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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is

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Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and let's see we have a fun one

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Speaker 1: to talk about here today. This one originally published three fourteen,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. It's our episode on the nineteen eighty

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Speaker 1: four saw An The Lame Bass short film Quest. This

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Speaker 1: one is a visionary take on human mortality, written by

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Speaker 1: the Great Ray Brad Perry.

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Speaker 2: Let's have it.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.

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Speaker 4: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today's episode feels like a perfect fit in a

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Speaker 1: number of ways. For starters, we've been discussing mystery cults

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Speaker 1: on our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: and where the concept of an imagistic religion has been

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Speaker 1: key to our our discussions. There infrequent high sensory rights

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Speaker 1: of passage, and I feel like today's film matches up

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Speaker 1: with that concept on a couple of levels. Furthermore, to understand,

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Speaker 1: we potentially have more eyes on the podcast feed this week,

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Speaker 1: and it seemed proper to maybe the lean a little

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Speaker 1: more into science fiction. Plus, we've also been saving this

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Speaker 1: one for a week when we had maybe a little

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Speaker 1: less time. This is one of the shorter pictures we've

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Speaker 1: looked at on Weird House Cinema. It's only a half

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Speaker 1: hour long, but that's fitting given the subject matter, and

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Speaker 1: boy does it pack a lot in So what's the movie.

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Speaker 1: The movie is the nineteen eighty four short film Quest.

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Speaker 1: I note that I am going to mistakenly refer to

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Speaker 1: this film as Conquest at least once during the course

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Speaker 1: of this podcast, but not to be confused with Lucio

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Speaker 1: Fulci's Conquest. This is Quest. It is adapted for the

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Speaker 1: screen written by Ray Bradbury, and it is directed by

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Speaker 1: Saul and Elaine Bass.

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Speaker 4: Now this is not our first Bass film. We talked

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Speaker 4: about Saul and Elaine Bass when we covered the movie

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Speaker 4: Phase four, which was about super intelligent ants. That was

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Speaker 4: a very interesting movie. But one thing I remember thinking

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Speaker 4: about it was that it felt somewhat constrained by realism

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Speaker 4: for most of its run time, except in like the

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Speaker 4: very last couple of minutes where it got super weird,

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Speaker 4: and it almost felt like, you know, that that level

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Speaker 4: of weirdness was being held back for much of the runtime.

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Speaker 4: I think that is not something you could say about Quest.

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Speaker 1: Now, this film is all abstract and surreal weirdness. It

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Speaker 1: is not held back by the necessities of for the

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Speaker 1: most part, of the necessities of genre or plot or character,

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Speaker 1: or any of the conventional trappings of narrative filmmaking. It

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Speaker 1: is instead more like an initiation into a great mystery.

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Speaker 4: That's right. I mean, its plot is very basic. It

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Speaker 4: is essentially a there's a premise, which we'll explain more

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Speaker 4: as we go on, but it essentially has to do

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Speaker 4: with characters whose life spans are unnaturally short. And then

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Speaker 4: from that premise there is a character who must make

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Speaker 4: a journey through a difficult sort of hero's journey in

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Speaker 4: order to cure the people of this condition of having

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Speaker 4: shortened life spans.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we have a chosen one, we have a quest,

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Speaker 1: and yeah it's quite an adventure.

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Speaker 4: But so with the plot itself being quite simple, what

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Speaker 4: is left to fill in the kind of uniqueness of

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Speaker 4: the movie is the series of images that it supplies.

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Speaker 4: This is a movie that is about creating weird scenes.

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Speaker 4: And I really like the the variable tone of the

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Speaker 4: sort of settings that we get Because there were sort

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Speaker 4: of natural settings we see our hero wandering through rocky

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Speaker 4: landscapes and you know, mountain mountain passes and plains and

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Speaker 4: things like that. But then all as we get not

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Speaker 4: even artificial but almost geometric like abstract landscapes that couldn't

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Speaker 4: really exist in reality. They're they're like illustrations from an

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Speaker 4: mc escher drawing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they increasingly surreal landscapes and environments. You know,

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Speaker 1: you go from from some settings that have like a

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Speaker 1: very like dark fantasy sword and sandals kind of feel,

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Speaker 1: into settings that feel like they have perhaps been stripped

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Speaker 1: from tron somehow.

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Speaker 4: Yes. Yes, it starts a tour and ends esher Yeah.

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Speaker 1: All right, my elevator pitch for this one, I just

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Speaker 1: dug up a quick Bible verse teach us to number our.

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Speaker 2: Days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that'll come up later.

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Speaker 1: Now. As for the trailer for this one, there's seemingly

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Speaker 1: no true trailer for this film, which isn't surprising, as

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Speaker 1: we'll get into some of the reasons here. It only

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Speaker 1: played in festival competitions and never received a theatrical release.

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Speaker 1: But maybe we can just have a brief audio sample

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Speaker 1: of JJ's choosing here.

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Speaker 5: Is this the one one?

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Speaker 6: Day from now, you'll be a grown boy two or three,

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Speaker 6: young man, five, middle age seven old. In eight days.

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Speaker 7: You'll stop and die. Listen to our hearts race. Listen

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Speaker 7: to your own heart race.

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Speaker 6: We are locked away in the world where our lives

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Speaker 6: speak through time.

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Speaker 5: In eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know.

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Speaker 5: It's time now the teaching begins.

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Speaker 8: Listen to them, no honqutution them.

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Speaker 2: All right now.

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Speaker 1: If you want to watch Quest from nineteen eighty four

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Speaker 1: before proceeding here, well, DVD and VHS releases have apparently

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Speaker 1: been available. There's some evidence I've found that you can

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Speaker 1: order some sort of a DVD of this movie, but

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Speaker 1: for the most part, I can't tell that it has

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Speaker 1: benefited from a high quality physical media release, at least

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Speaker 1: not yet. Hopefully there's some sort of you know, collected

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Speaker 1: short films of Saul in the Lane bass disc that'll

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Speaker 1: come out in the future, and when it does, we

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Speaker 1: will certainly promote it here on Weird House Cinema. As

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Speaker 1: of right now, you can easily find this film on YouTube.

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Speaker 1: There's at least one version that claims to be some

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Speaker 1: level of remastering. I'm never sure how that works when

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Speaker 1: you have a unofficial remastering of films, so I'm not

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Speaker 1: completely certain on that. I think that Eternal Family, which

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Speaker 1: you can find at Eternal TV, I believe they have

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Speaker 1: offered it in the past, but I'm not sure that

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Speaker 1: it is currently offered, But check out Eternal Family. Either way,

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Speaker 1: their catalog often matches up with weird house cinema tastes.

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Speaker 1: But I'm confident that if you are interested in watching

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Speaker 1: Quest out there, you can find a stream of it somewhere,

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Speaker 1: and then hopefully down the road we'll get that high

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Speaker 1: quality release that we all clearly need.

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Speaker 4: All right, should we talk about the connections.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start at the top with the direct and producers.

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Speaker 1: It's Saul and Elaine Bass, husband and wife design power couple.

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Speaker 1: We discussed saw Bass previously in our episode on nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four's Phase four. That was only his slash there.

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Speaker 1: I may go back and forth from referring to him

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Speaker 1: and referring to he and his wife. They work together,

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Speaker 1: I believe on most of these projects after a certain point,

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Speaker 1: but she wasn't always credited right at there at the top,

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Speaker 1: But on Quest they are co directors and are credited

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Speaker 1: as such. But yeah, Phase four was their only feature

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Speaker 1: length directorial credit, a film that, yeah, we might describe

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Speaker 1: as the two thousand and one a space odyssey of

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Speaker 1: ant movies, an increasingly weird man versus nature film that

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Speaker 1: reaches a fever pitch of an ending in its theatrical cut,

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Speaker 1: but absolutely explodes in a cinematic acid trip if you

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Speaker 1: watch the original ending, which is even weirder and stranger.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, the spoiler for this movie is that humanity is

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Speaker 4: sort of being, would you say, competed with by hyper

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Speaker 4: intelligent ants, and the ants win in the end, and

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Speaker 4: when the ants win, there's an ending where it's I recall,

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Speaker 4: it's sort of implied that humans aren't all just like

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Speaker 4: killed by the ants. Like, life goes on, but life

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Speaker 4: is increasingly completely incomprehensible because we are unable to understand

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Speaker 4: the intelligence or desire or or what is meaningful to

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Speaker 4: the ant powers that are governing our lives.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of unclear if it's that a downer

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Speaker 1: ending or a happy ending, because it's that surreal and

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Speaker 1: out there, like it's it's beyond your human expectations of

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Speaker 1: good and bad endings.

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Speaker 4: You cannot imagine an ant ruled world. You just can't

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Speaker 4: even get there now.

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Speaker 1: Saubass lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six. Elaine Bass

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Speaker 1: was born in nineteen twenty seven and as of this

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Speaker 1: recording is still around now. We talked a bit about

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Speaker 1: Saul Bass on our episode regarding Phase four again. He

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Speaker 1: was the title sequence slash title design guy of his era.

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Speaker 1: A Bass title sequence is often credited as a perfect

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Speaker 1: condensation of the feel of a picture, just taking the

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Speaker 1: whole vibe of that picture and condensing it down to

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Speaker 1: just a mere couple of minutes. So you'll hear a

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Speaker 1: lot of filmmakers, even contemporary filmmakers, just talk about his

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Speaker 1: mastery of this. He crafted title sequences for major films

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Speaker 1: from the mid fifties all the way through the mid nineties.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about the likes of the Seven Year Itch, Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus,

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Speaker 1: West Side Story, Seconds, which we covered on Weird House Cinema,

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Speaker 1: Broadcast News, Big Good Fellas, Kate Beer, and Casino. The

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Speaker 1: credits to Mad Men on TV. This was an homage

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Speaker 1: to his work he did for a number of big

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Speaker 1: name companies throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he

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Speaker 1: also did some pretty famous movie posters as well, including

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Speaker 1: the aforementioned films as well as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining

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Speaker 1: I consulted a book for a little more detail about

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Speaker 1: Saul and Elaine Bass, a book titled Saalbath's Anatomy of

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Speaker 1: Film Design by Jan Christopher Horrock, which of course has

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Speaker 1: a great deal to say about their approach to art,

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Speaker 1: everything from you know, title and loco design work to

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Speaker 1: of course their cinematic output. And again, from about nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty onward, Elaine was his longtime creative partner who worked

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Speaker 1: with him on pretty much most of these projects. So

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Speaker 1: she's not again she's not always credited earlier on, but

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Speaker 1: certainly by the time of today's film she shared official

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Speaker 1: credit with her husband. Their first short film was nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty four. Is The Searching Eye, a contemplation of visual

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Speaker 1: awareness and the unseen world. This one was narrated by

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Speaker 1: Vic Perrin, who recently talked about the voice of the

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Speaker 1: Outer Limits and also the Gargoyle.

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Speaker 4: The narrator at the beginning of Gargoyles and dubbed in

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Speaker 4: on Bernie Casey's g Gargoyle King.

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Speaker 1: Yes, The Searching Eye was followed by From Here to

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Speaker 1: There The same year, and Why Man Creates in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, a meditation on creativity and nature did won

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Speaker 1: an Oscar the following year for Best Documentary Short Subjects,

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Speaker 1: and this paved the way for Phase four, which we've

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Speaker 1: previously talked about. Two other short films followed, seventy eight's

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Speaker 1: Notes on the Popular Arts and nineteen eighties The Solar

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Speaker 1: Film that was an OSCAR nominated documentary produced by Robert

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Speaker 1: Redford about the perils of fossil fuels and the need

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Speaker 1: for humanity to pivot to clean solar energy. And all

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Speaker 1: of this leads up to their final film project, and

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Speaker 1: that is nineteen eighty four's Quest. As Horrick relates, it's

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Speaker 1: the origin story on this one is super interesting, So

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Speaker 1: bear with me here. This is a lot I was

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Speaker 1: not expecting it to be this rich. So this was

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Speaker 1: a Japanese funded production funded by the Church of World Messianity,

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Speaker 1: a new religious movement founded in nineteen thirty five by

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Speaker 1: Mokichio Kata who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty five.

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Speaker 1: A religious movement that promotes spiritual cleansing via the Divine light.

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Speaker 4: WHOA I did not expect it to take this turn.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So apparently, as I understand it based on reading Horrock's book, here,

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Speaker 1: people affiliated with the church at this point. I think

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Speaker 1: the church was kind of going through like some rebranding,

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Speaker 1: a little bit redesign, like entering a new era, and

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Speaker 1: they were really taken by the Bass's design work. This

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Speaker 1: work had recently been featured in a nineteen seventy nine

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Speaker 1: issue of Idea, and so they approached him about creating

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Speaker 1: a visionary film to play in the church's temples and spaces.

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Speaker 1: So Saal Bass apparently wasn't really all that interested in

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Speaker 1: creating an overtly religious work, but was drawn to the

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Speaker 1: idea of quote a purely metaphoric vision without proselytizing for

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Speaker 1: the church and quote a positive film that doesn't view

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Speaker 1: life as a prelude to a disaster.

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Speaker 4: Okay, So the Basses and the funders here may have

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Speaker 4: had totally different visions about what made this project appealing,

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Speaker 4: but nevertheless they could both get what they wanted out

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Speaker 4: of it.

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Speaker 1: That does seem to be the amazing thing about it,

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Speaker 1: because they did reach an agreement here. So I think

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Speaker 1: basically Saul Bass had worked with some big corporations before

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Speaker 1: funding his other works and was able to keep a

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Speaker 1: great deal of creative freedom over.

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Speaker 2: The final product.

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Speaker 1: And he thought, really, I mean, and it seemed like

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Speaker 1: it would be kind of almost naive to think this,

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Speaker 1: but he thought, well, we can do the same thing

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Speaker 1: working with a religious organization. But he was right that

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Speaker 1: it seems like it basically worked out like that.

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Speaker 4: It's like when the Baptist Church of la funded Plan

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Speaker 4: nine from Outer Space.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. So yeah, they funded this for the

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Speaker 1: tune of I believe a million dollars was the overall budget.

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Speaker 1: And again this was back in the eighties, and it

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Speaker 1: does feature strong themes of light, which line up with

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Speaker 1: some of the doctrines that I understand them of the

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Speaker 1: church in question here. But otherwise the plot the finished

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Speaker 1: film is detached from the church's teaching, so again kind

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Speaker 1: of a secularization of maybe some of their core values,

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Speaker 1: but in a way that doesn't lean too heavily into

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Speaker 1: like preaching the gospel of this particular faith.

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Speaker 4: Kind of like if you could get a i don't know,

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Speaker 4: just some mainstream Christian church to sponsor you by creating

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Speaker 4: a story about sacrifice and redemption that didn't have any

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Speaker 4: overt Christian terms or ideas in it, apart from the themes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So the film never received a theatrical release

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Speaker 1: in the United States, but it did play at plenty

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Speaker 1: of festivals, winning at least one award. It attracted a

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Speaker 1: number of fans, including George Lucas, which is not surprising.

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Speaker 1: Lucas praised its effects, its music, and its use of

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Speaker 1: the hero's journey. Meanwhile, back in Japan, it played eight

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Speaker 1: times a day at the church's headquarters for a period

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Speaker 1: of four years.

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Speaker 4: Wow does that beat Rocky Horror for the longest theatrical

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Speaker 4: run just in terms of total number of plays?

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that would be an interesting question to actually

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Speaker 1: get into, because, of course, at the Studio ghibli Museum

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Speaker 1: in Tokyo they play various short films of Miyazaki's exclusively there.

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Speaker 1: It's the only place you can see most of them

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Speaker 1: outside of maybe catching them at a festival or a

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Speaker 1: special showing. That being said, I don't think they're playing

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Speaker 1: the same film every day, four times a day. But

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Speaker 1: then again, this is only a period of four years,

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Speaker 1: so I don't know how many total viewings they were

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Speaker 1: able to chalk up during that time. There was I

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Speaker 1: read in Quors Book, though there was apparently some concern

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Speaker 1: on the Japanese side here that if the film were

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Speaker 1: commercialized too much it would cause political problems for the church,

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Speaker 1: which allegedly this allegedly stifled some of its reach, so

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Speaker 1: there might have been some tension over that fact. But

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Speaker 1: still it did play in festivals, people did get to

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Speaker 1: see it, people continue to see it, and again, hopefully

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Speaker 1: we'll get to see some sort of proper release of

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Speaker 1: it in the future.

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Speaker 4: Wow, that's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: So they agreed to the basic terms of this film,

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Speaker 1: but then they still needed somebody to write it, so

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Speaker 1: they reached out to legendary author Ray Bradbury, who lived

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty through twenty twelve, the author of such famous

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Speaker 1: works as The Martian Chronicles in Hight four fifty one,

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Speaker 1: The Illustrated Man, The October Country, and so forth. He

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Speaker 1: was also a successful screenwriter in his own right, having

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Speaker 1: written the screenplay for the nineteen fifty six adaptation of

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Speaker 1: Moby Dick, and his work was also adapted for TV

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Speaker 1: and film going back to the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold.

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Speaker 1: It Came from Outer Space in fifty three, which we

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Speaker 1: may come back to on Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 4: You know, this makes me think I've never seen a

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Speaker 4: film adaptation of Moby Dick, and I'd be very curious

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Speaker 4: how they do it, because that's one of my favorite

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Speaker 4: novels and it doesn't seem like it would adapt to

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Speaker 4: the screen very well. So much of it is just

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Speaker 4: in the you know, it's in the weirdness of the narrator.

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Speaker 4: It's in like the kind of essays about seatology and

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Speaker 4: things like that. It seems like it would be hard

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Speaker 4: to turn into a movie, But I don't know. Maybe

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Speaker 4: they do a good job.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: but I remember really enjoying Gregory Peck in the adaptation

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Speaker 1: from fifty six, and since Ray Brebery did the screenplay,

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Speaker 1: maybe we can do it on Weird House Cinema. That's enough.

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Speaker 1: It's basically sci fi, So yeah, Saul and Elaine Bass

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Speaker 1: reached out to Bradbury to script Quest, and Bradbury adapted

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Speaker 1: his own nineteen forty six story, Frost and Fire. Now,

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Speaker 1: there were a number of changes made apparently here, as

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Speaker 1: Bradbury updated the structure of that old story for this

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Speaker 1: new project. So, first of all, Saul was wary of

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Speaker 1: overreaching with their budget, and requested that it be set

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Speaker 1: on Earth, or at least an earth like world, rather

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Speaker 1: than an overtly alien planet. That seems like a reasonable

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Speaker 1: budgetary request, though having seen the full film, I feel

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Speaker 1: like we get very unearthly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, at least half of it's taken place in

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Speaker 4: geometry textbook illustrations, not on any landscape I would recognize.

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Speaker 1: Right, So I don't feel like they really held back

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Speaker 1: too much there. Also, while the original story is more

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Speaker 1: hard science fiction, in the original story of the characters

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Speaker 1: depleted lifespan are apparently due to radiation, and they're able

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Speaker 1: to depend on some sort of race memory. They have

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Speaker 1: to convey the essentials of the quest as we'll get

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Speaker 1: into to each subsequent generation, Whereas the version of the

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Speaker 1: story that we get in the Quest has a more

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Speaker 1: mythic vibe to it. It feels more like fantasy or

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Speaker 1: sword and Sandals, but then gets increasingly stranger and more surreal.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's funny. I seem to recall in the past

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Speaker 4: at some point Bradbury making some kind of derisive comments

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Speaker 4: about science fiction and saying that he preferred to write

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Speaker 4: fantasy because that was like I don't know he thought

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Speaker 4: it was like less bound by realism or something. Maybe

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Speaker 4: I'm misremembering that.

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Speaker 1: That way, they would kind of match up with what

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Speaker 1: we see here. Like you can well imagine Bradbury seeing

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Speaker 1: this as the opportunity to take what interests him the

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Speaker 1: most about that old story that was written, you know,

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Speaker 1: very much for the sci fi publications of the day,

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Speaker 1: taking the essence of that and updating it and making

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Speaker 1: it more mythic, freeing it from the shackles of the

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Speaker 1: science fiction. Perhaps because clearly caveat, I have not read

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Speaker 1: the original Bradbury story, but I get a strong hint

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Speaker 1: here that Bradbury wasn't really interested in the effects of

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Speaker 1: radiation human beings. It's more about issues of mortality and

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Speaker 1: cross generational efforts and so forth. Now, as for the

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Speaker 1: human cast of Quest, there are a bunch of people

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Speaker 1: in this and everyone is just bolk credited at the end.

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Speaker 1: They don't specify who plays who, and it leaves the

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Speaker 1: task to your humble podcasters to try and figure out

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Speaker 1: exactly who's who in this picture. We are not going

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Speaker 1: to single out everyone, but I do want to mention

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Speaker 1: just a few of the players here who are notable

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Speaker 1: because of their work elsewhere, and my apologies to anyone

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Speaker 1: that I did leave out.

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Speaker 2: Because of this.

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Speaker 1: Multiple actors, for instance, play are chosen one, our hero

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Speaker 1: of the tale, because he's going to start. We cover

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Speaker 1: most of his life over the course of the narrative.

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Speaker 1: He begins as a baby and will end with him

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Speaker 1: as a mature adult man. But we have different actors

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Speaker 1: playing him, and it's not a makeup effect.

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Speaker 4: That would have been a good choice though, if you

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Speaker 4: had a baby the whole time with just makeup and

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Speaker 4: making the older.

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Speaker 1: Yeah or win in both directions, you know, have like

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Speaker 1: a twenty five year old actor and then age him

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Speaker 1: and de age him all the way down to baby.

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Speaker 1: All right. One of the early characters we encounter in

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Speaker 1: this is an unnam character that I thought of as

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Speaker 1: the elder, some sort of a wise older individual who

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Speaker 1: is looking for the chosen one and finds the chosen one.

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Speaker 4: And this is the monklike guy who does the palm

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Speaker 4: reading on the baby at the beginning.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This character is played by John Abbott who lived nineteen

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Speaker 1: oh five through nineteen ninety six, an English Shakespearean actor

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Speaker 1: with very expressive eyes, known for roles and let's say

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight's The Woman in White. He had an

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Speaker 1: appearance on the original Star Trek, the original Lost in Space,

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Speaker 1: and his other credits, of which he has a lot

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Speaker 1: include nineteen forty fours The Mask of Demetrios. This is

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Speaker 1: one I've looked at before because it's a Peter Lorrie movie.

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Speaker 1: He's also in Cry of the were Wolf from the

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Speaker 1: same year, and he was the voice of Akella the

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Speaker 1: Wolf in Disney's The Jungle Book back in nineteen sixty seven.

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Speaker 1: All Right, again, multiple actors play the chosen one, our hero,

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Speaker 1: but at one point the hero is played by Noah

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Speaker 1: Hathaway born nineteen seventy one. Fittingly, this is, of course,

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Speaker 1: the actor who also played a Treyu in nineteen eighty four.

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Speaker 1: Is the never Ending Story, which we covered on a

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Speaker 1: previous episode of Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 4: I thought he looked familiar. Yeah, is this the day too, boy?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the boy that I believe begins the journey. Right,

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Speaker 1: He's passed his tests and he's then setting out on

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Speaker 1: the journey.

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Speaker 4: He graduated Harvard College jail where he got into a

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Speaker 4: and then he gets to go out on the journey.

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Speaker 1: Now, another actor that shows up in this is Bill Irwin.

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Speaker 1: I think he plays an old man that is encountered

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Speaker 1: late in the picture. That is another monk like figure.

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Speaker 4: Oh, the hooded guy at the Egyptian temple.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe this is Bill Irwin. I could be

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Speaker 1: wrong on this. Bill Irwin lived nineteen fourteen through twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: an American character actor who appeared in more than two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty television and film roles, including the one

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Speaker 1: that earned him an Emmy nomination in nineteen ninety three.

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Speaker 1: Retiree Sid Fields on the sitcom Seinfeld.

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Speaker 4: You know, I wonder with actors like this, who are

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Speaker 4: they're the character actor who just always plays a cantankerous

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Speaker 4: old man. What did he do before he was old?

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Speaker 2: Just always old?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like William Hickey late in life if you

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Speaker 1: played contankerous old men, and also early in his career.

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Speaker 2: So all right.

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Speaker 1: The music in this film is also a real delight.

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Speaker 1: It's you'll have Maybe you can explain the music and

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Speaker 1: the sound of this film better than I can, Joe,

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Speaker 1: But I just think of it as as soothing, other

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Speaker 1: worldly cascade of electronic bliss and intrigue.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, just whipped butter synthesizer auras of really

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Speaker 4: good stuff, a lot of great, you know, good contrast

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Speaker 4: along the dynamic range. So there's a lot of synth

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Speaker 4: bass that sends to me might be like a mog

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Speaker 4: Taurus or something, you know, the strong pulsing bass tones,

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Speaker 4: and then like synthesizer flutes that I don't know if

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Speaker 4: you really get that sound much anymore. It was a

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Speaker 4: big thing in the eighties where you would you would

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Speaker 4: evoke a sense of mysticism by having a synthesizer flute

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Speaker 4: that I feel like if you were composing a t

437
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 4: and you went to put in that same synth flute voicing,

438
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:06,679
Speaker 4: it would sound really tenny and hokey to you, so

439
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 4: you would use something else. But if you go back

440
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:13,160
Speaker 4: to these compositions that feature it, it's actually great.

441
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about here,

442
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 1: and I think that the music it has this kind

443
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: So again, we have this purifying light that is important

444
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:28,159
Speaker 1: to the faith that funded this picture, and then also

445
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: there's a kind of purifying light that is key to

446
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:34,760
Speaker 1: the plot of our story, and the music feels like

447
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 1: a fitting sonic incarnation of that light.

448
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 4: I see what you're saying, yeah, the music shimmers a lot.

449
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,679
Speaker 4: It often expands to fit. You know, It'll be very

450
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 4: quiet at first, and then as the light floods into

451
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 4: the scene, the music floods onto the soundtrack. And yeah,

452
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 4: it's good use of sonic textures.

453
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: So the people behind the music here, well, Elaine Bass

454
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: is credited on the music. She was, of note, a

455
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: professional singer with some musical training prior to her design career.

456
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 1: But then also we have credited Barrington Van Campen, who

457
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: I looked him up. I can find a birthdate for him,

458
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 1: but he is apparently still active on the San Francisco

459
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,919
Speaker 1: music scene. If you look up, if you go to

460
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: the dbduo dot com, this is the website for Van

461
00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: Campen and Dale LeDuc. They have an acoustic act together,

462
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: and there's a They also have some some some some

463
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: brief bio information about Van Campen. Van Campen is a

464
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:43,680
Speaker 1: multi instrumentalist. His instruments include the melotron and various synthesizers.

465
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:46,679
Speaker 1: Uh and there's a lot of like session work and

466
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: production work in his background as well.

467
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 4: I just looked up Wait No l a Beatles tribute band.

468
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at one point, uh yeah, I think, I think,

469
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: and I think they still do a lot of covers

470
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: of Beatles songs of looking at They're still doing gig.

471
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 1: If you're in San Francisco, you can go out and

472
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 1: catch these guys. Tell them we sent you.

473
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 4: Please request a Beatles tune and then request the theme

474
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 4: from Quest.

475
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 2: Now.

476
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: Prior to this film, Van Kempen had worked as a

477
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: musician on the Jerry Lewis film Slapstick of Another Kind,

478
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,199
Speaker 1: adapted from the work of Kurt Vonnegut and also co

479
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: starring John Abbott, but Quest was seemingly his first credited

480
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: film or TV composition, followed in nineteen eighty eight with

481
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 1: the score for the film In Dangerous Company. He's also

482
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: credited as composer on Faces of Death Volumes four and

483
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: six in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety six. I have

484
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: not and we'll never see the Faces of Death. My

485
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: window for having watched Faces of Death has long passed.

486
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 1: But he did some sort of work on there, And

487
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: he also did a lot of work with such clients

488
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: as AT and T, various TV channels and film studios,

489
00:28:57,920 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: So I know, I just think he did a lot

490
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: of a lot of like mercenary sound work you know,

491
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: and so I don't want to single him out for

492
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: Faces of Death. Somebody had to do the music for

493
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: Faces of Death might as well have been this guy.

494
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 4: They could have also just sourced pre existing composition.

495
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. That's very possible. And I don't

496
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 2: know the full story on his involvement in Faces of Death.

497
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: So don't don't put any of that on him, because again,

498
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the music in Quest

499
00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: is amazing and I loved every minute of it.

500
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 4: Okay, you want to talk about the plot, Oh, let's

501
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 4: experience it all right. So when we first come up

502
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 4: and get our title sequence, the camera seems to be

503
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 4: navigating a cave or a megalithic structure of some kind, cold,

504
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 4: dark stone walls. We've got shadows cut by shafts of light.

505
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 4: Everything's kind of green and gray in color. There is

506
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 4: a generally pale, cold kind of color scheme that defines

507
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 4: most of the movie until the last couple minutes. It's greens, blues, whites,

508
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 4: and grays. And when we first come in, also there's fog.

509
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 4: The air is thick with fog. It's kind of swirling

510
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,960
Speaker 4: and suggesting, you know, a dark age in a way.

511
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 4: And then there's a voiceover that says, before the gate

512
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 4: was closed and the light began to fail, the ancients

513
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 4: lived a long and fruitful life. Now our lifespan is

514
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 4: eight days. Yes, for us, there is no time. The minutes,

515
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 4: the hours, and the days fly away, and our lives

516
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 4: along with them. And so all of this is being

517
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 4: said is the camera is panning and traveling through these

518
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 4: caverns and stone corridors. And then there's a thing that

519
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 4: I liked that struck me as a kind of scale twist.

520
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 4: So the cameras it's going through these stone caverns, and

521
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 4: I had been assuming the spaces we were looking at

522
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 4: were supposed to be roughly like human hall sized the

523
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 4: camera at normal eye level for a person. But then

524
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 4: suddenly we zoom in on a little crevice in a

525
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 4: stone facade that looks like it's the size of a mousehole.

526
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 4: But then you realize there are tiny stairs leading up

527
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 4: to the crevice, and then you see a human form

528
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 4: standing inside the doorway, and it becomes clear we're either

529
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 4: looking at like a two inch tall human or the

530
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 4: original reference scale you had in mind was wrong. And

531
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 4: I think it's the latter, though there will be similar

532
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 4: kind of scale inversions that happen later in the story

533
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 4: as well.

534
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to it just a certain degree. It's like

535
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: this is a an artifact of how the techniques they

536
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: use to shoot it. But also it feels fittingly surreal

537
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: in this picture as well.

538
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 4: Yeah. So from here we move into the cavern and

539
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 4: come upon a group of people who are dressed in

540
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 4: plain peasant clothing. There is again going along with the

541
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 4: kind of dark age feeling. There is a since when

542
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 4: we come to these people that are living abject lives

543
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 4: of kind of darkness and ignorance and want. But the

544
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 4: first thing we get to with these people is a

545
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 4: scene of childbirth. So there are all these people in

546
00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 4: peasant clothing assisting a woman in childbirth. The baby is born,

547
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 4: and a man in a sort of monastic beard holds

548
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 4: the child up to this audience of elders some kind

549
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 4: of counsel and they're asking is this the one? And

550
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 4: a debate starts. The elders say it's too early to tell,

551
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 4: and then another says, no, we cannot wait, we must

552
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 4: chance it, And so they check the infant's hand. They

553
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 4: have this monk like man. Look at the hand and

554
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 4: the baby's palm opens and yes, we see some crinkles there,

555
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 4: but I think they're actually doing a palm reading. The

556
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 4: monk like man says, yes, the line is strong. I

557
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 4: think talking about the lifeline.

558
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: Now. I love the way that the plight of the

559
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 1: people here is presented, because it's one of those things

560
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: where on one level, yes, it's fantastic, but on the

561
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:03,479
Speaker 1: other it's like, yeah, that's how our subjective experience of

562
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 1: time sometimes goes. It feels like it is flowing faster

563
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 1: than it should and we have no time, or we

564
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: have far less time than we wanted. And at the

565
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: same time, given the sort of again you said, like

566
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: the dark age vibe we have here, this kind of

567
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 1: archaic vibe. I'm also reminded of things we've discussed on

568
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind in the past about various historian,

569
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 1: historians and anthrop anthropologists reflecting on what life was like

570
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: for our ancestors before people were able to specialize more,

571
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: before various cultural and technological advancements opened up more time

572
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: in people's days to allow different types of experiences and

573
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 1: different types of knowledge to accumulate.

574
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is interesting, and that kind of desperation about

575
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 4: the time. The sense of I want more life is

576
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 4: a fantastic premise to start with, for one thing, because

577
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:03,560
Speaker 4: it's not a you know, it's it's a very relatable feeling,

578
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 4: but accelerated for the purpose of the narrative. And it's

579
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 4: also something it's like an unpersonified villain. It's not it's

580
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 4: not a beast you can fight, though there will be

581
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 4: some beasts to fight in the story. It's just like

582
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 4: we can't accept the way time flows around us, or

583
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:25,960
Speaker 4: the way our bodies flow through time. It's it's it's

584
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 4: a terror to us.

585
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's one of the things that makes it

586
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: fitting that this film is thirty minutes long and not

587
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: an hour or an hour and a half or two hours,

588
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 1: and it is a film where there there is no

589
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: true personified villain, if there is any. There are adversaries

590
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 1: to overcome, but there's also a case to be made

591
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 1: that all of those adversaries are perhaps aspects of the self,

592
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 1: you know. So it's yeah again. The film itself has

593
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 1: a great mythic vibe. It feels like an initiation into

594
00:34:58,760 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 1: some great secret.

595
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,880
Speaker 4: So they go on to observe that the child is

596
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 4: already seeing and hearing them, that's pretty quick, and the

597
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 4: elders all seem to agree, Okay, the teaching must begin

598
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 4: at once, So the child is carried out of the

599
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 4: room where he was born. How are you going to

600
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,399
Speaker 4: start teaching a baby that was born two minutes ago?

601
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 4: That I think that baby is not ready for school,

602
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 4: but they disagree, So here we go, it says day one,

603
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 4: and the elders move down a shadowy corridor, carrying the

604
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 4: baby with them. The narrator says, as we watch you

605
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 4: grow and change, as you watch us, we grow old,

606
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 4: Your life, like ours, is destined to be short. In

607
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:40,280
Speaker 4: eight days we're born, we mature, and we grow old

608
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 4: and die. And then the monk like man and the

609
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 4: others bring the baby to what looked to me kind

610
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 4: of like a shop counter in a fantasy game general store.

611
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 4: But this is, I think, actually supposed to be a school.

612
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 4: So they tell the baby one day from now, you

613
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 4: will be a grown boy two or three, a young man, five,

614
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 4: middle aged seven old. In eight days you will die.

615
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 2: Oh.

616
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 4: And then there's a strange moment where the man says,

617
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 4: listen to our heart's race, and one of the elders

618
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 4: holds the baby against her her chest and then they say,

619
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 4: listen to your own heart race, and this like accelerated

620
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:22,800
Speaker 4: heart rate is a thing that comes back in the story.

621
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,880
Speaker 4: But it does just remind me of like, you know,

622
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 4: putting my ear to the hearts of pets and hearing

623
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 4: their faster little heartbeats, you know, their small bodies and

624
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 4: little metabolisms.

625
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 2: Yeah.

626
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also will have another example of this

627
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 1: as well. But it kind of ties into this idea

628
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: that there is there is a cross generational, a cross

629
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:49,720
Speaker 1: generation connection between the individuals of the in this culture

630
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: of these people that is maybe a bit surreal as well,

631
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 1: that's maybe leaning a little bit into the fantastic, and

632
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:03,799
Speaker 1: it's not entirely base on real world human teaching and

633
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: conveying of information.

634
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the old man says, we are locked away

635
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 4: in a world where our lives speed through time in

636
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 4: eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know,

637
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:17,759
Speaker 4: And then he just says, okay, it's time, and the

638
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 4: baby is handed across the counter to the ShopKeep. But again,

639
00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 4: this is actually some kind of school. So they take

640
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 4: the baby away and the old man sort of calls

641
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 4: after the baby's saying, now the teaching begins. Learn quickly

642
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 4: little one and ooh, some kind of learning with blocks

643
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 4: is going on. There's a lot of cool stuff in

644
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 4: this teaching montage. I like that we start with these

645
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 4: little stone coins and there are squares and pyramids. It

646
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 4: looks like stuff that would be fun to handle in

647
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 4: the same way that D and D dice are.

648
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's all very tactile and yeah, I just

649
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: love this montage because everything is very identifiable as teaching

650
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: and principle on one level, but also feels very alien

651
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: and also perhaps concerning a natural philosophy.

652
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 2: Unknown to our world. Yeah.

653
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: Again, it's worth noting in the original Ray Bradbury story

654
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: that the short lived humans in it have a form

655
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 1: of race memory that they're able to depend upon to

656
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: pass knowledge down from short lived generation to short lived generation.

657
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 1: And that's not what we see here, but we might

658
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:29,399
Speaker 1: think of this along similar lines. Information is perhaps being

659
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 1: transferred from teachers to student, yes, with physical manipulation of

660
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 1: objects and some external learning devices, but also perhaps in

661
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: a way that depends on something greater than human learning,

662
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 1: and maybe there is some sort of psychic connection. And

663
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: in fact, later on, when our hero has commenced on

664
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:54,000
Speaker 1: his journey and he hears the voices of his teachers.

665
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:57,239
Speaker 1: I mean, perhaps that is like a psychic echo of

666
00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: what has occurred previously.

667
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I like that too. It invites questions of like,

668
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 4: is there actual telepathy going on or the teachers currently

669
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 4: communicating with him as he goes beyond, or is it

670
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 4: like now part of them is in him and he

671
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 4: just carries it with them?

672
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And this is a great film. And then

673
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:20,360
Speaker 1: it leaves you to ask those questions and they're ultimately unanswerable.

674
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: It's all up to your interpretation.

675
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 4: So already we see the child as a toddler sorting

676
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 4: these little shapes and blocks as the teachers look on.

677
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:31,719
Speaker 4: I love the way the blocks look. They're made of

678
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 4: a kind of polished, polished stone with a freckled and

679
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 4: scarred appearance, and the child is learning to line them

680
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 4: up in a special order, as if he were spelling

681
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 4: words with the blocks. But what does it mean? I

682
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 4: don't know, we're not told. There's also a metal block

683
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 4: set with a hollow cube that you balance on a

684
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 4: prismatic pillar and then you start kind of like piecing

685
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,479
Speaker 4: them together like an erector set. We see the child

686
00:39:56,600 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 4: working with these elements blindfolded. Also doing some kind of

687
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,839
Speaker 4: psychic paddy cake game with his hands, like the part

688
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,320
Speaker 4: across from his teachers where they're like moving their hands

689
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 4: and then slapping them together. I didn't get exactly what

690
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 4: that was, but it seemed to me it involved maybe

691
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 4: a kind of sense of psychic powers or premonitions about

692
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 4: where the hands were going. We also see the training

693
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 4: getting into He's like reading patterns of grain and blocks

694
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 4: of wood. I liked that it was strange, and then

695
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 4: making spears out of a kind of silvery metal. So

696
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:33,760
Speaker 4: the spears are modular and they snap together like tent poles,

697
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 4: and then they have these fins and barbs that snap

698
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 4: out from the poles, and he's throwing the spears doing

699
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 4: target practice with them. There's another part where he unveils

700
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 4: a shimmering steel cone from a covering which is a

701
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 4: metal box, and the cone emits blinding light, and then

702
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 4: he lifts up the cone and that unveils another level.

703
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 4: It is like a blue, glowing ball of energy that's

704
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 4: inside the cone, and the ball of energy just floats

705
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 4: in the air. Again we're not told what that is,

706
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 4: but anyway, when the training is complete, the boy now

707
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 4: looks about ten or twelve years old, and an old

708
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 4: man tells him it's time for you to go.

709
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 1: It's like you know in elementary school, when you make

710
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: it halfway through learning about the Civil War and then

711
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:20,799
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm sorry, now I have to send you

712
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: home for summer.

713
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 2: That's it, that's all we had time for.

714
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 4: Yeah. I do remember that about a lot of lesson

715
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,800
Speaker 4: plans when I was younger. A fantastic lack of closure

716
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 4: about me things we learned. Okay, So the old man

717
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 4: comes to the boy to tell him more about his mission.

718
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 4: They're looking at a light pouring out from between some rocks,

719
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 4: and the man says that light squeezes through the crack

720
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 4: where the doors in the Great Gate join. That gate

721
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 4: must be opened. You will open it.

722
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, And again this possibly lines up with this idea

723
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: of I believe it is that the Joe rai or

724
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: jewelry purifying light that factors into the teachings of Okichi

725
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: Okada often described as kind of like an energy healing doctrine.

726
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 4: Hmm.

727
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: Okay, And I've also read that that it sometimes involves

728
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:09,839
Speaker 1: like the use of some sort of reflective medallion, which

729
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:12,080
Speaker 1: we also see a version of in this picture.

730
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 2: Oh.

731
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 4: Interesting. Okay, I was wondering about that. Okay, so maybe

732
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 4: they did get a few little like specific things in there.

733
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

734
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 4: Anyway, the old man says, beyond the gate is a

735
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,919
Speaker 4: land where life is lived for twenty thousand days and more.

736
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 4: If the gate can be reached and opened, the light

737
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 4: will rush out over us, and with it bring long

738
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:35,840
Speaker 4: life and peace. The boy asks why he has been chosen,

739
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 4: and the old man explains those who were sent before

740
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 4: left when they were too old, they left too late,

741
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,879
Speaker 4: and they died before they reached the gate. This time,

742
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 4: they selected the boy to be sent when he was

743
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 4: very young, so he would have enough time to complete

744
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,320
Speaker 4: his mission. And then the old man says, you've learned

745
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 4: the You've learned your lessons quickly. You're strong and intelligent,

746
00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 4: you have curiosity. And the boy says, but have I

747
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 4: learned augh? And the old man does not answer the question.

748
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 4: He just says, we don't have time to teach you anymore.

749
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 4: You'll have to learn the rest on your way.

750
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it really is like that. I mean that again.

751
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: That's one of the great things about this film. I

752
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: say it in Jess, but it's also like that's the

753
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: way of life. And it encapsulates that perfectly.

754
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, have we ever learned enough in childhood to prepare

755
00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 4: us for adult life? Probably not, or can't really answer

756
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 4: that question, But you don't really have a choice. No

757
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 4: more time.

758
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: Here's your silvery space spear. Go out and do your best.

759
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 4: So the boy is outfitted with again those gleaming spears

760
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 4: and other supplies. We see them like kind of pouring

761
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 4: out these measures of grain and stuff for him. And

762
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 4: before he's sent out by the elders, the old man

763
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 4: gives him this small mirror polished metal pendant to hang

764
00:43:56,640 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 4: around his neck, which may be connecting to that actual

765
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 4: religious item used by the whatever, I forget what it's called,

766
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:09,439
Speaker 4: the Church of Messianity. Yeah, And then so he takes

767
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 4: the pendant, and then he turns to his mother and

768
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 4: they embrace, and all she says is goodbye. Then he goes.

769
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 4: So the boy sets out into the world. And now, oh,

770
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 4: and this is, by the way, we get a title

771
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:23,279
Speaker 4: that says day two. So day two of his life.

772
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:26,760
Speaker 4: The boy sets out into the world, and now instead

773
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 4: of just the dark caverns, there are landscapes. First we

774
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,600
Speaker 4: see the boy crossing a kind of bleak tundra with

775
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 4: these sandy hills, fields of snow, expanses of gray water,

776
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 4: and mountains in the background. At one point we see

777
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 4: him wandering through bad lands full of smooth, jumbled rock

778
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:49,600
Speaker 4: formations that look like giant piles of bones. And as

779
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 4: the boy travels on through the rocks, he hears voices

780
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 4: whispering in his head. This is what we were talking

781
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 4: about earlier, the voices of his teachers and the elders,

782
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 4: and they're saying things like, go on, don't hesitate, we

783
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 4: have prepared you well, be brave, don't worry. And the

784
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 4: boy wanders in darkness through this maze of stones, hearing

785
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:09,839
Speaker 4: the weird voices, and then suddenly hearing a kind of

786
00:45:09,840 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 4: hooting in the distance, and he draws his spear in preparation.

787
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 4: What is it? What's making the sound? And there's a stillness,

788
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,800
Speaker 4: feathers fall on the rocks around him, and then a

789
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 4: monster attacks.

790
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a pretty cool monster, I have to.

791
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 4: Say, that's right. So the monster, whatever it is, first

792
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 4: thrashes around in the darkness, roaring at the boy. The

793
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:32,760
Speaker 4: boy holds out his spear, and then they eventually clash,

794
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 4: and we see some elements of the monster. It appears

795
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 4: to be a kind of giant reptilian pit bull head

796
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 4: with a triangular or circular triangular mouth with teeth jutting

797
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:47,399
Speaker 4: in from all sides. I gotta say that the head

798
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:49,439
Speaker 4: is a little bit rancorish.

799
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely kind of a rain Corps vibe.

800
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: I also feel like it's maybe a combination of some

801
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: sort of a giant sloth and a tartar grade ye,

802
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: which would of course be a giant, very giant artic grade.

803
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 4: It's actually also, in fact drawn two different return of

804
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:06,799
Speaker 4: the Jedi. It's a little bit rancor and a little

805
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,960
Speaker 4: bit sarlac because of the circular mouth with the teeth

806
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 4: coming in all in all directions. Anyway, the boy fights

807
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 4: the monster in the dark with his spear, and eventually

808
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 4: he slays it, and as the beast lies dying on

809
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 4: the ground, he approaches it and there's a kind of

810
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:25,319
Speaker 4: sadness in its eyes. And then the next thing. This

811
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 4: was one of the few parts where I feel like

812
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,799
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure I was understanding what the film was

813
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 4: trying to suggest. There's like, after he's already slayed the monster,

814
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,280
Speaker 4: there's a screeching in the night, and some other creature

815
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 4: seems to be circling the boy and he raises a

816
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 4: rock above his head and he shouts no, and then

817
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 4: the threat seems to fade away.

818
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was interesting. I guess I'm on a literal

819
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,240
Speaker 1: interpretation level. I was thinking, Okay, maybe he's just scaring

820
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 1: away additional monsters. You know, there are others out there,

821
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: and he's saying he's just keeping them from attacking. Or

822
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps it's something more, and maybe he's driving

823
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: away the darkness of his defensive act, like he has

824
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: killed and therefore, even though he's acting in self defense,

825
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 1: now he has to contend with like the darkness of

826
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 1: what he has just done, and he's driving that away.

827
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,880
Speaker 1: Hourk in his book contends that we might think of

828
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: this maybe again another example of mythic battle in the darkness,

829
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 1: which we see in various sagas. But he asked some

830
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: questions like is this monster real? Is this a projection

831
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 1: of the hero's mind? Again, it's the sort of film

832
00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: where various interpretations are possible, there no right or wrong answers.

833
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 4: So then we get to day three. The boy appears

834
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 4: to be in his twenties now, and we see him

835
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 4: come up over a hilltop to look out on this

836
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 4: big sand flat with a sort of temple in the distance,

837
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 4: and he hears the whispered voices again. One of them says,

838
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 4: straight ahead, you must go there looking at the temple. Now,

839
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,280
Speaker 4: I don't know if you have thoughts about the style

840
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 4: of this temple. Rob there's sort of a So first

841
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 4: of all, there's a big, a big haul that we

842
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 4: just see as like a rock facade. But then out

843
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 4: in front of it there is a rock carving of

844
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 4: a domed head with an open mouth and these wild eyes,

845
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 4: kind of empty wild eyes, and giant hands held in

846
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 4: an open palm position.

847
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 2: Yeah.

848
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: The general vibe of these ruins reminding me a little

849
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: bit of photos I've seen of the ancient heads of

850
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 1: the gods in Nimroot Dog Turkey. Imagine many of you

851
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 1: out there have seen these images before, with kind of

852
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 1: conical looking hats on the heads.

853
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:38,279
Speaker 5: Oh.

854
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 4: I just looked it up, and yeah, I can see

855
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 4: the comparison. That is kind of interesting, though. It's almost

856
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 4: like some aspects feel a little bit like this, some

857
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,680
Speaker 4: feel a little a little more like like Mesoamerican art.

858
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, so I guess it. Yeah, It fittingly feels

859
00:48:55,040 --> 00:49:00,920
Speaker 1: akin to various examples of real world does traditions, but

860
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: it feels also removed in its own thing. When I

861
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: was looking around on letterboxed, I found a pretty great

862
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:09,359
Speaker 1: little review. Someone by the name of Roland one oh

863
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:12,439
Speaker 1: six said quote man walks through a series of prog

864
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:14,799
Speaker 1: album covers in order to save his people from their

865
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: eight day lifespans, which I legitimately laughed at that, and

866
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of spot on. There are many many scenes

867
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:25,879
Speaker 1: in this picture that could easily be a prog rock

868
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: album cover.

869
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, including the very next thing I was going

870
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:31,960
Speaker 4: to talk about, which is that as the boy is

871
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 4: coming to or I guess he's a young man now,

872
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:37,920
Speaker 4: as the hero is coming down to cross the plain

873
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 4: of sand to get to the temple, there's another thing

874
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,000
Speaker 4: he sees. At first, I was confused how this interacted

875
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:47,919
Speaker 4: with the other thing. But there's like a giant teardrop

876
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:52,760
Speaker 4: shaped rock descending slowly from the sky, and there appears

877
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:54,839
Speaker 4: to be a sort of castle or something on top

878
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 4: of it.

879
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is actually mentioned in the book. This is

880
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: apparently an ome homage to one of Saalbass's favorite visual works,

881
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:08,719
Speaker 1: The Castle of the Pyrenees by Belgian surrealist Renee Margrite.

882
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: This is a work from nineteen fifty nine, and apparently

883
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: Saul loved this image and it had just been looking for

884
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:19,879
Speaker 1: an opportunity to somehow utilize it in his work. There's

885
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia article about this particular painting, and I included

886
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:26,760
Speaker 1: a sample of it here in our notes for you, Joe.

887
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,799
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it looks exactly the same, so clearly, yeah.

888
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I feel like something just

889
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: like this also eventually pops up in Dungeons and Dragons,

890
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: So some of you dn D lord nerds out there

891
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,640
Speaker 1: will have to remind me what I'm thinking of, because

892
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:47,240
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen an homage to this piece

893
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: in Dungeons and Dragons art as well.

894
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 4: I thought you were going to say Zardas. It's like

895
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 4: the Zardas head, except it's not a head, it's just

896
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 4: a big rock.

897
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think there's some shared DNA

898
00:50:58,239 --> 00:50:59,959
Speaker 1: between some of the design work here and the design

899
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: and work of Zardis as well.

900
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 4: Okay, so the hero tries to cross the sand flat,

901
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 4: but when he gets into the sand, he begins to sink,

902
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 4: And at first I was like Oh no, it's like

903
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 4: a quick sand trap. He's gonna have to get out,

904
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:15,239
Speaker 4: But no, it goes in a different direction. Instead. He

905
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 4: is able to move through the sand, but it's like

906
00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 4: rising up to his chest and occasionally up to his chin,

907
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,880
Speaker 4: but he just wades on through like its water, and

908
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,479
Speaker 4: he makes his way all the way across the sand

909
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 4: flat this way, which I thought was I don't know,

910
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 4: the strange, unexpected, and obviously I don't think you can

911
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:35,919
Speaker 4: really do that. You can't move through sand that you're

912
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 4: that deep, and it would just there'd be too much resistance.

913
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 4: But it's like water, and he just passes through it.

914
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: This sequence, in particular reminds me of some of the

915
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:47,279
Speaker 1: sand related imagery that we get in Phase four.

916
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:51,040
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I agree. It also reminds me of a

917
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 4: weird sort of sand progressing through a sand chamber scene

918
00:51:55,080 --> 00:52:00,359
Speaker 4: in the Tarkowsky movie Stalker. But eventually the the hero

919
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 4: comes out the other side to stand on the stairs

920
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 4: of the temple. I didn't mention this earlier, but next

921
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:07,960
Speaker 4: to the human head there's kind of a big eagle

922
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 4: head as well, and then suddenly there's an earthquake. The

923
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 4: carvings at the entrance to the temple begin to crumble

924
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 4: and fall all around him, and the hero has to

925
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 4: dodge some boulders, but he survives. Now I think it's

926
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:24,640
Speaker 4: suggesting the earthquake is caused by the huge tear drop

927
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 4: asteroid settling into the sand, like it has finally touched down,

928
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 4: and that shakes the earth.

929
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:30,840
Speaker 2: I think so.

930
00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 1: But again, as to exactly what all this means, I mean,

931
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:39,399
Speaker 1: we're left to ponder that, like all of this, I'm

932
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: assuming all of this is somehow tied to the history

933
00:52:42,640 --> 00:52:45,840
Speaker 1: of these people, that these used to be their cities,

934
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: that these are their temples or their tombs. We're not sure.

935
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 1: But as to what the giant tear drop asteroid truly signifies,

936
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 1: like is this the spaceship that brought them there? Because

937
00:52:58,400 --> 00:52:59,960
Speaker 1: I know in the original Bradbury it has to do.

938
00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: There's like a crash spaceship that's part of the plot,

939
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 1: and so we might see some fantastic echo of that

940
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 1: concept here.

941
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:10,279
Speaker 4: But the voices in the hero's head they tell him

942
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 4: to go on, so he does. He goes into the

943
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:14,919
Speaker 4: temple and then we see from inside the giant head

944
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 4: with light pouring in through the eyes, which is very cool.

945
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 4: And then inside the temple, there is a swarm of

946
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 4: starlike particles suspended inside a blue light, much like the

947
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 4: blue light that the boy uncovered in his schooling. But

948
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 4: before he can make sense of it, the temple continues

949
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:35,440
Speaker 4: to crumble and it just rocks and blocks are falling,

950
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 4: and he's driven away, driven on into a different place,

951
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 4: a tube like corridor, sort of the inside of the

952
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 4: spaceworm where the Falcon lands and Empire strikes back. Yeah,

953
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 4: but with a raised metal boardwalk. He's saying, I'm going

954
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 4: through the boardwalk in the swamp or something, and he

955
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 4: moves on down the gangway and then finally we come

956
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,840
Speaker 4: to a different landscape and it announces is day four. Baby,

957
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 4: Here we are Day four, and he's standing in front

958
00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 4: of massive Egyptian temple architecture with rows and rows of columns.

959
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:12,319
Speaker 5: Uh.

960
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 4: And I forget the name of the temple I have

961
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 4: in mind, but there is an Egyptian temple I'm thinking

962
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 4: of that looks like this, And he's passing through the

963
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:26,520
Speaker 4: courtyard and it somehow seems to lead into a different universe,

964
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 4: like when he comes to the other end, there is

965
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 4: another flat sandy plain, but this one is bathed in

966
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 4: blue light, with pyramids that look like the Giza Complex

967
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 4: in the distance, and then beyond that giant planets looming

968
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:43,240
Speaker 4: in the sky.

969
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:44,080
Speaker 5: Huge.

970
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

971
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:48,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, So at this point I'm definitely questioning the whole

972
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: Make sure you set it on Earth ray Yeah, yeah,

973
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 1: directive here, because we really feel like we're in another

974
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: world at this point. We are, at lea if we're

975
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 1: not on another planet the whole time, then we are

976
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: some where else at this point.

977
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 4: Yes, you know, I don't mean to diminish it by

978
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 4: this comparison, but it's hard not to feel some Star

979
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 4: Wars influence on this. For one thing, he comes up

980
00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:15,720
Speaker 4: to a hooded man resting against one of the columns.

981
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 4: He's almost in a kind of either Obi Wan Kenobi

982
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 4: or Jahwa outfit. The hooded figure in the desert and

983
00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:25,880
Speaker 4: he comes up to the sky. No face is visible,

984
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 4: but the hero is looking out on this blue landscape

985
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 4: with the pyramids and the planets like passing into and

986
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:34,360
Speaker 4: out of alignment in the sky. The planets are moving

987
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 4: super fast, and then the hooded man starts to talk.

988
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 4: He says, so they sent another one. Let's have a

989
00:55:40,320 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 4: look at you. Yes, you're young, much younger than I

990
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 4: was when I got here, And the hooded man reveals

991
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 4: that he was the last hero, but he started too late,

992
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,400
Speaker 4: he says, the younger man does have a chance, and

993
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 4: he gives him advice. He says, look at that pyramid,

994
00:55:56,719 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 4: don't go around it, you have to climb to the top.

995
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:03,320
Speaker 1: All right, some fortune cookie sort of advice there, but

996
00:56:04,040 --> 00:56:06,160
Speaker 1: it feels specific to this challenge as well.

997
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:08,879
Speaker 4: Oh sure, And you know this actually made me think

998
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 4: about one of I was going to say, one of

999
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 4: the shadow themes of quest, and it's something that has

1000
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:20,080
Speaker 4: to do with trust. So our hero, at multiple times

1001
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 4: throughout the story, we get little different ways that he

1002
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:29,719
Speaker 4: just has to believe the advice given to him and

1003
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:35,360
Speaker 4: follow it because he doesn't have enough time to see

1004
00:56:35,360 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 4: and investigate for himself. And so he just meets this

1005
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:43,600
Speaker 4: random stranger here, and the stranger gives him advice and

1006
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,720
Speaker 4: he just follows it, and we're sort of to understand

1007
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:49,080
Speaker 4: that he doesn't really have a choice. I mean, I

1008
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:52,280
Speaker 4: guess he could try to not follow it, but seems

1009
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:54,880
Speaker 4: more likely that would result in him failing his mission

1010
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 4: as well.

1011
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, like if he said, no, Grandpa, I need I

1012
00:56:57,719 --> 00:56:59,560
Speaker 1: want to do my own research. On this like, yeah,

1013
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 1: then you're going to die in the desert like this, kuy.

1014
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:05,680
Speaker 4: And and it makes me think about the relationship between

1015
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 4: time and trust. You know, this is this is actually

1016
00:57:09,120 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 4: a core thing about what trust is. Trust is a

1017
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 4: thing that saves you time because if you didn't, if

1018
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 4: you had unlimited time and resources, you could investigate everything

1019
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:27,440
Speaker 4: for yourself, like you could, you know, look into every

1020
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:31,520
Speaker 4: you look endlessly into every question and not have to

1021
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:35,160
Speaker 4: believe anything people told you. But you don't have unlimited

1022
00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 4: time and resources. You're always trying to make your life

1023
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,680
Speaker 4: more efficient, so you have to rely on trust for

1024
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:42,800
Speaker 4: some things. And so a big part of what we

1025
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 4: think about in navigating life is just like where we

1026
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 4: where we decide to press the trust button to save

1027
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 4: ourselves time and this and this scenario created by the

1028
00:57:55,680 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 4: movie heightens that kind of the observation of that dynasm

1029
00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:04,640
Speaker 4: because time is so constricted and so he just literally

1030
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 4: does not have time to wonder whether this guy is

1031
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 4: giving him good advice or not. He just has to

1032
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:12,280
Speaker 4: follow it. Yeah, And then also the guy says, not

1033
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,120
Speaker 4: everything that frightens or hurts you as bad. Fear and

1034
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 4: pain are your teachers learn survive. So the young man

1035
00:58:20,720 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 4: hurries on through the desert. And meanwhile, also he's another

1036
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 4: thing he has to trust is he's been being given

1037
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:29,080
Speaker 4: these voices in his head. They're giving him advice. They're saying,

1038
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 4: you are not alone, We travel with you. So there's

1039
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:42,840
Speaker 4: a scene where the hero gets to the stairs. He

1040
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 4: has to climb. He has to climb to the top

1041
00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 4: of the pyramid, and the stairs seem endless, but he

1042
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 4: goes on up and up and up, and then finally

1043
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 4: he gets to the top where he finds a table

1044
00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 4: emitting a blue light. Looks almost like a game board.

1045
00:58:57,200 --> 00:58:58,920
Speaker 4: I was thinking that at first, and then what do

1046
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:00,800
Speaker 4: you know, It does seem like it's a game board.

1047
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,280
Speaker 4: It's covered in the shapes that the boy learned to

1048
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,480
Speaker 4: manipulate in school. And then suddenly there is a roar,

1049
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 4: and we're like, oh, another monster sort of. There is

1050
00:59:11,160 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 4: a sasquatchlike creature, like a big furry humanoid creature that

1051
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,880
Speaker 4: approaches him. But it's not another fight to the death

1052
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 4: with a spear. This time we're facing the chess YETI

1053
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:26,959
Speaker 4: our hero has to play a board game, a game

1054
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 4: of strategy with Bigfoot, and this I think may have

1055
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:33,760
Speaker 4: been my favorite creative choice in the film.

1056
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 1: Yes, I absolutely love this on one level because it

1057
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:40,600
Speaker 1: is just that outrageous, Like at this point everything has

1058
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:45,720
Speaker 1: already been surreal and dream like and full of WTF moments,

1059
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 1: and then we have this. But then it again is

1060
00:59:48,960 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 1: one of these moments too, where it's never fully explained.

1061
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 1: We don't know who or what this entity is, but

1062
00:59:56,400 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 1: there are so many different ways to tease it apart.

1063
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:02,080
Speaker 1: Horric and his book brings up the possibility that this

1064
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: is sort of like the ID that his own ID

1065
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 1: that he is combating here at least they're like his

1066
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:12,440
Speaker 1: this is his primal side. And I did when I

1067
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:15,520
Speaker 1: was originally watching it, I did kind of notice some

1068
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:19,360
Speaker 1: similarities between the face of the beast and the face

1069
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:21,400
Speaker 1: of our hero. I don't know how much of that

1070
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 1: was me just you know, reading too much into it

1071
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: or not, but I think there are various interpretations here.

1072
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 1: But what we get at the end of the day

1073
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:34,960
Speaker 1: is the game of chess or something like chess with

1074
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: this bestial other.

1075
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 4: That is funny. I mean, so, on one hand, I

1076
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 4: absolutely see the comparison in the way they're embodied, that

1077
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:47,280
Speaker 4: this creature may be some reflection of his more savage

1078
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 4: self on the other hand, like, why would you be

1079
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:53,800
Speaker 4: Why is the form of conflict a game of strategy?

1080
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:55,640
Speaker 4: Why are you playing chess against your ID?

1081
01:00:55,920 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 5: Oh?

1082
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:57,560
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you don't want to wrestle it. Look

1083
01:00:57,600 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 1: how strong this is? Get out smart, I guess.

1084
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 4: So. So the game itself is kind of tronish that

1085
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:10,960
Speaker 4: it's like these metal shapes, these polyhedron game pieces that

1086
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:15,960
Speaker 4: are zooming around and zapping each other with lasers. And then,

1087
01:01:16,160 --> 01:01:19,560
Speaker 4: of course, eventually the YETI loses and he doesn't like that.

1088
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:22,960
Speaker 4: You know, yeti's are known to rip people's arms off

1089
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:26,200
Speaker 4: and they lose. So he howls in anger, and he

1090
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 4: drools and rages very bad sport, and he seems ready

1091
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:34,120
Speaker 4: to kill our hero. But suddenly it's a little unclear

1092
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 4: exactly the orientation of what's happening here, but like a

1093
01:01:37,080 --> 01:01:42,360
Speaker 4: walkway extends out through space toward the pyramid, leading to

1094
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 4: another structure, and then the hero leaps out onto the

1095
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 4: walkway and goes away to this other place.

1096
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: The challenge has been overcome.

1097
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 4: Yes, so this other place is a lattice of mcsher

1098
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:58,880
Speaker 4: beams that are interlocking in impossible ways.

1099
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,320
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, at this point, like where are we? Like,

1100
01:02:02,360 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 1: are we it within the confines of some great supercomputer?

1101
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: Are we in another dimension? I mean, it's hard to

1102
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: say exactly what's going on here, and that's the beauty

1103
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 1: of it.

1104
01:02:13,920 --> 01:02:16,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, in one of the rooms the hero goes into

1105
01:02:16,600 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 4: here seems to be inside the game he just played,

1106
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 4: like he's in shrunken form, and the game pieces are

1107
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:25,960
Speaker 4: the giant shapes moving around him. He walks on the

1108
01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 4: board and of course Scale is being played with once

1109
01:02:29,760 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 4: again like I mentioned at the beginning. But then at

1110
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 4: one point, the man, oh, and we're told I can't

1111
01:02:34,640 --> 01:02:36,280
Speaker 4: remember if I already said this, but if not, this

1112
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:39,480
Speaker 4: is day five, so this is supposed to this is

1113
01:02:39,520 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 4: the time they said earlier that he would be in midlife.

1114
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:45,880
Speaker 4: And at one point the man is he's sort of

1115
01:02:46,080 --> 01:02:49,760
Speaker 4: messing around on the game board with these pieces, and

1116
01:02:49,760 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 4: then he looks at his reflection in a metal piece

1117
01:02:52,560 --> 01:02:54,960
Speaker 4: and he says to himself, he realizes he is getting

1118
01:02:55,000 --> 01:02:56,880
Speaker 4: old and he has to hurry, he has to get

1119
01:02:56,920 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 4: to the gate. And I was like, wait a minute,

1120
01:02:59,160 --> 01:03:02,720
Speaker 4: is this literally a life crisis vignette? He's like, oh, maybe,

1121
01:03:02,760 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 4: so yeah, he's like messing around playing games in this

1122
01:03:06,320 --> 01:03:09,240
Speaker 4: confusing space, and then he looks at himself in the

1123
01:03:09,400 --> 01:03:13,040
Speaker 4: mirror and has a sudden reminder of his mortality, and

1124
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 4: then he really picks up the pace.

1125
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't know that he should also buy a

1126
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:20,479
Speaker 1: leather jacket and look into motorcycles or something.

1127
01:03:20,560 --> 01:03:24,920
Speaker 4: Right, So we see him traveling through other weird landscapes,

1128
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:28,760
Speaker 4: some natural, some artificial. One is like a I don't

1129
01:03:28,760 --> 01:03:31,320
Speaker 4: even know what you call this, like a big flat,

1130
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 4: empty rectangular space that looks out onto looks out like

1131
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:41,240
Speaker 4: into the void, and there are planets beyond, so it's

1132
01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:44,960
Speaker 4: almost as if he's in a spaceship. There's another point

1133
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:50,000
Speaker 4: where he's wandering through this huge field of just pits

1134
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 4: that are inverted step pyramids.

1135
01:03:53,440 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, this must be where like maybe they cut the

1136
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:57,960
Speaker 1: pyramids from earlier out of this landscape.

1137
01:03:58,000 --> 01:03:58,360
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1138
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:02,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, a landscape just colossal works. I guess that's what

1139
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:03,000
Speaker 1: we're to take from it.

1140
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:06,280
Speaker 4: And I love these landscapes. The sets are amazing. But

1141
01:04:06,320 --> 01:04:10,640
Speaker 4: then finally, finally day seven comes, he's getting old and

1142
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 4: he makes it to the gate, the gate that was promised.

1143
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:18,960
Speaker 4: So he comes upon this sort of hole in the

1144
01:04:19,040 --> 01:04:22,680
Speaker 4: rocks where light is spilling through and he walks up

1145
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 4: to it and realizes a giant mechanism, This big metal

1146
01:04:26,800 --> 01:04:31,240
Speaker 4: bar is descending toward him slowly, and when it reaches him,

1147
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:35,560
Speaker 4: the mechanism has controls that have hand prints on them

1148
01:04:35,600 --> 01:04:37,560
Speaker 4: that he could put his hands in. It's kind of

1149
01:04:37,600 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 4: like that button that makes air on Mars in Total recall,

1150
01:04:41,840 --> 01:04:45,000
Speaker 4: you know, a metal thing with a handprint on it.

1151
01:04:46,080 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 4: So he's like, okay, I got to put my hands

1152
01:04:48,240 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 4: on it. So he puts his hands in the prints

1153
01:04:50,000 --> 01:04:53,760
Speaker 4: and it makes music. It releases this booming tone, and

1154
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:57,280
Speaker 4: then the whole mechanism sinks into the floor and the

1155
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:01,640
Speaker 4: gate opens and light spills over everything, not just on

1156
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 4: the man there in the place, but light seems to

1157
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 4: spill over the whole planet. So we go back to

1158
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 4: the place we came from. We see light filling in

1159
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:15,080
Speaker 4: the caverns where the people from the First Day live,

1160
01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 4: and there are lots of old people there, but we

1161
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:21,280
Speaker 4: get to hear their heartbeats slowing down as the light

1162
01:05:21,320 --> 01:05:24,720
Speaker 4: pours over them. And the light is of a very

1163
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 4: different color color warmth, than the stuff we've seen before.

1164
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 4: Most of the movie has been kind of blue green gray.

1165
01:05:33,080 --> 01:05:36,160
Speaker 4: The light now is orange. And then we return to

1166
01:05:36,200 --> 01:05:39,480
Speaker 4: the hero and we find him in a land, in

1167
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 4: a natural landscape unlike anything we've seen before. Now the

1168
01:05:43,080 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 4: world is green, green, green. He's on these hills covered

1169
01:05:46,680 --> 01:05:49,640
Speaker 4: in green grass, not the kind of pale, gross blue

1170
01:05:49,680 --> 01:05:52,720
Speaker 4: green of the fog in the world before. Now it's

1171
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:58,040
Speaker 4: like vibrant green, springtime, green hills covered in green grass

1172
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 4: and trees with flowers blue everywhere. And the man is

1173
01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:03,880
Speaker 4: just walking through it looking like Jesus.

1174
01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:08,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of a like a seventies white Jesus, kind

1175
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:11,840
Speaker 1: of like a Kenney Loggin's kind of a look here, yeah.

1176
01:06:11,160 --> 01:06:15,320
Speaker 4: Exactly, Yes, like hippie movie Jesus. Yeah. But he's got

1177
01:06:15,360 --> 01:06:17,760
Speaker 4: a magnificent beard, and you can tell he's just vibing

1178
01:06:17,800 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 4: on the nature that he's looking at. And then the

1179
01:06:21,520 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 4: boy's like looking at the plants. I don't know why

1180
01:06:23,800 --> 01:06:25,920
Speaker 4: I called him the boy. He's a man now, he's

1181
01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:28,320
Speaker 4: just mere days old, so that is true. He's like

1182
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:30,320
Speaker 4: looking at the plants. And then we get some narration

1183
01:06:31,080 --> 01:06:34,720
Speaker 4: where it's an ending that is at once a little

1184
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 4: bit a little bit corny, but also kind of beautiful.

1185
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:40,720
Speaker 4: He says, of all the twenty thousand days I have

1186
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,480
Speaker 4: which day will be the finest, which will be the

1187
01:06:43,480 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 4: best any day, any hour, any minute, and then we

1188
01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:51,280
Speaker 4: end as like geese are flying across this disc of

1189
01:06:51,320 --> 01:06:51,720
Speaker 4: the sun.

1190
01:06:52,520 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so upbeat and positive, and I think

1191
01:06:56,840 --> 01:06:59,560
Speaker 1: if you dig into it, it does get into some

1192
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:02,160
Speaker 1: serious depth, you know. I mean, how do you how

1193
01:07:02,200 --> 01:07:06,560
Speaker 1: do you overcome the shortness of our lives and the

1194
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 1: marching of time.

1195
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 2: Well, one way.

1196
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:13,560
Speaker 1: Is is by retreating into the now and focusing on

1197
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:16,840
Speaker 1: the now, focusing on any day, any hour, any minute,

1198
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:20,000
Speaker 1: you know, finding those little things, you know. So that's

1199
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: that's what came to my mind when I heard this.

1200
01:07:22,320 --> 01:07:24,800
Speaker 1: But on the other level, yes, it is like such

1201
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: an upbeat ending. I don't know. We get more used

1202
01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:34,280
Speaker 1: to more pessimistic endings in our films, so I don't know,

1203
01:07:34,280 --> 01:07:37,400
Speaker 1: it was it was refreshing that it does feel so

1204
01:07:37,520 --> 01:07:40,120
Speaker 1: optimistic at the end, like he succeeded in his quest,

1205
01:07:40,160 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: he brought life to everyone, and in the revelation here

1206
01:07:45,320 --> 01:07:47,600
Speaker 1: is perhaps a little deeper if we dig into it.

1207
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:52,440
Speaker 4: Well, in another one of those observations that is both

1208
01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:55,840
Speaker 4: profound and true and also can be kind of corny,

1209
01:07:55,920 --> 01:07:57,720
Speaker 4: But that doesn't make it any less true is the

1210
01:07:58,040 --> 01:08:01,120
Speaker 4: thing about you know, you can and you can overcome

1211
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:03,680
Speaker 4: the kind of despair about the perspective of the shortness

1212
01:08:03,680 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 4: of your life by having purpose, by having a mission,

1213
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:10,080
Speaker 4: by having a purpose that a purpose that is sort

1214
01:08:10,120 --> 01:08:13,400
Speaker 4: of other oriented, you know, that is driven towards not

1215
01:08:13,480 --> 01:08:16,920
Speaker 4: just yourself and your own gratification, but living for others.

1216
01:08:17,400 --> 01:08:19,840
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it reminds me of against some of

1217
01:08:19,840 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 1: what we've been discussing in our Mystery cult series. So

1218
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:27,200
Speaker 1: a lot of times some of the best nuggets of

1219
01:08:27,240 --> 01:08:30,880
Speaker 1: wisdom are also kind of overstatements of the obvious, like

1220
01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:32,880
Speaker 1: you know, love is all you need, love is the

1221
01:08:32,920 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 1: fifth element, what have you? You know, But these are

1222
01:08:36,560 --> 01:08:39,200
Speaker 1: also things that are true, and it all comes down

1223
01:08:39,200 --> 01:08:41,880
Speaker 1: to presentation. And in the same way we talked about

1224
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:43,800
Speaker 1: some of the initiations of the mystery cults, where there

1225
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:47,639
Speaker 1: might be something that is key to the initiation, something

1226
01:08:47,640 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: that is revealed in a box and if you just

1227
01:08:50,080 --> 01:08:52,600
Speaker 1: take it out of context, if you're a critic and

1228
01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:54,320
Speaker 1: you're just like, look at this thing they have in

1229
01:08:54,320 --> 01:08:55,800
Speaker 1: the box here, how corny is that?

1230
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:56,320
Speaker 2: You know?

1231
01:08:56,360 --> 01:08:58,600
Speaker 1: But if it's within context, if it occurs at the

1232
01:08:58,720 --> 01:09:02,320
Speaker 1: end of the initiation, then perhaps it is able to

1233
01:09:02,360 --> 01:09:04,960
Speaker 1: settle into your psyche in a more rewarding way.

1234
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:08,320
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, just for example, you know, you could say,

1235
01:09:09,479 --> 01:09:12,760
Speaker 4: like a Demeter is reunited with her daughter, and this

1236
01:09:12,960 --> 01:09:15,680
Speaker 4: brings us, you know, this ear of grain, which represents

1237
01:09:15,720 --> 01:09:18,040
Speaker 4: the wealth, the fruits of our fields, and it's what

1238
01:09:18,080 --> 01:09:20,599
Speaker 4: we live by. You know, if you just like put

1239
01:09:20,640 --> 01:09:23,120
Speaker 4: it in those words, somebody could be like, oh, yeah, okay,

1240
01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:25,040
Speaker 4: that's not all that impressive. But if you watch the

1241
01:09:25,080 --> 01:09:27,840
Speaker 4: whole drama and you take part in the suffering and

1242
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:30,400
Speaker 4: the passion and the relief of the reunion of mother

1243
01:09:30,439 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 4: and daughter and all that, it can be overwhelming. It's

1244
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:35,559
Speaker 4: something that follows you every day of your life. You

1245
01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 4: never never look at some flower the same way. Again.

1246
01:09:38,360 --> 01:09:41,000
Speaker 1: Yeah again, not everything that frightens or hurts you is bad.

1247
01:09:41,120 --> 01:09:43,639
Speaker 1: Fear and pain or your teachers learn survive.

1248
01:09:44,120 --> 01:09:47,120
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. I think the real moral of the story

1249
01:09:47,160 --> 01:09:49,759
Speaker 4: is if you're feeling down, play chess with a yetti

1250
01:09:49,920 --> 01:09:51,800
Speaker 4: and make sure you win.

1251
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:58,880
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, that is nineteen eighty four's quest. Again,

1252
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:00,720
Speaker 1: if you wish to experience as well, you should be

1253
01:10:00,760 --> 01:10:02,760
Speaker 1: able to find it out there and again, hopefully in

1254
01:10:02,760 --> 01:10:04,280
Speaker 1: the future there will be some sort.

1255
01:10:04,080 --> 01:10:06,240
Speaker 2: Of proper restored release as well.

1256
01:10:06,920 --> 01:10:09,040
Speaker 1: Just a reminder for everyone out there that Stuff to

1257
01:10:09,040 --> 01:10:11,400
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast

1258
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:14,000
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays

1259
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:16,880
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

1260
01:10:16,880 --> 01:10:21,080
Speaker 1: a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you're

1261
01:10:21,200 --> 01:10:24,639
Speaker 1: on letterbox dot com, you can find us. Our username

1262
01:10:24,680 --> 01:10:26,840
Speaker 1: is weird House and we have a nice list there

1263
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:29,760
Speaker 1: of all the episodes that we have covered so far,

1264
01:10:29,840 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 1: all the movies we have covered so far. Rather, and

1265
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:34,599
Speaker 1: I will remind you that at this point we're at

1266
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:38,280
Speaker 1: one ninety six, so we're coming in hot on selection

1267
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 1: two hundred. We already have some recommendations for what that

1268
01:10:42,080 --> 01:10:44,920
Speaker 1: episode might be, what film we could possibly cover for

1269
01:10:44,960 --> 01:10:48,000
Speaker 1: the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, but continue to

1270
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:50,800
Speaker 1: write in We have not made a decision as yet.

1271
01:10:51,000 --> 01:10:52,840
Speaker 4: It's going to be Mortal Kombat Annihilation.

1272
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:57,000
Speaker 1: It could be it could be that that is the

1273
01:10:57,040 --> 01:10:57,960
Speaker 1: most fitting choice.

1274
01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:01,240
Speaker 4: Huge thanks as always to our ex still an audio producer,

1275
01:11:01,320 --> 01:11:03,679
Speaker 4: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch

1276
01:11:03,720 --> 01:11:05,880
Speaker 4: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

1277
01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:08,040
Speaker 4: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1278
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:10,880
Speaker 4: say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff

1279
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:18,800
Speaker 4: to Blow your Mind dot com.

1280
01:11:18,920 --> 01:11:21,880
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1281
01:11:21,960 --> 01:11:24,759
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1282
01:11:24,920 --> 01:11:28,080
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.