Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb. Today we are reairing an episode that came
Speaker 1: out seven eleven, twenty twenty five. It is The White
Speaker 1: Reindeer in nineteen fifty two finish folk horror film, and
Speaker 1: it is it's an interesting one. So this is a
Speaker 1: way of yours, particularly if it's a little hot outside.
Speaker 1: This is a nice bit of winter escapism. Let's jump
Speaker 1: right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema we're going to be talking about the nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: two Finish folk horror film The White Reindeer, starring Miriami
Speaker 3: Quosmanan and directed by Eric Blomberg. If I may say,
Speaker 3: I think this is the finest where ungulate movie I
Speaker 3: have ever seen.
Speaker 1: It may be the finest where ungulate movie I can envision,
Speaker 1: because the concept to many of you, I imagine where
Speaker 1: wolf fans uh. To the last of you, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you might struggle to get excited for a where Reindeer
Speaker 1: picture and yet this one is really good. It's it's classy,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically art house and has some you know,
Speaker 1: almost kind of documentary vibes to it at times. It's
Speaker 1: very well done and ultimately makes you buy in completely
Speaker 1: to this concept that I have to I have to
Speaker 1: admit that on the surface to many of us might
Speaker 1: seem a little silly.
Speaker 3: Oh by the end, I was terrified of reindeers. That
Speaker 3: is that a correct plural would not be reindeers. It's
Speaker 3: still be reindeer. That's plural, just to say the dear Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: but yeah. So this movie is set in the culture
Speaker 3: of pre Christian Lapland today the northernmost region of Finland,
Speaker 3: and The White Reindeer tells a story of love and loneliness,
Speaker 3: of women's dependence and independence in culture, of longing and desire,
Speaker 3: of witchcraft, of transformation, and of murder. It's got all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff going on. So the basic premise of
Speaker 3: the story is that Pirita, a woman of the north
Speaker 3: married to a hard working reindeer herder in Lapland, finds
Speaker 3: herself unhappy with life, and she seeks the help of
Speaker 3: a wizard who prescribes for her a ritual that will
Speaker 3: make her irresistible to men. But unfortunately, this magic spell
Speaker 3: has a toxic interaction with the pre existing condition of
Speaker 3: her being a genetic witch since birth, and instead of
Speaker 3: merely becoming the bell of the Ball, Pirita is transformed
Speaker 3: into a kind of seductive, somnambulist and reindeer version of
Speaker 3: a werewolf, assuming fur and antlers by the light of
Speaker 3: the moon and luring unsuspecting herdsmen to their deaths Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: there's one little random claim I read on the internet
Speaker 3: that made a lot more sense of the story to
Speaker 3: me after I read it. I don't know this is true,
Speaker 3: but it seems likely given the story here. It's not
Speaker 3: explained in the story itself, but apparently the Sammi people,
Speaker 3: whose culture is depicted in this story. Among the Sammi people,
Speaker 3: it was a common folk belief that there was something
Speaker 3: special about a white or albino reindeer, and if you
Speaker 3: could catch a wild white reindeer, it would bring you
Speaker 3: great fortune.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that does help flash things out a little bit.
Speaker 3: So the white reindeer has a kind of interesting release history.
Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about it in a book
Speaker 3: called one hundred European horror Films edited by Stephen J. Schneider,
Speaker 3: and apparently it's nineteen fifty two debut in the Finnish
Speaker 3: capital of Helsinki happened during the summer Olympics in Helsinki,
Speaker 3: which resulted in what the author calls near vacant screenings.
Speaker 3: Nobody was gone to see it, but so not a
Speaker 3: good way to start. But it caught on domestically after
Speaker 3: this in a second run later that summer or maybe
Speaker 3: in the fall, and it started getting good press and
Speaker 3: would eventually become something of an international hit, receiving a
Speaker 3: number of awards, including at the con Film Festival. We'll
Speaker 3: get into more on that later, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: interesting that this was a sort of sensation at the time,
Speaker 3: and I think for most of my life I'd never
Speaker 3: even heard of it. I never became aware of it
Speaker 3: until just recently.
Speaker 1: I was not aware of it until you texted me
Speaker 1: over the weekend and said, I have chosen for this
Speaker 1: week it's the White Reindeer. And at the time I
Speaker 1: was like, of course, you know. One percent. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do that, Let's do the White Reindeer.
Speaker 1: But I was also thinking this is an interesting summer choice.
Speaker 1: But of course we just did a core stuff to
Speaker 1: Blowy Night episode on skiing, so it's not out out
Speaker 1: of keeping with us to do something that seems seasonally opposite.
Speaker 1: But oh, ice skating, Yeah, ice skating, Sorry, not skiing.
Speaker 1: We haven't done skiing yet, but we should skiing.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of skiing in the movie.
Speaker 1: Seeing But now that you mentioned that this originally came
Speaker 1: out in the summer, it is fitting that we're talking
Speaker 1: about it in the summer.
Speaker 3: I mean, I happen to personally love counter seasonal programming,
Speaker 3: yet you know that's just me. Now, I think it
Speaker 3: could be interesting to compare this film to other Rare
Speaker 3: Beast movies we've covered on the show, But maybe we
Speaker 3: should come back to that later or just as it
Speaker 3: occurs to us throughout. One thing I do think we
Speaker 3: should talk about briefly at the top is this movie's
Speaker 3: visual stylistic virtue. As many reviewers mentioned this as a
Speaker 3: real highlight of the film, the bold, stark way that
Speaker 3: it looks. It was shot on location in real snowy
Speaker 3: landscapes of northern Finland in Lapland, and so you get
Speaker 3: these the fells, you know, these kind of like like
Speaker 3: low sloping or rounded mountaintops or hilltops, many of which
Speaker 3: are bear some of which have just kind of, I
Speaker 3: don't know, sad looking like snow covered tree limbs poking out.
Speaker 1: Like every portion of the tree, trees iced over in
Speaker 1: ways that those of us in more southern climates scarcely
Speaker 1: can imagine. Like it looks almost Sussian, you know, the
Speaker 1: way these trees are iced over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, true Arctic strangeness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jack Frost hit this landscape hard.
Speaker 3: But also like herds of reindeer stretching to the horizon
Speaker 3: in some shots, those are quite striking. And then these
Speaker 3: little and then the way that the movie deals with
Speaker 3: both absolutely empty expanses and then these little closed boxes
Speaker 3: in the homes. You know that. So you'll go out
Speaker 3: in this field and it's just like seeing far to
Speaker 3: the horizon and there's nothing there but a few like
Speaker 3: you know, leafless shrubs or this, you know, this train
Speaker 3: of animals just stretching over the horizon and there's like
Speaker 3: nothing else to see. But then you arrive at the
Speaker 3: Wizard Shack and you go inside and it looks like
Speaker 3: it's about like eight feet by eight feet. Inside it's
Speaker 3: like tiny but crammed with evil magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that you mentioned it that way, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of some past discussions we had on the on
Speaker 1: the Core and stuff to blow your mind episodes about
Speaker 1: the art of Tibet and like interior spaces in Tibet,
Speaker 1: interior sacred spaces versus the exterior world where you have
Speaker 1: like huge sky and sweeping vistas. And we have a
Speaker 1: similar vibe going on here, you know, with these these
Speaker 1: little enclosed off in you know, very dark, cozy spaces,
Speaker 1: and then outside it's just like a white wasteland, but
Speaker 1: in the most beautiful sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these things filmed in a way that is both
Speaker 3: frightening and beautiful.
Speaker 1: If we haven't mentioned it already, this is a black
Speaker 1: and white film, which, especially in these shots of the
Speaker 1: of the landscape, it seemed very fitting. You know, everything
Speaker 1: is very very white, and the shadows have this depth
Speaker 1: to them, and then the indoor scenes, especially at night,
Speaker 1: also feel it feels appropriate. I will say there are
Speaker 1: a few scenes of just sort of normal everyday life
Speaker 1: or celebration within the community that I kind of wished
Speaker 1: we could have seen in color because I feel like
Speaker 1: those were Yeah, I just kind of wanted to see
Speaker 1: the colors there, but on the whole, yeah, the black
Speaker 1: and white, and this is absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3: I just realized there's really no way around it. But
Speaker 3: we're gonna say the words reindeer and snow so many
Speaker 3: times in this episode. I was just like going through
Speaker 3: my notes trying to think of synonyms, so I wasn't
Speaker 3: repeating myself so much. But in a way it's fitting
Speaker 3: because this movie is just it's just plowing straight into
Speaker 3: your brain with reindeer and snow. There's so much of both.
Speaker 1: Most of the location is snow, and there are far
Speaker 1: more reindeer in the picture than human beings. It's it's
Speaker 1: just a fact. There's just so many reindeer on the
Speaker 1: screen at different points. But in a way that is again,
Speaker 1: it feels very when you see people interacting with the reindeer.
Speaker 1: When you see it feels almost like a documentary, like
Speaker 1: a snapshot of life. There's not a sense of like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get the reindeer wrangler out there so
Speaker 1: it can get this shot like this, This film feels
Speaker 1: very real.
Speaker 3: I believe the director of it had made documentaries and
Speaker 3: maybe even on this subject right correct.
Speaker 1: His first short picture as well. We'll discuss here in
Speaker 1: a minute, was about the Lapland reindeer herders, So it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very fitting. I should also point out that this
Speaker 1: film is in many spaces very light on dialogue. It
Speaker 1: has almost a silent film sensibility.
Speaker 3: That's notable in multiple ways. It does contribute to the
Speaker 3: mood of the film, because there are long silent stretches
Speaker 3: where there's just music, no talking in between the dialogue scenes,
Speaker 3: and that I think that does contribute to the kind
Speaker 3: of lonely, eerie feeling that they're attempting to conjure, especially
Speaker 3: when we're just alone with Perita. Yeah. But in addition
Speaker 3: to that the lack of dialogue, it shows a real
Speaker 3: what seems to me to be a conscious choice of
Speaker 3: narrative restraint that keeps many things about characters, motivations and
Speaker 3: thoughts a mystery very different than I think most other
Speaker 3: movies at this time would have done.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: I feel like if this same kind of subject had
Speaker 3: been approached by an American filmmaker at this time, there
Speaker 3: would have been a lot more voiceover explaining the interior
Speaker 3: thoughts of characters of perioda and aslock. But we don't
Speaker 3: get that so very often we're just sort of left
Speaker 3: wondering what they're thinking about what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has a very European art house sensibility in
Speaker 1: that respect. And yeah, and there will be no transformation
Speaker 1: scenes in this in the way that you get them
Speaker 1: in a certainly American and many your pen examples of
Speaker 1: ladder monster movies and so specifically wear Wolf movies. But
Speaker 1: then again, you don't need a transformation scene for a
Speaker 1: great shape shifter.
Speaker 3: Movie, that's right, I mean, And in fact, this movie
Speaker 3: it doesn't really have a lot in the way of
Speaker 3: special effects, but it doesn't really need them because the
Speaker 3: way it handles its subject matter is just very natural
Speaker 3: and graceful.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 3: So, there's a character who transforms into a reindeer in
Speaker 3: these in these murder scenes, and you'll see her just
Speaker 3: sort of leap out of frame, and in the next frame,
Speaker 3: the reindeer leaps into frame. It's a very simple way
Speaker 3: to depict this kind of transformation without showing it in frame,
Speaker 3: and it works just fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminds me, I want to mention really quickly.
Speaker 1: When I was looking up the reviews on letterbox for
Speaker 1: this film, one of the people I followed, John from
Speaker 1: Video Drum here in Atlanta made the comment, somehow this
Speaker 1: is one of those low budget or enormous budget watching
Speaker 1: experiences which I can totally I can totally feel, because again,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: that naturalistic vibe, this kind of like documentary feel to it.
Speaker 1: At times, you can feel like, well, all they did
Speaker 1: was turn on the camera and this is just this
Speaker 1: is just what it is there, this is life. But
Speaker 1: then again, when you start thinking about, like you know,
Speaker 1: any documentary about filmmaking you've seen, like, no, maybe this
Speaker 1: was absolutely an enormously expensive picture. It's just hard to tell,
Speaker 1: especially you know, being so far from this environment.
Speaker 3: And from this time, I agree that it feels that way.
Speaker 3: Though I guess we should just flag that I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily want to vouch for this film's cultural authenticity and
Speaker 3: how it depicts the Sami culture and all that, because
Speaker 3: I don't really know how well it captures that. I
Speaker 3: didn't find sources addressing this. It clearly is trying. It
Speaker 3: seems to me to be trying to capture a kind
Speaker 3: of cultural authenticity, but I don't know how well in
Speaker 3: reality it actually did that.
Speaker 1: Right, we can point to other examples from the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and different cinema traditions where there's there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of finesse shown in that sort of cultural depictions.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we would. I think it's reasonable for us
Speaker 1: to have a healthy amount of skepticism, all right. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this had a trailer, or if
Speaker 1: whatever kind of trailer it originally had in Finland, if
Speaker 1: it exists online anywhere, we may air just a little
Speaker 1: bit of what I think is a modern trailer for
Speaker 1: it that Eureka Entertainment put out. Eureka Entertainment is responsible
Speaker 1: for what I believe is the main Blu Ray option
Speaker 1: for this picture. I did not watch it on this
Speaker 1: Blu Ray. I streamed it. It's widely available for streaming
Speaker 1: wherever you get your streaming pictures. But it looks like
Speaker 1: the Blu Ray is a really nice package with a
Speaker 1: number of extras.
Speaker 4: Oh tears in Sinu two level and many you are more.
Speaker 5: Zero two level sil say the lench and line and
Speaker 5: yellow and an old Toyo car too, lever star on
Speaker 5: the Malayah.
Speaker 3: You beca a boy?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's let's get into the cast and
Speaker 1: crew here a little bit, and I always want to
Speaker 1: apologize for any pronunciation errors with names and such. We
Speaker 1: haven't done really any finish films before. We've done some
Speaker 1: Russo finish co productions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this Rose is a Russo finished thing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is I think this is our first
Speaker 1: like purely finish film from the golden age of Finnish cinema.
Speaker 1: I'm to understand, and I want to note I'm going
Speaker 1: to refer several times to the Juicy Awards, JUSSI. There
Speaker 1: may be more USY Awards. They're essentially like Finnish Academy Awards,
Speaker 1: and I think maybe there's a little Emmy energy in there,
Speaker 1: because I think they also recognized television projects or at
Speaker 1: least came to at some point. They've been held since
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, and so I'm going to refer back
Speaker 1: to them several different times here. Okay, So the key individuals,
Speaker 1: as we've already noted, are going to be Eric Blomberg,
Speaker 1: who is it did as the director, one of the writers,
Speaker 1: certainly the cinematographer and also the editor, as well as
Speaker 1: his wife mir Jammi Kuzmanin, and she is our star.
Speaker 1: She is also credited as one of the writers. But
Speaker 1: I was reading about her specifically on a website called
Speaker 1: Nordic Women in Film dot com and in this this
Speaker 1: write up they mentioned just how closely these two work
Speaker 1: together on their projects. I think the quote is from
Speaker 1: one of them, is that when it came to projects
Speaker 1: they worked on, you would have to use a pair
Speaker 1: of tweezers to separate what each one did. So this
Speaker 1: division of labor here we get is in many ways
Speaker 1: maybe just a reflection of what their backgrounds were. Her
Speaker 1: background wasn't acting. His background was in cinematography and was
Speaker 1: behind the camera, and therefore they're credited as such. And
Speaker 1: it's also been pointed out that there were very few
Speaker 1: female directors in Finnish cinema at the time, so maybe
Speaker 1: that was another reason that her name wasn't at the top.
Speaker 1: But like they work so closely together, just keep that
Speaker 1: in mind as we're talking about these divisions, because it
Speaker 1: seems like this whole project was a collaboration.
Speaker 3: Right, so it should be kind of thought of as
Speaker 3: that them as co filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and they were very open yeah about this.
Speaker 1: So let's start with Eric. Though he lived nineteen thirteen
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety six finish cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director.
Speaker 1: Not to be confused with a Swedish poet of the
Speaker 1: same name. This Blomberg started off as a cinematographer with
Speaker 1: credits going back to nineteen thirty six, and he was
Speaker 1: a producer from nineteen thirty eight onward. His first directorial
Speaker 1: credit was a nineteen forty seven documentary short titled with
Speaker 1: the Reindeer, about the reindeer of Lapland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as we alluded to earlier, that is not surprising
Speaker 3: if you've seen the film that he had shot documentary
Speaker 3: footage about reindeer herding or about reindeer in general. There
Speaker 3: is a I don't even know how to identify what
Speaker 3: the the points leading to this impression are, but there's
Speaker 3: just a feeling of familiarity with the subject, if that
Speaker 3: makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, and it was well received. This documentary short
Speaker 1: won a Ucy Award. I'm gonna go ahead just say
Speaker 1: ucy instead of juicy, just because it sounds better to me.
Speaker 1: But that may also be incorrect, Okay. He followed this
Speaker 1: short up with a handful of additional shorts before tackling
Speaker 1: this his first feature length film, again a collaboration with
Speaker 1: his wife. She co wrote it, and again that you'd
Speaker 1: have to use a tweezer to separate what they were
Speaker 1: each working on in their own words. As you pointed out,
Speaker 1: nobody seemed to go to see it at first because
Speaker 1: they released it during the summer Olympics, but then it
Speaker 1: began to pick up steam domestically and then ultimately was
Speaker 1: very well received internationally. Not only did it earn them
Speaker 1: a uc for cinematography, it was nominated for the Grand
Speaker 1: Prize of the cons Film Festival in fifty three and
Speaker 1: it won in its fairy tail film categor which excited
Speaker 1: me and I had to research this. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: else won? What else was nominated? I don't think this
Speaker 1: category existed previously or afterwards, so I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the story is here. If they invented a category to
Speaker 1: honor this film, which if that's the case, great, this
Speaker 1: film totally earned it, or if they were like, yes,
Speaker 1: fairy tale films, they need their own category, and then
Speaker 1: it just they decided not to keep doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure.
Speaker 3: I'm getting out of the pitchforks. Bring it back, Bring
Speaker 3: it back to the con judges, we need a fairy
Speaker 3: tale film category, do it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe you'd encourage even more fairy tale films.
Speaker 1: I don't think we have enough of them. So Blomberg
Speaker 1: followed this up with a handful of feature link films,
Speaker 1: some more short works, and finally a couple of TV
Speaker 1: movies in sixty six and sixty eight. Of these, his
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five film Killouse also won a UCY for cinematography.
Speaker 1: But The White Reindeer I believe, remains his most well
Speaker 1: known film, certainly internationally, and continues to resonate not only
Speaker 1: as an example of cinema during from the golden era
Speaker 1: of Finnish cinema, but also as a rich entry in
Speaker 1: Global full car.
Speaker 3: I've read that Blomberg did not do a lot else
Speaker 3: in this sort of magical category.
Speaker 1: Right, that's I'm to understand that as well. Looking at
Speaker 1: his other pictures, I don't think anything else could qualify
Speaker 1: as you know, specula as having a speculative elopment.
Speaker 3: Okay, but that was Eric Blomberg. Let's talk Miriami Kosmanan Yeah.
Speaker 1: So. Kospannen lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty three. She
Speaker 1: plays our witch reindeer, Finnish actress, writer and longtime wife
Speaker 1: of Eric Blomberg. I was reading her this profile of
Speaker 1: her in her work on Nordic women in film. They
Speaker 1: point out that she was like a real wild child
Speaker 1: as a kid, like she played played sports with the boys,
Speaker 1: she loved swimming and fishing. There's some story about her
Speaker 1: putting out a fire in their house. So yeah, she
Speaker 1: seemed to be a real spirited individual. And she was
Speaker 1: active from thirty seven through fifty six, and they're a
Speaker 1: good I think dozen collaborations between her and her husband.
Speaker 1: She is often credited as a writer and sometimes she
Speaker 1: is an actress. But this film, in particular, I'm to understand,
Speaker 1: was a case where it was at least partially inspired
Speaker 1: by a dream she had of a woman turning into
Speaker 1: a reindeer. And I think it's also, you know, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss, based on some existing bits of folklore and
Speaker 1: Bret and Sagas and so forth, but also there's a
Speaker 1: dream element something that you know, that emerges personally from her.
Speaker 1: There's also a quote in that article about how like
Speaker 1: they had a unified vision for this picture and that
Speaker 1: they each could see every scene before they shot it.
Speaker 1: So she's a really beautiful thought, I.
Speaker 3: Think, especially for a film that has deadly premonitions within it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah that they Yeah, they saw the vision together.
Speaker 1: Other notable films of hers include nineteen thirty eight's The
Speaker 1: Song of the Scarlet Flower, which, like much her filmography,
Speaker 1: was a romance drama. Again, I don't think there are
Speaker 1: any other films in her filmography that you could think
Speaker 1: of as being horror, fantasy, or certainly sci fi. I
Speaker 1: think The White Reindeer stands alone. She won a uc
Speaker 1: for Best Leading Actress for her role in The White Reindeer.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, she's amazing in this. It's a captivating performance.
Speaker 1: You know, she's often silently channeling these intense feelings of loneliness,
Speaker 1: of love and hope and eventually other worldly power.
Speaker 3: She really carries the film. I mean, it is her
Speaker 3: burden to carry, and she takes it up that snowy hill.
Speaker 3: We spend huge amounts of the movie just alone with her,
Speaker 3: with nobody else, and even in scenes where she's with
Speaker 3: other people, often it's just sort of the audience in
Speaker 3: her and the other people are kind of peripheral. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so we have and it's a really interesting way
Speaker 3: to render a protagonist in this way because we our
Speaker 3: main relationship is with her, and we spend all this
Speaker 3: time with her. But also she remains so mysterious through
Speaker 3: the entire film, and we even at the end of
Speaker 3: the story, I think there are many questions we can
Speaker 3: still have about her that aren't really answered directly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, ultimately she gets some great Dracula
Speaker 1: moments and in a sense it's going to follow some
Speaker 1: the trajectory you might expect from a werewolf picture. But
Speaker 1: yet at the end there's not this feeling of Welp,
Speaker 1: she was a monster and thank goodness we killed her.
Speaker 1: It feels a lot, a lot sadder than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very it's tragic. Yeah, it's more. If I'm going
Speaker 1: to compare it to just an easily referred to werewolf picture,
Speaker 1: reminds me maybe a little bit of American Werewolf in London,
Speaker 1: like that kind of vibe where it's it's yeah, the
Speaker 1: monster's dad, but we don't feel great about it.
Speaker 3: I would say, yes, but it's even more tragic than that,
Speaker 3: because of course, you know, she has to be killed
Speaker 3: by the man she loves, uh, and he doesn't even
Speaker 3: know it's her. So it's just tragedy all around. And
Speaker 3: then there's an even more kind of bleak layer, which
Speaker 3: is that the guy an American werewolf in London. He's
Speaker 3: just had bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. He was
Speaker 3: out on the moor and he got scratched. He got
Speaker 3: bitten by a werewolf. That's no good. She It seems
Speaker 3: that our main character here is doomed from ages past.
Speaker 3: She was like doomed before her birth to this life
Speaker 3: of unnatural witchcraft. And it's like there is something that
Speaker 3: the other characters recognize about her that is evil, but
Speaker 3: it's almost like it's an evil that is not of
Speaker 3: her choosing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's an Yeah, it's fascinating. We'll have more
Speaker 1: to say about this character and this performance as we proceed,
Speaker 1: but let's move on to Aslek. This is Parita's young
Speaker 1: reindeer herger husband, played by Finnish actor and TV director
Speaker 1: Kalervo Neicilla, who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: I say young reindeer herder husband. The actor was I
Speaker 1: believe like forty here, and you know, kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a forty year old guy. But I have to
Speaker 1: say he has a very sympathetic face. It's a good performance.
Speaker 1: And while you could argue, well, he looks maybe a
Speaker 1: little older than he should be, and this is not
Speaker 1: unique to this film. We see this in all sorts
Speaker 1: of pictures, just in every decade. But I ultimately kind
Speaker 1: of liked the fact that he looked a little older. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she does two in certain scenes, because I kind
Speaker 1: of got this perhaps accidental vibe of them both being
Speaker 1: slightly older members of the community who just hadn't found
Speaker 1: love yet until now for various reasons.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. I didn't really think of it that way.
Speaker 3: I guess I interpreted. I mean, he does look older
Speaker 3: than I think he's supposed to be. Just based on
Speaker 3: the narrative, I would have guessed these characters are both
Speaker 3: supposed to be like twenty or something. Yeah, and they're
Speaker 3: actually both I guess in their you know, thirties or forty.
Speaker 3: But you could buy it, I think, especially with Aslac,
Speaker 3: because he's like he's a reindeer her. I mean, he's
Speaker 3: out there in the weather, like he's getting you know,
Speaker 3: the snow's beaten on him every day. You can imagine, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you'd imagine that he would look distinguished and mature even
Speaker 3: at a younger age. And he does. And so he
Speaker 3: has a kind of rugged handsomeness but also kind of
Speaker 3: a baby face at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. Like I say, he has a very
Speaker 1: sympathetic face. That works well here. Now, someone who does
Speaker 1: not have a sympathetic face is the character Messena. I'm
Speaker 1: probably not saying that correctly. This is a like a
Speaker 1: forester who shows up the ranger.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a real threatening air to him. I
Speaker 1: was looking at him. He's an interesting character. Played by
Speaker 1: Aki Lindman, who lived nineteen twenty eight through two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. He was a professional Finnish football player turned
Speaker 1: actor and eventually writer and director. He started acting I
Speaker 1: Believe in nineteen forty nine, started directing in sixty one,
Speaker 1: and was active behind the camp until two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and in front of it till two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: He won a Ussy for acting in fifty six for
Speaker 1: The Unknown Soldier. He won one for directing in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, and then he received a Lifetime Achievement Award
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. His various credits include nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine's Moonwolf, which is a rocket movie, a werewolf movie,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven's Telephone, nineteen eighty one's Reds that's directed
Speaker 1: by and starring Warren Beatty. I haven't seen Reds, but
Speaker 1: that one is filmed on location in Finland, so you
Speaker 1: had some Finnish actors appearing in some smaller supporting roles.
Speaker 1: And then he's also in a nineteen eighty eight film
Speaker 1: called The Moon God.
Speaker 3: Wait, he was in Moonwolf and Moon God. Yeah, unrelated films.
Speaker 1: Though unrelated decades apart, different I can't remember. I think
Speaker 1: The Moon God might have a speculative element to it,
Speaker 1: but it's not a rocket movie. Moon Wolf is a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties rocket movie.
Speaker 3: Does seem like a coincidence. How many movies are like
Speaker 3: Moon now? And how many would there be?
Speaker 1: Lots? Yeah, okay or something moon?
Speaker 3: There are lots of like yeah, death moon, that's right,
Speaker 3: We've covered some on the show. Yeah. I feel like
Speaker 3: modifier moon is more common than moon noun.
Speaker 1: Probably so in the long run, all right. We also
Speaker 1: we mentioned that there's a wizard. May we'll get into this.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's more of a shaman, but in the subtitles
Speaker 1: he does call himself a wizard. This is the character Salkunila,
Speaker 1: played by r Vo Alesma, who lived nineteen oh one
Speaker 1: through nineteen seventy three, Finnish actor who seems to have
Speaker 1: worked a lot in supporting roles. And he's really great
Speaker 1: in this, playing this kind of kind of drunken wizard
Speaker 1: or shaman that lives in a hut. I would say,
Speaker 1: out at the edge of the town. But there's not
Speaker 1: really a town so much, but he's kind of out
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of the outskirts here.
Speaker 3: The scene in his hut is really interesting. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to talk about that later, especially for the way like
Speaker 3: the tables get turned. Like in his scene, Parita arrives
Speaker 3: and it's like he's the scary one, and she's kind
Speaker 3: of supplicant and she's like, oh, what's it going to
Speaker 3: be like here, you know, meeting the shaman. But then
Speaker 3: by the end of the scene the tables are completely
Speaker 3: turned and like she is scary and he is scared
Speaker 3: of her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And finally, the composer for this was Einar England
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety nine. A finished composer,
Speaker 1: he won a NUSI Award in fifty two for this score,
Speaker 1: which I think I'm on the whole feels very much
Speaker 1: of its time, but I think it gets nicely dramatic
Speaker 1: as the film progresses.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think the music's wonderful. I think it really
Speaker 3: underscores the drama very well. There's these certain themes that
Speaker 3: recur when, like when Pirita is losing her mind or
Speaker 3: when she's sort of going to another place, we get
Speaker 3: this nice uneasy these chords come up. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 3: some dissonance and there's sort of a theme of the
Speaker 3: stone God. When we get to that, really good, I.
Speaker 1: Think that's when it its best. There's some early parts
Speaker 1: where it's there are a lot of horns and it
Speaker 1: maybe feels a little fashion, you know, from a bag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But when it gets into the darker and more dramatic parts,
Speaker 1: the composer totally brings it here. And I should also
Speaker 1: add that the film also makes great use, particularly in
Speaker 1: one segment early on, of what I take to be
Speaker 1: authentic folk songs, which adds nice flavor.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: We open on a shot of a winter landscape covered
Speaker 3: in snow, striped with lines of bear trees and shrubs
Speaker 3: stretching to the horizon, and then at the horizon we
Speaker 3: see these fairly low, gently sloping mountains in the distance,
Speaker 3: and in the foreground we see a pair of forked
Speaker 3: reindeer antlers belonging to an animal whose head is below
Speaker 3: the frame. And then standing next to the reindeer, there's
Speaker 3: a person facing away, dressed in furs, and there's music.
Speaker 3: The music is just a woman's voice singing an eerie,
Speaker 3: high pitched melody that sounds cold. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like this music, like it makes you want a blanket.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: As we pan away from the reindeer and the person
Speaker 3: over the landscape, a title comes in to tell us
Speaker 3: that this is a story from Lapland, and we get
Speaker 3: the title telling calling it the White Reindeer, Valcoyne and Peura.
Speaker 3: After the credits, a new song begins, and this one
Speaker 3: sounds like a folk song, also sung by a single
Speaker 3: woman's voice, and the lyrics are little girl child of Lapland,
Speaker 3: born in a snowdrift. And then here we see there's
Speaker 3: like a shot of the sky and it's very strange
Speaker 3: and beautiful. There are these gray clouds and there's like
Speaker 3: a glare of the sun piercing through the cloud. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the song goes on saying grew to girlhood straw
Speaker 3: stuffed shoes like a reindeer dough. And then we see
Speaker 3: wind blowing over the top of a deep snowfield with
Speaker 3: these black tree limbs barely peeking out of the drifts.
Speaker 3: And this is something that the director they will the
Speaker 3: directors will like to show you again and again is
Speaker 3: shots of a snowy field with wind blowing and the
Speaker 3: blowing snow like these sort of these sheets of snow
Speaker 3: being picked up off the top of the field and
Speaker 3: then blowing along. They look like curtains being dragged across
Speaker 3: the land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a real visual poetry to these scenes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The lyrics to the song go on, she did
Speaker 3: not know as a child, nor when she was married,
Speaker 3: that she was born a witch, evil in her belly.
Speaker 3: And then we see wolves running in the snowfields and
Speaker 3: a woman on skis with a long stick as a
Speaker 3: push pull. She's going alone over a hill, looking exhausted
Speaker 3: and pain She's facing down the wolves that are running
Speaker 3: from across the field. You don't know, are they threatening her,
Speaker 3: are they running with her? What's going on, but then
Speaker 3: the lyrics continue. They say, she offered to the stone
Speaker 3: god to modern Aca, she gave a white fawn, then
Speaker 3: ranged the fells as a deer till the appointed hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reading that this modern Aca was like
Speaker 1: a traditional goddess, that is, a goddess of the earth,
Speaker 1: of goddess of the beginnings of life, a protector of
Speaker 1: children as well.
Speaker 3: And then eventually the woman approaches a conical structure in
Speaker 3: the snow. I think this is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: sami lavu, which is kind of similar to a North
Speaker 3: American teepee. It's a conical shelter made with poles braced
Speaker 3: against one another, and then it would be covered in
Speaker 3: reindeer hides. Inside this structure, you've got people gathered together
Speaker 3: cooking a meal, and one of them sees the woman
Speaker 3: coming outside and pokes her head in to tell the others.
Speaker 3: And then the woman comes inside the lavo and collapses,
Speaker 3: and the lyrics go on to say iron pierced the
Speaker 3: white dough. Then the lap girl slept chill shawl for
Speaker 3: a coverlet snow drift for a pillow. And inside the
Speaker 3: lavo we see a baby next to the woman, so
Speaker 3: it seems she's given birth, and then an elder figure
Speaker 3: in traditional Sami clothing holds the baby, and I think
Speaker 3: it's implied that the mother dies here. It wasn't exactly
Speaker 3: clear on that, but I think she's supposed to die.
Speaker 3: And then afterwards we pull out to another landscape shot
Speaker 3: of a massive, steep, lonely hillside covered in snow, and
Speaker 3: again just the wind blowing sheets of frost over the
Speaker 3: top of the pack. And then that's the end of
Speaker 3: the opening montage. The whole thing is very I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's got a light touch, but it's also a good
Speaker 3: bit haunting. And so we cut ahead in time after
Speaker 3: that to a very different Now the image is sharper
Speaker 3: and the music is more lighthearted, and we see lots
Speaker 3: of people gathered for what looks like some kind of
Speaker 3: winter games or festival. Throughout this movie, you will see
Speaker 3: a common form of individual transportation in this region, which
Speaker 3: is a person riding in a kind of ground level
Speaker 3: sled pulled by a single reindeer. So when we say sled,
Speaker 3: don't imagine like a big, high up sleigh like often
Speaker 3: people are just sort of lying back in this sled.
Speaker 3: There's basically right there on the top of the snow
Speaker 3: with a single reindeer pulling them. And in this scene
Speaker 3: we see lots of happy people being pulled around, pulled
Speaker 3: all around, and crowds gathered. These people are lying back
Speaker 3: in their one seat reindeer sleds. You got dogs running
Speaker 3: around barking, and we see reindeer herders in their traditional
Speaker 3: clothes standing around, just cruising the vibes.
Speaker 1: Now, did we mention this already? If not, I want
Speaker 1: to drive home that I don't think this is supposed
Speaker 1: to take place in the nineteen fifties, but I don't
Speaker 1: know when exactly in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. So I read online sources
Speaker 3: saying this is supposed to take place in like pre
Speaker 3: Christian times or that, you know, So this would make
Speaker 3: me think, you know, at least hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 3: But also, like the character one character has a fairly
Speaker 3: modern looking rifle. And there's another scene where characters are
Speaker 3: in a building that I don't know, looks to me
Speaker 3: kind of like a Christian church, and they may seem
Speaker 3: to be attending maybe church, or maybe I'm misunderstanding what's
Speaker 3: happening there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Likewise, like the shamanistic traditions and the old religion don't
Speaker 1: feel as old and as removed from the people, which
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily bin in exactly when this would be. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to nail down.
Speaker 3: I truly, yeah, I truly don't know when this is
Speaker 3: supposed to be set. But certainly, like the characters don't
Speaker 3: have TVs or anything, right, Yeah, anyway, so we've got
Speaker 3: these these reindeer festival games going on, and in this sequence,
Speaker 3: we're going to meet a couple of our main care
Speaker 3: We meet a beautiful young woman, Parita and a handsome
Speaker 3: young man Aslock. And then Rob I pulled in a
Speaker 3: screenshot of Parita and the first time we really see
Speaker 3: her face here. She is the grown up version of
Speaker 3: the baby we saw featured in the opening folk song,
Speaker 3: and Oslock is a local reindeer herder and an eligible bachelor.
Speaker 3: And when we first see Pirita's face, she is angelic
Speaker 3: with a big, wide grin, and her eyes are sparkling
Speaker 3: in the sun. You can see they really set it
Speaker 3: up to like so that her eyes capture the light
Speaker 3: and it glints on her. You know, they look like wet.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's a good. Gross, But like she's sparkling.
Speaker 3: She's sparkling, and you can even see a little sparkle
Speaker 3: on her cheeks. I think there's like snow melted catching
Speaker 3: the light there. Yeah, and Parita is taking part in
Speaker 3: the reindeer sled race here. She's having a great time.
Speaker 3: She's happy, Yeah, just beaming with life. But also credit
Speaker 3: to Miriami Kosmanan's performance here, because she always manages to
Speaker 3: make Perita seem a little bit strange and mysterious even
Speaker 3: when she's happy and when times are good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, even early on, there's
Speaker 1: something else there. I don't eve know. Is it a
Speaker 1: deep loneliness? Is it something else? We'll have to think
Speaker 1: about it as we perceive.
Speaker 3: But asloc is also in the running here in this race,
Speaker 3: he seems to command his beast with confidence and pleasure.
Speaker 3: As lucks, he's a big ball of fun here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One visual theme I started noticing right around this sequence
Speaker 3: that I thought I should flag Rob. The movie has
Speaker 3: lots of shots of mostly empty snowfields that foreground, a
Speaker 3: single tree all by itself, piled up with snow, sometimes
Speaker 3: even bent over sideways under the weight of old frost
Speaker 3: and I think that is probably an intentional pattern, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of a subtle visual cue that communicates something
Speaker 3: about loneliness. Loneliness is a theme of the film, and
Speaker 3: it shows it as loneliness as this kind of cold
Speaker 3: and heavy burden that smothers you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, And then just in general, like
Speaker 1: the world is this vast cold landscape and you find
Speaker 1: warmth and community and in very small packages here and there.
Speaker 3: Yes, I totally agree with that, though I would say
Speaker 3: that like the focus is on something about the physical
Speaker 3: world and the necessities of life creating these things. It's not,
Speaker 3: it seems to me, not really a comment on anything
Speaker 3: about the community being alienating or isolating. It's more just like,
Speaker 3: these are the realities we have to deal with to survive.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And you know, they get out in the
Speaker 1: snow and they have some fun. They they're laboring in
Speaker 1: the snow. They don't you know, obviously it is an
Speaker 1: environmental hurdle for life, but they're doing their best. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just there are multiple scenes where our main actors are
Speaker 1: like iced over, but they're smiling. I think that's telling
Speaker 1: and it matches up with some things I've heard about
Speaker 1: surviving in cold environments where like people say, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just got to find a reason to go out
Speaker 1: in the snow and live your life.
Speaker 3: So eventually Parita and Aslac seem to have become separated
Speaker 3: from all the other contestants in the race. I don't
Speaker 3: know if they stopped caring about the overall race course.
Speaker 3: Now they're just playing together. It's just the two of
Speaker 3: them dashing over this big hillside, treating each other flirtatiously.
Speaker 3: And eventually Aslac makes a move. He throws a rope
Speaker 3: and lasso's Parita, pulling her off her sled, and he says,
Speaker 3: a reindeer is fast, but a wolf is faster, and
Speaker 3: they embrace, laughing, and they tumble down the hill in
Speaker 3: their furs, rolling over each other. And there's a shot
Speaker 3: here where when they come to rest, Aslac cradles Parita
Speaker 3: in his arms and she looks up at him with
Speaker 3: this big, toothy smile, and it really shows off this
Speaker 3: angel witch duality that kosmon And brings to the role,
Speaker 3: Like if you look at her face here, Rob, she's
Speaker 3: looking so happy, but also if you just change your mindset,
Speaker 3: she could look so dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and she will totally have those those Dracula
Speaker 1: moments later on.
Speaker 3: So as Lac leans down to kiss her. And there's
Speaker 3: also something funny about the way he looks here. They've
Speaker 3: done him up so that his eyebrows are just spiky
Speaker 3: with ice, so he's got like icicles over his eyes. Anyway,
Speaker 3: after the games are done, we see Parita and Aslac
Speaker 3: canoodling together in a reindeer drawn sled and riding around
Speaker 3: outside the festivities. Clearly they are falling in love, and
Speaker 3: Aslac asks do you like me? And she smiles and
Speaker 3: leans on him, but doesn't say anything. So soon after this,
Speaker 3: Parita is at home with her family. I believe these
Speaker 3: are her adoptive parents, and we see Aslac and his
Speaker 3: father coming in his sled to visit the house. I
Speaker 3: don't know if this was supposed to mean anything, or
Speaker 3: even if it was intentional, But Rob, did you notice
Speaker 3: in this scene that as Aslac is coming down the road,
Speaker 3: a black cat runs across his path?
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't notice this when I watched the film,
Speaker 1: but it's a great point. I'm not sure what it means, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the black cat's role might be
Speaker 1: in the folklore of northern Finland, but in absence of that,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just like cinematic tradition of black cats. Or
Speaker 1: sometimes you just have a cat that is going along
Speaker 1: and mining its own business and does not care that
Speaker 1: you're shooting a film.
Speaker 3: Get that cat out of the snow. Speaking to Parita's parents,
Speaker 3: I think this is Aslak's father, and he says, this
Speaker 3: must be some kind of metaphor. He says, we have
Speaker 3: a merchant, you have a bird, sell us the bird,
Speaker 3: and this is a marriage proposal. And Parita's father asks
Speaker 3: Aslac if his intentions are honorable, and he promises they are.
Speaker 3: He makes a pledge that he will treat their daughter well,
Speaker 3: and then the parents unfold a cloth containing the bride price.
Speaker 3: It's several coins and pieces of jewelry. And you get
Speaker 3: the sense that within their community, these people they're not rich,
Speaker 3: but they can lead a rich life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's not a sense of the people here
Speaker 1: like barely scraping by in the edge of civilization or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, there are environmental hardships, but but this is their
Speaker 3: way of life and they make it work, so there
Speaker 3: is there. It's not communicating it seems to me anything
Speaker 3: about like poverty or hardship of that kind. But but yeah,
Speaker 3: so we see that, and then the next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: we're at the wedding and it's a rock and party,
Speaker 3: like friends and relatives come to poor gifts onto the
Speaker 3: pile on the table, and they're drinking from this frothy
Speaker 3: booze booze chalice. Actually it's mostly just one guy drinking
Speaker 3: this chalice of and they're dancing around in the warmth
Speaker 3: of the fire. Eventually, this might be Aslek's father, I think,
Speaker 3: who says the drink is drunk bread and salt eaten.
Speaker 3: And then there's this interesting thing where like Parita and
Speaker 3: Aslac are kept behind a curtain. They're hidden from everybody
Speaker 3: else at the party, and one drunk guy keeps peeping
Speaker 3: through the curtain and tells them they look just like
Speaker 3: a couple of lovebirds. And then at the end that
Speaker 3: there's a funny shot where they're like closing up shop
Speaker 3: at the end of the wedding party, and like everybody's
Speaker 3: still like trying to peek in the door and somebody's
Speaker 3: trying to force the door shut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is the sequence where I kind of
Speaker 1: wish I had color because I feel like this is
Speaker 1: a This is a colorful in its own way, you know,
Speaker 1: rosy depiction of traditional life. Is it accurate, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it has an accurate feel to it, at least
Speaker 1: in my viewing.
Speaker 3: I think the clothes in the scene alone would have
Speaker 3: had a lot of cool colors.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But after this, now our main characters are married
Speaker 3: and time passes. Of course, Aslac a reindeer herder, which
Speaker 3: is a job that requires travel. He has to take
Speaker 3: his stock around, I guess, to different feeding grounds. Probably,
Speaker 3: so he's often gone, leaving Parita home alone for long periods.
Speaker 3: And when Aslac is gone, we learn Parita is lonely.
Speaker 3: We see her excitement in one scene where he returns
Speaker 3: with a giant train of animals. This was shot with
Speaker 3: a real reindeer herd, and it's just amazing to see
Speaker 3: this ocean of antlers bobbing. Is this column of like
Speaker 3: hundreds or maybe even thousands of animals clops on by?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so many reindeers.
Speaker 3: So Parita and Aslac race to meet each other, and
Speaker 3: she just collapses into his arms. There's not just love
Speaker 3: but relief when he comes home. But the night of
Speaker 3: their reunion, that's when the vibes first start getting a
Speaker 3: little dark. We see the couple together in their bed,
Speaker 3: and the camera slowly zooms in on them as we
Speaker 3: hear these uneasy, dissonant chords swelling up on the soundtrack,
Speaker 3: and we see that Aslac is asleep, but Parita is awake.
Speaker 3: She's laying there and her eyes are open, and she
Speaker 3: turns to her husband and she rubs his chest and
Speaker 3: tries to rouse his attention, but he's you know, he's tired.
Speaker 3: He sound asleep, and he rolls over, turning his back
Speaker 3: to her. And then Parita rises up from the bed
Speaker 3: and slowly walks over to the fireplace to warm her hands.
Speaker 3: And she turns and sees a man not Aslac staring
Speaker 3: at her from a bedroll on the floor. First time
Speaker 3: I watched it, I was like, wait, who is this?
Speaker 3: But I think this is one of the other herders.
Speaker 3: I think they're all just sleeping in the same house
Speaker 3: here and you know, one of her husband's coworkers here.
Speaker 3: And the man looks at her and she smiles, and
Speaker 3: then she climbs back into bed with asloc this little
Speaker 3: encounter in this exchange of looks feels significant, but I
Speaker 3: truly wasn't sure what to make of it, Like, was
Speaker 3: there supposed to be some kind of sexual tension with
Speaker 3: this other man? Or is he frightened of her for
Speaker 3: some reason? You could kind of read the scene that
Speaker 3: way at stage, like that could be what it means.
Speaker 3: She hasn't really done anything overtly creepy yet, but she
Speaker 3: is just I don't know, there's something in the music
Speaker 3: and the way she looks at him that is a
Speaker 3: little maybe off, and we don't know like what exactly
Speaker 3: is going on, but there's something she has a moment
Speaker 3: with this other man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering, is the man's supposed to be
Speaker 1: creepy here? Like I'm thinking to some of the themes
Speaker 1: here that are not all that overt I guess. But
Speaker 1: you know, we begin with this scene where her mother
Speaker 1: played by the same actor, is chased by wolves there,
Speaker 1: so is this guy sort of like are we thinking
Speaker 1: about like he's kind of a wolf himself? Is he
Speaker 1: like looking at her with predatory eyes? I'm not sure. Again,
Speaker 1: the film is kind of leads it to your interpretation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And so we have this question, like, ultimately,
Speaker 3: what is it that Parita wants? We know, and we'll
Speaker 3: explain more about this in following scenes, but we know
Speaker 3: she's unsatisfied in her marriage somehow. But is this only
Speaker 3: because she misses her husband and wants more attention from him,
Speaker 3: or is it because she desires other men as well?
Speaker 3: I think you could or is it something else? I
Speaker 3: think you could interpret it multiple ways? And Parita herself
Speaker 3: never says in the film. Later, in her wear reindeer form,
Speaker 3: she does seduce other men, But I wonder should we
Speaker 3: take that as like her true to herself, as her
Speaker 3: desire or is that just like the curse, the evil
Speaker 3: magic acting through her?
Speaker 1: Yeah? In either case, like, I think more communication was
Speaker 1: necessary its marriage.
Speaker 3: So later there's a scene where Aslak is preparing to
Speaker 3: leave with his herd once again, and before he goes,
Speaker 3: he gives Parita a gift, a young white reindeer, which
Speaker 3: he says she can have as a pet. So it's small,
Speaker 3: with soft looking fur, and it's asymmetrical. It only has
Speaker 3: one antler on one side of its head, no antler
Speaker 3: on the other side. And then Parita says, kind of
Speaker 3: sadly off you go again, and who knows for how
Speaker 3: long I'll miss you? And he hugs her and he
Speaker 3: tries to comfort her. He says he'll be back soon,
Speaker 3: but you can see that she is not happy in
Speaker 3: the way that like as he pulls away, she's still
Speaker 3: just reaching after him. So now Parita is alone again,
Speaker 3: alone with her one antlered white white reindeer dough, and
Speaker 3: we see her feeding it from a big ball of lichen.
Speaker 3: I think that's what it is. She's got, like this
Speaker 3: big wad of something that she feeds it. And then
Speaker 3: later she sits in her house staring out the window
Speaker 3: at this bleak landscape with gray clouds, and there's like
Speaker 3: a beam of sunlight cutting through the gray clouds, like
Speaker 3: we saw earlier in the opening montage. She's obviously yearning
Speaker 3: for something, and then suddenly it's a swis is flipped.
Speaker 3: A change comes over Parita and she has decided to
Speaker 3: do something. So she hurriedly packs some items in a
Speaker 3: bag and ventures out into the snow. She goes over
Speaker 3: a hill, across a plain all the way to a
Speaker 3: tiny isolated cottage in the fells. And I thought this
Speaker 3: was an interesting choice for the equivalent of what you
Speaker 3: would get in other movies. The witch's hut, which is
Speaker 3: often in the movies I'm more familiar with, is in
Speaker 3: a forest or is in a swamp. And here it
Speaker 3: is the only vertical feature we can see in an
Speaker 3: otherwise completely empty expanse of snow, and it.
Speaker 1: Itself is covered in snow. Snow everywhere.
Speaker 3: So Parita goes to the door and lets herself in.
Speaker 3: The cottage is filled with smoke, The floor is filthy.
Speaker 3: There is a goat chained to a post in the
Speaker 3: middle of the room, and then squatting on the floor
Speaker 3: tending to a fire. Is salku Nila, the shaman, the wizard,
Speaker 3: kind of the cunning man. I wondered if you had
Speaker 3: a thought on this, rob do you read Salkunila as
Speaker 3: an inbounds or an out of bounds practitioner of magic
Speaker 3: from the society's point of view? Is he more like
Speaker 3: the village priest or the village shaman, or is he
Speaker 3: more like some kind of outsider warlock.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, Yeah, because if in other films
Speaker 1: where we have this character, sort of character show up,
Speaker 1: you know, generally in the form of a witch, you
Speaker 1: can have different flavors they more. They may lean more
Speaker 1: old religion, more pagan, or they may lean more satanic
Speaker 1: dark magic. Right, and in either case kind of like
Speaker 1: position a sort of spiritual distance from the mainstream. But
Speaker 1: then here we get the sense that whatever the spiritual distance,
Speaker 1: there is a there is an actual physical distance from
Speaker 1: the rest of the people. I'm not sure how we're
Speaker 1: to take that, So I don't know. I guess I
Speaker 1: got the overall impression that the shamanistictor that he represents
Speaker 1: are at least not that far from the mainstream. But
Speaker 1: for whatever reasons, what he does is a little removed
Speaker 1: from the rest of the community. He is kind of
Speaker 1: an individual corners. Yeah, he is an individual with with
Speaker 1: influences in the other world, and that's why you come
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's in a place where like you could buy
Speaker 3: beer at the store, but he's a home brewer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Salkut Nila. He turns his eyes up to uh Pirrito
Speaker 3: when he when she comes in, and he says, I
Speaker 3: knew you would come, And then he hangs a pot
Speaker 3: over the fire. It looks like maybe it's a pot
Speaker 3: of soup. I thought, it looks like it's got a
Speaker 3: big bone sticking out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Parita quickly begins digging into her bag and
Speaker 3: pulling things out to lay before the wise man. She
Speaker 3: has brought, She has brought gifts. This is I guess
Speaker 3: how she's going to pay for his services. First of all,
Speaker 3: she pulls out these round loaves of that look like
Speaker 3: giant bagels. Rob, I understand you figured out what kind
Speaker 3: of bread product this is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was curious, maybe a little hungry at the time,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's I'm not gonna attempt to pronounce
Speaker 1: its finished name, but it's apparently a traditional finish rye bread.
Speaker 1: And that hole in the center it has to do
Speaker 1: with the way that they're they're they're hung on poles
Speaker 1: at some point in the process of making them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so some sort of finished rye bread here.
Speaker 3: So you sent me an article. It's like after you
Speaker 3: bake them, you hang them up on a pole over
Speaker 3: the oven, and that like keeps them warm or dries
Speaker 3: them or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're not donuts or bagels.
Speaker 3: There's something unique, but so yeah, she pulls out these
Speaker 3: large bagel shaped loaves of bread and then a wedge
Speaker 3: of cheese that's got to be reindeer milk cheese.
Speaker 1: Right, it's or goats, I mean this guy, but this
Speaker 1: guy's got goats and he doesn't have cheese, so that's true.
Speaker 3: He wants that cheese, I think. She also pulls out
Speaker 3: a dried piece of meat, and then finally the good stuff,
Speaker 3: a bottle of clear spirits. This could be vodka or
Speaker 3: maybe some kind of traditional sami liquor anywayland Salkunila sees
Speaker 3: what he wants. When she produces the bottle, he snatches
Speaker 3: it and immediately just starts chugging. And after a good
Speaker 3: long chug, he turns back to Parita and he says,
Speaker 3: love potion.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 3: Women young and old the same? And then while he's talking,
Speaker 3: he also keeps doing this bizarre, slow, high pitched laugh,
Speaker 3: and he says, your man off in the fells, salku
Speaker 3: Nila knows the cure. And then here he pulls out
Speaker 3: a leather pouch and begins to pinch things out of
Speaker 3: it and sprinkle them into the pot. He says, herbs
Speaker 3: from beyond ten fells, beside ten streams, some graveyard salt,
Speaker 3: the balls of ten bull moose, the strength of ten
Speaker 3: bull moose. Salkunila the Wizard can bring back lost reindeer,
Speaker 3: Salcunila the Great Wizard can raise the dead. And then
Speaker 3: I love this part. He pulls out a divination object.
Speaker 3: It is a drum with a skin loosely stretched over
Speaker 3: the top as its head, and all over this skin
Speaker 3: are illustrations and drawings, these patterns, and then he places
Speaker 3: a small stone or bone dye of some kind on
Speaker 3: the drum and then starts beating the drum with a
Speaker 3: clawed mallet and this makes the little dye object like
Speaker 3: bounce up and down and land on different parts of
Speaker 3: the drawings on the drum head. Yeah, I like this,
Speaker 3: so I assume where the bone piece bounces on the drum.
Speaker 3: Here tells her what she must do, and Sualkuneila explains
Speaker 3: the message. He says, you must sacrifice to the stone god,
Speaker 3: the first living thing you meet on your way home.
Speaker 3: Then no reindeer herder will be able to resist you
Speaker 3: this winter. You will. But then he trails off. He
Speaker 3: stops talking, and he leans back, looking frightened, like he's
Speaker 3: frightened of Pirita. And she tells him to go on,
Speaker 3: but now she's looming over him. With this menacing posture
Speaker 3: and this crazed look in her eyes, and she reaches
Speaker 3: out a hand flexed like an animal's claw and presses
Speaker 3: it down against the painted drumhead. And now the drum
Speaker 3: begins to sound, releasing this new, deep, deeper, echoing beat,
Speaker 3: and the bone dye. The little object starts to dance,
Speaker 3: even though Salkunila is not touching the drum. Nobody's beating
Speaker 3: the drum, but we're hearing a drum beat and it's reverberating.
Speaker 3: So there's some kind of terrible power radiating out of
Speaker 3: Parita herself into the drum and Rob, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have a way of describing the way her
Speaker 3: face looks in this scene, but it's intense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the lighting is totally different, you know. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is a darker environment to begin with. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: she has this kind of sinister look on her face.
Speaker 1: Something has awoken inside her. The spell. It kind of
Speaker 1: comes back to what you said earlier. This spell has
Speaker 1: has interacted with a pre existing condition that was unknown
Speaker 1: to our wizard here, that she herself is a born witch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he announces it now he Sualcuniela screams witch,
Speaker 3: and Parita looks possessed. And then also an interesting distinction
Speaker 3: to wonder, Like, so he's doing something like some kind
Speaker 3: of magic or witchcraft, but there's a different thing he
Speaker 3: means by her being a witch. Maybe it's that like
Speaker 3: he knows the the the magical arts, but she's got
Speaker 3: something you know, inborn in her, like she has powers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I get the sense that like he is
Speaker 1: one who has reached into the other world and has
Speaker 1: some degree of power and is probably over selling his
Speaker 1: ability saying he can raise the dead and so forth,
Speaker 1: and you know what's that vodka? Yeah, he's kind of
Speaker 1: a mess. Uh. And at this point he realizes, oh,
Speaker 1: she's the real deal though, she has powers that emerge
Speaker 1: from within the other world. And yeah, maybe he even
Speaker 1: has some some notion that there are going to be
Speaker 1: some interactions with how his magic and her magic are
Speaker 1: now going to manifest.
Speaker 3: Right, So Parita looks possessed, and then finally the drumhead
Speaker 3: rips open and Sualkunila shouts in terror as he like
Speaker 3: falls back into the corner of the room. He reaches
Speaker 3: for his goat for safety, and Parita stares into the
Speaker 3: fire as it climbs higher and then the scene's over.
Speaker 3: After this, Parita, we see her back outside heading home.
Speaker 1: Now did she get a love potion at all? It
Speaker 1: was just well, she was given a ritual to a
Speaker 1: ritual to carry out, so there's not so much a potion,
Speaker 1: but yeah, a ritual to carry out in order to
Speaker 1: achieve this effect.
Speaker 3: Right, So she's going back home and she's come out
Speaker 3: of her trance. But she as she's crossing the distance,
Speaker 3: she hears the words of the shaman again. She has
Speaker 3: to sacrifice to the stone god, the first living thing
Speaker 3: that she meets on her way home. But when she
Speaker 3: arrives home, Oh no, there's Osloc outside the house. He's
Speaker 3: home early. But fortunately before she reunites with her husband,
Speaker 3: he like the pet reindeer with the one antler. He
Speaker 3: lets go of it and it runs ahead of him
Speaker 3: into her arms. So the white reindeer now is the
Speaker 3: thing that she has to sacrifice Aslac tells her that
Speaker 3: he missed her and he had to come home early
Speaker 3: to see her. And at this point I wondered, oh, man,
Speaker 3: should you interpret that as like I made the trip
Speaker 3: to the shaman for no reason, like he came back anyway?
Speaker 3: This was the thing I wanted or did it already work?
Speaker 1: Hmmm, that's a good question. I also had a question
Speaker 1: about how there's not, again, not a lot of dialogue
Speaker 1: in some of these In many of these scenes, so
Speaker 1: like the wizard is just saying like, oh, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got what you want. You want a love potion, No
Speaker 1: reindeer herder will be able to resist you. And then
Speaker 1: but she doesn't say no, no, no, just my husband.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make my husband more attracted any reindeer.
Speaker 3: Well, it's unclear again, I think it we don't fully
Speaker 3: know whether she is just wanting the attention of her
Speaker 3: husband or whether she's interested in the attention of other
Speaker 3: reindeer herders as well. It could be either one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I think it is clear she misses aslock,
Speaker 3: so that's at least a part of it. Yes. Anyway,
Speaker 3: later we see Seepurita remembering what she has to do,
Speaker 3: so she packs up and she harnesses the young reindeer
Speaker 3: and she sets out for a journey to the place
Speaker 3: of the Stone God. This is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: parts of the movie. So, like, she passes these strange
Speaker 3: landscapes while she's on the way, there's one part here, Robert,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know what we're looking at.
Speaker 3: There's this big ice field and then there are these
Speaker 3: regularly spaced vertical structures that are totally covered in snow
Speaker 3: and ice, and I was like, are these just like
Speaker 3: really narrow trees that are regularly spaced this way or
Speaker 3: is this something man made? I truly have no idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, I took them to be trees when I
Speaker 1: was watching the film, but I could be wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could be structures of some sort, but they've been
Speaker 1: blasted by the snow and are now just encrusted with it.
Speaker 3: So the atmosphere and the music become much more frightening
Speaker 3: as she nears the place of the Stone God, and
Speaker 3: it is a giant, dark stone monolith looming over a field,
Speaker 3: topped with a reindeer skull and massive antlers. And then
Speaker 3: below the stone there is a reindeer graveyard, though all
Speaker 3: we see is snow with just hundreds of reindeer antlers
Speaker 3: sticking up out of it. It's a wonderfully composed scene.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yes.
Speaker 3: So Parita reaches the altar and then she kneels down
Speaker 3: with her pet and she raises the knife and then
Speaker 3: plum bunges the knife in to complete the sacrifice, and
Speaker 3: here some power comes over her. Yet again, Parita is overwhelmed,
Speaker 3: maybe possessed in some way, and she passes out and
Speaker 3: has all these visions. She has visions of her life,
Speaker 3: of her meeting with the shaman, of there's a vision
Speaker 3: of a reindeer running across a field in photo neegative
Speaker 3: and something now has changed, And I think maybe this
Speaker 3: is a good point to kind of zoom out and
Speaker 3: speak in a more summary way about the rest of
Speaker 3: the plot of the film, and then we can, I
Speaker 3: don't know, focus on anything that stands out to you
Speaker 3: that you want to talk about. So after this point,
Speaker 3: the ritual seems to have worked, but at a terrible cost.
Speaker 3: It sort of it comes with a twist. It's like
Speaker 3: a monkey's paw sort of thing. She is indeed now
Speaker 3: irresistible to the reindeer herdsman, but at night she transforms
Speaker 3: bodily into a wild white reindeer and roams the fells
Speaker 3: committing murders. So in her reindeer form we see this
Speaker 3: first scene where she attracts the attention of a herder
Speaker 3: one night and he wants to catch her, not as parita,
Speaker 3: but as a reindeer, to add her to the herd,
Speaker 3: I guess. And this is funny because it plays on
Speaker 3: this duality of like, she will be irresistible to the
Speaker 3: reindeer herdsman, and sometimes what they're interested in is business
Speaker 3: they want, you know, they want this reindeer, or maybe
Speaker 3: there's it's playing on this folk belief that like catching
Speaker 3: a wild white reindeer is like something that brings great fortune.
Speaker 1: Right right. But then the other side of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is that on one level or the other, she is
Speaker 1: a woman pursued by.
Speaker 3: Men, yes exactly. And then so when this guy does
Speaker 3: catch her, she transforms back into her human form and
Speaker 3: then she kills him. And this cycle repeats several times
Speaker 3: with these different sort of lurings out and murders in
Speaker 3: where she will alternate between her reindeer form and her
Speaker 3: human form.
Speaker 1: And she kind of has vampire teeth to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we see that, and it's freaky.
Speaker 3: And in response to the killings, the villagers get very
Speaker 3: upset and they try to come up with solutions to
Speaker 3: combat the evil witchcraft in their midst. The solution favored
Speaker 3: by Aslak, not knowing that the witch is his wife
Speaker 3: is cold iron, and that is the only way to
Speaker 3: kill a witch. So you see these forging scenes where
Speaker 3: these got you know, people who are I think not
Speaker 3: professional blacksmiths, are just doing the best they can. They're
Speaker 3: like beating out these iron tips into spearheads so that
Speaker 3: they can kill the witch with cold iron.
Speaker 1: Isn't there one scene where he's making one in the
Speaker 1: room with his wife. Yeah, yes, she's in there, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's kind of like recoiled in the corner because yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like an instrument of death for her, But
Speaker 1: he doesn't know that she is the witch. She is
Speaker 1: the reindeer.
Speaker 3: So at one point you mentioned the ranger with the
Speaker 3: rifle that shows up from the south. He is not
Speaker 3: part of the culture of the film and is not
Speaker 3: impressed by stories of magic and devils. He tracks the
Speaker 3: reindeer and he tries to shoot it, but I think
Speaker 3: some magical trickery goes on and the rifle explodes in
Speaker 3: his face, and then he sees the animal transform back
Speaker 3: into a beautiful woman and he sort of loses his mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After more killings, the villagers form a mob to hunt
Speaker 3: down the wear reindeer, and in this final in the climax,
Speaker 3: here Parita is frightened and she flees. She keeps transforming
Speaker 3: back and forth between her reindeer and human forms. She
Speaker 3: tries to go back to get help from the Wizard
Speaker 3: from Salkunela, but finds that he has been killed in
Speaker 3: his cottage. Rob, how did you interpret that? Who killed him?
Speaker 3: Do you think it was the villagers?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because he's in there, it's cold and frozen.
Speaker 1: It's unclear when he died exactly. So I mean, it
Speaker 1: also doesn't seem and he was necessarily practicing a lot
Speaker 1: of self care, Like did he drink himself to death
Speaker 1: in that hut? Is it because of what he saw after?
Speaker 3: Did she kill him?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did she kill him? Yes? She may have. She may
Speaker 1: have killed him un sight unseen, you know, off off
Speaker 1: off camera, off screen, after that initial encounter. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's again, it's it's it's a bit ambiguous, but it's
Speaker 1: clear that like he cannot help her in the same
Speaker 1: way that this ranger from the south cannot help the villagers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so she also she's seeking help wherever it
Speaker 3: can come. She tries to go back to the place
Speaker 3: of the Stone God to ask for mercy, but no
Speaker 3: mercy will be given. And then finally, in her reindeer form,
Speaker 3: she's caught by Aslac, who gores her with a cold
Speaker 3: iron spear, after which she transforms back into herself, leaving
Speaker 3: Aslac mortified and he kneels down over her, realizing he
Speaker 3: has killed his wife, and he brushes her hair tenderly
Speaker 3: while she's dying, and then we just see the snow
Speaker 3: blowing from the slope of the fells and the cold wind,
Speaker 3: and that's the end. It's a very bleak ending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't even get at the end. We close
Speaker 1: out and then we get the like the studio, the logo,
Speaker 1: and that's it.
Speaker 3: So so many interesting questions. I've raised this a couple
Speaker 3: times now, but I want to come back to evidence
Speaker 3: we can look at in the film for what is
Speaker 3: Parita's attitude? Like, so much of her inner life is
Speaker 3: left mysterious, and that's part of what makes the film
Speaker 3: and the character so alluring. She's clearly feeling and thinking
Speaker 3: so much, but we get hardly any dialogue or voiceover
Speaker 3: to share the details of those thoughts and feelings. With
Speaker 3: the audience, So, like, what is her attitude towards the
Speaker 3: killings that she's doing in the form of the White Reindeer.
Speaker 3: I found this commented on in a book entry I
Speaker 3: was reading about the movie. This was in a book
Speaker 3: about werewolf films called The Werewolf Filmography by an author
Speaker 3: named Brian Sin and in the entry on the White Reindeer,
Speaker 3: Sin writes, quote, it remains ambiguous to what triggers the
Speaker 3: change in Parita, nor is it clear whether she embraces
Speaker 3: the metamorphosis. At times she seems distraught over what she's
Speaker 3: done in her bewitched reindeer form, while at others she
Speaker 3: appears to revel in it, even sporting vampiric fangs. In
Speaker 3: one scene, like you mentioned, Rob as her witch half
Speaker 3: seemingly takes over. It's as if she has two personalities,
Speaker 3: the innocent Parita and the evil Witch. So I think
Speaker 3: that's a correct description. I wonder what we're supposed to
Speaker 3: take away from that. And likewise, the other question we
Speaker 3: raised about Parita's motivations, what is at the root of
Speaker 3: her unhappiness and her desire at the beginning of the film,
Speaker 3: What exactly is it she wants to be different, and
Speaker 3: also like what does she feel about her transformations. Is
Speaker 3: she desiring a kind of violent liberation from some aspect
Speaker 3: of her life or is it more just that she
Speaker 3: desires love and companionship. It could go either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I suspect it's it's getting
Speaker 1: to some degree into this idea of like how does
Speaker 1: she fit into this masculine world around her and the
Speaker 1: desires of men, including her husband, you know, like she
Speaker 1: wants to be loved, she doesn't want to be murdered.
Speaker 1: But that's that's where we end up with the slaying
Speaker 1: of her monster self as perceived by the community, and
Speaker 1: you know, the murder of her human self. And you
Speaker 1: know that this is also a case that the ending.
Speaker 1: We can point out that this matches up with with
Speaker 1: where wolf and shape shifting tales from ancient times, the
Speaker 1: idea that the monster is killed, and in the killing
Speaker 1: of the monster it is revealed that they were actually
Speaker 1: this individual, or if not a particular individual, than a
Speaker 1: human being. They are revealed in the death. Sometimes there's
Speaker 1: another form of the reveal, which we've all seen in
Speaker 1: werewolf movies before, where it's the wound the beast is wounded.
Speaker 1: Then later we see the wound on the human individual
Speaker 1: and we realize that the two are one.
Speaker 3: Can I point out another variation? Often in werewolf movies
Speaker 3: the character transforms into the werewolf, not only to in
Speaker 3: this transformed state get the desire to kill. Usually it's
Speaker 3: a kind of tragic thing where the werewolf in their
Speaker 3: human state doesn't want to do violence to anyone, but
Speaker 3: they transform and then the wolf side of them takes
Speaker 3: over and it wants to do these killings. But it's
Speaker 3: also the wolf side of them is the kind that
Speaker 3: can do the killings. It has the physical power and
Speaker 3: the teeth and the claws and all that. So it
Speaker 3: is through the wolf body that the violence is done.
Speaker 3: That's not always the case in The White Reindeer. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think, am I remembering it right? That Parita usually
Speaker 3: seems to like she will take the form of the
Speaker 3: White Reindeer at some point in the luring of these men,
Speaker 3: or at some point in the pursuit, or at some
Speaker 3: point in the escape afterwards. But like when she does
Speaker 3: the killing, she often is in her human form, isn't she.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point this. I was reading about
Speaker 1: this a bit in some of the information I was
Speaker 1: reading a few months ago about the female werewolf in folklore,
Speaker 1: in mythology, and in cinema, and the authors may the
Speaker 1: point that, yeah, you'll often see that the female turns
Speaker 1: into a werewolf, and in turning into a werewolf, they
Speaker 1: turn into a masculine or more masculine form of themselves
Speaker 1: in order to be this dominant monster. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: here in this film, yeah, she seems to generally kill
Speaker 1: in human form. And we should also point out again
Speaker 1: that it is not a graphic picture, so when people
Speaker 1: are killed and animals are killed, it's generally not shown cut.
Speaker 1: It's left to our imaginations.
Speaker 3: But I have the impression, based on having watched it
Speaker 3: a couple of times, that most or all of the killings,
Speaker 3: the last thing we see of her is like she's
Speaker 3: about to do it, and she's in human form, and
Speaker 3: then maybe she warps away and you know, runs off
Speaker 3: in the white reindeer form.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, it seems like the white reindeer form
Speaker 1: itself is more about mobility, yeah.
Speaker 3: But also about attraction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, attraction, mobility. Yeah. I'm also reminded of other
Speaker 1: folkloric traditions in which there is some inhuman threat that
Speaker 1: may take on the form of two different things that
Speaker 1: may attract a male, one being a female woman and
Speaker 1: the other being a horse. Those kind of traditions kind
Speaker 1: of seem akin to what we're seeing here in the
Speaker 1: modes of attraction that are employed. You know, the men
Speaker 1: are like, oh, there's a great reindeer, I need to
Speaker 1: catch that from my hurt. Or there is a beautiful woman,
Speaker 1: I want to go see what she's up to, chatter
Speaker 1: up a little bit, that sort of thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how we might completely factor that into our calculations here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a kind of duality of attraction along
Speaker 3: those lines.
Speaker 1: I should also point out I don't have materials put
Speaker 1: together to really go in depth on this, but we
Speaker 1: should also acknowledge that like a dear woman or a
Speaker 1: dear lady is also a part of different Native American
Speaker 1: mythologies and traditions, and I think there is like some
Speaker 1: amount of overlap in the way that that figure is
Speaker 1: sometimes presented in what we have here in this film.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there's any actual connective tissue between these
Speaker 1: but maybe they maybe they speak to some common threads
Speaker 1: in the human psyche. I'm not sure. If nothing else,
Speaker 1: you know, we might view it in the same way
Speaker 1: that we have different werewolf traditions and other shape shifting
Speaker 1: traditions that have popped up in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: some influenced by each other, but some with no connections.
Speaker 1: But they sometimes end up embodying some of the same ideas,
Speaker 1: the same attitudes, the same relationships between the wild world
Speaker 1: and the domesticated worldeen civilization and the wilds, and so forth.
Speaker 3: One more question about Pirita. Do you see any element
Speaker 3: of her getting her comeuppance in the film or do
Speaker 3: you think it's purely tragic, just tragic what happens to her,
Speaker 3: Like is it not really her fault or is it
Speaker 3: partially her fault?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean, in my viewing of the film, it
Speaker 1: felt tragic. It felt like the path of doom that
Speaker 1: was like writ from the day she was born. You know,
Speaker 1: if I go back and piece it together, like you know,
Speaker 1: in question where her mind was and all of this,
Speaker 1: I could maybe lean more into the retribution view. But
Speaker 1: I know, I think the pure cinematic experience is one
Speaker 1: of doom and tragedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel the same way. I was just wondering though,
Speaker 3: because I mean, it has structural elements that would lend
Speaker 3: themselves to a kind of, you know, punishment of hubris
Speaker 3: in some way, that there's something this character really should
Speaker 3: have done differently, that they did wrong and they're being
Speaker 3: punished for it. But I don't know, when you think
Speaker 3: of the content of it scene to scene, it doesn't
Speaker 3: quite feel that way. It feels more like the evil
Speaker 3: magic is sort of acting through her rather than an
Speaker 3: expression of herself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The weird thing though, is like we tend to side
Speaker 1: with her because she is the character we know the
Speaker 1: most in the movie, and yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: we really don't know her at all. We have very
Speaker 1: limited information about where her mind is in all of this.
Speaker 3: But again, I think that's one of the things that
Speaker 3: makes the movie so exciting, is like, is the mysteriousness
Speaker 3: of this character. I can't stop thinking about her in
Speaker 3: a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's an art house ambiguity to this and
Speaker 1: a dreamlike quality, fitting since it seems that this film,
Speaker 1: at least in part, emerged from the mist of dreams.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think that's all I've got on the
Speaker 3: White Reindeer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the White Reindeer. Yeah, I highly recommend it. It's
Speaker 1: easy to get. This is not one that as of
Speaker 1: this recording, is super were hard to find, so we
Speaker 1: recommend it, especially if you want some counter season programming.
Speaker 3: Like we were saying, freeze out your mind while your
Speaker 3: body sweats.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, just a reminder to everyone that's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, but on Fridays, we set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about a weird film here on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. You can get the Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: episodes in the main Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,
Speaker 1: but we're at least experimenting with Weird House Cinema as
Speaker 1: its own playlist, which appears as a feed wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. Wherever you're listening to the show, we
Speaker 1: just ask you rate and review and subscribe. That helps
Speaker 1: us keep things rolling. If you were on letterbox dot com,
Speaker 1: which is a great place to be if you're a
Speaker 1: film fan, you can find us there. We are a
Speaker 1: weird house. There's a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered over the years. And sometimes a glimpse ahead of
Speaker 1: what's coming up next.
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.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.