Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and let's see we have a fun one
Speaker 1: to talk about here today. This one originally published three fourteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. It's our episode on the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four saw An The Lame Bass short film Quest. This
Speaker 1: one is a visionary take on human mortality, written by
Speaker 1: the Great Ray Brad Perry.
Speaker 2: Let's have it.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 4: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today's episode feels like a perfect fit in a
Speaker 1: number of ways. For starters, we've been discussing mystery cults
Speaker 1: on our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: and where the concept of an imagistic religion has been
Speaker 1: key to our our discussions. There infrequent high sensory rights
Speaker 1: of passage, and I feel like today's film matches up
Speaker 1: with that concept on a couple of levels. Furthermore, to understand,
Speaker 1: we potentially have more eyes on the podcast feed this week,
Speaker 1: and it seemed proper to maybe the lean a little
Speaker 1: more into science fiction. Plus, we've also been saving this
Speaker 1: one for a week when we had maybe a little
Speaker 1: less time. This is one of the shorter pictures we've
Speaker 1: looked at on Weird House Cinema. It's only a half
Speaker 1: hour long, but that's fitting given the subject matter, and
Speaker 1: boy does it pack a lot in So what's the movie.
Speaker 1: The movie is the nineteen eighty four short film Quest.
Speaker 1: I note that I am going to mistakenly refer to
Speaker 1: this film as Conquest at least once during the course
Speaker 1: of this podcast, but not to be confused with Lucio
Speaker 1: Fulci's Conquest. This is Quest. It is adapted for the
Speaker 1: screen written by Ray Bradbury, and it is directed by
Speaker 1: Saul and Elaine Bass.
Speaker 4: Now this is not our first Bass film. We talked
Speaker 4: about Saul and Elaine Bass when we covered the movie
Speaker 4: Phase four, which was about super intelligent ants. That was
Speaker 4: a very interesting movie. But one thing I remember thinking
Speaker 4: about it was that it felt somewhat constrained by realism
Speaker 4: for most of its run time, except in like the
Speaker 4: very last couple of minutes where it got super weird,
Speaker 4: and it almost felt like, you know, that that level
Speaker 4: of weirdness was being held back for much of the runtime.
Speaker 4: I think that is not something you could say about Quest.
Speaker 1: Now, this film is all abstract and surreal weirdness. It
Speaker 1: is not held back by the necessities of for the
Speaker 1: most part, of the necessities of genre or plot or character,
Speaker 1: or any of the conventional trappings of narrative filmmaking. It
Speaker 1: is instead more like an initiation into a great mystery.
Speaker 4: That's right. I mean, its plot is very basic. It
Speaker 4: is essentially a there's a premise, which we'll explain more
Speaker 4: as we go on, but it essentially has to do
Speaker 4: with characters whose life spans are unnaturally short. And then
Speaker 4: from that premise there is a character who must make
Speaker 4: a journey through a difficult sort of hero's journey in
Speaker 4: order to cure the people of this condition of having
Speaker 4: shortened life spans.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we have a chosen one, we have a quest,
Speaker 1: and yeah it's quite an adventure.
Speaker 4: But so with the plot itself being quite simple, what
Speaker 4: is left to fill in the kind of uniqueness of
Speaker 4: the movie is the series of images that it supplies.
Speaker 4: This is a movie that is about creating weird scenes.
Speaker 4: And I really like the the variable tone of the
Speaker 4: sort of settings that we get Because there were sort
Speaker 4: of natural settings we see our hero wandering through rocky
Speaker 4: landscapes and you know, mountain mountain passes and plains and
Speaker 4: things like that. But then all as we get not
Speaker 4: even artificial but almost geometric like abstract landscapes that couldn't
Speaker 4: really exist in reality. They're they're like illustrations from an
Speaker 4: mc escher drawing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they increasingly surreal landscapes and environments. You know,
Speaker 1: you go from from some settings that have like a
Speaker 1: very like dark fantasy sword and sandals kind of feel,
Speaker 1: into settings that feel like they have perhaps been stripped
Speaker 1: from tron somehow.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yes, it starts a tour and ends esher Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, my elevator pitch for this one, I just
Speaker 1: dug up a quick Bible verse teach us to number our.
Speaker 2: Days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that'll come up later.
Speaker 1: Now. As for the trailer for this one, there's seemingly
Speaker 1: no true trailer for this film, which isn't surprising, as
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of the reasons here. It only
Speaker 1: played in festival competitions and never received a theatrical release.
Speaker 1: But maybe we can just have a brief audio sample
Speaker 1: of JJ's choosing here.
Speaker 5: Is this the one one?
Speaker 6: Day from now, you'll be a grown boy two or three,
Speaker 6: young man, five, middle age seven old. In eight days.
Speaker 7: You'll stop and die. Listen to our hearts race. Listen
Speaker 7: to your own heart race.
Speaker 6: We are locked away in the world where our lives
Speaker 6: speak through time.
Speaker 5: In eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know.
Speaker 5: It's time now the teaching begins.
Speaker 8: Listen to them, no honqutution them.
Speaker 2: All right now.
Speaker 1: If you want to watch Quest from nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: before proceeding here, well, DVD and VHS releases have apparently
Speaker 1: been available. There's some evidence I've found that you can
Speaker 1: order some sort of a DVD of this movie, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, I can't tell that it has
Speaker 1: benefited from a high quality physical media release, at least
Speaker 1: not yet. Hopefully there's some sort of you know, collected
Speaker 1: short films of Saul in the Lane bass disc that'll
Speaker 1: come out in the future, and when it does, we
Speaker 1: will certainly promote it here on Weird House Cinema. As
Speaker 1: of right now, you can easily find this film on YouTube.
Speaker 1: There's at least one version that claims to be some
Speaker 1: level of remastering. I'm never sure how that works when
Speaker 1: you have a unofficial remastering of films, so I'm not
Speaker 1: completely certain on that. I think that Eternal Family, which
Speaker 1: you can find at Eternal TV, I believe they have
Speaker 1: offered it in the past, but I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: it is currently offered, But check out Eternal Family. Either way,
Speaker 1: their catalog often matches up with weird house cinema tastes.
Speaker 1: But I'm confident that if you are interested in watching
Speaker 1: Quest out there, you can find a stream of it somewhere,
Speaker 1: and then hopefully down the road we'll get that high
Speaker 1: quality release that we all clearly need.
Speaker 4: All right, should we talk about the connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start at the top with the direct and producers.
Speaker 1: It's Saul and Elaine Bass, husband and wife design power couple.
Speaker 1: We discussed saw Bass previously in our episode on nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four's Phase four. That was only his slash there.
Speaker 1: I may go back and forth from referring to him
Speaker 1: and referring to he and his wife. They work together,
Speaker 1: I believe on most of these projects after a certain point,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't always credited right at there at the top,
Speaker 1: But on Quest they are co directors and are credited
Speaker 1: as such. But yeah, Phase four was their only feature
Speaker 1: length directorial credit, a film that, yeah, we might describe
Speaker 1: as the two thousand and one a space odyssey of
Speaker 1: ant movies, an increasingly weird man versus nature film that
Speaker 1: reaches a fever pitch of an ending in its theatrical cut,
Speaker 1: but absolutely explodes in a cinematic acid trip if you
Speaker 1: watch the original ending, which is even weirder and stranger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the spoiler for this movie is that humanity is
Speaker 4: sort of being, would you say, competed with by hyper
Speaker 4: intelligent ants, and the ants win in the end, and
Speaker 4: when the ants win, there's an ending where it's I recall,
Speaker 4: it's sort of implied that humans aren't all just like
Speaker 4: killed by the ants. Like, life goes on, but life
Speaker 4: is increasingly completely incomprehensible because we are unable to understand
Speaker 4: the intelligence or desire or or what is meaningful to
Speaker 4: the ant powers that are governing our lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of unclear if it's that a downer
Speaker 1: ending or a happy ending, because it's that surreal and
Speaker 1: out there, like it's it's beyond your human expectations of
Speaker 1: good and bad endings.
Speaker 4: You cannot imagine an ant ruled world. You just can't
Speaker 4: even get there now.
Speaker 1: Saubass lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six. Elaine Bass
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen twenty seven and as of this
Speaker 1: recording is still around now. We talked a bit about
Speaker 1: Saul Bass on our episode regarding Phase four again. He
Speaker 1: was the title sequence slash title design guy of his era.
Speaker 1: A Bass title sequence is often credited as a perfect
Speaker 1: condensation of the feel of a picture, just taking the
Speaker 1: whole vibe of that picture and condensing it down to
Speaker 1: just a mere couple of minutes. So you'll hear a
Speaker 1: lot of filmmakers, even contemporary filmmakers, just talk about his
Speaker 1: mastery of this. He crafted title sequences for major films
Speaker 1: from the mid fifties all the way through the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the likes of the Seven Year Itch, Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus,
Speaker 1: West Side Story, Seconds, which we covered on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: Broadcast News, Big Good Fellas, Kate Beer, and Casino. The
Speaker 1: credits to Mad Men on TV. This was an homage
Speaker 1: to his work he did for a number of big
Speaker 1: name companies throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he
Speaker 1: also did some pretty famous movie posters as well, including
Speaker 1: the aforementioned films as well as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
Speaker 1: I consulted a book for a little more detail about
Speaker 1: Saul and Elaine Bass, a book titled Saalbath's Anatomy of
Speaker 1: Film Design by Jan Christopher Horrock, which of course has
Speaker 1: a great deal to say about their approach to art,
Speaker 1: everything from you know, title and loco design work to
Speaker 1: of course their cinematic output. And again, from about nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty onward, Elaine was his longtime creative partner who worked
Speaker 1: with him on pretty much most of these projects. So
Speaker 1: she's not again she's not always credited earlier on, but
Speaker 1: certainly by the time of today's film she shared official
Speaker 1: credit with her husband. Their first short film was nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. Is The Searching Eye, a contemplation of visual
Speaker 1: awareness and the unseen world. This one was narrated by
Speaker 1: Vic Perrin, who recently talked about the voice of the
Speaker 1: Outer Limits and also the Gargoyle.
Speaker 4: The narrator at the beginning of Gargoyles and dubbed in
Speaker 4: on Bernie Casey's g Gargoyle King.
Speaker 1: Yes, The Searching Eye was followed by From Here to
Speaker 1: There The same year, and Why Man Creates in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, a meditation on creativity and nature did won
Speaker 1: an Oscar the following year for Best Documentary Short Subjects,
Speaker 1: and this paved the way for Phase four, which we've
Speaker 1: previously talked about. Two other short films followed, seventy eight's
Speaker 1: Notes on the Popular Arts and nineteen eighties The Solar
Speaker 1: Film that was an OSCAR nominated documentary produced by Robert
Speaker 1: Redford about the perils of fossil fuels and the need
Speaker 1: for humanity to pivot to clean solar energy. And all
Speaker 1: of this leads up to their final film project, and
Speaker 1: that is nineteen eighty four's Quest. As Horrick relates, it's
Speaker 1: the origin story on this one is super interesting, So
Speaker 1: bear with me here. This is a lot I was
Speaker 1: not expecting it to be this rich. So this was
Speaker 1: a Japanese funded production funded by the Church of World Messianity,
Speaker 1: a new religious movement founded in nineteen thirty five by
Speaker 1: Mokichio Kata who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: A religious movement that promotes spiritual cleansing via the Divine light.
Speaker 4: WHOA I did not expect it to take this turn.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So apparently, as I understand it based on reading Horrock's book, here,
Speaker 1: people affiliated with the church at this point. I think
Speaker 1: the church was kind of going through like some rebranding,
Speaker 1: a little bit redesign, like entering a new era, and
Speaker 1: they were really taken by the Bass's design work. This
Speaker 1: work had recently been featured in a nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: issue of Idea, and so they approached him about creating
Speaker 1: a visionary film to play in the church's temples and spaces.
Speaker 1: So Saal Bass apparently wasn't really all that interested in
Speaker 1: creating an overtly religious work, but was drawn to the
Speaker 1: idea of quote a purely metaphoric vision without proselytizing for
Speaker 1: the church and quote a positive film that doesn't view
Speaker 1: life as a prelude to a disaster.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the Basses and the funders here may have
Speaker 4: had totally different visions about what made this project appealing,
Speaker 4: but nevertheless they could both get what they wanted out
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: That does seem to be the amazing thing about it,
Speaker 1: because they did reach an agreement here. So I think
Speaker 1: basically Saul Bass had worked with some big corporations before
Speaker 1: funding his other works and was able to keep a
Speaker 1: great deal of creative freedom over.
Speaker 2: The final product.
Speaker 1: And he thought, really, I mean, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: it would be kind of almost naive to think this,
Speaker 1: but he thought, well, we can do the same thing
Speaker 1: working with a religious organization. But he was right that
Speaker 1: it seems like it basically worked out like that.
Speaker 4: It's like when the Baptist Church of la funded Plan
Speaker 4: nine from Outer Space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. So yeah, they funded this for the
Speaker 1: tune of I believe a million dollars was the overall budget.
Speaker 1: And again this was back in the eighties, and it
Speaker 1: does feature strong themes of light, which line up with
Speaker 1: some of the doctrines that I understand them of the
Speaker 1: church in question here. But otherwise the plot the finished
Speaker 1: film is detached from the church's teaching, so again kind
Speaker 1: of a secularization of maybe some of their core values,
Speaker 1: but in a way that doesn't lean too heavily into
Speaker 1: like preaching the gospel of this particular faith.
Speaker 4: Kind of like if you could get a i don't know,
Speaker 4: just some mainstream Christian church to sponsor you by creating
Speaker 4: a story about sacrifice and redemption that didn't have any
Speaker 4: overt Christian terms or ideas in it, apart from the themes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So the film never received a theatrical release
Speaker 1: in the United States, but it did play at plenty
Speaker 1: of festivals, winning at least one award. It attracted a
Speaker 1: number of fans, including George Lucas, which is not surprising.
Speaker 1: Lucas praised its effects, its music, and its use of
Speaker 1: the hero's journey. Meanwhile, back in Japan, it played eight
Speaker 1: times a day at the church's headquarters for a period
Speaker 1: of four years.
Speaker 4: Wow does that beat Rocky Horror for the longest theatrical
Speaker 4: run just in terms of total number of plays?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that would be an interesting question to actually
Speaker 1: get into, because, of course, at the Studio ghibli Museum
Speaker 1: in Tokyo they play various short films of Miyazaki's exclusively there.
Speaker 1: It's the only place you can see most of them
Speaker 1: outside of maybe catching them at a festival or a
Speaker 1: special showing. That being said, I don't think they're playing
Speaker 1: the same film every day, four times a day. But
Speaker 1: then again, this is only a period of four years,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how many total viewings they were
Speaker 1: able to chalk up during that time. There was I
Speaker 1: read in Quors Book, though there was apparently some concern
Speaker 1: on the Japanese side here that if the film were
Speaker 1: commercialized too much it would cause political problems for the church,
Speaker 1: which allegedly this allegedly stifled some of its reach, so
Speaker 1: there might have been some tension over that fact. But
Speaker 1: still it did play in festivals, people did get to
Speaker 1: see it, people continue to see it, and again, hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll get to see some sort of proper release of
Speaker 1: it in the future.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So they agreed to the basic terms of this film,
Speaker 1: but then they still needed somebody to write it, so
Speaker 1: they reached out to legendary author Ray Bradbury, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty through twenty twelve, the author of such famous
Speaker 1: works as The Martian Chronicles in Hight four fifty one,
Speaker 1: The Illustrated Man, The October Country, and so forth. He
Speaker 1: was also a successful screenwriter in his own right, having
Speaker 1: written the screenplay for the nineteen fifty six adaptation of
Speaker 1: Moby Dick, and his work was also adapted for TV
Speaker 1: and film going back to the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold.
Speaker 1: It Came from Outer Space in fifty three, which we
Speaker 1: may come back to on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: You know, this makes me think I've never seen a
Speaker 4: film adaptation of Moby Dick, and I'd be very curious
Speaker 4: how they do it, because that's one of my favorite
Speaker 4: novels and it doesn't seem like it would adapt to
Speaker 4: the screen very well. So much of it is just
Speaker 4: in the you know, it's in the weirdness of the narrator.
Speaker 4: It's in like the kind of essays about seatology and
Speaker 4: things like that. It seems like it would be hard
Speaker 4: to turn into a movie, But I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 4: they do a good job.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but I remember really enjoying Gregory Peck in the adaptation
Speaker 1: from fifty six, and since Ray Brebery did the screenplay,
Speaker 1: maybe we can do it on Weird House Cinema. That's enough.
Speaker 1: It's basically sci fi, So yeah, Saul and Elaine Bass
Speaker 1: reached out to Bradbury to script Quest, and Bradbury adapted
Speaker 1: his own nineteen forty six story, Frost and Fire. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a number of changes made apparently here, as
Speaker 1: Bradbury updated the structure of that old story for this
Speaker 1: new project. So, first of all, Saul was wary of
Speaker 1: overreaching with their budget, and requested that it be set
Speaker 1: on Earth, or at least an earth like world, rather
Speaker 1: than an overtly alien planet. That seems like a reasonable
Speaker 1: budgetary request, though having seen the full film, I feel
Speaker 1: like we get very unearthly.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, at least half of it's taken place in
Speaker 4: geometry textbook illustrations, not on any landscape I would recognize.
Speaker 1: Right, So I don't feel like they really held back
Speaker 1: too much there. Also, while the original story is more
Speaker 1: hard science fiction, in the original story of the characters
Speaker 1: depleted lifespan are apparently due to radiation, and they're able
Speaker 1: to depend on some sort of race memory. They have
Speaker 1: to convey the essentials of the quest as we'll get
Speaker 1: into to each subsequent generation, Whereas the version of the
Speaker 1: story that we get in the Quest has a more
Speaker 1: mythic vibe to it. It feels more like fantasy or
Speaker 1: sword and Sandals, but then gets increasingly stranger and more surreal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's funny. I seem to recall in the past
Speaker 4: at some point Bradbury making some kind of derisive comments
Speaker 4: about science fiction and saying that he preferred to write
Speaker 4: fantasy because that was like I don't know he thought
Speaker 4: it was like less bound by realism or something. Maybe
Speaker 4: I'm misremembering that.
Speaker 1: That way, they would kind of match up with what
Speaker 1: we see here. Like you can well imagine Bradbury seeing
Speaker 1: this as the opportunity to take what interests him the
Speaker 1: most about that old story that was written, you know,
Speaker 1: very much for the sci fi publications of the day,
Speaker 1: taking the essence of that and updating it and making
Speaker 1: it more mythic, freeing it from the shackles of the
Speaker 1: science fiction. Perhaps because clearly caveat, I have not read
Speaker 1: the original Bradbury story, but I get a strong hint
Speaker 1: here that Bradbury wasn't really interested in the effects of
Speaker 1: radiation human beings. It's more about issues of mortality and
Speaker 1: cross generational efforts and so forth. Now, as for the
Speaker 1: human cast of Quest, there are a bunch of people
Speaker 1: in this and everyone is just bolk credited at the end.
Speaker 1: They don't specify who plays who, and it leaves the
Speaker 1: task to your humble podcasters to try and figure out
Speaker 1: exactly who's who in this picture. We are not going
Speaker 1: to single out everyone, but I do want to mention
Speaker 1: just a few of the players here who are notable
Speaker 1: because of their work elsewhere, and my apologies to anyone
Speaker 1: that I did leave out.
Speaker 2: Because of this.
Speaker 1: Multiple actors, for instance, play are chosen one, our hero
Speaker 1: of the tale, because he's going to start. We cover
Speaker 1: most of his life over the course of the narrative.
Speaker 1: He begins as a baby and will end with him
Speaker 1: as a mature adult man. But we have different actors
Speaker 1: playing him, and it's not a makeup effect.
Speaker 4: That would have been a good choice though, if you
Speaker 4: had a baby the whole time with just makeup and
Speaker 4: making the older.
Speaker 1: Yeah or win in both directions, you know, have like
Speaker 1: a twenty five year old actor and then age him
Speaker 1: and de age him all the way down to baby.
Speaker 1: All right. One of the early characters we encounter in
Speaker 1: this is an unnam character that I thought of as
Speaker 1: the elder, some sort of a wise older individual who
Speaker 1: is looking for the chosen one and finds the chosen one.
Speaker 4: And this is the monklike guy who does the palm
Speaker 4: reading on the baby at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This character is played by John Abbott who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: oh five through nineteen ninety six, an English Shakespearean actor
Speaker 1: with very expressive eyes, known for roles and let's say
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight's The Woman in White. He had an
Speaker 1: appearance on the original Star Trek, the original Lost in Space,
Speaker 1: and his other credits, of which he has a lot
Speaker 1: include nineteen forty fours The Mask of Demetrios. This is
Speaker 1: one I've looked at before because it's a Peter Lorrie movie.
Speaker 1: He's also in Cry of the were Wolf from the
Speaker 1: same year, and he was the voice of Akella the
Speaker 1: Wolf in Disney's The Jungle Book back in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: All Right, again, multiple actors play the chosen one, our hero,
Speaker 1: but at one point the hero is played by Noah
Speaker 1: Hathaway born nineteen seventy one. Fittingly, this is, of course,
Speaker 1: the actor who also played a Treyu in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Is the never Ending Story, which we covered on a
Speaker 1: previous episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: I thought he looked familiar. Yeah, is this the day too, boy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the boy that I believe begins the journey. Right,
Speaker 1: He's passed his tests and he's then setting out on
Speaker 1: the journey.
Speaker 4: He graduated Harvard College jail where he got into a
Speaker 4: and then he gets to go out on the journey.
Speaker 1: Now, another actor that shows up in this is Bill Irwin.
Speaker 1: I think he plays an old man that is encountered
Speaker 1: late in the picture. That is another monk like figure.
Speaker 4: Oh, the hooded guy at the Egyptian temple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe this is Bill Irwin. I could be
Speaker 1: wrong on this. Bill Irwin lived nineteen fourteen through twenty ten,
Speaker 1: an American character actor who appeared in more than two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty television and film roles, including the one
Speaker 1: that earned him an Emmy nomination in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: Retiree Sid Fields on the sitcom Seinfeld.
Speaker 4: You know, I wonder with actors like this, who are
Speaker 4: they're the character actor who just always plays a cantankerous
Speaker 4: old man. What did he do before he was old?
Speaker 2: Just always old?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like William Hickey late in life if you
Speaker 1: played contankerous old men, and also early in his career.
Speaker 2: So all right.
Speaker 1: The music in this film is also a real delight.
Speaker 1: It's you'll have Maybe you can explain the music and
Speaker 1: the sound of this film better than I can, Joe,
Speaker 1: But I just think of it as as soothing, other
Speaker 1: worldly cascade of electronic bliss and intrigue.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, just whipped butter synthesizer auras of really
Speaker 4: good stuff, a lot of great, you know, good contrast
Speaker 4: along the dynamic range. So there's a lot of synth
Speaker 4: bass that sends to me might be like a mog
Speaker 4: Taurus or something, you know, the strong pulsing bass tones,
Speaker 4: and then like synthesizer flutes that I don't know if
Speaker 4: you really get that sound much anymore. It was a
Speaker 4: big thing in the eighties where you would you would
Speaker 4: evoke a sense of mysticism by having a synthesizer flute
Speaker 4: that I feel like if you were composing a t
Speaker 4: and you went to put in that same synth flute voicing,
Speaker 4: it would sound really tenny and hokey to you, so
Speaker 4: you would use something else. But if you go back
Speaker 4: to these compositions that feature it, it's actually great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about here,
Speaker 1: and I think that the music it has this kind
Speaker 1: So again, we have this purifying light that is important
Speaker 1: to the faith that funded this picture, and then also
Speaker 1: there's a kind of purifying light that is key to
Speaker 1: the plot of our story, and the music feels like
Speaker 1: a fitting sonic incarnation of that light.
Speaker 4: I see what you're saying, yeah, the music shimmers a lot.
Speaker 4: It often expands to fit. You know, It'll be very
Speaker 4: quiet at first, and then as the light floods into
Speaker 4: the scene, the music floods onto the soundtrack. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it's good use of sonic textures.
Speaker 1: So the people behind the music here, well, Elaine Bass
Speaker 1: is credited on the music. She was, of note, a
Speaker 1: professional singer with some musical training prior to her design career.
Speaker 1: But then also we have credited Barrington Van Campen, who
Speaker 1: I looked him up. I can find a birthdate for him,
Speaker 1: but he is apparently still active on the San Francisco
Speaker 1: music scene. If you look up, if you go to
Speaker 1: the dbduo dot com, this is the website for Van
Speaker 1: Campen and Dale LeDuc. They have an acoustic act together,
Speaker 1: and there's a They also have some some some some
Speaker 1: brief bio information about Van Campen. Van Campen is a
Speaker 1: multi instrumentalist. His instruments include the melotron and various synthesizers.
Speaker 1: Uh and there's a lot of like session work and
Speaker 1: production work in his background as well.
Speaker 4: I just looked up Wait No l a Beatles tribute band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at one point, uh yeah, I think, I think,
Speaker 1: and I think they still do a lot of covers
Speaker 1: of Beatles songs of looking at They're still doing gig.
Speaker 1: If you're in San Francisco, you can go out and
Speaker 1: catch these guys. Tell them we sent you.
Speaker 4: Please request a Beatles tune and then request the theme
Speaker 4: from Quest.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Prior to this film, Van Kempen had worked as a
Speaker 1: musician on the Jerry Lewis film Slapstick of Another Kind,
Speaker 1: adapted from the work of Kurt Vonnegut and also co
Speaker 1: starring John Abbott, but Quest was seemingly his first credited
Speaker 1: film or TV composition, followed in nineteen eighty eight with
Speaker 1: the score for the film In Dangerous Company. He's also
Speaker 1: credited as composer on Faces of Death Volumes four and
Speaker 1: six in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety six. I have
Speaker 1: not and we'll never see the Faces of Death. My
Speaker 1: window for having watched Faces of Death has long passed.
Speaker 1: But he did some sort of work on there, And
Speaker 1: he also did a lot of work with such clients
Speaker 1: as AT and T, various TV channels and film studios,
Speaker 1: So I know, I just think he did a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of like mercenary sound work you know,
Speaker 1: and so I don't want to single him out for
Speaker 1: Faces of Death. Somebody had to do the music for
Speaker 1: Faces of Death might as well have been this guy.
Speaker 4: They could have also just sourced pre existing composition.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. That's very possible. And I don't
Speaker 2: know the full story on his involvement in Faces of Death.
Speaker 1: So don't don't put any of that on him, because again,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the music in Quest
Speaker 1: is amazing and I loved every minute of it.
Speaker 4: Okay, you want to talk about the plot, Oh, let's
Speaker 4: experience it all right. So when we first come up
Speaker 4: and get our title sequence, the camera seems to be
Speaker 4: navigating a cave or a megalithic structure of some kind, cold,
Speaker 4: dark stone walls. We've got shadows cut by shafts of light.
Speaker 4: Everything's kind of green and gray in color. There is
Speaker 4: a generally pale, cold kind of color scheme that defines
Speaker 4: most of the movie until the last couple minutes. It's greens, blues, whites,
Speaker 4: and grays. And when we first come in, also there's fog.
Speaker 4: The air is thick with fog. It's kind of swirling
Speaker 4: and suggesting, you know, a dark age in a way.
Speaker 4: And then there's a voiceover that says, before the gate
Speaker 4: was closed and the light began to fail, the ancients
Speaker 4: lived a long and fruitful life. Now our lifespan is
Speaker 4: eight days. Yes, for us, there is no time. The minutes,
Speaker 4: the hours, and the days fly away, and our lives
Speaker 4: along with them. And so all of this is being
Speaker 4: said is the camera is panning and traveling through these
Speaker 4: caverns and stone corridors. And then there's a thing that
Speaker 4: I liked that struck me as a kind of scale twist.
Speaker 4: So the cameras it's going through these stone caverns, and
Speaker 4: I had been assuming the spaces we were looking at
Speaker 4: were supposed to be roughly like human hall sized the
Speaker 4: camera at normal eye level for a person. But then
Speaker 4: suddenly we zoom in on a little crevice in a
Speaker 4: stone facade that looks like it's the size of a mousehole.
Speaker 4: But then you realize there are tiny stairs leading up
Speaker 4: to the crevice, and then you see a human form
Speaker 4: standing inside the doorway, and it becomes clear we're either
Speaker 4: looking at like a two inch tall human or the
Speaker 4: original reference scale you had in mind was wrong. And
Speaker 4: I think it's the latter, though there will be similar
Speaker 4: kind of scale inversions that happen later in the story
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to it just a certain degree. It's like
Speaker 1: this is a an artifact of how the techniques they
Speaker 1: use to shoot it. But also it feels fittingly surreal
Speaker 1: in this picture as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So from here we move into the cavern and
Speaker 4: come upon a group of people who are dressed in
Speaker 4: plain peasant clothing. There is again going along with the
Speaker 4: kind of dark age feeling. There is a since when
Speaker 4: we come to these people that are living abject lives
Speaker 4: of kind of darkness and ignorance and want. But the
Speaker 4: first thing we get to with these people is a
Speaker 4: scene of childbirth. So there are all these people in
Speaker 4: peasant clothing assisting a woman in childbirth. The baby is born,
Speaker 4: and a man in a sort of monastic beard holds
Speaker 4: the child up to this audience of elders some kind
Speaker 4: of counsel and they're asking is this the one? And
Speaker 4: a debate starts. The elders say it's too early to tell,
Speaker 4: and then another says, no, we cannot wait, we must
Speaker 4: chance it, And so they check the infant's hand. They
Speaker 4: have this monk like man. Look at the hand and
Speaker 4: the baby's palm opens and yes, we see some crinkles there,
Speaker 4: but I think they're actually doing a palm reading. The
Speaker 4: monk like man says, yes, the line is strong. I
Speaker 4: think talking about the lifeline.
Speaker 1: Now. I love the way that the plight of the
Speaker 1: people here is presented, because it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where on one level, yes, it's fantastic, but on the
Speaker 1: other it's like, yeah, that's how our subjective experience of
Speaker 1: time sometimes goes. It feels like it is flowing faster
Speaker 1: than it should and we have no time, or we
Speaker 1: have far less time than we wanted. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, given the sort of again you said, like
Speaker 1: the dark age vibe we have here, this kind of
Speaker 1: archaic vibe. I'm also reminded of things we've discussed on
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind in the past about various historian,
Speaker 1: historians and anthrop anthropologists reflecting on what life was like
Speaker 1: for our ancestors before people were able to specialize more,
Speaker 1: before various cultural and technological advancements opened up more time
Speaker 1: in people's days to allow different types of experiences and
Speaker 1: different types of knowledge to accumulate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is interesting, and that kind of desperation about
Speaker 4: the time. The sense of I want more life is
Speaker 4: a fantastic premise to start with, for one thing, because
Speaker 4: it's not a you know, it's it's a very relatable feeling,
Speaker 4: but accelerated for the purpose of the narrative. And it's
Speaker 4: also something it's like an unpersonified villain. It's not it's
Speaker 4: not a beast you can fight, though there will be
Speaker 4: some beasts to fight in the story. It's just like
Speaker 4: we can't accept the way time flows around us, or
Speaker 4: the way our bodies flow through time. It's it's it's
Speaker 4: a terror to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's one of the things that makes it
Speaker 1: fitting that this film is thirty minutes long and not
Speaker 1: an hour or an hour and a half or two hours,
Speaker 1: and it is a film where there there is no
Speaker 1: true personified villain, if there is any. There are adversaries
Speaker 1: to overcome, but there's also a case to be made
Speaker 1: that all of those adversaries are perhaps aspects of the self,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's yeah again. The film itself has
Speaker 1: a great mythic vibe. It feels like an initiation into
Speaker 1: some great secret.
Speaker 4: So they go on to observe that the child is
Speaker 4: already seeing and hearing them, that's pretty quick, and the
Speaker 4: elders all seem to agree, Okay, the teaching must begin
Speaker 4: at once, So the child is carried out of the
Speaker 4: room where he was born. How are you going to
Speaker 4: start teaching a baby that was born two minutes ago?
Speaker 4: That I think that baby is not ready for school,
Speaker 4: but they disagree, So here we go, it says day one,
Speaker 4: and the elders move down a shadowy corridor, carrying the
Speaker 4: baby with them. The narrator says, as we watch you
Speaker 4: grow and change, as you watch us, we grow old,
Speaker 4: Your life, like ours, is destined to be short. In
Speaker 4: eight days we're born, we mature, and we grow old
Speaker 4: and die. And then the monk like man and the
Speaker 4: others bring the baby to what looked to me kind
Speaker 4: of like a shop counter in a fantasy game general store.
Speaker 4: But this is, I think, actually supposed to be a school.
Speaker 4: So they tell the baby one day from now, you
Speaker 4: will be a grown boy two or three, a young man, five,
Speaker 4: middle aged seven old. In eight days you will die.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: And then there's a strange moment where the man says,
Speaker 4: listen to our heart's race, and one of the elders
Speaker 4: holds the baby against her her chest and then they say,
Speaker 4: listen to your own heart race, and this like accelerated
Speaker 4: heart rate is a thing that comes back in the story.
Speaker 4: But it does just remind me of like, you know,
Speaker 4: putting my ear to the hearts of pets and hearing
Speaker 4: their faster little heartbeats, you know, their small bodies and
Speaker 4: little metabolisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also will have another example of this
Speaker 1: as well. But it kind of ties into this idea
Speaker 1: that there is there is a cross generational, a cross
Speaker 1: generation connection between the individuals of the in this culture
Speaker 1: of these people that is maybe a bit surreal as well,
Speaker 1: that's maybe leaning a little bit into the fantastic, and
Speaker 1: it's not entirely base on real world human teaching and
Speaker 1: conveying of information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the old man says, we are locked away
Speaker 4: in a world where our lives speed through time in
Speaker 4: eight days, no time to see, to feel, to know,
Speaker 4: And then he just says, okay, it's time, and the
Speaker 4: baby is handed across the counter to the ShopKeep. But again,
Speaker 4: this is actually some kind of school. So they take
Speaker 4: the baby away and the old man sort of calls
Speaker 4: after the baby's saying, now the teaching begins. Learn quickly
Speaker 4: little one and ooh, some kind of learning with blocks
Speaker 4: is going on. There's a lot of cool stuff in
Speaker 4: this teaching montage. I like that we start with these
Speaker 4: little stone coins and there are squares and pyramids. It
Speaker 4: looks like stuff that would be fun to handle in
Speaker 4: the same way that D and D dice are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's all very tactile and yeah, I just
Speaker 1: love this montage because everything is very identifiable as teaching
Speaker 1: and principle on one level, but also feels very alien
Speaker 1: and also perhaps concerning a natural philosophy.
Speaker 2: Unknown to our world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, it's worth noting in the original Ray Bradbury story
Speaker 1: that the short lived humans in it have a form
Speaker 1: of race memory that they're able to depend upon to
Speaker 1: pass knowledge down from short lived generation to short lived generation.
Speaker 1: And that's not what we see here, but we might
Speaker 1: think of this along similar lines. Information is perhaps being
Speaker 1: transferred from teachers to student, yes, with physical manipulation of
Speaker 1: objects and some external learning devices, but also perhaps in
Speaker 1: a way that depends on something greater than human learning,
Speaker 1: and maybe there is some sort of psychic connection. And
Speaker 1: in fact, later on, when our hero has commenced on
Speaker 1: his journey and he hears the voices of his teachers.
Speaker 1: I mean, perhaps that is like a psychic echo of
Speaker 1: what has occurred previously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I like that too. It invites questions of like,
Speaker 4: is there actual telepathy going on or the teachers currently
Speaker 4: communicating with him as he goes beyond, or is it
Speaker 4: like now part of them is in him and he
Speaker 4: just carries it with them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And this is a great film. And then
Speaker 1: it leaves you to ask those questions and they're ultimately unanswerable.
Speaker 1: It's all up to your interpretation.
Speaker 4: So already we see the child as a toddler sorting
Speaker 4: these little shapes and blocks as the teachers look on.
Speaker 4: I love the way the blocks look. They're made of
Speaker 4: a kind of polished, polished stone with a freckled and
Speaker 4: scarred appearance, and the child is learning to line them
Speaker 4: up in a special order, as if he were spelling
Speaker 4: words with the blocks. But what does it mean? I
Speaker 4: don't know, we're not told. There's also a metal block
Speaker 4: set with a hollow cube that you balance on a
Speaker 4: prismatic pillar and then you start kind of like piecing
Speaker 4: them together like an erector set. We see the child
Speaker 4: working with these elements blindfolded. Also doing some kind of
Speaker 4: psychic paddy cake game with his hands, like the part
Speaker 4: across from his teachers where they're like moving their hands
Speaker 4: and then slapping them together. I didn't get exactly what
Speaker 4: that was, but it seemed to me it involved maybe
Speaker 4: a kind of sense of psychic powers or premonitions about
Speaker 4: where the hands were going. We also see the training
Speaker 4: getting into He's like reading patterns of grain and blocks
Speaker 4: of wood. I liked that it was strange, and then
Speaker 4: making spears out of a kind of silvery metal. So
Speaker 4: the spears are modular and they snap together like tent poles,
Speaker 4: and then they have these fins and barbs that snap
Speaker 4: out from the poles, and he's throwing the spears doing
Speaker 4: target practice with them. There's another part where he unveils
Speaker 4: a shimmering steel cone from a covering which is a
Speaker 4: metal box, and the cone emits blinding light, and then
Speaker 4: he lifts up the cone and that unveils another level.
Speaker 4: It is like a blue, glowing ball of energy that's
Speaker 4: inside the cone, and the ball of energy just floats
Speaker 4: in the air. Again we're not told what that is,
Speaker 4: but anyway, when the training is complete, the boy now
Speaker 4: looks about ten or twelve years old, and an old
Speaker 4: man tells him it's time for you to go.
Speaker 1: It's like you know in elementary school, when you make
Speaker 1: it halfway through learning about the Civil War and then
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm sorry, now I have to send you
Speaker 1: home for summer.
Speaker 2: That's it, that's all we had time for.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I do remember that about a lot of lesson
Speaker 4: plans when I was younger. A fantastic lack of closure
Speaker 4: about me things we learned. Okay, So the old man
Speaker 4: comes to the boy to tell him more about his mission.
Speaker 4: They're looking at a light pouring out from between some rocks,
Speaker 4: and the man says that light squeezes through the crack
Speaker 4: where the doors in the Great Gate join. That gate
Speaker 4: must be opened. You will open it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And again this possibly lines up with this idea
Speaker 1: of I believe it is that the Joe rai or
Speaker 1: jewelry purifying light that factors into the teachings of Okichi
Speaker 1: Okada often described as kind of like an energy healing doctrine.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I've also read that that it sometimes involves
Speaker 1: like the use of some sort of reflective medallion, which
Speaker 1: we also see a version of in this picture.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Okay, I was wondering about that. Okay, so maybe
Speaker 4: they did get a few little like specific things in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyway, the old man says, beyond the gate is a
Speaker 4: land where life is lived for twenty thousand days and more.
Speaker 4: If the gate can be reached and opened, the light
Speaker 4: will rush out over us, and with it bring long
Speaker 4: life and peace. The boy asks why he has been chosen,
Speaker 4: and the old man explains those who were sent before
Speaker 4: left when they were too old, they left too late,
Speaker 4: and they died before they reached the gate. This time,
Speaker 4: they selected the boy to be sent when he was
Speaker 4: very young, so he would have enough time to complete
Speaker 4: his mission. And then the old man says, you've learned
Speaker 4: the You've learned your lessons quickly. You're strong and intelligent,
Speaker 4: you have curiosity. And the boy says, but have I
Speaker 4: learned augh? And the old man does not answer the question.
Speaker 4: He just says, we don't have time to teach you anymore.
Speaker 4: You'll have to learn the rest on your way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it really is like that. I mean that again.
Speaker 1: That's one of the great things about this film. I
Speaker 1: say it in Jess, but it's also like that's the
Speaker 1: way of life. And it encapsulates that perfectly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, have we ever learned enough in childhood to prepare
Speaker 4: us for adult life? Probably not, or can't really answer
Speaker 4: that question, But you don't really have a choice. No
Speaker 4: more time.
Speaker 1: Here's your silvery space spear. Go out and do your best.
Speaker 4: So the boy is outfitted with again those gleaming spears
Speaker 4: and other supplies. We see them like kind of pouring
Speaker 4: out these measures of grain and stuff for him. And
Speaker 4: before he's sent out by the elders, the old man
Speaker 4: gives him this small mirror polished metal pendant to hang
Speaker 4: around his neck, which may be connecting to that actual
Speaker 4: religious item used by the whatever, I forget what it's called,
Speaker 4: the Church of Messianity. Yeah, And then so he takes
Speaker 4: the pendant, and then he turns to his mother and
Speaker 4: they embrace, and all she says is goodbye. Then he goes.
Speaker 4: So the boy sets out into the world. And now, oh,
Speaker 4: and this is, by the way, we get a title
Speaker 4: that says day two. So day two of his life.
Speaker 4: The boy sets out into the world, and now instead
Speaker 4: of just the dark caverns, there are landscapes. First we
Speaker 4: see the boy crossing a kind of bleak tundra with
Speaker 4: these sandy hills, fields of snow, expanses of gray water,
Speaker 4: and mountains in the background. At one point we see
Speaker 4: him wandering through bad lands full of smooth, jumbled rock
Speaker 4: formations that look like giant piles of bones. And as
Speaker 4: the boy travels on through the rocks, he hears voices
Speaker 4: whispering in his head. This is what we were talking
Speaker 4: about earlier, the voices of his teachers and the elders,
Speaker 4: and they're saying things like, go on, don't hesitate, we
Speaker 4: have prepared you well, be brave, don't worry. And the
Speaker 4: boy wanders in darkness through this maze of stones, hearing
Speaker 4: the weird voices, and then suddenly hearing a kind of
Speaker 4: hooting in the distance, and he draws his spear in preparation.
Speaker 4: What is it? What's making the sound? And there's a stillness,
Speaker 4: feathers fall on the rocks around him, and then a
Speaker 4: monster attacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a pretty cool monster, I have to.
Speaker 4: Say, that's right. So the monster, whatever it is, first
Speaker 4: thrashes around in the darkness, roaring at the boy. The
Speaker 4: boy holds out his spear, and then they eventually clash,
Speaker 4: and we see some elements of the monster. It appears
Speaker 4: to be a kind of giant reptilian pit bull head
Speaker 4: with a triangular or circular triangular mouth with teeth jutting
Speaker 4: in from all sides. I gotta say that the head
Speaker 4: is a little bit rancorish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely kind of a rain Corps vibe.
Speaker 1: I also feel like it's maybe a combination of some
Speaker 1: sort of a giant sloth and a tartar grade ye,
Speaker 1: which would of course be a giant, very giant artic grade.
Speaker 4: It's actually also, in fact drawn two different return of
Speaker 4: the Jedi. It's a little bit rancor and a little
Speaker 4: bit sarlac because of the circular mouth with the teeth
Speaker 4: coming in all in all directions. Anyway, the boy fights
Speaker 4: the monster in the dark with his spear, and eventually
Speaker 4: he slays it, and as the beast lies dying on
Speaker 4: the ground, he approaches it and there's a kind of
Speaker 4: sadness in its eyes. And then the next thing. This
Speaker 4: was one of the few parts where I feel like
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure I was understanding what the film was
Speaker 4: trying to suggest. There's like, after he's already slayed the monster,
Speaker 4: there's a screeching in the night, and some other creature
Speaker 4: seems to be circling the boy and he raises a
Speaker 4: rock above his head and he shouts no, and then
Speaker 4: the threat seems to fade away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was interesting. I guess I'm on a literal
Speaker 1: interpretation level. I was thinking, Okay, maybe he's just scaring
Speaker 1: away additional monsters. You know, there are others out there,
Speaker 1: and he's saying he's just keeping them from attacking. Or
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps it's something more, and maybe he's driving
Speaker 1: away the darkness of his defensive act, like he has
Speaker 1: killed and therefore, even though he's acting in self defense,
Speaker 1: now he has to contend with like the darkness of
Speaker 1: what he has just done, and he's driving that away.
Speaker 1: Hourk in his book contends that we might think of
Speaker 1: this maybe again another example of mythic battle in the darkness,
Speaker 1: which we see in various sagas. But he asked some
Speaker 1: questions like is this monster real? Is this a projection
Speaker 1: of the hero's mind? Again, it's the sort of film
Speaker 1: where various interpretations are possible, there no right or wrong answers.
Speaker 4: So then we get to day three. The boy appears
Speaker 4: to be in his twenties now, and we see him
Speaker 4: come up over a hilltop to look out on this
Speaker 4: big sand flat with a sort of temple in the distance,
Speaker 4: and he hears the whispered voices again. One of them says,
Speaker 4: straight ahead, you must go there looking at the temple. Now,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you have thoughts about the style
Speaker 4: of this temple. Rob there's sort of a So first
Speaker 4: of all, there's a big, a big haul that we
Speaker 4: just see as like a rock facade. But then out
Speaker 4: in front of it there is a rock carving of
Speaker 4: a domed head with an open mouth and these wild eyes,
Speaker 4: kind of empty wild eyes, and giant hands held in
Speaker 4: an open palm position.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The general vibe of these ruins reminding me a little
Speaker 1: bit of photos I've seen of the ancient heads of
Speaker 1: the gods in Nimroot Dog Turkey. Imagine many of you
Speaker 1: out there have seen these images before, with kind of
Speaker 1: conical looking hats on the heads.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: I just looked it up, and yeah, I can see
Speaker 4: the comparison. That is kind of interesting, though. It's almost
Speaker 4: like some aspects feel a little bit like this, some
Speaker 4: feel a little a little more like like Mesoamerican art.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, so I guess it. Yeah, It fittingly feels
Speaker 1: akin to various examples of real world does traditions, but
Speaker 1: it feels also removed in its own thing. When I
Speaker 1: was looking around on letterboxed, I found a pretty great
Speaker 1: little review. Someone by the name of Roland one oh
Speaker 1: six said quote man walks through a series of prog
Speaker 1: album covers in order to save his people from their
Speaker 1: eight day lifespans, which I legitimately laughed at that, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of spot on. There are many many scenes
Speaker 1: in this picture that could easily be a prog rock
Speaker 1: album cover.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, including the very next thing I was going
Speaker 4: to talk about, which is that as the boy is
Speaker 4: coming to or I guess he's a young man now,
Speaker 4: as the hero is coming down to cross the plain
Speaker 4: of sand to get to the temple, there's another thing
Speaker 4: he sees. At first, I was confused how this interacted
Speaker 4: with the other thing. But there's like a giant teardrop
Speaker 4: shaped rock descending slowly from the sky, and there appears
Speaker 4: to be a sort of castle or something on top
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is actually mentioned in the book. This is
Speaker 1: apparently an ome homage to one of Saalbass's favorite visual works,
Speaker 1: The Castle of the Pyrenees by Belgian surrealist Renee Margrite.
Speaker 1: This is a work from nineteen fifty nine, and apparently
Speaker 1: Saul loved this image and it had just been looking for
Speaker 1: an opportunity to somehow utilize it in his work. There's
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia article about this particular painting, and I included
Speaker 1: a sample of it here in our notes for you, Joe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it looks exactly the same, so clearly, yeah.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I feel like something just
Speaker 1: like this also eventually pops up in Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: So some of you dn D lord nerds out there
Speaker 1: will have to remind me what I'm thinking of, because
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen an homage to this piece
Speaker 1: in Dungeons and Dragons art as well.
Speaker 4: I thought you were going to say Zardas. It's like
Speaker 4: the Zardas head, except it's not a head, it's just
Speaker 4: a big rock.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think there's some shared DNA
Speaker 1: between some of the design work here and the design
Speaker 1: and work of Zardis as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the hero tries to cross the sand flat,
Speaker 4: but when he gets into the sand, he begins to sink,
Speaker 4: And at first I was like Oh no, it's like
Speaker 4: a quick sand trap. He's gonna have to get out,
Speaker 4: But no, it goes in a different direction. Instead. He
Speaker 4: is able to move through the sand, but it's like
Speaker 4: rising up to his chest and occasionally up to his chin,
Speaker 4: but he just wades on through like its water, and
Speaker 4: he makes his way all the way across the sand
Speaker 4: flat this way, which I thought was I don't know,
Speaker 4: the strange, unexpected, and obviously I don't think you can
Speaker 4: really do that. You can't move through sand that you're
Speaker 4: that deep, and it would just there'd be too much resistance.
Speaker 4: But it's like water, and he just passes through it.
Speaker 1: This sequence, in particular reminds me of some of the
Speaker 1: sand related imagery that we get in Phase four.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I agree. It also reminds me of a
Speaker 4: weird sort of sand progressing through a sand chamber scene
Speaker 4: in the Tarkowsky movie Stalker. But eventually the the hero
Speaker 4: comes out the other side to stand on the stairs
Speaker 4: of the temple. I didn't mention this earlier, but next
Speaker 4: to the human head there's kind of a big eagle
Speaker 4: head as well, and then suddenly there's an earthquake. The
Speaker 4: carvings at the entrance to the temple begin to crumble
Speaker 4: and fall all around him, and the hero has to
Speaker 4: dodge some boulders, but he survives. Now I think it's
Speaker 4: suggesting the earthquake is caused by the huge tear drop
Speaker 4: asteroid settling into the sand, like it has finally touched down,
Speaker 4: and that shakes the earth.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 1: But again, as to exactly what all this means, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're left to ponder that, like all of this, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming all of this is somehow tied to the history
Speaker 1: of these people, that these used to be their cities,
Speaker 1: that these are their temples or their tombs. We're not sure.
Speaker 1: But as to what the giant tear drop asteroid truly signifies,
Speaker 1: like is this the spaceship that brought them there? Because
Speaker 1: I know in the original Bradbury it has to do.
Speaker 1: There's like a crash spaceship that's part of the plot,
Speaker 1: and so we might see some fantastic echo of that
Speaker 1: concept here.
Speaker 4: But the voices in the hero's head they tell him
Speaker 4: to go on, so he does. He goes into the
Speaker 4: temple and then we see from inside the giant head
Speaker 4: with light pouring in through the eyes, which is very cool.
Speaker 4: And then inside the temple, there is a swarm of
Speaker 4: starlike particles suspended inside a blue light, much like the
Speaker 4: blue light that the boy uncovered in his schooling. But
Speaker 4: before he can make sense of it, the temple continues
Speaker 4: to crumble and it just rocks and blocks are falling,
Speaker 4: and he's driven away, driven on into a different place,
Speaker 4: a tube like corridor, sort of the inside of the
Speaker 4: spaceworm where the Falcon lands and Empire strikes back. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but with a raised metal boardwalk. He's saying, I'm going
Speaker 4: through the boardwalk in the swamp or something, and he
Speaker 4: moves on down the gangway and then finally we come
Speaker 4: to a different landscape and it announces is day four. Baby,
Speaker 4: Here we are Day four, and he's standing in front
Speaker 4: of massive Egyptian temple architecture with rows and rows of columns.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And I forget the name of the temple I have
Speaker 4: in mind, but there is an Egyptian temple I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of that looks like this, And he's passing through the
Speaker 4: courtyard and it somehow seems to lead into a different universe,
Speaker 4: like when he comes to the other end, there is
Speaker 4: another flat sandy plain, but this one is bathed in
Speaker 4: blue light, with pyramids that look like the Giza Complex
Speaker 4: in the distance, and then beyond that giant planets looming
Speaker 4: in the sky.
Speaker 5: Huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So at this point I'm definitely questioning the whole
Speaker 1: Make sure you set it on Earth ray Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: directive here, because we really feel like we're in another
Speaker 1: world at this point. We are, at lea if we're
Speaker 1: not on another planet the whole time, then we are
Speaker 1: some where else at this point.
Speaker 4: Yes, you know, I don't mean to diminish it by
Speaker 4: this comparison, but it's hard not to feel some Star
Speaker 4: Wars influence on this. For one thing, he comes up
Speaker 4: to a hooded man resting against one of the columns.
Speaker 4: He's almost in a kind of either Obi Wan Kenobi
Speaker 4: or Jahwa outfit. The hooded figure in the desert and
Speaker 4: he comes up to the sky. No face is visible,
Speaker 4: but the hero is looking out on this blue landscape
Speaker 4: with the pyramids and the planets like passing into and
Speaker 4: out of alignment in the sky. The planets are moving
Speaker 4: super fast, and then the hooded man starts to talk.
Speaker 4: He says, so they sent another one. Let's have a
Speaker 4: look at you. Yes, you're young, much younger than I
Speaker 4: was when I got here, And the hooded man reveals
Speaker 4: that he was the last hero, but he started too late,
Speaker 4: he says, the younger man does have a chance, and
Speaker 4: he gives him advice. He says, look at that pyramid,
Speaker 4: don't go around it, you have to climb to the top.
Speaker 1: All right, some fortune cookie sort of advice there, but
Speaker 1: it feels specific to this challenge as well.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, And you know this actually made me think
Speaker 4: about one of I was going to say, one of
Speaker 4: the shadow themes of quest, and it's something that has
Speaker 4: to do with trust. So our hero, at multiple times
Speaker 4: throughout the story, we get little different ways that he
Speaker 4: just has to believe the advice given to him and
Speaker 4: follow it because he doesn't have enough time to see
Speaker 4: and investigate for himself. And so he just meets this
Speaker 4: random stranger here, and the stranger gives him advice and
Speaker 4: he just follows it, and we're sort of to understand
Speaker 4: that he doesn't really have a choice. I mean, I
Speaker 4: guess he could try to not follow it, but seems
Speaker 4: more likely that would result in him failing his mission
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like if he said, no, Grandpa, I need I
Speaker 1: want to do my own research. On this like, yeah,
Speaker 1: then you're going to die in the desert like this, kuy.
Speaker 4: And and it makes me think about the relationship between
Speaker 4: time and trust. You know, this is this is actually
Speaker 4: a core thing about what trust is. Trust is a
Speaker 4: thing that saves you time because if you didn't, if
Speaker 4: you had unlimited time and resources, you could investigate everything
Speaker 4: for yourself, like you could, you know, look into every
Speaker 4: you look endlessly into every question and not have to
Speaker 4: believe anything people told you. But you don't have unlimited
Speaker 4: time and resources. You're always trying to make your life
Speaker 4: more efficient, so you have to rely on trust for
Speaker 4: some things. And so a big part of what we
Speaker 4: think about in navigating life is just like where we
Speaker 4: where we decide to press the trust button to save
Speaker 4: ourselves time and this and this scenario created by the
Speaker 4: movie heightens that kind of the observation of that dynasm
Speaker 4: because time is so constricted and so he just literally
Speaker 4: does not have time to wonder whether this guy is
Speaker 4: giving him good advice or not. He just has to
Speaker 4: follow it. Yeah, And then also the guy says, not
Speaker 4: everything that frightens or hurts you as bad. Fear and
Speaker 4: pain are your teachers learn survive. So the young man
Speaker 4: hurries on through the desert. And meanwhile, also he's another
Speaker 4: thing he has to trust is he's been being given
Speaker 4: these voices in his head. They're giving him advice. They're saying,
Speaker 4: you are not alone, We travel with you. So there's
Speaker 4: a scene where the hero gets to the stairs. He
Speaker 4: has to climb. He has to climb to the top
Speaker 4: of the pyramid, and the stairs seem endless, but he
Speaker 4: goes on up and up and up, and then finally
Speaker 4: he gets to the top where he finds a table
Speaker 4: emitting a blue light. Looks almost like a game board.
Speaker 4: I was thinking that at first, and then what do
Speaker 4: you know, It does seem like it's a game board.
Speaker 4: It's covered in the shapes that the boy learned to
Speaker 4: manipulate in school. And then suddenly there is a roar,
Speaker 4: and we're like, oh, another monster sort of. There is
Speaker 4: a sasquatchlike creature, like a big furry humanoid creature that
Speaker 4: approaches him. But it's not another fight to the death
Speaker 4: with a spear. This time we're facing the chess YETI
Speaker 4: our hero has to play a board game, a game
Speaker 4: of strategy with Bigfoot, and this I think may have
Speaker 4: been my favorite creative choice in the film.
Speaker 1: Yes, I absolutely love this on one level because it
Speaker 1: is just that outrageous, Like at this point everything has
Speaker 1: already been surreal and dream like and full of WTF moments,
Speaker 1: and then we have this. But then it again is
Speaker 1: one of these moments too, where it's never fully explained.
Speaker 1: We don't know who or what this entity is, but
Speaker 1: there are so many different ways to tease it apart.
Speaker 1: Horric and his book brings up the possibility that this
Speaker 1: is sort of like the ID that his own ID
Speaker 1: that he is combating here at least they're like his
Speaker 1: this is his primal side. And I did when I
Speaker 1: was originally watching it, I did kind of notice some
Speaker 1: similarities between the face of the beast and the face
Speaker 1: of our hero. I don't know how much of that
Speaker 1: was me just you know, reading too much into it
Speaker 1: or not, but I think there are various interpretations here.
Speaker 1: But what we get at the end of the day
Speaker 1: is the game of chess or something like chess with
Speaker 1: this bestial other.
Speaker 4: That is funny. I mean, so, on one hand, I
Speaker 4: absolutely see the comparison in the way they're embodied, that
Speaker 4: this creature may be some reflection of his more savage
Speaker 4: self on the other hand, like, why would you be
Speaker 4: Why is the form of conflict a game of strategy?
Speaker 4: Why are you playing chess against your ID?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you don't want to wrestle it. Look
Speaker 1: how strong this is? Get out smart, I guess.
Speaker 4: So. So the game itself is kind of tronish that
Speaker 4: it's like these metal shapes, these polyhedron game pieces that
Speaker 4: are zooming around and zapping each other with lasers. And then,
Speaker 4: of course, eventually the YETI loses and he doesn't like that.
Speaker 4: You know, yeti's are known to rip people's arms off
Speaker 4: and they lose. So he howls in anger, and he
Speaker 4: drools and rages very bad sport, and he seems ready
Speaker 4: to kill our hero. But suddenly it's a little unclear
Speaker 4: exactly the orientation of what's happening here, but like a
Speaker 4: walkway extends out through space toward the pyramid, leading to
Speaker 4: another structure, and then the hero leaps out onto the
Speaker 4: walkway and goes away to this other place.
Speaker 1: The challenge has been overcome.
Speaker 4: Yes, so this other place is a lattice of mcsher
Speaker 4: beams that are interlocking in impossible ways.
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, at this point, like where are we? Like,
Speaker 1: are we it within the confines of some great supercomputer?
Speaker 1: Are we in another dimension? I mean, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say exactly what's going on here, and that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in one of the rooms the hero goes into
Speaker 4: here seems to be inside the game he just played,
Speaker 4: like he's in shrunken form, and the game pieces are
Speaker 4: the giant shapes moving around him. He walks on the
Speaker 4: board and of course Scale is being played with once
Speaker 4: again like I mentioned at the beginning. But then at
Speaker 4: one point, the man, oh, and we're told I can't
Speaker 4: remember if I already said this, but if not, this
Speaker 4: is day five, so this is supposed to this is
Speaker 4: the time they said earlier that he would be in midlife.
Speaker 4: And at one point the man is he's sort of
Speaker 4: messing around on the game board with these pieces, and
Speaker 4: then he looks at his reflection in a metal piece
Speaker 4: and he says to himself, he realizes he is getting
Speaker 4: old and he has to hurry, he has to get
Speaker 4: to the gate. And I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: is this literally a life crisis vignette? He's like, oh, maybe,
Speaker 4: so yeah, he's like messing around playing games in this
Speaker 4: confusing space, and then he looks at himself in the
Speaker 4: mirror and has a sudden reminder of his mortality, and
Speaker 4: then he really picks up the pace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't know that he should also buy a
Speaker 1: leather jacket and look into motorcycles or something.
Speaker 4: Right, So we see him traveling through other weird landscapes,
Speaker 4: some natural, some artificial. One is like a I don't
Speaker 4: even know what you call this, like a big flat,
Speaker 4: empty rectangular space that looks out onto looks out like
Speaker 4: into the void, and there are planets beyond, so it's
Speaker 4: almost as if he's in a spaceship. There's another point
Speaker 4: where he's wandering through this huge field of just pits
Speaker 4: that are inverted step pyramids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this must be where like maybe they cut the
Speaker 1: pyramids from earlier out of this landscape.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a landscape just colossal works. I guess that's what
Speaker 1: we're to take from it.
Speaker 4: And I love these landscapes. The sets are amazing. But
Speaker 4: then finally, finally day seven comes, he's getting old and
Speaker 4: he makes it to the gate, the gate that was promised.
Speaker 4: So he comes upon this sort of hole in the
Speaker 4: rocks where light is spilling through and he walks up
Speaker 4: to it and realizes a giant mechanism, This big metal
Speaker 4: bar is descending toward him slowly, and when it reaches him,
Speaker 4: the mechanism has controls that have hand prints on them
Speaker 4: that he could put his hands in. It's kind of
Speaker 4: like that button that makes air on Mars in Total recall,
Speaker 4: you know, a metal thing with a handprint on it.
Speaker 4: So he's like, okay, I got to put my hands
Speaker 4: on it. So he puts his hands in the prints
Speaker 4: and it makes music. It releases this booming tone, and
Speaker 4: then the whole mechanism sinks into the floor and the
Speaker 4: gate opens and light spills over everything, not just on
Speaker 4: the man there in the place, but light seems to
Speaker 4: spill over the whole planet. So we go back to
Speaker 4: the place we came from. We see light filling in
Speaker 4: the caverns where the people from the First Day live,
Speaker 4: and there are lots of old people there, but we
Speaker 4: get to hear their heartbeats slowing down as the light
Speaker 4: pours over them. And the light is of a very
Speaker 4: different color color warmth, than the stuff we've seen before.
Speaker 4: Most of the movie has been kind of blue green gray.
Speaker 4: The light now is orange. And then we return to
Speaker 4: the hero and we find him in a land, in
Speaker 4: a natural landscape unlike anything we've seen before. Now the
Speaker 4: world is green, green, green. He's on these hills covered
Speaker 4: in green grass, not the kind of pale, gross blue
Speaker 4: green of the fog in the world before. Now it's
Speaker 4: like vibrant green, springtime, green hills covered in green grass
Speaker 4: and trees with flowers blue everywhere. And the man is
Speaker 4: just walking through it looking like Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of a like a seventies white Jesus, kind
Speaker 1: of like a Kenney Loggin's kind of a look here, yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, Yes, like hippie movie Jesus. Yeah. But he's got
Speaker 4: a magnificent beard, and you can tell he's just vibing
Speaker 4: on the nature that he's looking at. And then the
Speaker 4: boy's like looking at the plants. I don't know why
Speaker 4: I called him the boy. He's a man now, he's
Speaker 4: just mere days old, so that is true. He's like
Speaker 4: looking at the plants. And then we get some narration
Speaker 4: where it's an ending that is at once a little
Speaker 4: bit a little bit corny, but also kind of beautiful.
Speaker 4: He says, of all the twenty thousand days I have
Speaker 4: which day will be the finest, which will be the
Speaker 4: best any day, any hour, any minute, and then we
Speaker 4: end as like geese are flying across this disc of
Speaker 4: the sun.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so upbeat and positive, and I think
Speaker 1: if you dig into it, it does get into some
Speaker 1: serious depth, you know. I mean, how do you how
Speaker 1: do you overcome the shortness of our lives and the
Speaker 1: marching of time.
Speaker 2: Well, one way.
Speaker 1: Is is by retreating into the now and focusing on
Speaker 1: the now, focusing on any day, any hour, any minute,
Speaker 1: you know, finding those little things, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: that's what came to my mind when I heard this.
Speaker 1: But on the other level, yes, it is like such
Speaker 1: an upbeat ending. I don't know. We get more used
Speaker 1: to more pessimistic endings in our films, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was it was refreshing that it does feel so
Speaker 1: optimistic at the end, like he succeeded in his quest,
Speaker 1: he brought life to everyone, and in the revelation here
Speaker 1: is perhaps a little deeper if we dig into it.
Speaker 4: Well, in another one of those observations that is both
Speaker 4: profound and true and also can be kind of corny,
Speaker 4: But that doesn't make it any less true is the
Speaker 4: thing about you know, you can and you can overcome
Speaker 4: the kind of despair about the perspective of the shortness
Speaker 4: of your life by having purpose, by having a mission,
Speaker 4: by having a purpose that a purpose that is sort
Speaker 4: of other oriented, you know, that is driven towards not
Speaker 4: just yourself and your own gratification, but living for others.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it reminds me of against some of
Speaker 1: what we've been discussing in our Mystery cult series. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times some of the best nuggets of
Speaker 1: wisdom are also kind of overstatements of the obvious, like
Speaker 1: you know, love is all you need, love is the
Speaker 1: fifth element, what have you? You know, But these are
Speaker 1: also things that are true, and it all comes down
Speaker 1: to presentation. And in the same way we talked about
Speaker 1: some of the initiations of the mystery cults, where there
Speaker 1: might be something that is key to the initiation, something
Speaker 1: that is revealed in a box and if you just
Speaker 1: take it out of context, if you're a critic and
Speaker 1: you're just like, look at this thing they have in
Speaker 1: the box here, how corny is that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: But if it's within context, if it occurs at the
Speaker 1: end of the initiation, then perhaps it is able to
Speaker 1: settle into your psyche in a more rewarding way.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, just for example, you know, you could say,
Speaker 4: like a Demeter is reunited with her daughter, and this
Speaker 4: brings us, you know, this ear of grain, which represents
Speaker 4: the wealth, the fruits of our fields, and it's what
Speaker 4: we live by. You know, if you just like put
Speaker 4: it in those words, somebody could be like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: that's not all that impressive. But if you watch the
Speaker 4: whole drama and you take part in the suffering and
Speaker 4: the passion and the relief of the reunion of mother
Speaker 4: and daughter and all that, it can be overwhelming. It's
Speaker 4: something that follows you every day of your life. You
Speaker 4: never never look at some flower the same way. Again.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, not everything that frightens or hurts you is bad.
Speaker 1: Fear and pain or your teachers learn survive.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. I think the real moral of the story
Speaker 4: is if you're feeling down, play chess with a yetti
Speaker 4: and make sure you win.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, that is nineteen eighty four's quest. Again,
Speaker 1: if you wish to experience as well, you should be
Speaker 1: able to find it out there and again, hopefully in
Speaker 1: the future there will be some sort.
Speaker 2: Of proper restored release as well.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder for everyone out there that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you're
Speaker 1: on letterbox dot com, you can find us. Our username
Speaker 1: is weird House and we have a nice list there
Speaker 1: of all the episodes that we have covered so far,
Speaker 1: all the movies we have covered so far. Rather, and
Speaker 1: I will remind you that at this point we're at
Speaker 1: one ninety six, so we're coming in hot on selection
Speaker 1: two hundred. We already have some recommendations for what that
Speaker 1: episode might be, what film we could possibly cover for
Speaker 1: the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, but continue to
Speaker 1: write in We have not made a decision as yet.
Speaker 4: It's going to be Mortal Kombat Annihilation.
Speaker 1: It could be it could be that that is the
Speaker 1: most fitting choice.
Speaker 4: Huge thanks as always to our ex still an audio producer,
Speaker 4: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 4: with us with feedback on this episode or any other
Speaker 4: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 4: say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 4: to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.