Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
Speaker 1: women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn, best
Speaker 1: start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hey, Caitlin, Hey Jamie, here's the thing I want to die,
Speaker 2: but maybe we should do some sort of bartering thing first.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to tell me your story first.
Speaker 2: Okay, but like make sure you're doing some like petty
Speaker 2: crime for me. Okay, okay. The many ways in which
Speaker 2: Lee peys acts completely out of pocket this movie. He's like,
Speaker 2: it's a too urgent. I have to od in front
Speaker 2: of this kid, Oh, who is addicted to lying and
Speaker 2: definitely will not leave the room. Lee, Lee, Lee, all right,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3: My name's Jamie, my name is Caitlin. This is our
Speaker 3: show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 3: using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and what pray tell is that, Jamie.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a media metric created by our dear friend
Speaker 2: Alison Bechdel, who originally put the metric in a comic
Speaker 2: in her iconic comic collection Dice to watch out for
Speaker 2: in the eighties, lots of versions of this test. Here's
Speaker 2: the version we use. We require that there be two
Speaker 2: characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to
Speaker 2: each other about something other than a man for more
Speaker 2: than two lines of meaningful dialogue. I was I was
Speaker 2: a little worried about this. I have to say Bechdel
Speaker 2: test wise, I was worried. But we we get there.
Speaker 2: It would have been it would have been objectively a
Speaker 2: bad look twenty nine countries and it doesn't pass the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test. That would be pretty incredible. But Spoilerer, we're fine.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we have a sticky, little but in yet
Speaker 2: gigantic movie that we're covering today. Yes, The Fall two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. Ever heard of it?
Speaker 3: You may not have.
Speaker 2: And it's such an interesting story. Why it's basically like
Speaker 2: this director's Megalopolis, except.
Speaker 3: Except it's actually watchable.
Speaker 2: Except when I watch it, I'm like, Okay, I basically
Speaker 2: know what's happening, right, And we have an incredible guest
Speaker 2: to discuss with us.
Speaker 3: Indeed, he is the editor at film Slop.
Speaker 4: It's Ali, Hello, how's it going?
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for joining us and bringing us the fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, truly what a moment. I was thinking as well,
Speaker 2: because I know you're a fellow minion's head. I was
Speaker 2: thinking as I was watching this, I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: kind of a love letter to old Hollywood, not unlike.
Speaker 5: Maybe this is Actually this is a really good segue.
Speaker 5: Because I was thinking about this. I have something unlike
Speaker 5: the Beckadul test, called the menion test that I run
Speaker 5: in my head, and this is one of the few
Speaker 5: move because that passes. The test is essentially, if you
Speaker 5: replace a main character with a minion, will the movie
Speaker 5: get better or worse? And most of the time the
Speaker 5: movie will get better if you're a place of a minion.
Speaker 5: But this is the one movie I can like just
Speaker 5: completely say if you replace a character with a minion,
Speaker 5: the movie will be worse. So I'm pretty excited to
Speaker 5: get into that. I think the little girl, if you
Speaker 5: replace her with a minion, you can't do that. She's
Speaker 5: better than Anyia.
Speaker 2: No, I can't do that. She's irreplaceable.
Speaker 3: You can't replace Roy with a minion.
Speaker 2: No, because minions can't die, right, And I mean it's
Speaker 2: much lower like you can give a minion all the
Speaker 2: morphine you want, nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 5: I mean, they'll probably go to sleep for a while.
Speaker 5: I feel like they're not a milliono morphin and they're
Speaker 5: gonna like it.
Speaker 2: That's true, They're just gonna get hooked.
Speaker 3: Okay. I love the minion test.
Speaker 5: I try to think about it. Usually when there's a
Speaker 5: child actor, if you can replace I think, because most
Speaker 5: most child actors are pretty replaceable with minions.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I don't disagree.
Speaker 2: You could replace it with a poopy situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah likely. I also, I mean, not to get into
Speaker 5: the plot of the movie, the little girl at the
Speaker 5: center of the movie is basically a median. She's like
Speaker 5: attached herself to a kind of terrible person.
Speaker 2: It's kind of her growth.
Speaker 5: Does his bidding with whatever he wants. WHOA Wow, that's
Speaker 5: why I like this movie above all.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, tell us your your relationship, your history with
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 5: I have a pretty deep history of this movie. I
Speaker 5: think I came across it randomly. Honestly, don't remember how
Speaker 5: I came across it, but it's one of the movies
Speaker 5: that I watched and it really made me unlock why
Speaker 5: I loved movies I like, I think honestly, before I
Speaker 5: became a cinephile. Sorry I just said that out lot.
Speaker 5: I really don't like.
Speaker 3: The word cinophil Okay, brag.
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe maybe a better term for cinephile movie lover.
Speaker 5: But like before I became a movie perfer, I think
Speaker 5: it was one of the first better maybe just branding
Speaker 5: cinephile to movie perfer. It's like one of the first
Speaker 5: ever movies that I saw that just really unlocked the
Speaker 5: medium for me, maybe six years ago. And then I
Speaker 5: remember I was having a really stressful day a week
Speaker 5: after at work, and I started googling pretty shots from
Speaker 5: The Fall just to destress, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: I found myself watching three hours of content from The Falls.
Speaker 5: I was like, might as well just watch the movie,
Speaker 5: and I continued watching it, and then it just became
Speaker 5: something really special to me. And whenever I tell people
Speaker 5: that I love movies, that always asked me, what is
Speaker 5: your favorite movie? This is one of the top three.
Speaker 5: And there's a huge issue I have with doing this
Speaker 5: because there is that movie that came out in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two called Fall, which is just a terrible movie
Speaker 5: about rock climbers. I think I don't get the premise.
Speaker 5: They're like trying to climb a thing. But everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 5: you love that movie, and then I have to end
Speaker 5: up in this hole. No, not that one, it's the
Speaker 5: one from two thousand and six, and then I sound
Speaker 5: like a pretentious juice bag, which I really don't like doing.
Speaker 3: But oh, there's also that show called The Fall. Yeah, Jamie,
Speaker 3: what is his name?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: I was like, what the fifty Shades of great guy?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, he's in that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I looked at the post and I was like, I
Speaker 2: bet my mom would have something to say about this show.
Speaker 2: It just looks like a Jill a show for Jill,
Speaker 2: which generally means that it's none of my business.
Speaker 5: But yeah, every time I tell people I like The Fall,
Speaker 5: I always have to coffee out with actually that one.
Speaker 5: And I feel like, if you're gonna name your movie
Speaker 5: something related to The Fall, it has to be a
Speaker 5: good movie, because then I walk out embarrassed, feeling like
Speaker 5: someone thinks that I'm a huge fan of the rock
Speaker 5: climbing movie, which rock climbing is a concept, is just
Speaker 5: something I don't condone or support or believe in.
Speaker 2: Heavy as the crown that lies on the letterbox user,
Speaker 2: you know it is. It's a tough it's a tough
Speaker 2: world out there. Yeah, I feel like this movie is
Speaker 2: not well. And also if you're a fan of this movie,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's inherently you have to explain it
Speaker 2: because it was not available to watch for so long
Speaker 2: until the last couple of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't on streaming. It wasn't even rentable digitally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how did did you watch it six years ago?
Speaker 5: I have to fund some redacted channels of sorts.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 5: But then they did the re release in theaters, which
Speaker 5: I remember that day because everybody was posting on their
Speaker 5: Instagram stories and they got to see the Northern Lights,
Speaker 5: and I was really bummed about it because I wanted
Speaker 5: to see the Northern Lights. All my friends in New
Speaker 5: York are like wherever else we're posting it. And then
Speaker 5: I remember I saw the Fall after I was just like,
Speaker 5: you know what, you can have your Northern rights. I
Speaker 5: got to see one of the most beautiful things in
Speaker 5: the world to put the screen and it made me
Speaker 5: really happy. So I think that's I'm so bummed about
Speaker 5: not seeing the Northern Lights, but you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: But the Northern Lights, they happened more. But you'd wait
Speaker 2: like eighteen years to see this in a theater, the
Speaker 2: Northern Lights. I'll be back, I think, so, yeah.
Speaker 5: I would take this over. I remember the first time
Speaker 5: I watched it, I wrote on a piece of paper
Speaker 5: that I would sacrifice my firstborn to be able to
Speaker 5: see it in theaters because I think it's it's.
Speaker 2: Like a pretty good you don't have to know, well,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 5: I did see it in theater, so I do have
Speaker 5: to sacrifice.
Speaker 3: My first born reactively.
Speaker 5: Like, whatever I have, I'm gonna have to get rid
Speaker 5: of them, which isn't isn't great?
Speaker 2: Wow, that really does change the dynamic of sacrificer. You're
Speaker 2: first born, doesn't it.
Speaker 5: That's not ideal. I mean I was just like, they
Speaker 5: have to be born and I have to sacrifice them.
Speaker 5: I originally was like, I don't know if I want kids,
Speaker 5: but I think I have to have a child now,
Speaker 5: so I could sacrifice them.
Speaker 2: So you have to sacrifice into the fall gods, the
Speaker 2: powers that be.
Speaker 3: Jamie, what's your history with this movie?
Speaker 2: My history with this movie? I had not seen it,
Speaker 2: but I have a history of being aware of it,
Speaker 2: which is normally I wouldn't even mention, but it does
Speaker 2: feel relevant here because I'm a lee pace head. Because
Speaker 2: I my brother and I watched Pushing Daisies when it
Speaker 2: first when it was airing. We loved, loved, loved Pushing Daisies,
Speaker 2: and I was like, who is this? Who is this
Speaker 2: handsomest man in the world that I'm looking at, And
Speaker 2: to this day, I think he is. He's got to
Speaker 2: be cracking the top ten, like of handsomest men I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. And yeah, so I was obsessed with ly
Speaker 2: Paced and was like, what else has he been in?
Speaker 2: And at that point the answer was not much. But
Speaker 2: this movie had come out the year before, and I
Speaker 2: remember being like, oh, I want to see that. And
Speaker 2: then because of all these reasons, I now understand it
Speaker 2: just never really happened, because it turns out it like
Speaker 2: couldn't really have happened unless I got unless I pirated it,
Speaker 2: which I am not ethically opposed to, but I just
Speaker 2: kind of forgot that existed. So it just took it
Speaker 2: took a really long time for me to get around
Speaker 2: to watching it. And it's so uh, there's so much
Speaker 2: going on, there's so much. It's weird because it's so
Speaker 2: beautiful and it's not it wouldn't normally be my kind
Speaker 2: of movie, but you can just feel I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's like hard to explain that, Like you can just
Speaker 2: feel the passion and insincerity. Like it's impossible not to
Speaker 2: get on board with this movie. It's so beautiful, especially
Speaker 2: learning that there is barely any cgi. It's the kind
Speaker 2: of movie where I don't know, there's so many movies
Speaker 2: we've covered on the show that learning about the backstory
Speaker 2: makes you like it way less, and this is the opposite.
Speaker 2: Like I watched it the first time and I was like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: that was really impressive. That was really cool. It reminded
Speaker 2: me of a George Miller movie that no one saw
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, three thousand years of longing.
Speaker 3: I saw it, brag.
Speaker 2: I think we were in too. The only wait I'll
Speaker 2: eat Did.
Speaker 4: You see I watched?
Speaker 5: I have a condition where I have to watch every
Speaker 5: single movie that shows look in theaters.
Speaker 2: So there, so you were there, you're seated.
Speaker 5: I was there.
Speaker 2: It was if you haven't seen it, I don't even
Speaker 2: know if I would recommend it, but it was just
Speaker 2: like I was the only person sitting in the theater
Speaker 2: and was like, I don't know, this feels like a
Speaker 2: movie where it's both gigantic and it feels like a
Speaker 2: secret at the same time. So anyways, it reminded me
Speaker 2: a lot of that, and I'm so glad I finally
Speaker 2: saw it. You can see how influential this movie is
Speaker 2: in spite of the fact that probably statistically you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it. Yeah, what was your history with this, Caitlin?
Speaker 3: Kind of similar. I had not seen it before prepping
Speaker 3: for this episode, but I knew of it, and I
Speaker 3: don't remember exactly when it came on to my radar,
Speaker 3: but I've known about it for a while. I knew
Speaker 3: what the poster looked like, and I knew that friends
Speaker 3: of mine who had seen it generally loved it and
Speaker 3: thought it was beautiful and like a feat of filmmaking.
Speaker 2: It's got like a five hundred odd letter box.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I didn't really know anything else about it,
Speaker 3: but I was eager to watch it for this episode.
Speaker 3: It is so visually impressive, especially because I love anything practical,
Speaker 3: practical sets practical effects. This movie is that all the
Speaker 3: way down. Yeah, we'll talk more about the production of it,
Speaker 3: but I also generally like a kind of like story
Speaker 3: within a story. It reminded me kind of of Princess
Speaker 3: Bride in the sense that it's an adult relaying a
Speaker 3: story to a child. It reminded me a bit of
Speaker 3: a Little Princess, where that's not quite as big of
Speaker 3: a component of that movie as far as like a
Speaker 3: person relaying a story and then we flash to images
Speaker 3: from that story, But the visuals that you do see
Speaker 3: when we flash to the story and a Little Princess
Speaker 3: feel kind of similar to some of what we see
Speaker 3: in The Fall. So it was just it felt kind
Speaker 3: of like familiar even though I had never seen it before,
Speaker 3: and I was really charmed, Yeah, by the movie.
Speaker 2: How many epic films because this is and I don't
Speaker 2: mean that in the cringe sense. I mean truly this
Speaker 2: is epic, not epic, random sauce epic, just to clarify, right,
Speaker 2: but how many epic can say that they were shot
Speaker 2: immediately after a Mountain Dew commercial. I just loved learning
Speaker 2: about the background for this movie. Yeah, it's so there's
Speaker 2: so much like five d chs being played, just the
Speaker 2: fact I want to see the Mountain Dew commercial. Why
Speaker 2: the hell were they filming such an expensive mountain dew commercial.
Speaker 2: We used to you know, we used to make movies
Speaker 2: for mountain dew.
Speaker 3: I guess because the director, Tarsuan had mostly a history
Speaker 3: of directing commercials and I think some music videos. He
Speaker 3: had also directed The Cell, which I've seen but only
Speaker 3: once and it was long ago and I don't really
Speaker 3: remember it. And then he would go on to direct
Speaker 3: Mirror Mirror, the twenty twelve Snow White adaptation.
Speaker 2: He also want un to direct a movie called Immortals,
Speaker 2: but not that one again, another not that one kind
Speaker 2: of movie for Tarsa, Like, yeah, people just keep using
Speaker 2: his titles. Although the Fall, you know, kind of asking
Speaker 2: for it no offense.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is a generic word.
Speaker 2: Anyone's movie could be this. I also think there might
Speaker 2: be a famous book called The Fall. Anyways. Also, I
Speaker 2: just love a mononymous director. You could already if someone's mononymous,
Speaker 2: You're like, Okay, we're dealing with a level of confidence
Speaker 2: that I am not going to find relatable, and that's exciting, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He is also sometimes referred to as his full name
Speaker 3: Tarsum Singh, but at least in this movie, he's credited
Speaker 3: as Tarsum. But yeah, I'm so excited to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
Speaker 3: for the recap. And we're back. First, we'll place a
Speaker 3: content warning at the top for attempted suicide and suicidality. Also,
Speaker 3: this movie is is hard to recap, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot that happens, So I'm gonna be leaving out some details,
Speaker 3: but I'll do my very best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, feel free to jump in if they're relevant to
Speaker 2: you personally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So we open on dramatic black and white
Speaker 3: slow mo images and music of a train stopped on
Speaker 3: the tracks on a bridge, and it seems as though
Speaker 3: some people, possibly and also a horse, has fallen off
Speaker 3: the bridge into the water below. We will get more
Speaker 3: insight on that later. But is this perhaps the titular fall?
Speaker 3: Maybe yes, but also there are there are other falls
Speaker 3: throughout the movie that could be.
Speaker 2: There are the fall. It's true, it depends on who
Speaker 2: you are, but I guess I guess I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: there's a fall, I can relax.
Speaker 3: Sure. We cut to a hospital in Los Angeles. Ever
Speaker 3: heard of it? It's the nineteen twenties. We meet a
Speaker 3: five year old girl named Alexandria played by Katinka Untaru,
Speaker 3: who is there because she has broken her arm because
Speaker 3: she also had a the fall off screen in the backstory.
Speaker 2: And Ali, you referenced this earlier but great child performance.
Speaker 5: Maybe one of the best, Like, I don't think there
Speaker 5: is a better child performance. I'm gonna go on a
Speaker 5: record and say that it's.
Speaker 2: Really up there.
Speaker 3: It's so good. And I think it's because she's like
Speaker 3: kind of not acting. I mean she is, but like
Speaker 3: a lot of her dialogue was improvised or like just
Speaker 3: the director kind of created scenarios where what was happening
Speaker 3: in the scene was like kind of happening in real life.
Speaker 3: So she was just like responding to Lee Pace telling
Speaker 3: her things and then she was just yeah, like kind
Speaker 3: of reacting naturally.
Speaker 2: They're like shooting through like holes in the in like
Speaker 2: a sheet so that it doesn't feel too much like
Speaker 2: I just I was so impressed by how he shot
Speaker 2: that because you're because it does feel like how it
Speaker 2: feels to have a conversation with a kid totally, and
Speaker 2: the fact that she learned English to do this movie basically,
Speaker 2: and there's scenes where I read that she had to
Speaker 2: like mostly talk with Lee pace in English, because when
Speaker 2: she was talking to Tarsum, she started talking in English
Speaker 2: that had a slight Indian accent, which you can't hear
Speaker 2: in a couple of scenes too. It's just like, it's
Speaker 2: so fun, it's so cool, so collaborative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do have. I watched the two documentaries that
Speaker 3: are about this movie. They're each pretty short. They're both
Speaker 3: like twenty eight minutes long. One is called wonder Lust
Speaker 3: and one is called Nostalgia. And although Tarsum's direction is
Speaker 3: very impressive and the movie he made is very impressive,
Speaker 3: there are moments that he doesn't come off looking great
Speaker 3: in the way that he is treating, particularly Katinka, in
Speaker 3: different moments.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he is compassionate and patient, other times not so much.
Speaker 3: I can talk more about that later. But yeah, especially
Speaker 3: considering she was like six years old when they were
Speaker 3: shooting this.
Speaker 2: I literally learned an entire language to do the movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean she's the Lebron James of
Speaker 5: child acting. I feel like you're not patient with her.
Speaker 3: Can't condona In any case, we meet Alexandria. She's in
Speaker 3: this hospital because she has broken her arm and is
Speaker 3: in this big cast she tries to drop a note
Speaker 3: from the window of the hospital down to her pal,
Speaker 3: nurse Evelyn played by Justine Waddell, but the paper fled
Speaker 3: down into the room of a man named Roy played
Speaker 3: by Lee Pace. Alexandria and Roy kind of befriend each
Speaker 3: other after she goes into his room to retrieve the note,
Speaker 3: and he starts to tell her the story of Alexander
Speaker 3: the Great, and we cut to the tale that he's telling,
Speaker 3: which Alexandria periodically interrupts and like questions the various details
Speaker 3: and logic of the story, which is something that will
Speaker 3: happen throughout the rest of the movie, and then Roy
Speaker 3: tells her to come back the following day so that
Speaker 3: he can tell her a different story. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: we learn that Roy has sustained an injury that has
Speaker 3: left him paralyzed from the waist down. I believe the
Speaker 3: details are a little foggy around this at this point,
Speaker 3: but it seems like he is a stuntman and fell
Speaker 3: during a stunt that went wrong. It becomes clear that
Speaker 3: it's that the images that we saw at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the movie with like the train that was the stunt.
Speaker 3: Like he had tried to jump from the train onto
Speaker 3: a horse below and things went terribly wrong. We pieced
Speaker 3: that information together. We also learned that he is very
Speaker 3: depressed and it is possibly about a woman, and then
Speaker 3: we'll get more insight on that later as well. Alexandria
Speaker 3: comes back the next day and Roy starts telling her
Speaker 3: a story about five men, and we cut to their
Speaker 3: story on screen. The men are Oda Benga, a former
Speaker 3: enslaved man, Luigi, an expert in explosives, a man from
Speaker 3: India whose character's name is the Indian. There's also famous
Speaker 3: naturalist Charles Darwin and his monkey friend Wallace.
Speaker 2: Also a real person. Like it's so, where the hea
Speaker 2: they're doing there? Like, yeah, the the Avengers of the
Speaker 2: history question mark, the avengers of lee Pace's morphine brain.
Speaker 3: Right, and we can talk more about Odebanga yes later.
Speaker 5: I will say of everybody, Charles Darwin maybe is the
Speaker 5: most dressed person in the world in this movie. Just
Speaker 5: the things that he has on are unreal.
Speaker 3: The big red like fur coat.
Speaker 2: It's kind of iconic.
Speaker 5: It's I think there's a lot of hyperbole that I'm
Speaker 5: going to speak in, but genuinely, Lee Pace might be
Speaker 5: the best looking a man has ever looked, and Charles
Speaker 5: Darwin might be the best dressed a man has ever
Speaker 5: been in this movie and just a lot of great.
Speaker 2: Lee Pace is just he's something else. I just love
Speaker 2: to see him.
Speaker 3: Especially as the Masked Bandit. When he takes his mask
Speaker 3: off and he's wearing this like he has like smoky
Speaker 3: eyes and like this like modern haircut, You're just like, oh.
Speaker 4: Yep, it's just hot.
Speaker 5: That's the guy. There's this is This is a complete tangent.
Speaker 5: But there's a movie that came out with Lee Pace recently,
Speaker 5: The Running Man with Glenn Powell, and I hated it
Speaker 5: so much for one reason, which is they cast Lee Pace,
Speaker 5: but they made him wear a mask for most of
Speaker 5: the movie. It's like, why are you gonna put a
Speaker 5: man this beautiful If I'm not even gonna be able
Speaker 5: to look into his.
Speaker 2: Eyes, don't waste his time. There are certain actors that
Speaker 2: I should be masked Ryan Reynolds, and there are certain
Speaker 2: masks that there are certain actors who you cannot, under
Speaker 2: any circumstances mask Lee Pace.
Speaker 3: What does what does his character look like in the MCU.
Speaker 3: I forget if he's got like a like heavy makeup
Speaker 3: on like prosthetics, or if we actually see Lee Pace
Speaker 3: Lee Pace's face. Yeah, is he not in the MCU.
Speaker 2: You're asking the wrong guy.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah he is. I'm googling him right now. He's blue.
Speaker 3: He's blue, right, I thought.
Speaker 5: He Why would you make him blue?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Wow, Avatar, Avatar, your influence is felt.
Speaker 5: All this. There are tasteful ways to mask Lee Pace,
Speaker 5: and this movie does it tastefully.
Speaker 3: It enhances the Wi Pace right because the final character
Speaker 3: is the Masked Bandit, who isn't played by Lee Pace
Speaker 3: at first, but then it becomes Lee Pace. Well we'll
Speaker 3: get there. But the thing with all of these men
Speaker 3: who we've just met is that they hate a man
Speaker 3: named Governor Odius, and they have all sworn to kill
Speaker 3: him because of various injustices that Odius has committed against them.
Speaker 3: But right now they are stranded on an island until
Speaker 3: they escape the island via an elephant that's carrying the
Speaker 3: masked Bandit because he can't swim, And then the others
Speaker 3: are swimming alongside the elephant and they end up in
Speaker 3: some remote desert place where they encounter a man who
Speaker 3: kind of like magically comes out of a tree. This
Speaker 3: is the mystic who tells them that he's been sent
Speaker 3: by his mystic cult to help them defeat Governor Odius.
Speaker 3: So they all head to a fort where Governor Odius
Speaker 3: is holding the Masked Bandit's twin brother, the Blue Bandit,
Speaker 3: and they launch an attack against Odius's soldiers, but it's
Speaker 3: too late. Odius had already killed the Blue Bandit. And
Speaker 3: then the story that Roy is telling is interrupted because
Speaker 3: we periodically cut back to Alexandria and Roy. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: because she's interjecting, sometimes it's because someone else interrupts them.
Speaker 2: I love her interjections are so it just is so
Speaker 2: authentically kid like, where she's like, I just yeah, she's incredible.
Speaker 2: She reminds me of my neighbors because they're just letting
Speaker 2: her be a kid. Totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She'll be like, wait a minute, didn't you say this?
Speaker 3: Your story is inconsistent, Or she'll make an assumption that
Speaker 3: Roy then incorporates into the rest of the story. Stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So the story resumes the Masked Bandit, who
Speaker 3: is revealed to be played by Lee Pace, although again
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it was a different actor when we
Speaker 3: initially saw him. I think it's the same actor who
Speaker 3: plays Alexandria's father, who we meet via a photograph, but
Speaker 3: he had passed away some time ago. But anyway, the
Speaker 3: masked bandit swears to avenge his brother, but the men
Speaker 3: aren't sure where to find their sworn enemy, Odious, so
Speaker 3: the mystic and his tribe do some sort of ritual
Speaker 3: that gives them directions via a like tattoo map that
Speaker 3: appears on the body of the mystic, and the men
Speaker 3: follow the map and find Odius's carriage crossing the desert,
Speaker 3: which is pulled by a bunch of enslaved people. But
Speaker 3: before this story continues, Roy stops and asks Alexandria to
Speaker 3: go to the pharmacy or like the dispensary at the
Speaker 3: hospital and get him some morphine pills to help him
Speaker 3: sleep so that he can more effectively finish the story.
Speaker 3: So she sneaks into the dispensary procures a bottle, but
Speaker 3: only gives him three pills and then throws the rest
Speaker 3: away due to a misunderstanding.
Speaker 2: That I think was like it wasn't that, like an
Speaker 2: actual misunderstanding by the childacker and then they changed it.
Speaker 2: That's so sweet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Roy spells out morphine, but his e at
Speaker 3: the end looks like a three, so she thinks he
Speaker 3: only wanted three pills and it morphin three.
Speaker 5: It makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone could have made this mistake.
Speaker 5: This is me at work whenever someone gives me directions that.
Speaker 2: You wrote so kind of on her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So she brings him the three pills and
Speaker 3: Roy is disappointed because he wanted the whole bottle for
Speaker 3: reasons that will soon become more clear. So back to
Speaker 3: the story. The men free the enslaved people and stop
Speaker 3: Odius's carriage, but Odious turns out not to be inside. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's a woman who he has captured to be his bride.
Speaker 3: The masked bandit claims this woman as his future wife.
Speaker 2: I know, which is pretty rich given that he just
Speaker 2: was like, I'm anti slave Frey, except for this woman
Speaker 2: who will may Amy or else.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, And this woman turns out to look a
Speaker 3: lot like Nurse Evelyn, who we've met before. Because the
Speaker 3: characters in this story look like Slash are inspired by
Speaker 3: Slash are the same actors who play other characters in
Speaker 3: the hospital setting, which I just.
Speaker 2: Love how they approach like how the I don't know,
Speaker 2: I've never seen anything like this because it must have
Speaker 2: been so hard to do. Is like that we're seeing
Speaker 2: a combination of what Roy is talking about, but we're
Speaker 2: also seeing ideas that could have only come from Alexandria,
Speaker 2: and in how she's like populating this world or even
Speaker 2: just misunderstandings around Indian means two different things to each
Speaker 2: of them, and that like affects the entire story. It's
Speaker 2: just it's I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: It's really cool. It's very like Wizard of Ozian in
Speaker 3: the sense that all the characters Scarecrow, ten Man, the Lion,
Speaker 3: the Wicked Witch, they're played by actors who also play
Speaker 3: the characters that Dorothy knows in real life, like around
Speaker 3: her farm, in town and stuff like that. And she's
Speaker 3: mapping the people that she knows onto the characters in
Speaker 3: her dream, and Alexandria is doing the same thing with
Speaker 3: the people she knows and mapping them onto the characters
Speaker 3: in Roy's story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was telling Caitlin about this, but this is
Speaker 5: like kind of a literalization of how I relate to
Speaker 5: movies and why I love film. It's also like essentially
Speaker 5: why I started film slot, and that a lot of
Speaker 5: film criticism to me is here's why this shot is beautiful,
Speaker 5: Here's why this is stunning. But for me, it's always
Speaker 5: been about where you see yourself in the context of
Speaker 5: a movie, and I kind of just wanted to space
Speaker 5: to engage with that. I think this is the first
Speaker 5: movie that was like whoa. You can actually literally see
Speaker 5: people insert themselves into stories and how they understand their
Speaker 5: own world through that, and that's I do think it's magical.
Speaker 5: I think this movie has a lot of flaws that
Speaker 5: I'm excited to unpack with you. I do think if
Speaker 5: you love something, the best way to love it is
Speaker 5: to see it for its laws and to help it grow.
Speaker 5: But in like the understanding of where you see yourself
Speaker 5: with in the context of a story, I don't think
Speaker 5: anything does it better than this movie. And that is
Speaker 5: truly like how I've learned to love and grow with movies.
Speaker 2: It's so cool, it really is. I just whenever a
Speaker 2: movie can pull the magic trick of like showing you,
Speaker 2: like literalizing how people think, even if they're like thinking
Speaker 2: in a direction that does not make linear sense, it's
Speaker 2: just like it's the coolest thing in the world and
Speaker 2: it happens a million times in this movie, to the
Speaker 2: point where you're like, oh, right, if this was just
Speaker 2: like a linear story, that wouldn't have happened, but it
Speaker 2: made sense when I don't know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: you do that and shoot across twenty nine countries over
Speaker 2: four years, and at some point you're like, I'm sure
Speaker 2: that they're just mistakes in there. That it's like, well,
Speaker 2: you can't fly leepas everywhere.
Speaker 5: It's awfully. I think the story as the characters evolve
Speaker 5: their thinking, Like as the relationship becomes clearer, the characters
Speaker 5: and the stories become clearer. The people that the child
Speaker 5: inserts Alexandria's she's seen different people that she grows relationships too,
Speaker 5: and things change. It doesn't make sense in the context
Speaker 5: of the story, but yeah, you realize at some point
Speaker 5: the story really isn't the point. You're there to hang
Speaker 5: out inside both of their brains and see how they.
Speaker 2: Think they need each other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's sweet, it's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, So then we meet Alexandria's mom and sister
Speaker 3: who come to visit her in the hospital. They are
Speaker 3: all immigrants from Romania, I believe, and we learn that
Speaker 3: Alexandria broke her arm when she fell while picking fruit
Speaker 3: in an orange grove. Keep in mind that she is
Speaker 3: five years old, and we're like, right, this is taking
Speaker 3: place before the Fair Labor Standards Act of nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 3: which significantly regulated child labor in the US, but is
Speaker 3: taking place in the nineteen twenties. There were not really
Speaker 3: child labor laws at this time. Then we see Alexandria
Speaker 3: observing a woman crying in a car outside the hospital,
Speaker 3: as well as a man who is a famous movie star.
Speaker 3: This is Sinclair, and we pieced together that this woman
Speaker 3: was Roy's former beloved but that she left him for Sinclair,
Speaker 3: and this is why Roy is deeply depressed and perhaps suicidal.
Speaker 3: And then Roy has Alexandria steal more morphine pills from
Speaker 3: his neighbor's cabinet. Like the guy a few hospital beds over,
Speaker 3: great guy, Yeah, he's really awesome. Roy resumes his story.
Speaker 3: The masked bandit takes the woman who he has captured,
Speaker 3: whose name is also Evelyn, takes her with him and
Speaker 3: they fall in love as the bandit and the other
Speaker 3: men plan their attack on Odius's palace, but then Evelyn
Speaker 3: learns that they intend to kill her fiance odious. So
Speaker 3: the masked bandit has to kill her for some reason,
Speaker 3: so he shoots her, but the locket she's wearing stops
Speaker 3: the bullet and she survives. And it seems like it's
Speaker 3: because Alexandria says, no, she can't die, so Roy's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I guess well, I have to make sure she lives.
Speaker 2: So it's like watching someone write a Marvel movie.
Speaker 3: In real time.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, we got to bring it back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this action figure is import it. I think it's
Speaker 5: so special that the love interest takes the form of
Speaker 5: the nurse because you're seeing it through a kid's eyes.
Speaker 5: And so teach. I teach third grade sometimes on Sundays.
Speaker 5: And the ultimate way I can tell that they like
Speaker 5: me is if some them have older sisters. They'll be like,
Speaker 5: you should marry my sister, and I'll be like, no,
Speaker 5: but I appreciate that I've like ingratiated myself with you.
Speaker 5: I think it's for like Alexandria, she sees the nurse,
Speaker 5: and she sees leepaes as the two adults that she likes,
Speaker 5: and naturally, in child logic, they need to be together.
Speaker 5: And it's I think it's really special that she sees
Speaker 5: the love interest as the nurse rather than Liepes's ex
Speaker 5: who is in slish fantasy of that story.
Speaker 2: It plaisa I love and I love the character the nurse,
Speaker 2: like her relationship with the nurse is so sweet and nurturing,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I really like that because that's like like
Speaker 2: the first major detail where you're like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: not just his We're not just seeing his version of events.
Speaker 3: So then the Bandit opens the locket that he had
Speaker 3: just shot with a bullet and reads the inscription inside,
Speaker 3: and all of this is taken as a sign that
Speaker 3: the Bandit and Evelyn are destined to be together. So
Speaker 3: they go to get married. But a priest character not
Speaker 3: unlike the priest who's at the hospital because this hospital
Speaker 3: is also sort of like a mission because there's like
Speaker 3: nuns there and a priest and the nuns are also
Speaker 3: the nurses or something. I wasn't really sure exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's got a lot of colonial energy
Speaker 2: about it, right.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the priest who is supposed to marry these
Speaker 3: characters betrays the bandit and sells him out to Odious.
Speaker 3: So the Bandit and his friends are once again banished
Speaker 3: to the desert and like tied up and things seem
Speaker 3: pretty hopeless. There's no one left to save them until
Speaker 3: a new masked bandit appears a little one played by Alexandria,
Speaker 3: and so she unties the men from their restraints. But
Speaker 3: before the story continues, Roy has taken a full bottle
Speaker 3: of the morphine pills, intending to die by suicide, and
Speaker 3: he tells Alexandria to leave when he quote unquote falls asleep.
Speaker 2: Now, Roy, that's the most diabolical thing you can.
Speaker 3: Really fucked up, Roy, not great, not great.
Speaker 2: Not great. He's like, he knows, like he's like, so
Speaker 2: I can definitely trust this six year old to do
Speaker 2: what I say, even though that's never once happened. It's truly, yes,
Speaker 2: he's he's kind of growing out there, that is. I
Speaker 2: don't even think Grew would have done that. Grew would
Speaker 2: not have done that to Kevin.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: No, Wait, that's such a that's just my stomach just
Speaker 2: dropped considering that.
Speaker 5: That's really sad.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, God, no, You've got so much to live.
Speaker 5: For, dude to spile me twelve and when they release
Speaker 5: that version of Old Grew, feeling suicidal grew.
Speaker 2: God, greath and Asia plot. Oh my god, something to
Speaker 2: consider so that he consider anything.
Speaker 3: To think about anyway.
Speaker 5: Sorry, you're doing such a good job of telling this,
Speaker 5: like amazing story. It's like this is like impossible to
Speaker 5: summarize by the way. I'm just I'm watching a master
Speaker 5: at work right now, Jamie and I are going about.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's the little interjections like this that make
Speaker 3: the recap so special.
Speaker 2: No, you worked very hard at this.
Speaker 3: We'll stop talking, Okay. So Roy loses consciousness after taking
Speaker 3: the pills. Alexandria tries to wake him up. She thinks
Speaker 3: that he has died and is devastated, but twist he's alive.
Speaker 3: He wakes up and discovers that the morphine was actually
Speaker 3: placebo pills that the doctors had been giving his neighbor Guy.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't sure if it was implied that he
Speaker 3: was a hypochondriac or that he was maybe an addict
Speaker 3: who is sort of like drug seeking. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: what exactly was going on there.
Speaker 2: I don't know either way.
Speaker 3: They're giving him placbos.
Speaker 2: I sort of resigned myself to disx and placebo pill right.
Speaker 2: He just can't die.
Speaker 5: Much like the minions.
Speaker 2: So sometimes Roy is grew, sometimes he is a minion.
Speaker 2: Life is complicated, right. There are relationships where you're the
Speaker 2: minion and relationships where you grew in this life.
Speaker 5: And the most beautiful ones are when you're both true.
Speaker 2: And that's the relationship you have with yourself. A kind
Speaker 2: of really makes you think, I am my own minion.
Speaker 5: I did that on a shirt.
Speaker 3: WHOA Okay. So Roy is furious because he was expecting
Speaker 3: to die and he didn't, so he lashes out. Alexandria
Speaker 3: runs off. He's kind of frightened. That night, she sneaks
Speaker 3: back into the dispensary to try to retrieve more pills
Speaker 3: for Roy, thinking that he needs them to sleep, but
Speaker 3: she slips and falls another the fall she the falls yes,
Speaker 3: and as she's she has fallen and injured herself. It
Speaker 3: seems like she sustains a head injury. We see flashes
Speaker 3: from the story that Roy has been telling, We see
Speaker 3: flashes from Alexandria's backstory, and then this like surreal stop
Speaker 3: animation sequence.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so good, it's so good, so good.
Speaker 3: And then eventually Alexandria wakes up and Roy is there
Speaker 3: and She begs him to tell her the rest of
Speaker 3: the story, but he is despondent and he also feels
Speaker 3: responsible for Alexandria's the fall.
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you why it feels that way,
Speaker 2: because fall as he is.
Speaker 3: But he tearfully resumes the story, where the Masked Bandit
Speaker 3: and friends spot Evelyn with Odius, who I think this
Speaker 3: is the first time we are seeing Odius on screen
Speaker 3: and he is the same guy as Sinclair, that famous
Speaker 3: movie star. So they plan their attack on Odius, but
Speaker 3: things go awry and one by one the members of
Speaker 3: the group die, starting with Wallace the Monkey, then Darwin Luigi,
Speaker 3: Ode Benga, the Mystic, and the Indian. They're either killed
Speaker 3: by Odius's army or they sacrifice themselves until the only
Speaker 3: ones left are the Masked Bandit and the Little Masked
Speaker 3: Bandit played by Alexandria.
Speaker 5: I don't know what this says about me, but I
Speaker 5: think I'm not much of a movie crier. But like,
Speaker 5: the only time I teared up watching this movie, which
Speaker 5: is really sposhible me, is when the monkey dies.
Speaker 2: I mean that is very moving.
Speaker 5: It was like a hard watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hard agree that monkey was acting his ass off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, could not replace him with a minion either.
Speaker 2: No, No, minyas can't emote like that.
Speaker 3: Well I think they can, but they can.
Speaker 2: They can't.
Speaker 5: It depends which minion you're using.
Speaker 2: There's a Spectrum James, maybe Crime, James.
Speaker 4: Mary James.
Speaker 5: AD's the one who got me.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, and you gotta love Ed. It's so
Speaker 2: wild that they created three new, amazing minions. I didn't
Speaker 2: think they could do it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot what So this is the Minions and
Speaker 3: Monsters Minions. Yes, yes, I loved Dick.
Speaker 2: Dick, Dick. That's and you might be alone there there, Dick,
Speaker 2: I don't remember.
Speaker 3: I love Dick.
Speaker 2: Is my favorite moment Indias and Monsters was like when
Speaker 2: the Minions are passing the Christoph Waltz producer character and
Speaker 2: he and Dick have a moment where he goes Dick
Speaker 2: Max and it made me laugh so much I laughed
Speaker 2: for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 3: It was great.
Speaker 2: That should have happened in the fall.
Speaker 5: It should have kind of happens in the fall. There's
Speaker 5: like a lot of producers and moments.
Speaker 3: It's sort of right.
Speaker 2: It's true. There's no Dick the minion. I guess I
Speaker 2: been again. Like, is Roy Dick the Minion?
Speaker 5: Sometimes Alexander Dickmanion most of the time.
Speaker 3: It's also true the neighbor maybe is Dick the Minion?
Speaker 5: He was?
Speaker 4: He actually behaves like Dick the Minion, Yes he does.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a powerful character. We see him everywhere.
Speaker 5: I think we just both have broken friends.
Speaker 3: And that's okay, okay. So, so most of the characters
Speaker 3: have died. And then Alexandria, both in the story that
Speaker 3: Roy is telling and in real life in the hospital,
Speaker 3: she is sobbing and asking, like, why are you killing everyone?
Speaker 3: Why is this how the story is going? And it's
Speaker 3: because Roy is so depressed. And then Odious appears and
Speaker 3: attacks the bandit, who falls in the pool and he's drowning.
Speaker 3: He's completely given up again, kind of the way that
Speaker 3: Roy has. He doesn't even try to fight back. And
Speaker 3: Alexandria again like begs Roy to let the bandit live.
Speaker 3: She's also kind of like projecting her father onto the bandit,
Speaker 3: and like everyone is crying, and so Roy decides to
Speaker 3: let the bandit live in the story, and the character
Speaker 3: starts fighting back and he punches Odius, who accidentally impales
Speaker 3: himself on a sword and dies. Though the line where
Speaker 3: he says, I'm not feeling very well, it's so funny
Speaker 3: because he's got a sword through his chest. We've been there,
Speaker 3: tis but to scratch. And then the story ends triumphantly
Speaker 3: for the Bandit and the Little Bandit. We cut back
Speaker 3: to Alexandria, Roy, and other patients in the hospital watching
Speaker 3: a film with some characters that kind of resemble characters
Speaker 3: from Roy's story, and I think it's implied that the
Speaker 3: film that they're watching is the one that Roy was
Speaker 3: working on when he was injured, and we see his
Speaker 3: stunt kind of it.
Speaker 2: Got basically cut for time. Yeah, it seems like tough business.
Speaker 3: And then we cut to Alexandria and her family working
Speaker 3: in the Orange Grove after Alexandria has fully recovered, and
Speaker 3: her voiceover says that she misses Roy, that he has
Speaker 3: gone back to work as a stuntman, and that she
Speaker 3: has seen him in a film and that she like
Speaker 3: kind of watched it over and over again to make
Speaker 3: sure that it was him. And then the movie that
Speaker 3: we are watching ends with a montage of impressive stunts
Speaker 3: from silent films, including a lot of people falling.
Speaker 2: The end, I mean makes you think makes you think,
Speaker 2: kind of reminded me of the end of Babylon. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this movie is so I punched just a little bit,
Speaker 2: and also the beginning of Many and Monsters. Okay, it's right,
Speaker 2: So that's the movie.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 3: We're back, Ollie. Where would you like to start?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think this is the first time
Speaker 5: I've actually watched this through a Bechdel CASTI feminist lens.
Speaker 5: I think every time I was kind of swept in
Speaker 5: by the magic of cinema. This is like maybe round
Speaker 5: four or five for me watching it, so I could
Speaker 5: be a little bit more critical, and I am very
Speaker 5: excited to hear your thoughts because I think this movie
Speaker 5: is rather lacking in some of the feminist readings. There
Speaker 5: is one lens that I think I have crafted. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure if it's accurate. It's me inserting something trying
Speaker 5: to make an excuse for something that I love dearly.
Speaker 5: But I do think that Roy's original rendition of the
Speaker 5: story is kind of an insult fantasy where he's this
Speaker 5: guy who has been rejected and now he's just kind
Speaker 5: of lashing out. He is using vengeance as this shield
Speaker 5: and doesn't know how to accept being rejected. He is
Speaker 5: kind of a loser, unfortunately. But I think with Alexandria,
Speaker 5: she has inserted herself into this male dominated story and
Speaker 5: with the inclusion of a child slash female voice, there's
Speaker 5: like a break from this toxic masculinity that dominates stories,
Speaker 5: and it is more of like an invitation to add
Speaker 5: more diverse voices into the stories we tell. So I
Speaker 5: think that's my one way of like, here's how I
Speaker 5: can make this a little bit more tasteful too myself.
Speaker 2: I like it. Yeah, I totally agree with you, especially
Speaker 2: with the Alexandria stuff, where I the performance is so great.
Speaker 2: And I also was, as I was like looking into
Speaker 2: the extensive backstory for this movie, that this movie was
Speaker 2: not written for a child of a specific gender, and
Speaker 2: I feel like you can really feel that in the story,
Speaker 2: and it made me actually think and challenge a little
Speaker 2: more how like young Girls are written specifically because children
Speaker 2: are like genderless, like genders of contract. Children are genderless weirdos.
Speaker 2: They just like they're flop it around. It's fun. Being
Speaker 2: a kid is fun, And like I like that because
Speaker 2: Katinka was encouraged to and I'm very curious to hear
Speaker 2: more about this documentary, Caitlin. But it seems that Katinka
Speaker 2: was encouraged to just act like a kid and not
Speaker 2: be acting out this like coming of age young girl
Speaker 2: plot that I love, but like you can feel how
Speaker 2: free it is, and that because it's just a kid
Speaker 2: being a kid, it is kind of like inherently like
Speaker 2: a genderless performance because that's how kids are. And I
Speaker 2: just I loved that she seemed free to behave and
Speaker 2: think like a kid in the way that the story
Speaker 2: rolls out because she's still she's still so young that
Speaker 2: I think the ways in which gender will shape her
Speaker 2: life are maybe not quite.
Speaker 3: Clear to her yet. Yeah, which is cool. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of the moment where the Evelyn character enters the story
Speaker 3: as as the woman who who the masked bandit has
Speaker 3: kidnapped and sort of like made into his bride to be,
Speaker 3: but they're also kind of like falling in love whatever,
Speaker 3: and Alexandria is like, make them kiss, make them kiss,
Speaker 3: And I was thinking about how a lot of like
Speaker 3: gender socialization encourages little girls to latch onto romance, and
Speaker 3: it also conditions little boys to think that that's gross
Speaker 3: because going back to, for example, The Princess Bride, there
Speaker 3: are parts in that story when you know the grandfather
Speaker 3: who's relaying the story of the Princess Bride to the
Speaker 3: little Fred Savage character, and he's like, ooh, gross, they're kissing.
Speaker 3: Can't you skip over the kissing parts? Because he has
Speaker 3: been socialized to find that stuff yucky and that's and
Speaker 3: romance is for girls, that kind of thing. So I
Speaker 3: was thinking about that. But Alexandria also says that she
Speaker 3: has never seen a movie before, so I'm just like,
Speaker 3: it's not like she was like influenced by at least films,
Speaker 3: maybe by books or other stories. She might have received
Speaker 3: some sort of conditioning, but it could also just be
Speaker 3: that she wants to see these two characters kiss and
Speaker 3: that's just coming from her without any kind of like
Speaker 3: external influence. I don't know exactly what to make of that,
Speaker 3: but but I found that interesting.
Speaker 2: I liked it. It just felt more like and I'm like,
Speaker 2: who knows how scripted or unscripted that was, but like
Speaker 2: it just feels like a thing that a curious kid says,
Speaker 2: right because they've heard of kissing and it looks fun
Speaker 2: like mm, hmm, yeah, I don't know. I totally agree
Speaker 2: because I don't know, it's so hard to get a
Speaker 2: performance like this. It's so singular, so it's not like
Speaker 2: this could just be how kids perform. Not everyone is
Speaker 2: Katinka and Taro.
Speaker 3: But is.
Speaker 2: So it's such a cool experiment kind of, but also
Speaker 2: it sounds could we talk about that really quick, because
Speaker 2: I just it's like, in the back of my head,
Speaker 2: I'm very curious about how she was treated, because we've
Speaker 2: talked a lot on the show about how just in general, like,
Speaker 2: I have very mixed feelings on I mean, there's just
Speaker 2: still not enough protections in place for kid actors and
Speaker 2: the whole like whatever, the whole classic mentalities don't work
Speaker 2: with kids or animals. When I feel like the question
Speaker 2: should be like, well, maybe that's because there's not proper
Speaker 2: protections in place for kids and animals and that's why
Speaker 2: it tends to not go well anyways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the documentaries that I watched, wonder Lust and Nostalgia,
Speaker 3: they're pretty similar. They both are just behind the scenes footage,
Speaker 3: so there's no like interviews or anything. There's no like
Speaker 3: talking heads describing oh this was my vision for this
Speaker 3: scene or anything like that. It's just a kind of
Speaker 3: a series of behind the scenes shots that are strung together.
Speaker 3: What we gather from it is that it seems like
Speaker 3: this movie was difficult to shoot because there are all
Speaker 3: these tough locations, there's harsh weather, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: practical effects and stunts and things like that, so we
Speaker 3: see bits of that. There's a part with an elephant
Speaker 3: that's like on a boat and like being shipped to
Speaker 3: this island, and it just it made me feel so
Speaker 3: bad for the elephant. I don't know how many protections
Speaker 3: were put in place in the production for this elephant,
Speaker 3: but I was just like, oh man, this poor elephant
Speaker 3: is like how I was feeling as I was watching it.
Speaker 3: In addition to that, you get insight into how Tarsum
Speaker 3: is as a director, for like the cast in general,
Speaker 3: but also particularly how he directed young Katinka. So as
Speaker 3: I said before, sometimes he seems patient and calm and
Speaker 3: pleasant to work with toward her, and then other times
Speaker 3: he is just cruel and berating her. There's a moment
Speaker 3: where she's crying and it seems it's because something isn't
Speaker 3: going quite right on the set or I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly the context, but she's crying, not her character is crying,
Speaker 3: but like it's clear that the actor is crying because
Speaker 3: she's frustrated or her feelings have been hurt or something
Speaker 3: like that. And Harson says something like, don't do that
Speaker 3: crap here, do it over there in front of the camera.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that. He's yelling. There's another scene where he
Speaker 3: has her do nineteen takes of something, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So again, he doesn't come off great in these documentaries.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how, I mean, I genuinely don't know
Speaker 2: the answer to this. It's like how child I mean,
Speaker 2: it's weird that this story touches on child labor and
Speaker 2: seems to come down antie and then this is how
Speaker 2: the child star of the movie is treated. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: how those laws differ from country to country, I actually
Speaker 2: don't know. But in the US they're definitely still a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean, so much of child labor laws and entertainment
Speaker 2: have and this is exclusive, but like it has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with like what the parents are willing
Speaker 2: to tolerate on behalf of the child, not necessarily what
Speaker 2: the child themselves wants or needs, which is how you
Speaker 2: get into all these horrific stage parent things. That's why,
Speaker 2: like cougan laws exist to protect their money, but I
Speaker 2: don't know that it necessarily protects them. And then you
Speaker 2: heard stories about child actors that had parents that were
Speaker 2: doing their best and were very careful and the child
Speaker 2: is still harmed or abused behind the scenes, and that's
Speaker 2: I I don't know what the solution to that is.
Speaker 2: Like it's because it's like you can be a great
Speaker 2: director and that doesn't mean that you should be directing children,
Speaker 2: and like how do you make that distinction?
Speaker 3: And I don't know, right it's Yeah, it was disheartening
Speaker 3: to see footage of Tarsan's behavior toward Katinka in those
Speaker 3: two documentaries. The other notable thing about what I learned
Speaker 3: from Wanderlust and Nostalgia was that Tarsum had lee Pace
Speaker 3: pretend to not be able to walk during the whole shoot,
Speaker 3: to the point where Katinka and most of the crew
Speaker 3: thought he was actually disabled. And Tarsan did this to
Speaker 3: I guess, like help with the authenticity, particularly for Katinka's
Speaker 3: reactions to things and her behavior where she was like
Speaker 3: really careful around lee Pace's legs, if she was like
Speaker 3: sitting in bed with him or something like that, and
Speaker 3: then like I think maybe on the last day of
Speaker 3: shooting they reveal to her that he actually can walk.
Speaker 3: So there's a discussion to be had around ableism.
Speaker 2: Here, not only in the psychological torture yes of a child, right,
Speaker 2: because it's like it's so many layers.
Speaker 3: It's an able bodied actor playing a disabled character. It
Speaker 3: is an able bodied actor pretending to be disabled, not
Speaker 3: only for the sake of the story that unfolds on screen,
Speaker 3: but also for the like behind the scenes. And then
Speaker 3: there's the like lying to a child in order to
Speaker 3: elicit a more authentic reaction and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: So it's also the gravity of what you're kind of
Speaker 5: lying to a child about, where this is a child
Speaker 5: who is learning English, is developing a really close relationship
Speaker 5: with this actor, who I think on set is very
Speaker 5: caring and you come to learn to love him in
Speaker 5: your own way, and you just like have this understanding
Speaker 5: that the person who care about is hurt. It is
Speaker 5: very devastating to be a kid and to have to
Speaker 5: think about it in my context for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't I mean Lee Pece very much
Speaker 2: obviously an adult during this movie, but that I feel
Speaker 2: like does sort of lay firmly with Tarsum, especially because
Speaker 2: I don't know, like, yeah, this was like very early
Speaker 2: into Leepece's career, like you're whatever. I and also with
Speaker 2: her parents, like your parents have to be involved in
Speaker 2: this high level of deception if you're that young, like
Speaker 2: they have to. It's not like you know, because it's
Speaker 2: a non starter if her parents are like, no, that
Speaker 2: that's fucked up, like on all of these different levels
Speaker 2: we're gonna tell her like then there's no point in
Speaker 2: doing it. So it's like there there's sort of a
Speaker 2: multiple levels of people that are okay with a deceitful
Speaker 2: and ablest setup that is required for this to happen.
Speaker 2: And again I think it's it's it's ablest in the
Speaker 2: ways that like they're treating I mean, the story treats uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean not that the story is
Speaker 2: inherently the casting is somewhat ablest, right, but like the
Speaker 2: story itself, Like I understand that he wanted an able
Speaker 2: bodied actor to be able to play the other character, right,
Speaker 2: but surely you know, we have we have a lot
Speaker 2: of great writers on this movie. There's an interesting way
Speaker 2: to subvert that in a way that doesn't make it
Speaker 2: necessary for this to happen in the first place.
Speaker 3: But writers like Dan Gilroy.
Speaker 2: Man, some of our some of our strongest NEPO soldiers
Speaker 2: are the Gilroys. Like, they're so cool Dan Gilroy, He's
Speaker 2: the Nightcrawler Gilroy, Right, Yes, I believe, so good Gilroy,
Speaker 2: strong Gilroy.
Speaker 3: And then Tony Gilroy's mister and or Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there's John Gilroy who I think edits like
Speaker 2: both of their movies. Oh yeah, good for him Gilroy Nation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess getting back to the characters, like gave it
Speaker 2: to the character. I think that Alexandria is a really
Speaker 2: interesting and layered character. And now talking about how the
Speaker 2: actress was treated on set, it is interacting directly with
Speaker 2: Alexandria's story in a way that probably was not intentional.
Speaker 2: Where she is she was injured working. That is like
Speaker 2: why she's in this hospital in the first place. She
Speaker 2: was injured doing a job that she shouldn't have had
Speaker 2: to have been doing, which child labor is like all
Speaker 2: in conversation with obviously like class and the ability to survive.
Speaker 2: It's not just like her parents, I mean, And I
Speaker 2: like that the movie goes out of its way to
Speaker 2: introduce us to her mom. We don't get to know
Speaker 2: her mom especially well, but we do get to I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think that there is a tendency, at
Speaker 2: least in the US, to reduce very large issues to
Speaker 2: like an individual family or person and have the thinking
Speaker 2: be like, oh, this child was sent to work, How
Speaker 2: cruel of their parents, when it's like, well, that was
Speaker 2: the only situation that would have allowed this family to
Speaker 2: even remotely thrive. That was like how the system was built.
Speaker 2: And I like that. You do get a moment with
Speaker 2: her and her mom, and then she's still being a
Speaker 2: bit of a minion in that scene because she has
Speaker 2: all the power in that scene. She's the translator and
Speaker 2: she's like hmm, like she I don't know.
Speaker 5: Did you see the Bulgarian movie that this is based on.
Speaker 5: It's called Yoho Ho I have not known. It's like
Speaker 5: the same kind of promise, but instead of a little girl,
Speaker 5: it's a little boy, and the story is about like pirates,
Speaker 5: and it's a little bit more simplistic, but it's kind
Speaker 5: of the same. Broken arm in the hospital befriends a
Speaker 5: paraplegic and then they make up a story and the
Speaker 5: paraplegic is also suicidal, but they kind of resist the
Speaker 5: villain in the room at the end.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Okay, Yeah, I knew it was based on because
Speaker 2: I know that that, like lore wise with the production
Speaker 2: of this movie. Was that a movie that Tarsum saw
Speaker 2: when he was young and like wanted to create his
Speaker 2: version of right, it seems like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Tarsan went to film school in oh I
Speaker 3: forget the name of the school, but it's in Pasadena.
Speaker 3: His classmates included Michael Bay and Zack Snyder.
Speaker 2: Okay, but a lot of really strong, weird guy energy.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course, he wasn't writing very strong women characters.
Speaker 2: Look at his peersmates.
Speaker 5: I'm on his his Wikipedia page right now, and the
Speaker 5: last sentence is Singh also acted in a student film
Speaker 5: of Bay and Snyder, including Gannazi and one of the.
Speaker 2: Latter's works, Wow, and You're like and the less set
Speaker 2: about whatever the hell that is? It's like cool, Sure,
Speaker 2: why the hell not?
Speaker 3: Like, but it seems like Tarsum saw the Bulgarian film
Speaker 3: when he was in film school, which I'm guessing would
Speaker 3: have been like late eighties, early nineties, and from that
Speaker 3: point on he was like I'm making I'm adapting this,
Speaker 3: I'm making my own version of this. He and I'm
Speaker 3: pulling a lot of this information from an Indie wire
Speaker 3: oral history of the Fall that was published in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four.
Speaker 2: And I know this is so pedantic, but I read
Speaker 2: that same article and I was like, this isn't a
Speaker 2: damn oral history. This is an article with an interview
Speaker 2: in it. Yeah, right, nice, try Layla Jordan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get her ass.
Speaker 5: But it's funny you mentioned that article because Lila and
Speaker 5: I went to college together.
Speaker 2: Oh but oh, okay, okay, Charsa Michael bay vibes.
Speaker 5: She's great, She's cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sure. I'm sure she did. She didn't write
Speaker 2: the headline either. But I was like, I was. I
Speaker 2: love oral histories, and I was like, but this is
Speaker 2: it's a good article, but an article. Nonetheless, pray, let
Speaker 2: me tell you.
Speaker 5: Film Slop would not be publishing titles like that.
Speaker 3: No, and that's why every one should read film Slop.
Speaker 3: You hear that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, multiple plugs listeners for the record, I was being
Speaker 2: unfair there. Writers rarely get to pick their headlines. But whatever.
Speaker 3: In any case, Tarsan saw the film early on wanted
Speaker 3: to make his own version of it, and basically throughout
Speaker 3: the nineties was like figuring out ways to do this.
Speaker 3: It seems like when he got his first big paycheck
Speaker 3: after directing a big commercial, he bought the rights to
Speaker 3: the Bulgarian film. From that point on he was working
Speaker 3: with writers, production designers, things like that to develop the movie,
Speaker 3: and then it went into production finally. I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly when, but I do know that it took four
Speaker 3: years to film. Tarsan funded the whole thing himself.
Speaker 2: Which I guess is like part of how he did that,
Speaker 2: which is pretty clever, is like would take gigs like
Speaker 2: Mountain Dew commercials be in a great location already keep
Speaker 2: the same crew, like, pay to retain the same crew
Speaker 2: from the commercial, so he didn't need to actually assemble
Speaker 2: his own international crews in every single country and then
Speaker 2: just fly the actress out. Yeah, kind of something only
Speaker 2: he could have done at this exact moment, But I
Speaker 2: was like, pretty pretty cool. Five D Chessi's playing scheduling
Speaker 2: was for sure.
Speaker 3: I also read that he paid the entire cast and
Speaker 3: crew the same rate, no matter what their role was,
Speaker 3: which meant that some people got paid a greater rate
Speaker 3: than they might have otherwise on a different production. It
Speaker 3: seems that other people would have taken a pay cut.
Speaker 3: But from what I read, anyone who took a pay
Speaker 3: cut was just like, I'll gladly do it because I
Speaker 3: believe so in my in this project.
Speaker 2: That's called I've That's how I made my movie Smiley Face.
Speaker 2: It's called a Most Favored Nations setup that is designed
Speaker 2: to it's I don't know if this is how Tarsome
Speaker 2: did it, but I think that I only learned about
Speaker 2: this to do this movie. But that everyone has paid
Speaker 2: the same day rate and everyone gets back points. So
Speaker 2: for people who are taking a pay cut, it's and
Speaker 2: on my movie is kind of who wasn't taking a
Speaker 2: pay cut? That there is like potential for more revenue
Speaker 2: on the on the back end, I guess not that
Speaker 2: anyone in the Fall would have ever gotten the opportunity
Speaker 2: to get back in points because this movie was not
Speaker 2: financially successful, but.
Speaker 5: Sure it is coming back kind of. I think they've
Speaker 5: had a little bit of a run. So I wonder
Speaker 5: if the new movie stuff has come to the actor terms.
Speaker 2: How wild would that be if you started getting residuals
Speaker 2: like twenty plus years after the movie first, after you
Speaker 2: shaw something. I mean, that's how residual should work. It's
Speaker 2: just wild to think that for a movie that you
Speaker 2: very much had given up on ever seeing a cent
Speaker 2: from right.
Speaker 3: Best wishes to the cast and crew. Yeah, for that,
Speaker 3: I had a point to all this context I was providing,
Speaker 3: But now I forget what it was.
Speaker 2: We were talking about the international. I think we started
Speaker 2: in the international, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Guess just that Tarsan would take commercial directing jobs only
Speaker 3: in countries that he wanted to use locations for in
Speaker 3: his movie. Oh right, I was just saying, how basically
Speaker 3: the development and the production of this movie, so he
Speaker 3: funded it himself by accepting these commercial directing gigs, and
Speaker 3: it happened over a four year period, and so I'm
Speaker 3: guessing it went into production in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: Because this movie premiered at TIFF in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: Tarsan was hoping that Roger Ebert would champion his film
Speaker 3: as he did for The Cell, and that because of
Speaker 3: that kind of testimonial from Roger Ebert, he would get
Speaker 3: distribution for the movie after TIFF aka the Toronto International
Speaker 3: Film Festival. But Roger Ebert was sick and didn't attend
Speaker 3: the festival, and then Harvey Weinstein, World's Greatest Villain, basically
Speaker 3: was just like, this movie sucks. He walked out of
Speaker 3: it after fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: He literally balled his fist up and was like I'm
Speaker 2: convinced and like.
Speaker 3: And stormed out. And because of that, like public rejection
Speaker 3: of the film, no one wanted to touch it, no one
Speaker 3: wanted to buy it for distribution. And that's part of
Speaker 3: why this movie basically never came out and was so
Speaker 3: hard to for anyone to get their hands on. And
Speaker 3: I mean not that it was impossible, because obviously people
Speaker 3: did see this movie and it developed up a cult following,
Speaker 3: but it was very not accessible for most of the
Speaker 3: time this movie has existed. The end of my little story.
Speaker 2: It is, I mean, there's so well getting into the
Speaker 2: woman of it all, because I guess that's a job.
Speaker 2: I do think it's interesting we see these stories of
Speaker 2: various I mean, and it's not like Tarson was like
Speaker 2: a world famous director. I think he was a very
Speaker 2: wealthy director because he directed so many commercials, So it
Speaker 2: is there is kind of a distinction there totally. But
Speaker 2: people who financed their like dream projects on a very
Speaker 2: large scale. I was looking at the list of directors
Speaker 2: that have done this through the years and they and
Speaker 2: you won't believe what they all have in common. They're
Speaker 2: all men. Only men have ever been able to it
Speaker 2: seems like afford to take a swing like this, which
Speaker 2: I think just like gets back into convers stations we've
Speaker 2: had before about you know, who's big swings get the
Speaker 2: chance to even be I mean, I think it is
Speaker 2: pretty upsetting, like the way that The Fall hit basically
Speaker 2: every like setback it could have hit. But that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that Tarzan didn't get to realize through a lot
Speaker 2: of like fifteen is it, but he could have. I mean,
Speaker 2: to be able to afford to make this movie is
Speaker 2: pretty staggering.
Speaker 3: He spent somewhere around twenty to thirty million dollars of
Speaker 3: his own money, yeah, on the production.
Speaker 2: And I liked in the in the in that article
Speaker 2: in the Indie Wire article by Leila Jordan, innocent, he
Speaker 2: was like told his brother not to tell him how
Speaker 2: much money he had lost, but like to be in
Speaker 2: that position, you know, is very few directors have ever
Speaker 2: been in that position. Obviously. Our most recent example is
Speaker 2: Megalopolis and I'm not even opposed, Like I'm not opposed
Speaker 2: to that conceptually, it's like if sure, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know it just I was I was like, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe there's a sequel woman that I that could have
Speaker 2: afforded to do this, but so far it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: that that was the case. And also, I mean, this
Speaker 2: movie opens on David Fincher and Spike Jones, presents two
Speaker 2: fellow male auteurs, and it turns out they had absolutely
Speaker 2: nothing to do with it, and they just put their
Speaker 2: names on it to increase its chances of being seen
Speaker 2: because they liked Tar's previous work. So nice of them
Speaker 2: to do, and also funny that they had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it.
Speaker 5: Have you have you read the Vulture article that's like
Speaker 5: the hundred most powerful directors in Hollywood that came out
Speaker 5: like a week ago.
Speaker 2: I didn't for my own safety.
Speaker 5: What I mean, it really does fall into the fingers
Speaker 5: saying I think there's like three women on that list.
Speaker 5: It's like, and I don't think it's a reflection of
Speaker 5: Vulture or reflection of the time. It's like there truly
Speaker 5: is like no power except outside of like Gretigerwigan closure
Speaker 5: out who've had to kind of do every thing and
Speaker 5: endure so much hate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I haven't pulled up now. I yeah, there's
Speaker 2: certain articles where I'm like, maybe in a year, I
Speaker 2: don't want to be reminded of how how low my
Speaker 2: chances are for success are.
Speaker 5: But it's also it's like a fun contrast because there's
Speaker 5: like twenty twenty year old guys on there who you know,
Speaker 5: maybe maybe aren't the most of deserved, but I guess
Speaker 5: that's just how power moves.
Speaker 2: Which look kN Parsons get behind me. I will protect
Speaker 2: my nephew, King Parson.
Speaker 5: I'm not talking about him till I don't think he
Speaker 5: makes the lest yet.
Speaker 2: It is fascinating. Yeah, I've we got greteger where at
Speaker 2: number four, but even she's stuck in franchise world, like
Speaker 2: it's just I don't know. I'm very glad that The
Speaker 2: Fall is able to exist. I think that a lot
Speaker 2: of the conversation around this movie is it's wild that
Speaker 2: it was able to exist, because this is not the
Speaker 2: kind of movie that anyone asks for, And it's like
Speaker 2: Tarsum realizing his perfect art, which is like amazing, And
Speaker 2: I just wish that more women got the chance to
Speaker 2: do something equally unhinged as to what Tarsam has done here.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Also, the Mountain Dew commercials fun.
Speaker 1: That was that was?
Speaker 3: What did you watch it?
Speaker 2: I did, Samurai Fi. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 3: We'll link it in the description.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you want to see the titular Rutin Dew commercial.
Speaker 3: But going back to your initial remark, ALI about like,
Speaker 3: this is a movie about a man relaying this story
Speaker 3: that he's making up as he goes that he's drawing
Speaker 3: inspiration from his real life as well as kind of
Speaker 3: like historical events that were like in the news at
Speaker 3: the time. And then it's this young girl populating the
Speaker 3: version of the story that we're actually seeing unfold on screen.
Speaker 3: So while he's narrating it, she's like filling in the
Speaker 3: gaps and influencing the story, like we said earlier, because
Speaker 3: sometimes she'll like question story logic or react to a
Speaker 3: specific detail that he either then like emphasizes or changes
Speaker 3: depending on her reactions. So she has a lot of
Speaker 3: influence over this story. And a part that I thought
Speaker 3: was so moving was toward the end, it's after Alexandria
Speaker 3: has fallen trying to retrieve more pills for Roy, and
Speaker 3: she has a head injury and she's crying and begging
Speaker 3: Roy to finish the story and he's like, I don't
Speaker 3: want to. It's my story. I can do whatever with it.
Speaker 3: And she's like, no, it's my story too, and she's
Speaker 3: absolutely right because she's had so much influence over it.
Speaker 2: And Roy is so frustrating at this point in the
Speaker 2: story where I'm like, Hm, can you fucking grow up
Speaker 2: for what? This kid cracked her head open trying to
Speaker 2: help you, trying to help you, and You're like, no, no, friend,
Speaker 2: shut up, dude, a child could have died.
Speaker 5: Also, like the story that he's telling at first kind
Speaker 5: of sucks. It's just a guy who has been spurned
Speaker 5: and now he's going revenge mode. And I love our
Speaker 5: revenge story. I think when I was twelve, I found
Speaker 5: a copy of an abridged version of The Count of
Speaker 5: Monic Cristo and made it my personality. In third grade,
Speaker 5: I was like having my friends on the playground. I
Speaker 5: was teaching them about vengeance at the right page of
Speaker 5: twelve and we were like going, We're going at it.
Speaker 5: But this story is just like he's just I got rejected,
Speaker 5: so now I'm going to kill every single person. And
Speaker 5: there's even the characters that he inserts, like I think
Speaker 5: you mentioned Darwin and Atamanga, who are both representations of
Speaker 5: social Darwinism. It's like a very man strong, survival fittest
Speaker 5: better I destroy thing. And then until Alexandria begins to
Speaker 5: like input her lines, there's a softness and more nuanced
Speaker 5: to it, which I think is really funny that like
Speaker 5: the seven year old is coming in with so much.
Speaker 3: Like just a five year old, she's even younger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've just been throwing out numbers randomly.
Speaker 5: I'm like twelve seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that that's something that like the script
Speaker 2: in the story does very well. Is like it does
Speaker 2: clear like this story is enhanced the moment she gets involved,
Speaker 2: and that the end, she kind of saves the story
Speaker 2: on multiple levels where she you know, like reassures Roy
Speaker 2: like no, you're awesome, dude, because that's what has happened,
Speaker 2: but also like it becomes a better story for her
Speaker 2: having been involved. It's not just the tantrum ending that
Speaker 2: Roy wants it to be. But yeah, within that story
Speaker 2: it's we are I guess, subjected to Roy's conception of
Speaker 2: women and rejection quite a bit and like you're saying, Ali,
Speaker 2: like Alexandria's pushback on that sort of ends up giving
Speaker 2: the story more depth than it would have had otherwise,
Speaker 2: but there's still not really until Alexandria shows up in
Speaker 2: the story little bandit style, which I kind of.
Speaker 3: Wish had happened earlier. She had maybe inserted herself in earlier,
Speaker 3: but sorry, go on.
Speaker 2: But before then, Yeah, it's it's very like he's creating
Speaker 2: these and I still want to talk about the historic
Speaker 2: people that he chooses, specifically Ota Banga, but he's assembling
Speaker 2: his you know, nineteen twenties avengers, his morphine avengers, and
Speaker 2: you know, of course, of course they are all men.
Speaker 2: And there is it sticks out to me most of
Speaker 2: like this character's conception of women in Yeah, in the
Speaker 2: scene where first of all, there's like, oh, sort of
Speaker 2: a white savior thing going where a group of enslaved
Speaker 2: people are liberated, but then immediately after he sees a
Speaker 2: woman and is like, I will marry her. She's mine,
Speaker 2: and you're like, all right, So we're playing with a
Speaker 2: bunch of different rules in here, and that character never
Speaker 2: like fails to ever fully take shape, which corresponds with
Speaker 2: how that like whatever. Clearly, even though we see her
Speaker 2: as nurse Evelyn in the story world, I think, to Roy,
Speaker 2: it's his ex girlfriend who sure dumped him for a
Speaker 2: Hollywood guy, a movie star. And I do feel like
Speaker 2: this story, like we only really get one glimpse of her.
Speaker 2: She's crying, she's at the hospital, like, but we never
Speaker 2: get to know who this woman is. Perhaps maybe she
Speaker 2: had a good reason for Britt, Like it's never conceived of.
Speaker 2: We're told she left me for a richer, more successful man,
Speaker 2: and it does seem like he's an asshole, but perhaps
Speaker 2: she has a type and Roy was also an asshole,
Speaker 2: Like we're I think that the way the story works,
Speaker 2: we're left to believe, you know, kind of in the
Speaker 2: more classic broad storytelling sense, she left him because he
Speaker 2: was less powerful, not because maybe his personality sucked.
Speaker 5: Roy does objectively suck, Like this is a guy who
Speaker 5: he's not a good dude. Also, can we talk about
Speaker 5: how the first chance he gets, he's like, oh, she
Speaker 5: doesn't want me, I have to kill her now.
Speaker 4: That's like a yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And for a character that he's like has clearly like
Speaker 2: he is, the storyteller has no interest in her inferiority.
Speaker 2: He's like, she's beautiful, she is mine.
Speaker 5: And then she's not mine. Time to die.
Speaker 3: And then the other woman who appears very very briefly
Speaker 3: toward the beginning of his story is the character whose
Speaker 3: name is the Indian. His wife is kidnapped and then
Speaker 3: fridged to motivate the Indian's narrative and like story of
Speaker 3: revenge for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: So right, which is like, in the context of like
Speaker 2: the time this story is taking place in might make sense,
Speaker 2: but it's also being written in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and we have this little girl here who's never seen
Speaker 2: a movie before. Like that's a great opportunity to have
Speaker 2: pushback on a plot point like that. If there's a
Speaker 2: little girl that's like, there's no girls in this story,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the direction actually changes. Like I don't
Speaker 2: think it needed to be like a one to one
Speaker 2: of like what the conception of women in movies in
Speaker 2: the twenties would have been, which wasn't even exclusively that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, there's we do have Nurse Evelyn, who,
Speaker 2: as we said, we're fans she we don't get I
Speaker 2: mean again, we don't get a ton of we get
Speaker 2: a fair amount of time with her. I don't think
Speaker 2: we get like a she doesn't really have much of
Speaker 2: her own story, but we do get some time with her.
Speaker 2: We get one scene with Alexandria's mom that I appreciated.
Speaker 2: But again, like, except for Alexandria, there's not really a
Speaker 2: girl or woman in the story that you get to
Speaker 2: know or that like the movie seems to have interest
Speaker 2: in outside of a symbol of something else. Because I
Speaker 2: think while I really like Nurse Evelyn, she ultimately kind
Speaker 2: of symbolizes a maternal figure for Alexandria, and like a
Speaker 2: maternal figure specifically because she takes care of her. She
Speaker 2: puts her at ease, and she shows her how to
Speaker 2: put on makeup, and those are kind of the things
Speaker 2: that Nurseblin does.
Speaker 5: I also, I think Nurse Evelyn's perception, even in Alexandria's mind,
Speaker 5: kind of shows a little bit of a normalization. And oh,
Speaker 5: that is the pretty woman who takes care of me.
Speaker 5: Her purpose is to marry the nice man that I
Speaker 5: have met in the hospital, and I put them together.
Speaker 5: And this is what society has taught me to belief,
Speaker 5: which I mean it's a it is a reflection of
Speaker 5: how people think unfortunately but not great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah I did. Yeah, but like going back to
Speaker 2: your original point, Ellie, like it is kind of an
Speaker 2: in cell revenge story on Roy's part that I don't
Speaker 2: think the movie is pushing back off, like not commenting
Speaker 2: on enough to just I kind of am like, maybe
Speaker 2: this is where like Tarzan's like, yeah, exactly, anyone in
Speaker 2: his position would do the same.
Speaker 5: How dare she like, yeah, maybe you should have gotten
Speaker 5: dumped Roy. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know based on Roy's Oh, I mean
Speaker 2: I understand, like whoever, I'll show Roy, this man who
Speaker 2: doesn't exist grace, why not that he is recently paralyzed
Speaker 2: and like the whole shape of his life is going
Speaker 2: to change. He is feeling upset that this is going
Speaker 2: to cost him the career path he was on all
Speaker 2: this stuff, Like he's at a low point. Obviously he's
Speaker 2: he's suicidal, but I don't but I don't think that
Speaker 2: that makes his Like, but it seems like he's blaming
Speaker 2: his ex girlfriend for all of this in the story
Speaker 2: and in his attitude towards her. Yeah, maybe not maybe
Speaker 2: not our best movie for women, But again, like Alexandria
Speaker 2: saves so much of it. I'm so glad that they
Speaker 2: cast a young girl in this role.
Speaker 5: Also, not to objectify Lee Pace, but do you realize
Speaker 5: how massively you probably fucked up to be dumped when
Speaker 5: you look likely Pace for a hee. He's like a
Speaker 5: decently attractive man. I'll give him that odios or whatever
Speaker 5: the sinclair, but to break up with Lee Pace for him,
Speaker 5: has to have a really terrible personality.
Speaker 2: For a second, I thought that the famous actor was
Speaker 2: played by Jason Schwartzmin but I was wrong. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I've just seen him wear a little hat
Speaker 2: like that in a different movie and my men. But yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: that I think maybe confirms that that Roy had a
Speaker 2: shitty personality because he is Lee Pace. He's a gainfully
Speaker 2: employed Lee Pace, Like, what's the problem.
Speaker 5: What's going on here? He can do stunts, he can
Speaker 5: he's able to convince children to give him the devices
Speaker 5: to kill him songs.
Speaker 2: He's clearly although if you have to manipulate a child,
Speaker 2: maybe you're not the guy.
Speaker 5: But he knows how to do a solution. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you were you were saying that you're glad you cast
Speaker 5: a they cast a girl, and I think your credit
Speaker 5: the original version of the story was a ten year
Speaker 5: old boy and a grown man, So I think this iteration.
Speaker 5: I'm curious about why Tarsum went for this, and I'm
Speaker 5: not sure it's with the same nuances and motivations that
Speaker 5: we're talking about. But I'm really intrigued to see what
Speaker 5: his intentions are of I need to bring a girl
Speaker 5: into what kind of norms are out the foundation of thought?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think without Alexandria, this movie is almost
Speaker 2: completely essentialist about gender and gender roles and who's entitled
Speaker 2: to who as literal property. Well, he calls DIBs. He
Speaker 2: literally calls divs.
Speaker 3: From what I learned, and I can't remember if this
Speaker 3: was from the Indie Wire article or it must have
Speaker 3: been that when they were casting for the child, they
Speaker 3: weren't looking for any specific gender. They were more looking
Speaker 3: for children that responded very like emphatically to stories that
Speaker 3: were being told. So in the travels, as they were
Speaker 3: doing location scouting or prep work or something like that,
Speaker 3: they were in Romania and they went to a school
Speaker 3: and observed a teacher or some adult telling a story
Speaker 3: to a group of children, and the person who fit
Speaker 3: the bill the best was this young girl Katinka, who
Speaker 3: I think was four and a half at the time.
Speaker 3: By the time they shot her scenes she was I
Speaker 3: believe six, But yeah, she was just cast because she
Speaker 3: gave such like animated responses to hearing a story.
Speaker 2: She's awesome, and her casting I feel like saves what
Speaker 2: at least from a gender respective what otherwise would have
Speaker 2: been saying not very much.
Speaker 3: And then there are some other things to consider about
Speaker 3: this story that Roy tells that are perhaps not super great,
Speaker 3: such as again the character who is just called the Indian,
Speaker 3: who is also completely silent. I think he never has
Speaker 3: any dialogue and feels very underdeveloped as a character as
Speaker 3: a result. There's the odebannga character who does say some things,
Speaker 3: but he similarly doesn't have a ton of dialogue.
Speaker 2: Well, and Odabanga is also it's such a I'm curious
Speaker 2: why they pull this specific historical figure because Odabanga would
Speaker 2: have been probably someone who Roy, living in the twenties,
Speaker 2: would have been aware of, but had an extremely tragic
Speaker 2: life that I know that. I think that the idea
Speaker 2: of the story is to bring this historical figure into
Speaker 2: a story and have him have more of a triumphant moment,
Speaker 2: but without any context. It's just it's so the background
Speaker 2: with Odebango is that he was a formerly enslaved person
Speaker 2: from the Congo who was brought to the US as
Speaker 2: an exhibit, so basically treated throughout his life, first as
Speaker 2: an exhibit of an enslaved person from the Congo at
Speaker 2: the nineteen oh four Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and then later
Speaker 2: was brought to the Bronx Zoo and literally exhibited as
Speaker 2: a zoo animal.
Speaker 3: Like put in cages with monkeys and.
Speaker 2: Apes, and then eventually just made quote unquote an exhibit
Speaker 2: of his own And this is I mean, this was
Speaker 2: happening in the early nineteen hundreds and he eventually took
Speaker 2: his own life in nineteen sixteen, so horrific. Like I
Speaker 2: don't even know where to begin. So for I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just feel like this is I'm not object to
Speaker 2: Odabanga being like awareness being brought to him, but it's like,
Speaker 2: if you're bringing ode Beka into the conversation, I feel
Speaker 2: like you really have a responsibility to do so carefully
Speaker 2: and like thoughtfully, because by two thousand and six, you know,
Speaker 2: this is not someone who we really discuss and not
Speaker 2: someone who I would imagine the US is willing to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that this happened, not to mention, just one hundred
Speaker 2: years before this movie was being filmed. So while it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be like an openly antagonistically I don't
Speaker 2: think that this is being done, that this historical figure
Speaker 2: is being brought into the story in a way that
Speaker 2: is intended to cause harm. But I just didn't seem
Speaker 2: given who Odebka is and how tragic his story was,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know, because that choice was
Speaker 2: confusing to.
Speaker 3: Me, especially because so the other historical figure that is
Speaker 3: referenced by name as a character in Roy's story is
Speaker 3: Charles Darwin, and he gets a whole story, and it's
Speaker 3: and the monkey, and it's referencing the dispute between Charles
Speaker 3: Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace regards darting like the credit
Speaker 3: for the ideas that were put forth in on the
Speaker 3: Origin of Species, which is again directly reference in the
Speaker 3: sense that the Charles Darwin character is often seen stealing
Speaker 3: ideas that Wallace the monkey gave him and then taking
Speaker 3: sole credit for them. So his story is like specifically referenced.
Speaker 3: But then ode Benga the only references about the real
Speaker 3: historical person that you see in the character in this
Speaker 3: movie is that he's a former enslaved person. And then
Speaker 3: he also carries a bow and arrow, which is a
Speaker 3: reference to when real life Odebannga was literally put in
Speaker 3: a cage alongside an orangutan. He was given a functional
Speaker 3: bow and arrow in case he needed to use it
Speaker 3: against the ape for his protection, but instead of doing that,
Speaker 3: Odebannga would shoot people who mocked him at the exhibit.
Speaker 3: So the bow and arrow is referenced, but again you
Speaker 3: don't know any of the context for it if you
Speaker 3: were just watching this movie. Yeah, yeah, it's just very
Speaker 3: yeah bizarre.
Speaker 2: It feels pretty I mean, especially because Charles Darwin is
Speaker 2: a historical figure that most Western audiences are like, he's
Speaker 2: taught in schools. But for this movie to go, yeah,
Speaker 2: out of its way to like reference some like kind
Speaker 2: of b side Charles Darwin lore and give that historical figure.
Speaker 2: I mean we also have Alexander the Great at the
Speaker 2: beginning as well, but to have that historical figure given
Speaker 2: more depth and more references and like this like kind
Speaker 2: of I think, like beautiful tragic scene at the end,
Speaker 2: the monkey see at the end is so sad, And
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to find the name of the actor
Speaker 2: who played Wallace. He's not creditor, he's not credited in
Speaker 2: the movie. I was hoping for a Jimmy the Raven
Speaker 2: kind of situation. But anyways, that is Sally Seagull. If
Speaker 2: you have listened to a recent Lighthouse episode on our
Speaker 2: Matreon legend Sally Segull scene Steeler. But all that to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: like this movie clearly does have the time space and
Speaker 2: energy to build out the historical characters there invoke and
Speaker 2: do not do that for Odebanka. And it's like, if
Speaker 2: you're not able to contend with the history of what
Speaker 2: Odebanka went through and how tragic history was, then why
Speaker 2: choose him to include in.
Speaker 3: The first place.
Speaker 2: Like I just was confused by that choice.
Speaker 3: It's bizarre. And then in addition to that, again regarding
Speaker 3: Roy's story and the details he chooses to include, you've
Speaker 3: also got the mystic played by a white actor who
Speaker 3: various points in the movie has like different shades of
Speaker 3: darkened skin ak he's in like black and brown face.
Speaker 3: And then for that character and like his quote unquote
Speaker 3: mystic cult, it felt to me like they were coded
Speaker 3: as an indigenous tribe, and it feels like tropes around
Speaker 3: indigenous characters were present, especially because we never really learn
Speaker 3: anything about any of these characters, so we're just seeing
Speaker 3: stereotypical imagery. But then you think about who is conceiving
Speaker 3: and telling this story, and it's Roy, who is a
Speaker 3: CIS white man in the nineteen twenties, so it's not
Speaker 3: gonna be a progressive, inclusive story. But also this movie
Speaker 3: was made in the early two thousands, so there can
Speaker 3: also be.
Speaker 2: There's also a specific kind of early two thousands, like
Speaker 2: any periodies, you're like, okay, so there's the prejudices of
Speaker 2: the time we're talking about, and also whatever the hell
Speaker 2: was going when they made it.
Speaker 5: Right, I was doing I was doing some side reading
Speaker 5: on Ode Benga, and I found something kind of interesting.
Speaker 5: So the movie The Fall takes place in nineteen fifteen
Speaker 5: Oda Benga.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, he would have still been alive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he died of suicide in nineteen sixty and
Speaker 5: due to depression, which I think is a really interesting
Speaker 5: parallel too with a leapaced character, and potentially maybe why
Speaker 5: Tersa included it. But I don't know if the description
Speaker 5: there is, because I think there's a lot of parallel
Speaker 5: but I just don't think it's handled as gently right.
Speaker 3: I feel like we don't have enough information.
Speaker 5: Maybe I do want to know the psychology of why he.
Speaker 2: Included that, yeah, because it's not not that like Odebga
Speaker 2: is like a historical figure who we should talk about.
Speaker 2: But I'm just like in this movie, it's just like
Speaker 2: it just feels like a weird choice and it's a
Speaker 2: yeah for him to take on and then actually not
Speaker 2: take on. Just there are so many choices made in
Speaker 2: the movie The Fall two thousand and six, and a
Speaker 2: movie of choices, it's so, so, so many choices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does anyone have anything else they want to talk
Speaker 3: about regarding all these choices? I know there any choices to.
Speaker 5: Talk about the choices. I would love to see Minion
Speaker 5: James's version of The Fall. I'll say, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I don't know what he would be doing, but I
Speaker 5: do think it would be problematic in its own life.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, yeah, I think you know, James. And
Speaker 2: also the fact that the choice not to spoilers for
Speaker 2: millions and monsters, don't let it ruin it for you.
Speaker 2: At the end, we find out that the movie we've
Speaker 2: just watched was written and directed by James, and so
Speaker 2: possibly none of it happened at all, and it's just
Speaker 2: James's rewriting of history, meaning that all of you know,
Speaker 2: any any tropes, any harmful tropes presented in Millions and Monsters.
Speaker 2: Well that's kind of on James.
Speaker 3: James le Mignon.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you know it's male auteurs. They're gonna do
Speaker 2: it every single time, even James.
Speaker 3: Again, they're they're making choices out there.
Speaker 5: A lot of pressure to be a male au tour
Speaker 5: and dominion.
Speaker 2: I it is kind of scary to be that James,
Speaker 2: the Minion is ranked higher than Greta Girlwig on Vultures
Speaker 2: one hundred most Powerful Directors. But how many Imax screens?
Speaker 3: That's Hollywood baby.
Speaker 5: To be fair to the Minions, I guess they don't
Speaker 5: have a nuanced understanding of gender because they're all male.
Speaker 4: So yeah, kind of that's a weird, weird true.
Speaker 2: But they're word for Scarlett overkill, you know, like they
Speaker 2: know a powerful woman when they see one of them.
Speaker 2: It's God, bring Scarlett Overkill back. If there's one Minions
Speaker 2: expanded universe character, I want back it's her anyways. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's all my thoughts I have on this movie end same.
Speaker 2: If we're back to dominions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they'll be brought up the minions more times than
Speaker 5: the fall in this conversation. Fine, every movie comes back eventually.
Speaker 3: Of course. Of course, does this movie pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 2: Yes it does. It passes between Alexandria and Nusanbalin a
Speaker 2: couple different times. I think it also passes between Alexandria
Speaker 2: and her mom, although I cannot be totally sure because
Speaker 2: I do not speak the language that Alexandria's mom does.
Speaker 3: But well, when when Alexandria is translating for her mother,
Speaker 3: it seems as though one of the one of the
Speaker 3: things that her mother wants to know is like how
Speaker 3: much longer Alexandria needs to be there? Slash, what is
Speaker 3: that going to cost?
Speaker 4: Her?
Speaker 3: Which goes back to class Ye, but yeah, we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't know exactly what the conversation is, but we
Speaker 3: glean bits here in there. But yes, that conversation does
Speaker 3: seem to pass. I would say, I think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess the reason I said I couldn't say
Speaker 2: for sure is because it seems like she's mistranslating her
Speaker 2: mom at several points in that conversation. But yeah, either way,
Speaker 2: it does pass the Bactels hast not handily. And I
Speaker 2: don't think, you know, there's a retroactive feminist argument to
Speaker 2: be made for this particular movie. But Alexandria, I mean,
Speaker 2: she's the saving grace of this movie.
Speaker 3: Definitely, Yes. And then as far as our nipple scale,
Speaker 3: the scale where we rate the movie zero to five
Speaker 3: nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 3: this is tricky, said, Yeah, it's a tough one. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's not doing great, I would say, especially if
Speaker 3: we're considering the nature of Roy's story and his failure
Speaker 3: to include women meaningfully.
Speaker 2: And the fact that we haven't really said this, but
Speaker 2: at the end of the movie, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: he's really meaningfully even though like he clearly has formed
Speaker 2: a strong connection with this awesome kid, it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like he's meaningfully grown as a person. He's still kind
Speaker 2: of like boohoo boo, who my GF dumped me? Like
Speaker 2: that's kind of his thing the whole movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it seems like I'm not gonna commit suicide, but
Speaker 5: I will still see woman asks what I've seen them
Speaker 5: first wise.
Speaker 2: Yeah she did, but she I still I don't have
Speaker 2: any reason to believe that he doesn't blame her fully
Speaker 2: at the end of the movie. Also, I think he
Speaker 2: just feels worse because it is he seems aware that
Speaker 2: it's his fault of what happened Alexandria. But I think
Speaker 2: he still blames his ex girlfriend for basically everything else.
Speaker 3: Because the way he ends like her arc in his
Speaker 3: story is that she comes back up to him and says,
Speaker 3: this was all just an elaborate test to get you
Speaker 3: to prove how much you loved.
Speaker 2: Me, projecting yeah, he's right, and.
Speaker 3: Then he says something like hah no, thanks by forever,
Speaker 3: as if like it almost seems like I'm not fired,
Speaker 3: I quit kind of thing.
Speaker 2: It's also middle school. Like when I was in middle school,
Speaker 2: the way that people would break up with each other
Speaker 2: is they'd get in each other's face and go, you're cut.
Speaker 2: And that's sort of like what he's doing there. He's like,
Speaker 2: n uh, you're cut. Wow, I know you are, but
Speaker 2: what am I every breakup I've been through, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what if I just said you're cut?
Speaker 3: There there you move out.
Speaker 5: I feeling you should do that. It's just clear communication.
Speaker 5: It seems like that's your duty when you're breaking up
Speaker 5: with someone. Really clear.
Speaker 2: I can't like there's there's no there's no road for reconciliation.
Speaker 2: As I said, you're cut cut.
Speaker 5: You can't really misinterpret that. It's very clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in any case, So, yeah, Roy's story plays into
Speaker 3: a lot of tropes surrounding women being damsels or being fridged,
Speaker 3: tropes surrounding the various characters of color and characters who
Speaker 3: I feel like are coded as in digital But again
Speaker 3: we're not really sure what's going on there a lot
Speaker 3: of the time. But yeah, Roy's story that he's telling
Speaker 3: does not farewell on the Bechdel cast Nipple scale. The
Speaker 3: larger movie is a little bit more complicated because again,
Speaker 3: it is a story that this little girl is populating
Speaker 3: and interpreting through her lens, and so we see sort
Speaker 3: of like a more interesting and more nuanced version of
Speaker 3: the story that Roy is telling. But she's also five
Speaker 3: years old, so it's not gonna be too nuanced. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I do appreciate that the child character is a
Speaker 3: little girl and she is like inserting her sensibilities into
Speaker 3: the story. So I don't know, like two nipples, I
Speaker 3: have no idea. I almost want to like differ.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna rate it because if he wants this to
Speaker 2: be viewed as a movie and so and so, I
Speaker 2: must rate it fair. Okay, I'll go with who nipples?
Speaker 2: Then I'm gonna go. I think I'm gonna go. And
Speaker 2: this is again I guess qualifying up. I say, I
Speaker 2: feel like so often if we're going to it, if
Speaker 2: there's like a criticism of this show, they're like, they
Speaker 2: gave it such a low rating, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: but look at the framing of the rating. We're never
Speaker 2: writing it on how much we liked it, except if
Speaker 2: it's a Minion's movie they were giving it five, which
Speaker 2: of course, but you know, the point of the show
Speaker 2: is we're talking about a very specific subject within movies
Speaker 2: that we like. I say that because I am going
Speaker 2: to give this a one point five I and I
Speaker 2: really really really liked the.
Speaker 3: Movie, and I will be saying it's stunning, it's incredible,
Speaker 3: it's moving, it's great.
Speaker 2: It's going in the rotation. However, this movie doesn't I mean,
Speaker 2: outside of Alexandria's very strong characterization, which we know has
Speaker 2: a lot more to do with the performer than maybe
Speaker 2: the writing. This movie is pretty essential in the way
Speaker 2: that it views gender. And also, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: just knowing how Katinka and Taro was sort of spoken
Speaker 2: down to by the director also just leaves a bad
Speaker 2: taste in my mouth, especially because one of the points
Speaker 2: it does seem to try to be making about this
Speaker 2: character is that she shouldn't be like that. It's dangerous
Speaker 2: for children to be working and overworked. So it feels
Speaker 2: a little dissident in that way, and then everything else
Speaker 2: we've talked about. So, yeah, I'm gonna go one point
Speaker 2: five and I'm giving them both to my good friend
Speaker 2: Katinka who did not who who elected to not really
Speaker 2: go on to do very much acting, And I'd be
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any interviews with her, so I'd be
Speaker 2: curious as to like why she made that decision. Yeah, Ollie,
Speaker 2: how about you?
Speaker 5: I think I'm with Caitlin and just pure medal of
Speaker 5: the Road. This is kind of a two nipple movie,
Speaker 5: five star movie in general for me, because it's one
Speaker 5: of the most beautiful things as Yeah, but at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, it is like it does. It
Speaker 5: does push the message of you need more diversity in
Speaker 5: the stories that you tell, But it is kind of
Speaker 5: unfortunate to put all that weight on relying on a
Speaker 5: five year old, a child to be the voice of diversity,
Speaker 5: when it should kind of come from the adults. And
Speaker 5: there are a lot of questionable decisions made in lenses
Speaker 5: of acceptance that I don't necessarily think are the greatest.
Speaker 5: Perhaps also, apparently El Fanning was in talks to be
Speaker 5: the child.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Fanning sisters are so iconic, Like, it is wild,
Speaker 2: how I forget that El Fanning. I think she may
Speaker 2: have recently turned thirty, which is wild because I cannot
Speaker 2: know she's twenty eight. I can't conceive of a world
Speaker 2: in which Elf Fanning is not is doing three movies
Speaker 2: a year. It's wild.
Speaker 3: I also I am just like, is she not still
Speaker 3: a child?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I guess not.
Speaker 2: She's not many for an Oscar less year, Oh my
Speaker 2: gosh for sentimental value.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, good movie.
Speaker 3: Which I saw, And she was very clearly an adult
Speaker 3: in that movie. So I don't know what I'm talking
Speaker 3: about anyway. Ollie, thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 3: for this discussion and giving us an excuse to finally
Speaker 3: watch this movie.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Tell us what you'd like to plug where people can
Speaker 3: follow your work, etc.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think I've talked a lot about film Slop,
Speaker 5: but film Slop is my child. It is a film
Speaker 5: review site that I kind of started because I used
Speaker 5: to freelance and I liked writing about movies, but I
Speaker 5: never felt like I was writing things in my own voice.
Speaker 5: And now it just become a space where you can
Speaker 5: engage with movies in the same way that kind of
Speaker 5: The Fall does, where our ethos is blending personal narrative
Speaker 5: and films. As an editor, I don't really care about
Speaker 5: what you thought of the technical craft of the movie.
Speaker 5: I care more about where it exists within the lived
Speaker 5: experience of yourself. So yeah, if anyone ever wants a
Speaker 5: starting point in terms of writing or interviews, are kind
Speaker 5: of getting into the world of film journalism and wants
Speaker 5: to build a portfolio, we are very happy to work
Speaker 5: with you. And yeah, and then I think the other
Speaker 5: thing I would like to promote is my sister runs
Speaker 5: a human rights foundation based on in the Middle East
Speaker 5: called t I m EP Time Up. So if any
Speaker 5: of you are fans of human rights. That is a
Speaker 5: place to go. She's doing cool things and she has
Speaker 5: my older sister, so it would be bad of me
Speaker 5: to not mention it at every opportunity that.
Speaker 2: I got so cool and you're yeah, everyone, check out
Speaker 2: film slap. You're a great writer. I'm like, I just
Speaker 2: love following along and check.
Speaker 3: Out all these interview with a with a certain couple
Speaker 3: people named Caitlin and Jamie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Check out we are film slop fil m s l
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Speaker 5: Yy sorry, you can find.
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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And with that Google googly googly be gone,
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Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia. Hosted and
Speaker 2: produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 3: Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
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