Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And today's episode feels like a perfect fit in a
Speaker 2: number of ways. For starters. We've been discussing mystery cults
Speaker 2: on our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: and the concept of an imagistic religion has been key
Speaker 2: to our discussions. There infrequent high sensory rights of passage,
Speaker 2: and I feel like today's film matches up with that
Speaker 2: concept on a couple of levels. Furthermore, to understand, we
Speaker 2: potentially have more eyes on the podcast feed this week,
Speaker 2: and it seemed proper to maybe lean a little more
Speaker 2: into science fiction. Plus, we've also been saving this one
Speaker 2: for a week when we had maybe a little less time.
Speaker 2: This is one of the shorter pictures we've looked at
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. It's only a half hour long,
Speaker 2: but that's fitting given the subject matter, and boy does
Speaker 2: it pack a lot.
Speaker 3: In So what's the movie?
Speaker 2: The movie is the nineteen eighty four short film Quest.
Speaker 2: I note that I am going to mistakenly refer to
Speaker 2: this film as Conquest at least once during the course
Speaker 2: of this podcast. But not to be confused with Luccio
Speaker 2: Fulci's Conquest. This is Quest. It is adapted for the
Speaker 2: screen written by Ray Bradbury, and it is directed by
Speaker 2: Saul and Elaine Bass.
Speaker 3: Now this is not our first Bass film. We talked
Speaker 3: about Saul and Elaine Bass when we covered the movie
Speaker 3: Phase four, which was about super intelligent ants. That was
Speaker 3: a very interesting movie. But one thing I remember thinking
Speaker 3: about it was that it felt somewhat constrained by realism
Speaker 3: for most of its run time, except in like the
Speaker 3: very last couple of minutes where it got super weird,
Speaker 3: and it almost felt like, you know, that level of
Speaker 3: weirdness was being held back for much of the run time.
Speaker 3: I think that is not something you could say about Quest.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: This film is all abstract and surreal weirdness. It is
Speaker 2: not held back by the necessities of for the most part,
Speaker 2: the necessities of genre or plot or character, or any
Speaker 2: of the conventional trappings of narrative filmmaking. It is instead
Speaker 2: more like an initiation into a great mystery.
Speaker 3: That's right. I mean, its plot is very basic. It
Speaker 3: is essentially a there's a premise which We'll explain more
Speaker 3: as we go on, but it essentially has to do
Speaker 3: with characters whose life spans are unnaturally short. And then
Speaker 3: from that premise, there is a character who must make
Speaker 3: a journey through a difficult sort of hero's journey in
Speaker 3: order to cure the people of this condition of having
Speaker 3: shortened life spans.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we have a chosen one, we have a quest,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's quite an adventure.
Speaker 3: But so with the plot itself being quite simple, what
Speaker 3: is left to fill in the kind of uniqueness of
Speaker 3: the movie is the series of images that it supplies.
Speaker 3: This is a movie that is about creating weird scenes,
Speaker 3: and I really like the the variable tone of of
Speaker 3: the the sort of settings that we get. Because there
Speaker 3: were sort of natural settings. We see our hero wandering
Speaker 3: through rocky landscapes and you know, mountain mountain passes and
Speaker 3: planes and things like that. But then also we get
Speaker 3: not even artificial but almost geometric, like abstract landscapes that
Speaker 3: couldn't really exist in reality. They're they're like illustrations from
Speaker 3: an mc escher drawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, increasingly surreal landscapes and environments. You know, you
Speaker 2: go from from some settings that have like a very
Speaker 2: like dark fantasy, Sword and Sandals kind of feel into
Speaker 2: settings that feel like they have apps been stripped from
Speaker 2: tron somehow.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it starts a tour and ends esher.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, my elevator pitch for this one, I
Speaker 2: just dug up a quick Bible verse, teach us to
Speaker 2: number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'll come up later.
Speaker 2: Now. As for the trailer for this one, there's seemingly
Speaker 2: no true trailer for this film, which isn't surprising, as
Speaker 2: we'll get into some of the reasons here. It only
Speaker 2: played in festival competitions and never received a theatrical release.
Speaker 2: But maybe we can just have a brief audio sample
Speaker 2: of JJ's choosing here.
Speaker 4: Is this the one?
Speaker 5: One day from now, you'll be a grown boy, two
Speaker 5: or three, young man, five, middle aves seven old. In
Speaker 5: eight days, you'll stop and die.
Speaker 4: Listen to our heart's race. Listen to your own heart race.
Speaker 5: We are locked away in the world where our lives
Speaker 5: speaks through time. In eight days, no time to see you,
Speaker 5: to feel, to know.
Speaker 4: It's time. Ah, Now the teaching begins.
Speaker 5: Listen to them, learn quickly, listen to.
Speaker 2: Them all right now? If you want to watch Quest
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty four before proceeding here. Well, DVD and
Speaker 2: VHS releases have apparently been available. There's some evidence I've
Speaker 2: found that you can order some sort of a DVD
Speaker 2: of this movie, but for the most part, I can't
Speaker 2: tell that it has benefited from a high quality physical
Speaker 2: media release, at least not yet. Hopefully there's some sort
Speaker 2: of collected short films of Saul in the Lane Bass
Speaker 2: disc that will come out in the future, and when
Speaker 2: it does, we will certainly promote it here on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. As of right now, you can easily find
Speaker 2: this film on YouTube. There's at least one version that
Speaker 2: claims to be some level of remastering. I'm never sure
Speaker 2: how that works when you have a unofficial remastering of films,
Speaker 2: so I'm not completely certain on that. I think that
Speaker 2: Eternal Family, which you can find an Eternal dot TV,
Speaker 2: I believe they have offered it in the past, but
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that it is currently offered, but check
Speaker 2: out Eternal Family either way, their catalog often matches up
Speaker 2: with Weird House Cinema tastes. But I'm confident that if
Speaker 2: you were interested in watching Quest, out there, you can
Speaker 2: find a stream of it somewhere, and then hopefully down
Speaker 2: the road we'll get that high quality release that we
Speaker 2: all clearly need.
Speaker 3: All right, Should we talk about the connections?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start at the top with the directors and producers.
Speaker 2: It's Saul and Elaine Bass, husband and wife design power couple.
Speaker 2: We discussed saw Bass previously in our episode on nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four's Phase four. That was his only his slash there.
Speaker 2: I may go back and forth from referring to him
Speaker 2: and referring to he and his wife. They work together,
Speaker 2: I believe on most of these projects after a certain point,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't always credited right at there at the top.
Speaker 2: On Quest they are co directors and are credited as such.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Phase four was their only feature length directorial credit.
Speaker 2: A film that, yeah, we might describe as the two
Speaker 2: thousand and one a space odyssey of ant movies, an
Speaker 2: increasingly weird man versus Nature film that reaches a fever
Speaker 2: pitch of an ending and its theatrical cut, but absolutely
Speaker 2: explodes in a cinematic acid trip if you watch the
Speaker 2: original ending, which is even weirder and stranger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spoiler for this movie is that humanity is
Speaker 3: sort of being, would you say, competed with by hyper
Speaker 3: intelligent ants, and the ants win in the end, and
Speaker 3: when the ants, when there's an ending where it's I recall,
Speaker 3: it's sort of implied that humans aren't all just like
Speaker 3: killed by the ants. Like life goes on, but life
Speaker 3: is increasingly completely incomprehensible because we are unable to understand
Speaker 3: the intelligence or desire or what is meaningful to the
Speaker 3: ant powers that are governing our lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of unclear if it's a downer ending
Speaker 2: or a happy ending, because it's that surreal and out there,
Speaker 2: like it's beyond your human expectations of good and bad endings.
Speaker 3: You cannot imagine an ant ruled world. You just can't
Speaker 3: even get there now.
Speaker 2: Saalbass lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six. Elaine Bass
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen twenty seven, and as of this
Speaker 2: recording is still around now. We talked a bit about
Speaker 2: sal Bass on our episode regarding Phase four again. He
Speaker 2: was the title sequence slash title design guy of his era.
Speaker 2: A Bass title sequence is often credited as a perfect
Speaker 2: condensation of the feel of a picture, just taking the
Speaker 2: whole vibe of that picture and condensing it down to
Speaker 2: just a mere couple of minutes. So you'll hear a
Speaker 2: lot of filmmakers, even contemporary filmmakers, just talk about his
Speaker 2: mastery of this. He crafted title sequences for major films
Speaker 2: from the mid fifties all the way through the mid nineties.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the likes of the Seven Year Itch, Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus,
Speaker 2: West Side Story, Seconds, which we covered on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: Broadcast News, Big Goodfellas, Kate Beer, and Casino. The credits
Speaker 2: to Mad Men on TV this was an homage to
Speaker 2: his work. He did logos for a number of big
Speaker 2: name companies throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he
Speaker 2: also did some pretty famous movie posters as well, including
Speaker 2: the aforementioned films as well as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
Speaker 2: I consulted a book for a little more detail about
Speaker 2: Saul and the Lame Bass, a book titled saw Baths,
Speaker 2: Anatomy of Film Design by Jan Christopher Horrock, which of
Speaker 2: course has a great deal to say about their approach
Speaker 2: to art, everything from title and logo design work to
Speaker 2: of course their cinematic output. And again from about nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty onward. Elaine was his longtime creative partner who worked
Speaker 2: with him on pretty much most of these projects, so
Speaker 2: she's not again. She's not always credited earlier on, but
Speaker 2: certainly by the time of today's film, she shared official
Speaker 2: credit with her husband. Their first short film was nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four. Is the Searching Eye, a contemplation of visual
Speaker 2: awareness in the unseen world. This one was narrated by
Speaker 2: Vic Perrin, who recently talked about the Voice of the
Speaker 2: Outer Limits and also the Gargoyle.
Speaker 3: The narrator at the beginning of Gargoyles and dubbed in
Speaker 3: on Bernie Casey's Gargoyle King.
Speaker 2: Yes, The Searching Eye was followed by From Here to
Speaker 2: There the same year, and Why Man Creates in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight, a meditation on creativity and nature. Did won
Speaker 2: an Oscar the following year for Best Documentary Short Subjects,
Speaker 2: and this paved the way for Phase four, which we've
Speaker 2: previously talked about. Two other short films followed, seventy eight's
Speaker 2: Notes on the Popular Arts and nineteen eighties The Solar
Speaker 2: Film that was an OSCAR nominated documentary produced by Robert Redford.
Speaker 2: About the perils of fossil fuels and the need for
Speaker 2: humanity to pivot to clean solar energy, and all of
Speaker 2: this leads up to their final film project, and that
Speaker 2: is nineteen eighty four's Quest. As Horrick relates, the origin
Speaker 2: story on this one is super interesting. So bear with
Speaker 2: me here. This is a lot. I was not expecting
Speaker 2: it to be this rich. So this was a Japanese
Speaker 2: funded production funded by the Church of World Messianity, a
Speaker 2: new religious movement founded in nineteen thirty five by Mokichio
Speaker 2: Kata who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2: A religious movement that promotes spiritual cleansing via the light.
Speaker 3: WHOA, I did not expect it to take this turn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so apparently, as I understand it based on reading
Speaker 2: Horrock's book, here people affiliated with the church at this point.
Speaker 2: I think the Church was kind of going through like
Speaker 2: some you know, rebranding a little bit redesign, like entering
Speaker 2: a new era, and they were really taken by the
Speaker 2: Bass's design work. This work had recently been featured in
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventy nine issue of Idea, and so they
Speaker 2: approached him about creating a visionary film to play in
Speaker 2: the church's temples and spaces. So Saul Bass apparently wasn't
Speaker 2: really all that interested in creating an overtly religious work,
Speaker 2: but was drawn to the idea of quote a purely
Speaker 2: metaphoric vision without proselytizing for the church, and quote, a
Speaker 2: positive film that doesn't view life as a prelude to disaster.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the Basses and the funders here may have
Speaker 3: had totally different visions about what made this project appealing,
Speaker 3: but nevertheless they could both get what they wanted out
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: That does seem to be the amazing thing about it,
Speaker 2: because they did reach an agreement here. So I think
Speaker 2: basically Saul Bass had worked with some big corporations before
Speaker 2: funding his other works and was able to keep a
Speaker 2: great deal of creative freedom over the final product. And
Speaker 2: he thought, really, I mean, it seemed like it would
Speaker 2: be kind of almost naive to think this, but he thought, well,
Speaker 2: we can do the same thing working with a religious organization.
Speaker 2: But he was right that it seems like it basically
Speaker 2: worked out like that.
Speaker 3: It's like when the Baptist Church of la funded Plan
Speaker 3: nine from Outer Space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. So, yeah, they funded this for the
Speaker 2: tune of I Believe a Million dollars was the overall budget,
Speaker 2: and again this was back in the eighties, and it
Speaker 2: does feature strong themes of light, which line up with
Speaker 2: some of the doctrines the land stand them of the
Speaker 2: church in question here, but otherwise the plot the finished
Speaker 2: film is detached from the church's teaching, so again kind
Speaker 2: of a secularization of maybe some of their core values,
Speaker 2: but in a way that doesn't lean too heavily into
Speaker 2: preaching the gospel of this particular faith.
Speaker 3: Kind of like if you could get a I don't know,
Speaker 3: just some mainstream Christian church to sponsor you by creating
Speaker 3: a story about sacrifice and redemption that didn't have any
Speaker 3: overtly Christian terms or ideas in it apart from the themes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So the film never received a theatrical release
Speaker 2: in the United States, but it did play at plenty
Speaker 2: of festivals, winning at least one award. It attracted a
Speaker 2: number of fans, including George Lucas, which is not surprising.
Speaker 2: Lucas praised its effects, its music, and its use of
Speaker 2: the hero's journey. Meanwhile, back in Japan, it played eight
Speaker 2: times a day at the church's headquarters for a period
Speaker 2: of four years.
Speaker 3: Wow, does that beat Rocky Horror for the longest theatrical
Speaker 3: run just in terms of total number of plays?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, that would be an interesting
Speaker 2: question to actually get into. Because, of course, at the
Speaker 2: Studio ghibli Museum in Tokyo they play various short films
Speaker 2: of Miyazaki's exclusively there. It's the only place you can
Speaker 2: see most of them outside of maybe catching them at
Speaker 2: a festival or a special showing. But that being said,
Speaker 2: I don't think they're playing the same film every day,
Speaker 2: four times a day. So, but then again, this is
Speaker 2: only a period of four years, so I don't know
Speaker 2: how many total viewings they were able to chalk up
Speaker 2: during that time. There was a read in Horror's book,
Speaker 2: though there was apparently some concern on the Japanese side
Speaker 2: here that if the film were commercialized too much, it
Speaker 2: would cause political problems for the church, which allegedly this
Speaker 2: allegedly stifled some of its reach, So there may there
Speaker 2: might have been some tension over that fact. But still
Speaker 2: it did play in festivals, people did get to see it,
Speaker 2: people continue to see it, and again, hopefully we'll get
Speaker 2: to see some sort of proper release of it in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: So they agreed to the basic terms of this film,
Speaker 2: but then they still needed somebody to write it, so
Speaker 2: they reached out to legendary author Ray Bradbury, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty through twenty twelve, the author of such famous
Speaker 2: works as The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit four fifty one, The
Speaker 2: Illustrated Man, The October Country, and so forth. He was
Speaker 2: also a successful screenwriter in his own right, having written
Speaker 2: the screenplay for the nineteen fifty six adaptation of Moby Dick,
Speaker 2: and his work was also adapted for TV and film
Speaker 2: going back to the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold's It
Speaker 2: Came from Outer Space in fifty three, which we may
Speaker 2: come back to in Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: You know, this makes me think I've never seen a
Speaker 3: film adaptation of Moby Dick, and I'd be very curious
Speaker 3: how they do it, because that's one of my favorite
Speaker 3: novels and it doesn't seem like it would adapt to
Speaker 3: the screen very well. So much of it is just
Speaker 3: in the you know, it's in the weirdness of the narrator.
Speaker 3: It's in like the kind of essays about seatology and
Speaker 3: things like that. It seems like it would be hard
Speaker 3: to turn into a movie, but I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 3: they do a good job.
Speaker 2: I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a kid,
Speaker 2: but I remember really enjoying Gregory Peck in the adaptation
Speaker 2: from fifty six. And since Ray Bradbury did the screenplay,
Speaker 2: maybe we can do it on weird house cinema. That's enough.
Speaker 2: It's basically sci fi, so yeah, Saul and Elaine Bass
Speaker 2: reached out to Bradbury to script Quest, and Bradbury adapted
Speaker 2: his own nineteen forty six story, Frost and Fire. Now,
Speaker 2: there were a number of changes made, apparently here, as
Speaker 2: Bradbury updated the structure of that old story for this
Speaker 2: new project. So first of all, Saul was wary of
Speaker 2: overreaching with their budget and requested that it be set
Speaker 2: on Earth, or at least an earth like world, rather
Speaker 2: than an overly alien planet. That seems like a reasonable
Speaker 2: budgetary request, though having seen the full film, I feel
Speaker 2: like we get very unearthly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least half of it's taken place in you know,
Speaker 3: geometry textbook illustrations, not on any landscape I would recognize.
Speaker 2: Right, So I don't feel like they really held back
Speaker 2: too much there. Also, while the original story is more
Speaker 2: hard science fiction, in the original story of the characters
Speaker 2: depleted life spans are apparently due to radiation, and they're
Speaker 2: able to depend on some sort of race memory. They
Speaker 2: have to convey the essentials of the quest, as we'll
Speaker 2: get into to each subsequent generation, Whereas the version of
Speaker 2: the story that we get in the Quest has a
Speaker 2: more mythic vibe to it. It feels more like fantasy
Speaker 2: or sword and Sandals, but then gets increasingly stranger and
Speaker 2: more surreal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny. I seem to recall in the past
Speaker 3: at some point Bradbury making some kind of derisive comments
Speaker 3: about science fiction and saying that he preferred to write
Speaker 3: fantasy because that was, like, I don't know, he thought
Speaker 3: it was like less bound by realism or something. Maybe
Speaker 3: I'm misremembering that.
Speaker 2: That way, they would kind of match up with what
Speaker 2: we see here, Like you can well imagine Bradbury seeing
Speaker 2: this as the opportunity to take what interests him the
Speaker 2: most about that old story that was written, you know
Speaker 2: very much for the sci fi publications of the day,
Speaker 2: taking the essence of that and updating it and making
Speaker 2: it more mythic, freeing it from the shackles of the
Speaker 2: science fiction. Perhaps because clearly caveat, I have not read
Speaker 2: the original Bradbury story, but I get a strong hint
Speaker 2: here that Bradbury wasn't really interested in the effects of
Speaker 2: radiation human beings. It's more about issues of mortality and
Speaker 2: you know, cross generational efforts and so forth. Now, as
Speaker 2: for the human cast of Quest, there are a bunch
Speaker 2: of people in this and everyone is just bolk credited
Speaker 2: at the end. They don't specify who plays who, and
Speaker 2: it leaves the task to your humble podcasters to try
Speaker 2: and figure out exactly who's who in this picture. We
Speaker 2: are not going to single out everyone, but I do
Speaker 2: want to mention just a few of the players here
Speaker 2: who are notable because of their work elsewhere, and my
Speaker 2: apologies to anyone that I did leave out because of this.
Speaker 2: Multiple actors, for instance, play are chosen one our hero
Speaker 2: of the tale, because he's going to start We cover
Speaker 2: most of his life over the course of the narrative.
Speaker 2: He begins as a baby and we'll end with him
Speaker 2: as a mature adult man. But we have different actors
Speaker 2: playing him, and it's not a makeup effect.
Speaker 3: That would have been a good choice though, if you
Speaker 3: had a baby the whole time with just makeup and
Speaker 3: the older.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or win in both directions. You know, have like
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old actor and then age him
Speaker 2: and dage him all the way down to baby. All right.
Speaker 2: One of the early characters we encounter in this is
Speaker 2: an unnamed character that I thought of as the Elder,
Speaker 2: some sort of a wise older individual who is looking
Speaker 2: for the chosen one and finds the chosen one.
Speaker 3: And this the monklike guy who does the palm reading
Speaker 3: on the baby at the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This character is played by John Abbott, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five through nineteen ninety six, an English Shakespearean actor
Speaker 2: with very expressive eyes, known for roles and let's say
Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight's The Woman in White. He had an
Speaker 2: appearance on the original Star Trek, the original Lost in Space,
Speaker 2: and his other credits, of which he has a lot,
Speaker 2: include nineteen forty four Is The Mask of Demetrios. This
Speaker 2: is one I've looked at before because it's a Peter
Speaker 2: Lorrie movie. He's also in Cry of the were Wolf
Speaker 2: from the same year, and he was the voice of
Speaker 2: Akella the Wolf in Dizzy Needs the Jungle Book back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven. All right, again, multiple actors play
Speaker 2: the chosen one, our hero, but at one point the
Speaker 2: hero is played by Noah Hathaway born nineteen seventy one. Fittingly,
Speaker 2: this is, of course, the actor who also played a
Speaker 2: Treyu in nineteen eighty four. Is the never ending story
Speaker 2: which we covered on a previous episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: I thought he looked familiar. Yeah, is this the day too, boy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the boy that I believe begins the journey. Right,
Speaker 2: He's passed his tests and is then setting out on
Speaker 2: the journey.
Speaker 3: He graduated at Harvard College j L where he got
Speaker 3: an A and then he gets to go out on
Speaker 3: the journey.
Speaker 2: Now, another actor that shows up in this is Bill Irwin.
Speaker 2: I think he plays an old man that is encountered
Speaker 2: late in the picture. That is another monk like figure.
Speaker 3: Oh, the hooded guy at the Egyptian temple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I believe this is Bill Irwin. I could
Speaker 2: be wrong on this. Bill Irwin of nineteen fourteen through
Speaker 2: twenty ten an American character actor who appeared in more
Speaker 2: than two hundred and fifty television and film roles, including
Speaker 2: the one that earned him an Emmy nomination in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three. Retiree Sid Fields on the sitcom Seinfeld.
Speaker 3: You know, I wonder with actors like this, who are
Speaker 3: they're the character actor who just always plays a cantankerous
Speaker 3: old man. What did he do before he was old?
Speaker 2: Just always old?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like William Hickey late in life, you played
Speaker 2: cantankerous old men, and also early in his career. So
Speaker 2: all right. The music in this film is also a
Speaker 2: real delight. It's you'll have Maybe you can explain the
Speaker 2: music and the sound of this film better than I can, Joe,
Speaker 2: But I just think of it as a soothing, other
Speaker 2: worldly cascade of electronic bliss and intrigue.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, just whipped butter. Synthesizer auras a really
Speaker 3: good stuff, a lot of great you know contrast along
Speaker 3: the dynamic range. So there's a lot of synth bass
Speaker 3: that sends to me might be like a mog Taurus
Speaker 3: or something, you know, the strong, pulsing based tones, and
Speaker 3: then like synthesizer flutes that I don't know if you
Speaker 3: really get that sound much anymore. It was a big
Speaker 3: thing in the eighties where you would you would evoke
Speaker 3: a sense of mysticism by having a synthesizer flute that
Speaker 3: I feel like if you were composing a track now
Speaker 3: and you went to put in that same synth flute voicing,
Speaker 3: it would sound really tinny and hokey to you, so
Speaker 3: you would use something else. But if you go back
Speaker 3: to these compositions that feature it, it's actually great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about here,
Speaker 2: and I think that the music it has this kind
Speaker 2: So again, we have this purifying light that is important
Speaker 2: to the faith that funded this picture. And then also
Speaker 2: there's a kind of purifying light that is key to
Speaker 2: the plot of our story, and the music feels like
Speaker 2: a fitting sonic incarnation of that light.
Speaker 3: I see what you're saying. Yeah, the music shimmers a lot.
Speaker 3: It often expands to fit. You know, It'll be very
Speaker 3: quiet at first, and then as the light floods into
Speaker 3: the scene, the music floods onto the soundtrack, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's a good use of sonic textures.
Speaker 2: So the people behind the music here, well, Elaine Bass
Speaker 2: is credited on the music. She was of not a
Speaker 2: professional singer, with some musical training prior to her design career.
Speaker 2: But then also we have credited Barrington Van Campen who
Speaker 2: I looked him up. I can find a birthday for him.
Speaker 2: But he is apparently still active on the San Francisco
Speaker 2: music scene. If you look up, if you go to
Speaker 2: the dbduo dot com, this is the website for Van
Speaker 2: Campen and Dale LeDuc. They haven't a stick act together,
Speaker 2: and there's a They also have some some some some
Speaker 2: brief bio information about Van Campen. Van Campen is a
Speaker 2: multi instrumentalist. His instruments include the melotron and various synthesizers.
Speaker 2: Uh and there's a lot of like session work and
Speaker 2: production work in his background as well.
Speaker 3: I just looked at Wait No l a Beatles tribute band.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, at one point, Uh yeah, I think, I think,
Speaker 2: and I think they still do a lot of covers
Speaker 2: of Beatles songs. I was looking at. They're still doing gigs.
Speaker 2: If you're in in San Francisco, you can go out
Speaker 2: and catch these guys. Tell them we sent you.
Speaker 3: Please request a Beatles tune and then request the theme
Speaker 3: from Quest Now.
Speaker 2: Prior to this film, Van Campen had worked as a
Speaker 2: musician on the Jerry Lewis film Slapstick of Another Kind,
Speaker 2: adapted from the work of Kurt Vonnegut and also co
Speaker 2: starring John Abbott, but Quest was seemingly his first credited
Speaker 2: film or TV composition. UH followed in nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: with a score for the film In Dangerous Company. He's
Speaker 2: also credited as composer on Faces of Death Volumes four
Speaker 2: and six in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety six. I
Speaker 2: have not and we'll never see the Faces of Death.
Speaker 2: My window for having watched Faces of Death has long passed.
Speaker 2: But he did some sort of work on there, and
Speaker 2: he also did a lot of work with you know,
Speaker 2: such clients as AT and T, various TV channels and
Speaker 2: film studios. So I know, I just think he did
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of a lot of like
Speaker 2: mercenary sound work, you know. And so I don't want
Speaker 2: to I don't want to single him out for Faces
Speaker 2: of Death. Somebody had to do the music for Faces
Speaker 2: of Death might as well have been this guy.
Speaker 3: They could have also just sourced pre existing composition.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. That's very possible. And I don't
Speaker 2: know the full story on his involvement in Faces of death.
Speaker 2: So don't don't put any of that on him, because again,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, the music in Quest
Speaker 2: is amazing and I loved every minute of it.
Speaker 3: Okay, you want to talk about the plot, Oh, let's
Speaker 3: experience it all right. So when we first come up
Speaker 3: and get our title sequence, the camera seems to be
Speaker 3: navigating a cave or a megalithic structure of some kind. Cold,
Speaker 3: dark stone walls. We've got shadows cut by shafts of light.
Speaker 3: Everything's kind of green and gray in color. There is
Speaker 3: a generally pale, cold kind of color scheme that defines
Speaker 3: most of the movie until the last couple minutes. It's greens, blues, whites,
Speaker 3: and grays. And when we first come in, also there's fog.
Speaker 3: The air is thick with fog. It's kind of swirling
Speaker 3: and suggesting a dark age in a way. And then
Speaker 3: there's a voiceover that says, before the gate was closed
Speaker 3: and the light began to fail, the ancients lived a
Speaker 3: long and fruitful life. Now our lifespan.
Speaker 4: Is eight days.
Speaker 3: Yes, for us, there is no time. The minutes, the hours,
Speaker 3: and the days fly away, and our lives along with them.
Speaker 3: And so all of this is being said is the
Speaker 3: camera is panning and traveling through these caverns and stone corridors,
Speaker 3: and then there's a thing that I liked that struck
Speaker 3: me as a kind of scale twist. So the cameras
Speaker 3: it's going through these stone caverns, and I had been
Speaker 3: assuming the spaces we were looking at were supposed to
Speaker 3: be roughly like human hall sized, with the camera at
Speaker 3: normal eye level for a person. But then suddenly we
Speaker 3: zoom in on a little crevice in a stone facade
Speaker 3: that looks like it's the size of a mousehole. But
Speaker 3: then you realize there are tiny stairs leading up to
Speaker 3: the crevice, and then you see a human form standing
Speaker 3: inside the doorway, and it becomes clear we're either looking
Speaker 3: at like a two inch tall human or the original
Speaker 3: reference scale you had in mind was wrong, And I
Speaker 3: think it's the latter, though there will be similar kind
Speaker 3: of scale versions that happen later in the story as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to just a certain degree, it's like this is
Speaker 2: a an artifact of how the techniques they use to
Speaker 2: shoot it, but also it feels fittingly surreal in this
Speaker 2: picture as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So from here we move into the cavern and
Speaker 3: come upon a group of people who are dressed in
Speaker 3: plain peasant clothing. There is again going along with the
Speaker 3: kind of dark age feeling. There is a since when
Speaker 3: we come to these people that they are living abject
Speaker 3: lives of kind of darkness and ignorance and want. But
Speaker 3: the first thing we get to with these people is
Speaker 3: a scene of childbirth there. So there are all these
Speaker 3: people in peasant clothing assisting a woman in childbirth. The
Speaker 3: baby is born, and a man in a sort of
Speaker 3: monastic beard holds the child up to this audience of
Speaker 3: elders some kind of counsel and they're asking is this
Speaker 3: the one? And a debate starts. The elder say it's
Speaker 3: too early to tell, and then another says, no, we
Speaker 3: cannot wait, we must chance it. And so they check
Speaker 3: the infant's hand. They have this monk like man look
Speaker 3: at the hand, and the baby's palm opens and yes,
Speaker 3: we see some crinkles there, but I think they're actually
Speaker 3: doing a palm reading. The monk like man says, yes,
Speaker 3: the line is strong. I think talking about the lifeline.
Speaker 2: Now. I love the way that the plight of the
Speaker 2: people here is presented because it's one of those things
Speaker 2: where on one level, yes, it's fantastic, But on the
Speaker 2: other it's like, yeah, that's how our subjective experience of
Speaker 2: time sometimes goes. It feels like it is flowing faster
Speaker 2: than it should and we have no time, or we
Speaker 2: have far less time than we wanted. And at the
Speaker 2: same time, given the sort of again you said, like
Speaker 2: the dark age vibe we have here, this kind of
Speaker 2: archaic vibe. I'm also reminded of things we've discussed on
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind in the past about various
Speaker 2: historian historians an anthrop anthropologists reflecting on what life was
Speaker 2: like for our ancestors before people were able to specialize more,
Speaker 2: before various cultural and technological advancements opened up more time
Speaker 2: in people's days to allow different types of experiences and
Speaker 2: different types of knowledge to accumulate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting, and and that kind of desperation
Speaker 3: about the time. The sense of I want more life
Speaker 3: is a fantastic premise to start with, for one thing,
Speaker 3: because it's not a you know, it's it's a very
Speaker 3: relatable feeling but accelerated for the purpose of the narrative.
Speaker 3: And it's also something it's like an unpersonified villain. It's
Speaker 3: not it's not a beast you can fight, though there
Speaker 3: will be some beasts to fight in the story. It's
Speaker 3: just like we we we can't accept the way time
Speaker 3: flows around us, or the way our bodies flow through time.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's a terror to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's one of the things that makes it
Speaker 2: fitting that this film is thirty minutes long and not
Speaker 2: an hour or an hour and a half or two hours,
Speaker 2: And it is a film where there there is no
Speaker 2: true personified villain, if there is any. There are adversaries
Speaker 2: to overcome, but there's also a case to be made
Speaker 2: that all of those adversaries are perhaps aspects of the self,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's yeah again. The film itself has
Speaker 2: a great mythic vibe. It feels like an initiation into
Speaker 2: some great secret.
Speaker 3: So they go on to observe that the child is
Speaker 3: already seeing and hearing them. That's pretty quick, and the
Speaker 3: elders all seem to agree, Okay, the teaching must begin
Speaker 3: at once. So the child is carried out of the
Speaker 3: room where he was born. How are you going to
Speaker 3: start teaching a baby that was born two minutes ago?
Speaker 3: That I think that baby is not ready for school,
Speaker 3: But they disagree, so here we go, it says day one,
Speaker 3: and the elders move down a shadowy corridor, carrying the
Speaker 3: baby with them. The narrator says, as we watch you
Speaker 3: grow and change, as you watch us we grow old,
Speaker 3: Your life, like ours, is destined to be short. In
Speaker 3: eight days we're born, we mature, and we grow old
Speaker 3: and die. And then the monk like man and the
Speaker 3: others bring the baby to what looked to me kind
Speaker 3: of like a shop counter in a fantasy game general store,
Speaker 3: but this is, I think, actually supposed to be a school.
Speaker 3: So they tell the baby one day from now, you
Speaker 3: will be a grown boy, two or three, a young man, five,
Speaker 3: middle aged, seven old. In eight days you will die.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: And then there's a strange moment where the man says,
Speaker 3: listen to our heart's race, and one of the elders
Speaker 3: holds the baby against her chest, and then they say,
Speaker 3: listen to your own heart race. And this, like accelerated
Speaker 3: heart rate, is a thing that comes back in the story,
Speaker 3: but it does just remind me of like, you know,
Speaker 3: putting my ear to the hearts of pets and hearing
Speaker 3: their faster little heartbeats. You know, there's small bodies and
Speaker 3: little metabolisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and it also will have another example of
Speaker 2: this as well. But it kind of ties into this
Speaker 2: idea that there is there is a cross generational, a
Speaker 2: cross generation connection between the individuals of the in this
Speaker 2: culture of these people that is maybe a bit surreal
Speaker 2: as well. That's maybe leaning a little bit into the fantastic,
Speaker 2: and it's not entirely based on real world human teaching
Speaker 2: and conveying of information.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the old man says, we are locked away
Speaker 3: in a world where our lives speed through time in
Speaker 3: eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know,
Speaker 3: And then he just says, okay, it's time, and the
Speaker 3: baby is handed across the counter to the ShopKeep. But again,
Speaker 3: this is actually some kind of school. So they take
Speaker 3: the baby away, and the old man sort of calls
Speaker 3: after the baby's now the teaching begins. Learn quickly, little one,
Speaker 3: uh and ooh. The some kind of learning with blocks
Speaker 3: is going on. There's a lot of cool stuff in
Speaker 3: this teaching montage. I like that we start with these
Speaker 3: little stone coins and there are squares and pyramids. It
Speaker 3: looks like stuff that would be fun to handle in
Speaker 3: the same way that D and D dice are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's all very cactile. And yeah, I just
Speaker 2: love this montage because everything is very identifiable as teaching
Speaker 2: and principle on one level, but also feels very alien
Speaker 2: and also perhaps concerning a natural philosophy unknown to our world.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, it's worth noting in the original Ray Bradbury story
Speaker 2: that the short lived humans in it have a form
Speaker 2: of race memory that they're able to depend upon to
Speaker 2: pass knowledge down from short lived generation to short lived generation.
Speaker 2: And that's not what we see here, but we might
Speaker 2: think of this along similar lines. Information is perhaps being
Speaker 2: trans from teachers to student, yes, with physical manipulation of
Speaker 2: objects and some external learning devices, but also perhaps in
Speaker 2: a way that depends on something greater than human learning,
Speaker 2: and it maybe there is some sort of psychic connection.
Speaker 2: And in fact, later on, when we when our hero
Speaker 2: has commenced on his journey and he hears the voices
Speaker 2: of his teachers, I mean, perhaps that is like a
Speaker 2: psychic echo of what has occurred previously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I like that too. It invites questions of like,
Speaker 3: is there actual telepathy going on or the or the
Speaker 3: teachers currently communicating with him as he as he goes beyond,
Speaker 3: or is it like now now part of them is
Speaker 3: in him and he just carries it with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and this is a great film. And then
Speaker 2: it leaves you to ask those questions and they're ultimately unanswerable.
Speaker 2: It's all up to your interpretation.
Speaker 3: So already we see the child as a toddler, sorting
Speaker 3: these little shapes and blocks as the teachers look on.
Speaker 3: I love the way the blocks look. They're made of
Speaker 3: a kind of polished stone with a freckled and scarred appearance,
Speaker 3: and the child is learning to line them up in
Speaker 3: a special order, as if he were spelling words with
Speaker 3: the blocks. But what does it mean.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: We're not told. There's also a metal block set with
Speaker 3: a hollow cube that you balance on a prismatic pillar,
Speaker 3: and then you start kind of like piecing them together
Speaker 3: like an erector set. We see the child working with
Speaker 3: these elements blindfolded, also doing some kind of psychic paddy
Speaker 3: cake game with his hands, like the part across from
Speaker 3: his teachers where they're like moving their hands and then
Speaker 3: slapping them together. I didn't get exactly what that was,
Speaker 3: but it seemed to me it involved maybe a kind
Speaker 3: of sense of psychic powers or premonitions about where the
Speaker 3: hands were going. We also see the training getting into
Speaker 3: He's like reading patterns of grain in blocks of wood.
Speaker 3: I liked that it was strange, and then making spears
Speaker 3: out of a kind of silvery So the spears are
Speaker 3: modular and they snap together like tent poles, and then
Speaker 3: they have these fins and barbs that snap out from
Speaker 3: the poles and he's throwing the spears doing target practice
Speaker 3: with them. There's another part where he unveils a shimmering
Speaker 3: steel cone from a covering which is a metal box,
Speaker 3: and the cone emits blinding light, and then he lifts
Speaker 3: up the cone and that unveils another level. It is
Speaker 3: like a blue glowing ball of energy that's inside the cone,
Speaker 3: and the ball of energy just floats in the air. Again,
Speaker 3: we're not told what that is. But anyway, when the
Speaker 3: training is complete, the boy now looks about ten or
Speaker 3: twelve years old, and an old man tells him it's
Speaker 3: time for you to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like you know in elementary school when you
Speaker 2: make it halfway through learning about the Civil War and
Speaker 2: then they're like, I'm sorry, now I have to send
Speaker 2: you home for summer.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: That's all we had time for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do remember that about a lot of lesson
Speaker 3: plans when I was younger, A fantastic lack of clothes
Speaker 3: about me. Things we learned. Okay, So the old man
Speaker 3: comes to the boy to tell him more about his mission.
Speaker 3: They're looking at a light pouring out from between some rocks,
Speaker 3: and the man says, that light squeezes through the crack
Speaker 3: where the doors in the Great Gate join. That gate
Speaker 3: must be opened. You will open it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again this possibly lines up with this idea
Speaker 2: of I believe it is that the Joe rai or
Speaker 2: jewelry purifying light that factors into the teachings of Okichi
Speaker 2: Okata often described as kind of like an energy healing
Speaker 2: doctrine hm. Okay, And I've also read that it sometimes
Speaker 2: involves like the use of some sort of reflective medallion,
Speaker 2: which we also see a version of in this picture.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Okay, I was wondering about that. Okay, So
Speaker 3: maybe they did get a few little like specific things
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the old man says, beyond the gate is a
Speaker 3: land where life is lived for twenty thousand days and more.
Speaker 3: If the gate can be reached and opened, the light
Speaker 3: will rush out us and with it bring long life
Speaker 3: and peace. The boy asks why he has been chosen,
Speaker 3: and the old man explains, those who were sent before
Speaker 3: are left when they were too old, they left too late,
Speaker 3: and they died before they reached the gate. This time,
Speaker 3: they selected the boy to be sent when he was
Speaker 3: very young, so he would have enough time to complete
Speaker 3: his mission. And then the old man says, you've learned.
Speaker 3: You've learned your lessons quickly. You're strong and intelligent, you
Speaker 3: have curiosity. And the boy says, but have I learned enough?
Speaker 3: And the old man does not answer the question. He
Speaker 3: just says, we don't have time to teach you anymore.
Speaker 3: You'll have to learn the rest on your way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really is like that. I mean that again.
Speaker 2: That's one of the great things about this film. I
Speaker 2: say it in Jess. But it's also like that's the
Speaker 2: way of life, and it encapsulates that perfectly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, have we ever learned enough in childhood to prepare
Speaker 3: us for adult life? Probably not, or can't really answer
Speaker 3: that question, but you don't really have a choice no
Speaker 3: more time.
Speaker 2: Here's your silvery space. Go out and do your best.
Speaker 3: So the boy is outfitted with again those gleaming spears
Speaker 3: and other supplies. We see them like kind of pouring
Speaker 3: out these measures of grain and stuff for him. And
Speaker 3: before he's sent out by the elders, the old man
Speaker 3: gives him this small, like mirror polished metal pendant to
Speaker 3: hang around his neck, which may be connecting to that
Speaker 3: actual religious item used by the whatever, I forget what
Speaker 3: it's called, the Church of Messianity. Yeah, And then so
Speaker 3: he takes the pendant, and then he turns to his
Speaker 3: mother and they embrace, and all she says is goodbye.
Speaker 4: Then he goes.
Speaker 3: So the boy sets out into the world. And now, oh,
Speaker 3: and this is by the way, we get a title
Speaker 3: that says day two. So day two of his life.
Speaker 3: The boy sets out into the world, and now instead
Speaker 3: of just the dark caverns, there are landscapes. First, we
Speaker 3: see the boy crossing a kind of bleak tundra with
Speaker 3: these sandy hills, fields of snow, expanses of gray water,
Speaker 3: and mountains in the background. At one point we see
Speaker 3: him wandering through bad lands full of smooth, jumbled rock
Speaker 3: formations that look like giant piles of bones. And as
Speaker 3: the boy travels on through the rocks, he hears voices
Speaker 3: whispering in his head. This is what we were talking
Speaker 3: about earlier, the voices of his teachers and the elders,
Speaker 3: and they're saying things like, go on, don't hesitate, we
Speaker 3: have prepared you well, be brave, don't worry. And the
Speaker 3: boy wanders in darkness through dis maze of stones, hearing
Speaker 3: the weird voices, and then suddenly hearing a kind of
Speaker 3: hooting in the distance, and he draws his spear in preparation.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 3: What's making this sound? And there's a stillness, feathers fall
Speaker 3: on the rocks around him, and then a monster attacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a pretty cool monster.
Speaker 3: I have to say, that's right. So the monster, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, first thrashes around in the darkness, roaring the boy.
Speaker 3: The boy holds out his spear, and then they eventually
Speaker 3: clash and we see some elements of the monster. It
Speaker 3: appears to be a kind of giant reptilian pit bull
Speaker 3: head with a triangular or circular triangular mouth with teeth
Speaker 3: jutting in from all sides. I gotta say that the
Speaker 3: head is a little bit rancori ish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely kind of a rain corps vibe.
Speaker 2: I also feel like it's maybe a combination of some
Speaker 2: sort of a giant sloth and a tartar grade, which
Speaker 2: would of course be a giant, a very giant tartar grade.
Speaker 3: It's actually also, in fact, to draw on two different
Speaker 3: return of the Jedi. It's a little bit Rancor and
Speaker 3: a little bit Sarlac because of the circular mouth with
Speaker 3: the teeth coming in in all directions. Anyway, the boy
Speaker 3: fights the monster in the dark with his spear, and
Speaker 3: eventually he slays it, and as the beast lies dying
Speaker 3: on the ground, he approaches it and there's a kind
Speaker 3: of sadness in its eyes. And then the next thing.
Speaker 3: This was one of the few parts where I feel
Speaker 3: like I wasn't sure I was understanding what the film
Speaker 3: was trying to suggest. There's like, after he's already slayed
Speaker 3: the monster, there's a screeching in the night, and some
Speaker 3: other creature seems to be circling the boy and he
Speaker 3: raises a rock above his head and he shouts no,
Speaker 3: and then the threat seems to fade away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was interesting. I guess I'm on a literal
Speaker 2: interpretation level. I was thinking, Okay, maybe he's just scaring
Speaker 2: away additional monsters. You know, there are others out there,
Speaker 2: and he's saying he's just keeping them from attacking. Or
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps it's something more, and maybe he's driving
Speaker 2: away the darkness of his defensive act, like he has
Speaker 2: killed and therefore, even though he's acting in self defense,
Speaker 2: now he has to contend with like the darkness of
Speaker 2: what he has just done, and he's driving that away.
Speaker 2: Horrack in his book contends that we might think of this, maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, as again another example of mythic battle in
Speaker 2: the darkness, which we see in various sagas. But he
Speaker 2: asked some questions like is this monster real? Is this
Speaker 2: a projection of the heroes mind? Again, it's the sort
Speaker 2: of film where various interpretations are possible, the no right
Speaker 2: or wrong answers.
Speaker 3: So then we get to day three. The boy appears
Speaker 3: to be in his twenties now, and we see him
Speaker 3: come up over a hilltop to look out on this
Speaker 3: big sand flat with a sort of temple in the distance,
Speaker 3: and he hears the whispered voices again. One of them says,
Speaker 3: straight ahead, you must go there looking at the temple. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you have thoughts about the style
Speaker 3: of this temple. Rob there's sort of a so first
Speaker 3: of all, there's a a big haul that we just
Speaker 3: see as like a rock facade, but then out in
Speaker 3: front of it there is a rock carving of a
Speaker 3: domed head with an open mouth and these wild eyes,
Speaker 3: kind of empty wild eyes, and giant hands held in
Speaker 3: an open poem position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the general vibe of these ruins reminding me a
Speaker 2: little bit of photos I've seen of the ancient heads
Speaker 2: of the gods in Nimrout Dog Turkey. Imagine many of
Speaker 2: you out there have seen these images before, with kind
Speaker 2: of conical looking hats on the heads.
Speaker 3: Oh, I just looked it up, and yeah, I can
Speaker 3: see the comparison. That is kind of interesting.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 3: It's almost like some aspects feel a little bit like this,
Speaker 3: some feel a little a little more like like Mesoamerican art.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, so I guess it. Yet, it fittingly feels
Speaker 2: akin to various examples of real world the design traditions,
Speaker 2: but it feels also removed in its own thing. When
Speaker 2: I was looking around on letterboxed, I found a pretty
Speaker 2: great little review. Someone by the name of Roland one
Speaker 2: oh six said quote man walks through a series of
Speaker 2: prog album covers in order to save his people from
Speaker 2: their eight day life spans, which I legitimately laughed at
Speaker 2: that and it's kind of spot on. There are many
Speaker 2: many scenes in this picture that could easily be a
Speaker 2: prog rock album cover.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, including the very next thing I was going
Speaker 3: to talk about, which is that as the boy is
Speaker 3: coming or I guess he's a young man now, as
Speaker 3: the hero is coming down to cross the plain of
Speaker 3: sand to get to the temple, there's another thing he sees.
Speaker 3: At first, I was confused how this interacted with the
Speaker 3: other thing. But there's like a giant teardrop shaped rock
Speaker 3: descending slowly from the sky, and there appears to be
Speaker 3: a sort of castle or something on top of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is actually mentioned in the book. This is
Speaker 2: apparently an homage to one of Saalbass's favorite visual works,
Speaker 2: The Castle of the Pyrenees by Belgian surrealist Renee Margrite.
Speaker 2: This is a work from nineteen fifty nine, and apparently
Speaker 2: Saul loved this image and had just been looking for
Speaker 2: an opportunity to somehow utilize it in his work. There's
Speaker 2: a Wikipedia article about this particular painting, and I included
Speaker 2: a sample of it here in our notes for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks exactly the same, so clearly, yeah.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong, but I feel like something just
Speaker 2: like this also eventually pops up in Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 2: So some of you dn D lord nerds out there
Speaker 2: will have to remind me what I'm thinking of, because
Speaker 2: I feel like I've seen an homage to this piece
Speaker 2: in Dungeons and Dragons art as well.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say Zardas, it's like
Speaker 3: the Zardas head, except it's not a head, it's just
Speaker 3: a big rock.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I think there's some shared DNA
Speaker 2: between some of the design work here and the design
Speaker 2: work of Zardas as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the hero tries to cross the sand flat,
Speaker 3: but when he gets into the sand, he begins to sink,
Speaker 3: and at first I was like, oh, no, it's like
Speaker 3: a quick sand trap. He's gonna have to get out,
Speaker 3: but no, it goes in a different direction. Instead. He
Speaker 3: is able to move through the sand, but it's like
Speaker 3: rising up to his chest and occasionally up to his chin,
Speaker 3: but he just wades on through like its water, and
Speaker 3: he makes his way all the way across the sand
Speaker 3: flat this way, which I thought was I don't know,
Speaker 3: the strange, unexpected, and obviously I don't think you can
Speaker 3: really do that. You can't move through sand that you're
Speaker 3: that deepened, and it would just there'd be too much resistance.
Speaker 3: But it's like water, and he just passes through it.
Speaker 2: This sequence, in particular reminds me of some of the
Speaker 2: sand related imagery that we get in Phase four.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I agree. It also reminds me of a
Speaker 3: weird sort of sand progressing through a sand chamber scene
Speaker 3: in the Tarkowsky movie Stalker. But eventually the hero comes
Speaker 3: out the other side to stand on the stairs of
Speaker 3: the temple. I didn't mention this earlier, but next to
Speaker 3: the human head there's kind of a big eagle head
Speaker 3: as well. And then suddenly there's an earthquake. The carvings
Speaker 3: at the entrance to the temple begin to crumble and
Speaker 3: fall all around him, and the hero has to dodge
Speaker 3: some boulders, but he survives. Now I think it's suggesting
Speaker 3: the earthquake is caused by the huge tear drop asteroid
Speaker 3: settling into the sand, like it has finally touched down
Speaker 3: and that shakes the air.
Speaker 2: I think so. But again, as to exactly what all
Speaker 2: this means, I mean, we're left to ponder that, like
Speaker 2: all of this, I'm assuming all of this is somehow
Speaker 2: tied to the history of these people, that these used
Speaker 2: to be their cities, that these are their temples, they
Speaker 2: or their tombs. We're not sure. But as to what
Speaker 2: the giant tear drop asteroid truly signifies, like, is this
Speaker 2: the spaceship that brought them there? Because I know in
Speaker 2: the original Bradbury it has to do. There's like a
Speaker 2: crash spaceship that's part of the plot, and so we
Speaker 2: might see some fantastic echo of that concept here.
Speaker 3: But the voices in the hero's head they tell him
Speaker 3: to go on, so he does. He goes into the
Speaker 3: temple and then we see from inside the giant head
Speaker 3: with light pouring in through the eyes, which is very cool.
Speaker 3: And then inside the temple there is a swarm of
Speaker 3: star like particles suspended inside a blue light, much like
Speaker 3: the blue light that the boy uncovered in his schooling.
Speaker 3: But before he can make sense of it, the temple
Speaker 3: continues to crumble and it just rocks and blocks are falling,
Speaker 3: and he's driven away, driven on into a different place,
Speaker 3: a tube like corridor sort of the inside of the spaceworm,
Speaker 3: where the Falcon lands and Empire strikes back. Yea, but
Speaker 3: with a raised metal boardwalk. He's saying, I'm going through
Speaker 3: the boardwalk in the swamp or something, and he moves
Speaker 3: on down the gangway and then finally we come to
Speaker 3: a different landscape and it announces is day four. Baby,
Speaker 3: Here we are day four, and he's standing in front
Speaker 3: of massive Egyptian temple architecture with rows and rows of columns,
Speaker 3: and I forget the name of the temple I have
Speaker 3: in mind, but there is an Egyptian temple I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of that looks like this, and he's passing through the
Speaker 3: courtyard and it somehow seems to lead into a different universe,
Speaker 3: like when he comes to the other end there is
Speaker 3: a another flat sandy plain, but this one is bathed
Speaker 3: in blue light with pyramids that look like the Giza
Speaker 3: Complex in the distance, and then beyond that giant planets
Speaker 3: looming in the sky.
Speaker 4: Huge. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at this point I'm definitely questioning the whole
Speaker 2: Make sure you set it on Earth ray, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: directive here, because we really feel like we're in another
Speaker 2: world at this point. We are, at least if we're
Speaker 2: not on another planet the whole time, then we are
Speaker 2: somewhere else at this point.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, I don't mean to diminish it by
Speaker 3: by this comparison, but it's hard not to feel some
Speaker 3: Star Wars influence on this. For one thing, he like,
Speaker 3: he comes up to a hooded man resting against one
Speaker 3: of the columns. He's almost in a kind of either
Speaker 3: obi wan kenobi or jahwa outfit. The hooded figure in
Speaker 3: the desert and he comes up to the sky. No
Speaker 3: face is visible, but the hero is looking out on
Speaker 3: this blue landscape with the pyramid and the planets like
Speaker 3: passing into and out of alignment in the sky. The
Speaker 3: planets are moving super fast. And then the hooded man
Speaker 3: starts to talk. He says, so they sent another one.
Speaker 3: Let's have a look at you. Yes, you're young, much
Speaker 3: younger than I was when I got here. And the
Speaker 3: hooded man reveals that he was the last hero, but
Speaker 3: he started too late, he says. The younger man does
Speaker 3: have a chance, and he gives him advice. He says,
Speaker 3: look at that pyramid, don't go around it. You have
Speaker 3: to climb to the top.
Speaker 2: All right, some fortune cookie sort of advice there, but
Speaker 2: it feels specific to this challenge as well.
Speaker 3: Oh sure. And you know, this actually made me think
Speaker 3: about one of I was going to say, one of
Speaker 3: the shadow themes of Quest, and it's something that has
Speaker 3: to do with trust. So our hero, at multiple times
Speaker 3: throughout the story, we get little different ways that he
Speaker 3: just has to believe the advice given to him and
Speaker 3: follow it because he doesn't have enough time to see
Speaker 3: and investigate for himself. And so he just meets this
Speaker 3: random stranger here, and the stranger gives him advice and
Speaker 3: he just follows it, and we're sort of to understand
Speaker 3: that he doesn't really have a choice. I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess he could try to not follow it, but seems
Speaker 3: more likely that would result in him failing his mission
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like if he said, no, Grandpa, I needed I
Speaker 2: want to do my own research on this, like, you know,
Speaker 2: then you're going to die in the desert like this guy.
Speaker 4: And and it.
Speaker 3: Makes me think about the relationship between time and trust.
Speaker 3: You know, this is this is actually a core thing
Speaker 3: about what trust is. Trust is a thing that saves
Speaker 3: you time because if you didn't. If you had unlimited
Speaker 3: time and resources, you could investigate everything for yourself like
Speaker 3: you could, you know, look into every you look endlessly
Speaker 3: into every question and not have to believe anything people
Speaker 3: told you. But you don't have unlimited time and resources.
Speaker 3: You're always trying to make your life more efficient, so
Speaker 3: you have to rely on trust for some things. And
Speaker 3: so a big part of what we think about in
Speaker 3: navigating life is just like where we decide to press
Speaker 3: the trust button to save ourselves time and this and
Speaker 3: this scenario created by the movie heightens that kind of
Speaker 3: the observation of that dynamic because time is so constricted
Speaker 3: and so he just literally does not have time to
Speaker 3: wonder whether this guy is giving him good advice or not.
Speaker 3: He just has to follow it. Yeah, And then also
Speaker 3: the guy says, not everything that frightens or hurts you
Speaker 3: as bad. Fear and pain are your teachers learn survive.
Speaker 3: So the young man hurries on through the desert. And meanwhile,
Speaker 3: also he's another thing he asked to trust, is he's
Speaker 3: been being given these voices in his head. They're giving
Speaker 3: him advice. They're saying, you are not alone, we travel
Speaker 3: with you. So there's a scene where the hero gets
Speaker 3: to the stairs, he has to climb. He has to
Speaker 3: climb to the top of the pyramid, and the stairs
Speaker 3: seem endless, but he goes on up and up and up,
Speaker 3: and then finally he gets to the top, where he
Speaker 3: finds a table emitting a blue light. Looks almost like
Speaker 3: a game board. I was thinking that at first, and
Speaker 3: then what do you know, It does seem like it's
Speaker 3: a game board. It's covered in the shapes that the
Speaker 3: boy learned to manipulate in school. And then suddenly there
Speaker 3: is a roar, and we're like, oh, another monster sort of,
Speaker 3: There is a sasquatchlike creature, like a big, furry humanoid
Speaker 3: creature that approaches him, but it's not another fight to
Speaker 3: the death with a spear. This time we're facing the chess.
Speaker 3: YETI our hero has to play a board game, a
Speaker 3: game of strategy with Bigfoot, and I think may have
Speaker 3: been my favorite creative choice in the film.
Speaker 2: Yes, I absolutely love this on one level because it
Speaker 2: is just that outrageous, Like, at this point everything has
Speaker 2: already been surreal and dream like and full of WTF
Speaker 2: moments and then we have this. But then it again
Speaker 2: is one of these moments too. Where it's never fully explained.
Speaker 2: We don't know who or what this entity is, but
Speaker 2: there are so many different ways to tease it apart.
Speaker 2: Horrick and his book brings up the possibility that this
Speaker 2: is sort of like the ID, that his own ID
Speaker 2: that he is combating here. That least, they're like his,
Speaker 2: this is his primal side. And I did when I
Speaker 2: was originally watching it, I did kind of notice some
Speaker 2: similarities between the face of the beast and the face
Speaker 2: of our hero. I don't know how much of that
Speaker 2: was me just, you know, reading too much into it
Speaker 2: or not, but I think there are various interpretations here.
Speaker 2: But what we get at the end of the day
Speaker 2: is the game of chess or something like chess with
Speaker 2: this bestial other.
Speaker 3: That is funny. I mean, so, on one hand, I
Speaker 3: absolutely see the comparison in the way they're embodied, that
Speaker 3: this creature may be some reflection of his more savage self.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, like why would you be Why
Speaker 3: is the form of conflict a game of strategy? Why
Speaker 3: are you playing chess against your ID?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you don't want to wrestle it? Look
Speaker 2: how strong this is get out smarted?
Speaker 3: I guess so so the game itself is kind of
Speaker 3: tronish that it's like these metal shapes, these polyhedron game
Speaker 3: pieces that are zoom zooming around and zapping each other
Speaker 3: with lasers. And then, of course, eventually the YETI loses
Speaker 3: and he doesn't like that. You know, yetti's are known
Speaker 3: to rip people's arms off and they lose. So he
Speaker 3: howls in anger, and he drools and rages very bad sport,
Speaker 3: and he seems ready to kill our hero. But suddenly
Speaker 3: it's a little unclear exactly the orientation of what's happening here,
Speaker 3: but like a walkway extends out through space toward the pyramid,
Speaker 3: leading to another structure, and then the hero leaps out
Speaker 3: onto the walkway and goes away to this other place.
Speaker 2: The challenge has been overcome.
Speaker 3: Yes, so this other place is a lattice of mcsher
Speaker 3: beams that are interlocking in impossible ways.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: So yeah, at this point, like where are we Like,
Speaker 2: are we it within the confines of some great supercomputer?
Speaker 2: Are we in another dimension? I Mean it's hard to
Speaker 2: say exactly what's going on here, and that's the beauty
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in one of the rooms, the hero goes into
Speaker 3: here seems to be inside the game he just played,
Speaker 3: like he's in shrunken form, and the game pieces are
Speaker 3: the giant shapes moving around him. He walks on the board,
Speaker 3: and of course Scale is being played with one again,
Speaker 3: like I mentioned at the beginning. But then at one point,
Speaker 3: the man, oh, and we're told I can't remember if
Speaker 3: ilread he said this, but if not, this is day five,
Speaker 3: so this is supposed to this is the time they
Speaker 3: said earlier that he would be in midlife. And at
Speaker 3: one point the man is he's sort of messing around
Speaker 3: on the game board with these pieces, and then he
Speaker 3: looks at his reflection in a metal piece and he
Speaker 3: says to himself, he realizes he is getting old, and
Speaker 3: he has to hurry. He has to get to the gate.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait a minute, is this literally
Speaker 3: a midlife crisis vignette?
Speaker 2: He's like, well maybe so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like messing around playing games in this confusing space,
Speaker 3: and then he looks at himself in the mirror and
Speaker 3: has a sudden reminder of his mortality, and then he
Speaker 3: really picks up the pace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't know that he should also buy a
Speaker 2: leather jacket and look into motorcycles or something.
Speaker 3: Right, So we see him traveling through other weird landscapes,
Speaker 3: some natural, some artificial. One is like, I don't even
Speaker 3: know what you call it, like a big flat, empty
Speaker 3: rectangular space that looks out onto looks out like into
Speaker 3: the void, and there are planets beyond, so it's almost
Speaker 3: as if he's in a spaceship. There's another point where
Speaker 3: he's wandering through this huge field of just pits that
Speaker 3: are inverted step pyramids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this must be where like maybe they cut the
Speaker 2: pyramids from earlier out of this landscape. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a landscape of just colossal works. I guess this is
Speaker 2: what we're to take from it.
Speaker 3: And I love these landscapes. The sets are amazing. But
Speaker 3: then finally, finally Day seven comes. He's getting old, and
Speaker 3: he makes it to the gate, the gate that was promised.
Speaker 3: So he comes upon this sort of hole in the
Speaker 3: rocks where light is spilling through, and he walks up
Speaker 3: to it and realizes a giant mechanism, this big metal
Speaker 3: bar is descending toward him slowly, and when it reaches him,
Speaker 3: the mechanism has controls that have hand prints on them
Speaker 3: that he could put his hands in. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like that button that makes air on Mars and total recall,
Speaker 3: you know, a metal thing with a handprint on it.
Speaker 3: So he's like, okay, I got to put my hands
Speaker 3: on it. So he puts his hands in the prints,
Speaker 3: and it makes music. It releases this booming tone, and
Speaker 3: then the whole mechanism sinks into the floor and the
Speaker 3: gate opens and light spills over everything, not just on
Speaker 3: the man there in the place, but light seems to
Speaker 3: spill over the whole planet. So we go back to
Speaker 3: the place we came from. We see light filling in
Speaker 3: the caverns where the people from the First Day live,
Speaker 3: and there are lots of old people there, but we
Speaker 3: get to hear their heartbeats slowing down as the light
Speaker 3: pours over them. And the light is of a very
Speaker 3: different color warmth than the stuff we've seen before. Most
Speaker 3: of the movie has been kind of blue green gray.
Speaker 3: The light now is orange. And then we return to
Speaker 3: the hero and we find him in a land, in
Speaker 3: a natural landscape, unlike anything we've seen before. Now the
Speaker 3: world is green, green, green. He's on these hills covered
Speaker 3: in green grass, not the kind of pale, gross blue
Speaker 3: green of the fog in the world before. Now it's
Speaker 3: like vibrant green, springtime green, the hills covered in green
Speaker 3: grass and trees with flowers blooming everywhere, and the man
Speaker 3: is just walking through it looking like Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of a like a seventies white Jesus, kind
Speaker 2: of like a Kinney Loggin's kind of a look here, yeah.
Speaker 3: Exactly, yes, like hippie movie Jesus.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But he's got a magnificent beard, and you can tell
Speaker 3: he's just vibing on the nature that he's looking at.
Speaker 3: And then the boy's like looking at the plants. I
Speaker 3: don't know why I called him the boy. He's a
Speaker 3: man now, he's just mere days old, so that is true.
Speaker 3: He's like looking at the plants. And then we get
Speaker 3: some narration where it's an ending that is at once
Speaker 3: a little bit a little bit corny, but also kind
Speaker 3: of beautiful. He says, of all the twenty thousand days
Speaker 3: I have, which day will be the finest, which will
Speaker 3: be the best? Any day, any hour, any minute, And
Speaker 3: then we end as like geese are flying across this
Speaker 3: disc of the sun.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so upbeat and positive, and I think
Speaker 2: if you dig into it, it does get into some
Speaker 2: serious depth, you know, I mean, how do you how
Speaker 2: do you overcome the shortness of our lives and the
Speaker 2: marching of time? Well, one way is by retreating into
Speaker 2: the now and focusing on the now, focusing on any day,
Speaker 2: any hour, any minute, you know, finding those little things,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's that's what came to my mind
Speaker 2: when I heard this. But on the other level, yes,
Speaker 2: it is like such an upbeat ending. I don't know.
Speaker 2: We get more used to more past mystic endings in
Speaker 2: our films, so I don't know, it was it was
Speaker 2: refreshing that it does feel so optimistic at the end,
Speaker 2: like he succeeded in his quest. He brought life to everyone,
Speaker 2: and in the revelation here is perhaps a little deeper
Speaker 2: if we dig into it.
Speaker 3: Well, in another one of those observations that is both
Speaker 3: profound and true and also can be kind of corny,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't make it any less true. Is the
Speaker 3: thing about you know, you can you can overcome the
Speaker 3: kind of despair about the perspective of the shortness of
Speaker 3: your life by having purpose, by having by having a mission,
Speaker 3: by having a purpose that a purpose that is sort
Speaker 3: of other oriented. You know that is driven towards not
Speaker 3: just yourself and your own gratification, but living for others.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it reminds me of against some of
Speaker 2: what we've been discussing in our Mystery cult series. So
Speaker 2: a lot of times some of the best nuggets of
Speaker 2: wisdom are also kind of overstatements the obvious, like, you know,
Speaker 2: love is all you need, love is the fifth element,
Speaker 2: what have you? You know, But these are also things
Speaker 2: that are true, and it all comes down to presentation.
Speaker 2: And in the same way we talked about some of
Speaker 2: the initiations of the mystery cults, where there might be
Speaker 2: something that is key to the initiation, something that is
Speaker 2: revealed in a box, and if you just take it
Speaker 2: out of context, if you're a critic and you're just like,
Speaker 2: look at this thing they have in the box here,
Speaker 2: how corny is that? You know? But if it's within context,
Speaker 2: if it occurs at the end of the initiation, then
Speaker 2: perhaps it is able to settle into your psyche in
Speaker 2: a more rewarding way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So just for example, you know, you could say, like
Speaker 3: a Demeter is reunited with her daughter, and this brings us,
Speaker 3: you know, this ear of grain, which represents the wealth
Speaker 3: the fruits of our fields, and it is what we
Speaker 3: live by. You know, if you just like put it
Speaker 3: in those words, somebody could be like, oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: that's not all that impressive. But if you watch the
Speaker 3: whole drama and you take part in the suffering and
Speaker 3: the passion and the relief of the re union of
Speaker 3: mother and daughter and all that, it can be overwhelming.
Speaker 3: It's something that follows you every day of your life.
Speaker 3: You never never look at some flower the same way.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, not everything that frightens or hurts you as
Speaker 2: bad fear and pain or your teachers learn survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. I think the real moral of the story
Speaker 3: is if you're feeling down, play chess with a yetti
Speaker 3: and make sure you win.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, that is nineteen eighty four's quest. Again,
Speaker 2: if you wish to experience it as well, you should
Speaker 2: be able to find it out there, and again, hopefully
Speaker 2: in the future there'll be some sort of proper restored
Speaker 2: release as well. Just a reminder for everyone out there
Speaker 2: that stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: If you're on letterbox dot com you can find us.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird House and we have a nice
Speaker 2: list there of all the episodes that we have covered
Speaker 2: so far, all the movies we have covered so far. Rather,
Speaker 2: and I will remind you that at this point we're
Speaker 2: at one ninety six, so we're coming in hot on
Speaker 2: selection two hundred. We already have some recommendations for what
Speaker 2: that episode might be, what film we could possibly cover
Speaker 2: for the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, but continue
Speaker 2: to ride in. We have not made a decision as yet.
Speaker 3: It's going to be Mortal Kombat Annihilation.
Speaker 2: It could be it could be that that is the
Speaker 2: most fitting choice.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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