55:03.840 --> 0:55:07.080 planets are moving super fast. And then the hooded man 0:55:07.120 --> 0:55:09.839 starts to talk. He says, so they sent another one. 0:55:10.239 --> 0:55:13.319 Let's have a look at you. Yes, you're young, much 0:55:13.400 --> 0:55:16.120 younger than I was when I got here. And the 0:55:16.160 --> 0:55:18.920 hooded man reveals that he was the last hero, but 0:55:18.960 --> 0:55:21.719 he started too late, he says. The younger man does 0:55:21.800 --> 0:55:25.200 have a chance, and he gives him advice. He says, 0:55:25.440 --> 0:55:28.799 look at that pyramid, don't go around it. You have 0:55:28.880 --> 0:55:29.960 to climb to the top. 0:55:30.480 --> 0:55:33.680 All right, some fortune cookie sort of advice there, but 0:55:34.360 --> 0:55:36.480 it feels specific to this challenge as well. 0:55:36.680 --> 0:55:39.200 Oh sure. And you know, this actually made me think 0:55:39.239 --> 0:55:41.360 about one of I was going to say, one of 0:55:41.360 --> 0:55:45.919 the shadow themes of Quest, and it's something that has 0:55:46.000 --> 0:55:50.400 to do with trust. So our hero, at multiple times 0:55:50.440 --> 0:55:55.239 throughout the story, we get little different ways that he 0:55:55.400 --> 0:56:00.080 just has to believe the advice given to him and 0:56:00.160 --> 0:56:05.680 follow it because he doesn't have enough time to see 0:56:05.719 --> 0:56:11.040 and investigate for himself. And so he just meets this 0:56:11.160 --> 0:56:13.920 random stranger here, and the stranger gives him advice and 0:56:13.960 --> 0:56:17.080 he just follows it, and we're sort of to understand 0:56:17.080 --> 0:56:19.400 that he doesn't really have a choice. I mean, I 0:56:19.440 --> 0:56:22.600 guess he could try to not follow it, but seems 0:56:22.640 --> 0:56:25.240 more likely that would result in him failing his mission 0:56:25.239 --> 0:56:25.640 as well. 0:56:26.080 --> 0:56:28.040 Yeah, like if he said, no, Grandpa, I needed I 0:56:28.080 --> 0:56:30.000 want to do my own research on this, like, you know, 0:56:30.080 --> 0:56:32.439 then you're going to die in the desert like this guy. 0:56:32.920 --> 0:56:33.919 And and it. 0:56:33.840 --> 0:56:37.720 Makes me think about the relationship between time and trust. 0:56:38.160 --> 0:56:40.200 You know, this is this is actually a core thing 0:56:40.280 --> 0:56:46.280 about what trust is. Trust is a thing that saves 0:56:46.320 --> 0:56:50.839 you time because if you didn't. If you had unlimited 0:56:50.880 --> 0:56:55.960 time and resources, you could investigate everything for yourself like 0:56:56.000 --> 0:56:59.200 you could, you know, look into every you look endlessly 0:56:59.320 --> 0:57:03.200 into every question and not have to believe anything people 0:57:03.239 --> 0:57:06.400 told you. But you don't have unlimited time and resources. 0:57:06.400 --> 0:57:09.239 You're always trying to make your life more efficient, so 0:57:09.280 --> 0:57:12.040 you have to rely on trust for some things. And 0:57:12.080 --> 0:57:14.440 so a big part of what we think about in 0:57:15.400 --> 0:57:20.120 navigating life is just like where we decide to press 0:57:20.160 --> 0:57:24.600 the trust button to save ourselves time and this and 0:57:24.680 --> 0:57:28.480 this scenario created by the movie heightens that kind of 0:57:28.880 --> 0:57:32.840 the observation of that dynamic because time is so constricted 0:57:33.600 --> 0:57:36.160 and so he just literally does not have time to 0:57:36.240 --> 0:57:38.560 wonder whether this guy is giving him good advice or not. 0:57:38.640 --> 0:57:41.400 He just has to follow it. Yeah, And then also 0:57:41.440 --> 0:57:44.360 the guy says, not everything that frightens or hurts you 0:57:44.400 --> 0:57:47.880 as bad. Fear and pain are your teachers learn survive. 0:57:49.720 --> 0:57:53.000 So the young man hurries on through the desert. And meanwhile, 0:57:53.040 --> 0:57:55.960 also he's another thing he asked to trust, is he's 0:57:56.000 --> 0:57:58.439 been being given these voices in his head. They're giving 0:57:58.520 --> 0:58:01.000 him advice. They're saying, you are not alone, we travel 0:58:01.080 --> 0:58:12.200 with you. So there's a scene where the hero gets 0:58:12.240 --> 0:58:14.040 to the stairs, he has to climb. He has to 0:58:14.040 --> 0:58:15.920 climb to the top of the pyramid, and the stairs 0:58:15.920 --> 0:58:19.360 seem endless, but he goes on up and up and up, 0:58:19.400 --> 0:58:21.600 and then finally he gets to the top, where he 0:58:21.680 --> 0:58:26.440 finds a table emitting a blue light. Looks almost like 0:58:26.520 --> 0:58:28.800 a game board. I was thinking that at first, and 0:58:28.840 --> 0:58:30.600 then what do you know, It does seem like it's 0:58:30.600 --> 0:58:32.920 a game board. It's covered in the shapes that the 0:58:32.960 --> 0:58:36.040 boy learned to manipulate in school. And then suddenly there 0:58:36.080 --> 0:58:40.880 is a roar, and we're like, oh, another monster sort of, 0:58:40.960 --> 0:58:45.160 There is a sasquatchlike creature, like a big, furry humanoid 0:58:45.200 --> 0:58:48.880 creature that approaches him, but it's not another fight to 0:58:48.920 --> 0:58:52.400 the death with a spear. This time we're facing the chess. 0:58:52.480 --> 0:58:57.000 YETI our hero has to play a board game, a 0:58:57.080 --> 0:59:00.960 game of strategy with Bigfoot, and I think may have 0:59:01.000 --> 0:59:04.080 been my favorite creative choice in the film. 0:59:04.560 --> 0:59:07.600 Yes, I absolutely love this on one level because it 0:59:07.640 --> 0:59:10.920 is just that outrageous, Like, at this point everything has 0:59:10.960 --> 0:59:15.520 already been surreal and dream like and full of WTF 0:59:15.600 --> 0:59:19.120 moments and then we have this. But then it again 0:59:19.200 --> 0:59:21.760 is one of these moments too. Where it's never fully explained. 0:59:21.800 --> 0:59:26.280 We don't know who or what this entity is, but 0:59:26.720 --> 0:59:29.160 there are so many different ways to tease it apart. 0:59:29.480 --> 0:59:32.400 Horrick and his book brings up the possibility that this 0:59:32.560 --> 0:59:36.520 is sort of like the ID, that his own ID 0:59:36.600 --> 0:59:38.920 that he is combating here. That least, they're like his, 0:59:39.200 --> 0:59:42.800 this is his primal side. And I did when I 0:59:42.840 --> 0:59:45.760 was originally watching it, I did kind of notice some 0:59:45.960 --> 0:59:49.680 similarities between the face of the beast and the face 0:59:49.720 --> 0:59:51.720 of our hero. I don't know how much of that 0:59:51.800 --> 0:59:54.240 was me just, you know, reading too much into it 0:59:55.040 --> 0:59:58.200 or not, but I think there are various interpretations here. 0:59:58.760 --> 1:00:00.520 But what we get at the end of the day 1:00:00.680 --> 1:00:05.320 is the game of chess or something like chess with 1:00:05.760 --> 1:00:07.160 this bestial other. 1:00:07.560 --> 1:00:10.040 That is funny. I mean, so, on one hand, I 1:00:10.080 --> 1:00:13.720 absolutely see the comparison in the way they're embodied, that 1:00:13.800 --> 1:00:18.000 this creature may be some reflection of his more savage self. 1:00:18.600 --> 1:00:20.600 On the other hand, like why would you be Why 1:00:20.720 --> 1:00:24.320 is the form of conflict a game of strategy? Why 1:00:24.320 --> 1:00:25.919 are you playing chess against your ID? 1:00:26.240 --> 1:00:26.360 Oh? 1:00:26.360 --> 1:00:27.920 Well, I mean you don't want to wrestle it? Look 1:00:27.920 --> 1:00:30.480 how strong this is get out smarted? 1:00:31.400 --> 1:00:34.160 I guess so so the game itself is kind of 1:00:34.280 --> 1:00:40.680 tronish that it's like these metal shapes, these polyhedron game 1:00:40.760 --> 1:00:43.880 pieces that are zoom zooming around and zapping each other 1:00:43.880 --> 1:00:48.560 with lasers. And then, of course, eventually the YETI loses 1:00:48.640 --> 1:00:52.080 and he doesn't like that. You know, yetti's are known 1:00:52.120 --> 1:00:55.160 to rip people's arms off and they lose. So he 1:00:55.240 --> 1:00:59.360 howls in anger, and he drools and rages very bad sport, 1:00:59.400 --> 1:01:01.960 and he seems ready to kill our hero. But suddenly 1:01:03.600 --> 1:01:06.640 it's a little unclear exactly the orientation of what's happening here, 1:01:06.640 --> 1:01:11.720 but like a walkway extends out through space toward the pyramid, 1:01:12.240 --> 1:01:15.840 leading to another structure, and then the hero leaps out 1:01:15.880 --> 1:01:18.480 onto the walkway and goes away to this other place. 1:01:19.360 --> 1:01:20.680 The challenge has been overcome. 1:01:20.960 --> 1:01:26.120 Yes, so this other place is a lattice of mcsher 1:01:26.280 --> 1:01:29.200 beams that are interlocking in impossible ways. 1:01:29.880 --> 1:01:30.240 Yes. 1:01:30.680 --> 1:01:32.640 So yeah, at this point, like where are we Like, 1:01:32.720 --> 1:01:36.680 are we it within the confines of some great supercomputer? 1:01:37.400 --> 1:01:41.040 Are we in another dimension? I Mean it's hard to 1:01:41.080 --> 1:01:43.760 say exactly what's going on here, and that's the beauty 1:01:43.760 --> 1:01:43.960 of it. 1:01:44.240 --> 1:01:46.640 Yeah, in one of the rooms, the hero goes into 1:01:46.920 --> 1:01:50.240 here seems to be inside the game he just played, 1:01:50.320 --> 1:01:53.680 like he's in shrunken form, and the game pieces are 1:01:53.760 --> 1:01:56.720 the giant shapes moving around him. He walks on the board, 1:01:57.920 --> 1:02:00.400 and of course Scale is being played with one again, 1:02:00.440 --> 1:02:03.280 like I mentioned at the beginning. But then at one point, 1:02:03.320 --> 1:02:05.360 the man, oh, and we're told I can't remember if 1:02:05.360 --> 1:02:07.440 ilread he said this, but if not, this is day five, 1:02:08.480 --> 1:02:10.400 so this is supposed to this is the time they 1:02:10.400 --> 1:02:14.120 said earlier that he would be in midlife. And at 1:02:14.120 --> 1:02:17.080 one point the man is he's sort of messing around 1:02:17.080 --> 1:02:20.400 on the game board with these pieces, and then he 1:02:20.440 --> 1:02:23.280 looks at his reflection in a metal piece and he 1:02:23.320 --> 1:02:25.920 says to himself, he realizes he is getting old, and 1:02:25.960 --> 1:02:27.720 he has to hurry. He has to get to the gate. 1:02:28.080 --> 1:02:30.160 And I was like, wait a minute, is this literally 1:02:30.160 --> 1:02:32.120 a midlife crisis vignette? 1:02:32.160 --> 1:02:33.160 He's like, well maybe so. 1:02:33.480 --> 1:02:37.560 Yeah, he's like messing around playing games in this confusing space, 1:02:37.600 --> 1:02:40.240 and then he looks at himself in the mirror and 1:02:40.320 --> 1:02:43.760 has a sudden reminder of his mortality, and then he 1:02:43.880 --> 1:02:44.920 really picks up the pace. 1:02:45.240 --> 1:02:47.360 Yeah, he doesn't know that he should also buy a 1:02:47.440 --> 1:02:50.800 leather jacket and look into motorcycles or something. 1:02:50.880 --> 1:02:55.240 Right, So we see him traveling through other weird landscapes, 1:02:55.320 --> 1:02:59.320 some natural, some artificial. One is like, I don't even 1:02:59.320 --> 1:03:02.320 know what you call it, like a big flat, empty 1:03:02.480 --> 1:03:07.439 rectangular space that looks out onto looks out like into 1:03:07.480 --> 1:03:11.880 the void, and there are planets beyond, so it's almost 1:03:11.920 --> 1:03:15.520 as if he's in a spaceship. There's another point where 1:03:15.560 --> 1:03:20.520 he's wandering through this huge field of just pits that 1:03:20.600 --> 1:03:22.680 are inverted step pyramids. 1:03:23.760 --> 1:03:25.800 Yeah, this must be where like maybe they cut the 1:03:25.840 --> 1:03:29.600 pyramids from earlier out of this landscape. I don't know. Yeah, 1:03:29.680 --> 1:03:32.320 a landscape of just colossal works. I guess this is 1:03:32.360 --> 1:03:33.360 what we're to take from it. 1:03:33.640 --> 1:03:36.640 And I love these landscapes. The sets are amazing. But 1:03:36.680 --> 1:03:40.959 then finally, finally Day seven comes. He's getting old, and 1:03:41.320 --> 1:03:45.520 he makes it to the gate, the gate that was promised. 1:03:45.600 --> 1:03:49.280 So he comes upon this sort of hole in the 1:03:49.400 --> 1:03:53.000 rocks where light is spilling through, and he walks up 1:03:53.040 --> 1:03:57.040 to it and realizes a giant mechanism, this big metal 1:03:57.160 --> 1:04:01.600 bar is descending toward him slowly, and when it reaches him, 1:04:01.600 --> 1:04:05.919 the mechanism has controls that have hand prints on them 1:04:05.920 --> 1:04:07.880 that he could put his hands in. It's kind of 1:04:07.920 --> 1:04:12.040 like that button that makes air on Mars and total recall, 1:04:12.200 --> 1:04:15.360 you know, a metal thing with a handprint on it. 1:04:16.440 --> 1:04:18.560 So he's like, okay, I got to put my hands 1:04:18.560 --> 1:04:19.960 on it. So he puts his hands in the prints, 1:04:20.360 --> 1:04:24.080 and it makes music. It releases this booming tone, and 1:04:24.120 --> 1:04:27.600 then the whole mechanism sinks into the floor and the 1:04:28.000 --> 1:04:31.960 gate opens and light spills over everything, not just on 1:04:32.240 --> 1:04:35.280 the man there in the place, but light seems to 1:04:35.320 --> 1:04:37.800 spill over the whole planet. So we go back to 1:04:38.440 --> 1:04:42.360 the place we came from. We see light filling in 1:04:42.400 --> 1:04:45.400 the caverns where the people from the First Day live, 1:04:45.520 --> 1:04:48.000 and there are lots of old people there, but we 1:04:48.080 --> 1:04:51.600 get to hear their heartbeats slowing down as the light 1:04:51.680 --> 1:04:55.080 pours over them. And the light is of a very 1:04:55.080 --> 1:05:00.320 different color warmth than the stuff we've seen before. Most 1:05:00.360 --> 1:05:02.880 of the movie has been kind of blue green gray. 1:05:03.400 --> 1:05:06.520 The light now is orange. And then we return to 1:05:06.560 --> 1:05:09.800 the hero and we find him in a land, in 1:05:09.880 --> 1:05:13.360 a natural landscape, unlike anything we've seen before. Now the 1:05:13.400 --> 1:05:17.000 world is green, green, green. He's on these hills covered 1:05:17.000 --> 1:05:20.000 in green grass, not the kind of pale, gross blue 1:05:20.000 --> 1:05:23.040 green of the fog in the world before. Now it's 1:05:23.120 --> 1:05:27.800 like vibrant green, springtime green, the hills covered in green 1:05:27.920 --> 1:05:32.040 grass and trees with flowers blooming everywhere, and the man 1:05:32.120 --> 1:05:34.240 is just walking through it looking like Jesus. 1:05:35.440 --> 1:05:38.520 Yeah, kind of a like a seventies white Jesus, kind 1:05:38.520 --> 1:05:42.200 of like a Kinney Loggin's kind of a look here, yeah. 1:05:41.480 --> 1:05:43.880 Exactly, yes, like hippie movie Jesus. 1:05:43.960 --> 1:05:45.200 Yeah. 1:05:45.240 --> 1:05:47.280 But he's got a magnificent beard, and you can tell 1:05:47.320 --> 1:05:50.080 he's just vibing on the nature that he's looking at. 1:05:50.840 --> 1:05:53.760 And then the boy's like looking at the plants. I 1:05:53.760 --> 1:05:55.440 don't know why I called him the boy. He's a 1:05:55.480 --> 1:05:58.360 man now, he's just mere days old, so that is true. 1:05:58.360 --> 1:05:59.920 He's like looking at the plants. And then we get 1:06:00.080 --> 1:06:04.560 some narration where it's an ending that is at once 1:06:04.680 --> 1:06:07.560 a little bit a little bit corny, but also kind 1:06:07.560 --> 1:06:10.680 of beautiful. He says, of all the twenty thousand days 1:06:10.720 --> 1:06:13.560 I have, which day will be the finest, which will 1:06:13.560 --> 1:06:18.120 be the best? Any day, any hour, any minute, And 1:06:18.160 --> 1:06:21.000 then we end as like geese are flying across this 1:06:21.200 --> 1:06:22.080 disc of the sun. 1:06:22.840 --> 1:06:27.000 I mean, it's so upbeat and positive, and I think 1:06:27.160 --> 1:06:29.919 if you dig into it, it does get into some 1:06:30.280 --> 1:06:32.520 serious depth, you know, I mean, how do you how 1:06:32.520 --> 1:06:36.920 do you overcome the shortness of our lives and the 1:06:37.320 --> 1:06:42.240 marching of time? Well, one way is by retreating into 1:06:42.280 --> 1:06:45.840 the now and focusing on the now, focusing on any day, 1:06:45.920 --> 1:06:49.400 any hour, any minute, you know, finding those little things, 1:06:49.440 --> 1:06:51.680 you know. So that's that's what came to my mind 1:06:51.720 --> 1:06:53.919 when I heard this. But on the other level, yes, 1:06:53.960 --> 1:06:57.720 it is like such an upbeat ending. I don't know. 1:06:57.760 --> 1:07:01.600 We get more used to more past mystic endings in 1:07:02.120 --> 1:07:05.080 our films, so I don't know, it was it was 1:07:05.120 --> 1:07:09.040 refreshing that it does feel so optimistic at the end, 1:07:09.080 --> 1:07:13.440 like he succeeded in his quest. He brought life to everyone, 1:07:13.600 --> 1:07:17.080 and in the revelation here is perhaps a little deeper 1:07:17.080 --> 1:07:17.880 if we dig into it. 1:07:18.240 --> 1:07:22.760 Well, in another one of those observations that is both 1:07:23.240 --> 1:07:26.160 profound and true and also can be kind of corny, 1:07:26.240 --> 1:07:28.320 but that doesn't make it any less true. Is the 1:07:28.360 --> 1:07:31.560 thing about you know, you can you can overcome the 1:07:31.640 --> 1:07:34.080 kind of despair about the perspective of the shortness of 1:07:34.080 --> 1:07:37.320 your life by having purpose, by having by having a mission, 1:07:37.400 --> 1:07:40.479 by having a purpose that a purpose that is sort 1:07:40.480 --> 1:07:43.720 of other oriented. You know that is driven towards not 1:07:43.800 --> 1:07:47.280 just yourself and your own gratification, but living for others. 1:07:47.760 --> 1:07:50.160 Well, you know, it reminds me of against some of 1:07:50.200 --> 1:07:54.040 what we've been discussing in our Mystery cult series. So 1:07:54.160 --> 1:07:57.560 a lot of times some of the best nuggets of 1:07:57.600 --> 1:08:01.440 wisdom are also kind of overstatements the obvious, like, you know, 1:08:01.520 --> 1:08:03.880 love is all you need, love is the fifth element, 1:08:03.920 --> 1:08:07.479 what have you? You know, But these are also things 1:08:07.560 --> 1:08:10.280 that are true, and it all comes down to presentation. 1:08:10.760 --> 1:08:12.360 And in the same way we talked about some of 1:08:12.400 --> 1:08:14.480 the initiations of the mystery cults, where there might be 1:08:14.560 --> 1:08:18.240 something that is key to the initiation, something that is 1:08:18.320 --> 1:08:20.800 revealed in a box, and if you just take it 1:08:20.920 --> 1:08:23.400 out of context, if you're a critic and you're just like, 1:08:23.720 --> 1:08:25.240 look at this thing they have in the box here, 1:08:25.280 --> 1:08:28.120 how corny is that? You know? But if it's within context, 1:08:28.120 --> 1:08:31.080 if it occurs at the end of the initiation, then 1:08:31.120 --> 1:08:34.200 perhaps it is able to settle into your psyche in 1:08:34.240 --> 1:08:35.280 a more rewarding way. 1:08:36.200 --> 1:08:36.479 Yeah. 1:08:36.520 --> 1:08:39.920 So just for example, you know, you could say, like 1:08:40.040 --> 1:08:43.920 a Demeter is reunited with her daughter, and this brings us, 1:08:43.960 --> 1:08:46.519 you know, this ear of grain, which represents the wealth 1:08:46.600 --> 1:08:48.599 the fruits of our fields, and it is what we 1:08:48.640 --> 1:08:51.040 live by. You know, if you just like put it 1:08:51.080 --> 1:08:53.439 in those words, somebody could be like, oh yeah, okay, 1:08:53.479 --> 1:08:55.400 that's not all that impressive. But if you watch the 1:08:55.400 --> 1:08:58.200 whole drama and you take part in the suffering and 1:08:58.240 --> 1:09:00.479 the passion and the relief of the re union of 1:09:00.520 --> 1:09:03.160 mother and daughter and all that, it can be overwhelming. 1:09:03.200 --> 1:09:05.240 It's something that follows you every day of your life. 1:09:05.800 --> 1:09:08.040 You never never look at some flower the same way. 1:09:08.080 --> 1:09:08.360 Again. 1:09:08.680 --> 1:09:11.040 Yeah again, not everything that frightens or hurts you as 1:09:11.120 --> 1:09:13.960 bad fear and pain or your teachers learn survive. 1:09:14.439 --> 1:09:17.439 Yeah yeah. I think the real moral of the story 1:09:17.520 --> 1:09:20.080 is if you're feeling down, play chess with a yetti 1:09:20.280 --> 1:09:22.120 and make sure you win. 1:09:22.720 --> 1:09:29.200 Yes, all right, that is nineteen eighty four's quest. Again, 1:09:29.360 --> 1:09:31.000 if you wish to experience it as well, you should 1:09:31.000 --> 1:09:33.000 be able to find it out there, and again, hopefully 1:09:33.000 --> 1:09:35.600 in the future there'll be some sort of proper restored 1:09:35.680 --> 1:09:38.920 release as well. Just a reminder for everyone out there 1:09:38.960 --> 1:09:40.920 that stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science 1:09:40.960 --> 1:09:43.640 and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:09:43.640 --> 1:09:46.560 but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to 1:09:46.720 --> 1:09:50.960 just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. 1:09:51.040 --> 1:09:54.040 If you're on letterbox dot com you can find us. 1:09:54.320 --> 1:09:56.639 Our username is weird House and we have a nice 1:09:56.680 --> 1:09:59.719 list there of all the episodes that we have covered 1:09:59.720 --> 1:10:02.040 so far, all the movies we have covered so far. Rather, 1:10:02.439 --> 1:10:04.760 and I will remind you that at this point we're 1:10:04.800 --> 1:10:07.720 at one ninety six, so we're coming in hot on 1:10:08.200 --> 1:10:12.040 selection two hundred. We already have some recommendations for what 1:10:12.080 --> 1:10:15.120 that episode might be, what film we could possibly cover 1:10:15.200 --> 1:10:18.280 for the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, but continue 1:10:18.280 --> 1:10:21.120 to ride in. We have not made a decision as yet. 1:10:21.360 --> 1:10:23.160 It's going to be Mortal Kombat Annihilation. 1:10:25.560 --> 1:10:27.360 It could be it could be that that is the 1:10:27.360 --> 1:10:28.280 most fitting choice. 1:10:28.600 --> 1:10:32.519 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 1:10:32.800 --> 1:10:34.360 If you would like to get in touch with us 1:10:34.360 --> 1:10:36.839 with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 1:10:36.840 --> 1:10:38.880 a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 1:10:38.960 --> 1:10:41.559 you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow 1:10:41.600 --> 1:10:49.120 your Mind dot com. 1:10:49.280 --> 1:10:52.200 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 1:10:52.280 --> 1:10:55.080 more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app 1:10:55.240 --> 1:10:58.480 Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,