Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob.
Speaker 1: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: So it's time to check another country off of the
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema list. You know, we can imagine our
Speaker 2: global map and we're putting pins in the different countries
Speaker 2: that we've visited via the cinematic output of said nation.
Speaker 2: This time we're going to Estonia and sorry, France, we'll
Speaker 2: get to you eventually.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Today we're going to be talking about the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: nine Estonian Soviet sci fi detective film Dead Mountaineers Hotel,
Speaker 3: directed by Grigory Kromanov, based on a story by the
Speaker 3: brothers Boris and Arkadi Strugatsky, who also wrote the source
Speaker 3: material for another one of my favorite weird Soviet films,
Speaker 3: which is Tarkovsky's Stalker. In fact, that movie was released
Speaker 3: the same year as this movie. Both came out in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine, so a big year for the brothers Strugatsky.
Speaker 3: I had never seen Dead Mountaineers Hotel before this past week.
Speaker 3: I was attracted to it after I saw some very
Speaker 3: intriguing stills online featuring weird sets full of mirrors and
Speaker 3: some very striking shot composition with interesting use of color.
Speaker 3: And then I read reviews characterizing this movie as a
Speaker 3: bizarre but generally quite well liked Eastern European film noir
Speaker 3: with subversive science fiction themes and several heaping spoonfuls of
Speaker 3: what is going on? So this sort of pull toward
Speaker 3: the film was amplified when I went to Videodrome and
Speaker 3: I saw the employees there had posted a recommendation on
Speaker 3: this film, so I decided I had to get it
Speaker 3: check it out. So it was Estonian sci Fi detective
Speaker 3: week for me, and you know, despite all of that preparation,
Speaker 3: I was still incredibly surprised by this film. I'll do
Speaker 3: a short synopsis of the setup the first third of
Speaker 3: the movie. It is about a police inspector named Glebski
Speaker 3: working in some country in capitalist western Europe. But did
Speaker 3: they ever specify what country it is? I think it's unnamed.
Speaker 2: I think it is unnamed. Yeh, it's just miscellaneous European country,
Speaker 2: which which is sometimes my favorite country to go to
Speaker 2: in cinema.
Speaker 3: Right, So he's a policeman working somewhere further west in Europe,
Speaker 3: in some alpine region, and he is called to a
Speaker 3: remote ski lodge up in the mountains known as the
Speaker 3: Dead Mountaineers Hotel. But once he arrives, it seems he
Speaker 3: was summoned on a false alarm. The other guests at
Speaker 3: the hotel behave very strangely and something is not what
Speaker 3: it seems. Then suddenly there is at the same time
Speaker 3: an avalanche cutting the guests off from the rest of
Speaker 3: the world, and a murder, putting Inspector Globsky sort of
Speaker 3: taking him out of vacation mode and putting him back
Speaker 3: into on duty mode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because initially he's like, well, it took me so
Speaker 2: long to get up here, and it's a little misty out.
Speaker 2: I'm clearly going to have to spend the night here
Speaker 2: and drink some wine exactly. But then yeah, back on duty.
Speaker 2: When the murder occurs.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to dance to some really good Estonian
Speaker 3: proud rock.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 3: Now at this point, I think we're gonna have to
Speaker 3: go ahead and deal with something, which is that this
Speaker 3: film has major surprises that develop across its run time,
Speaker 3: and it would be rob I think you'd agree basically
Speaker 3: impossible for us to talk about this movie without spoiling
Speaker 3: its big twists.
Speaker 2: Right right, And we were talking about this a little
Speaker 2: bit off Mike beforehand. This is not a film that
Speaker 2: is so dependent upon the twist that you cannot enjoy it.
Speaker 2: In fact, you might enjoy it a little bit more
Speaker 2: knowing the sort of territory it we'll get into.
Speaker 3: I read a blog post somewhere online where the writer
Speaker 3: was reviewing the film and said that they thought that
Speaker 3: it actually worked better if you went in already knowing
Speaker 3: what the twist would be. I'm not sure about that,
Speaker 3: but that could be the case. I went in already
Speaker 3: knowing the twist and still greatly enjoyed the movie. But
Speaker 3: if you suspect that might not be the case for
Speaker 3: you, You want your chance to duck out and not know
Speaker 3: what happens later in the Film's here's your here's your moment.
Speaker 3: Let's do some some spoiler avoidance, walk out music.
Speaker 1: Flee and terror from the revelations to come.
Speaker 2: Your mind is not ready. Your mind is not ready.
Speaker 1: Your mind is okay.
Speaker 3: But here you are with us to know what happens
Speaker 3: later in the film. But you know part of the
Speaker 3: difficulty is that even the genre designation of the movie
Speaker 3: spoils the twist because it is called like a neo
Speaker 3: noir or detective science fiction film, and there is nothing
Speaker 3: science fiction about the movie until the twist is revealed,
Speaker 3: which is that, well, one part of the twist is
Speaker 3: not necessary early sci fi. It's more sort of crime
Speaker 3: thriller themed, and that is that some of the hotel
Speaker 3: guests are secretly gangsters and or terrorists. I wasn't quite
Speaker 3: sure exactly what kind of criminal this is supposed to be.
Speaker 3: But then beyond that, some other hotel guests are robots,
Speaker 3: and yet other guests are aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I have to add, like, knowing that
Speaker 2: we selected this for weird house cinema, you might already
Speaker 2: suspect that there will be something speculative in the plot.
Speaker 2: But I also have to highlight that the movie is
Speaker 2: weird enough in its texture and its tone that I
Speaker 2: think we could have covered it even had it not
Speaker 2: involved robots and aliens.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because people have pointed this out about especially
Speaker 3: like the sets and the music created very otherworldly atmosphere
Speaker 3: before any technically speculative plot elements are introduced, like this
Speaker 3: is a ski resort in the mountains, but it feels
Speaker 3: like a set from Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And then the score is very abstract and tronic.
Speaker 2: We'll get into that in a bit too, But all
Speaker 2: of this sort of you know, sets the board, and
Speaker 2: by the time aliens and robots come around, I have
Speaker 2: a feeling that even if you didn't know they were
Speaker 2: going to occur, they it would not feel completely out
Speaker 2: of left field. You would be like, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course. I mean, a number of human beings have
Speaker 2: to be robots and aliens. That's where I am in
Speaker 2: my worldview after experiencing this much of the film.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of the characters are acting incredibly weird,
Speaker 3: and so it seems something would have to be up
Speaker 3: to explain the way they behave right, and the films
Speaker 3: I would say the film's themes don't fully come into
Speaker 3: focus until the final act, when, after the revelation of
Speaker 3: the presence of aliens and robots, the policeman Glebski is
Speaker 3: put in a position to think independently given new information,
Speaker 3: even unprecedented information, and he has to choose whether to
Speaker 3: blindly charge ahead, deferring his individual judgment and performing his
Speaker 3: official duties or to think for himself and act as
Speaker 3: a human being. And we see Glebsky really struggling with
Speaker 3: this choice. He feels very strongly pulled to just act
Speaker 3: out his official duties as a policeman, even if they
Speaker 3: don't really make sense in the scenario, and it would
Speaker 3: spell disaster for visitors from another world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the making of retrospective feature at on
Speaker 2: the Blu Ray edition that we both watched more than
Speaker 2: that in a minute. It shed some interesting light on
Speaker 2: the production. So, first of all, just a bit of
Speaker 2: background since we're dealing with Estonian cinema here. At the
Speaker 2: time Dead Mountaineers Hotel was made, Estonia was the Estonian
Speaker 2: Soviet Socialist Republic. This is essentially what it was known
Speaker 2: as nineteen forty through nineteen forty one, and then nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four through around nineteen ninety one, though asterix by
Speaker 2: that date I'll explain in a second. And while Estonia
Speaker 2: had its own distinct film, TV and theater scenes, it
Speaker 2: seems to have to a large extent been a shared
Speaker 2: ecosystem with Moscow based film production. At the time you had,
Speaker 2: you know, you seem to have a very Soviet film
Speaker 2: bureaucracy in place governing the production of this film and
Speaker 2: other films that were occurring throughout the than Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: For instance, composer sim Gruenberg talks about composing music for
Speaker 2: the film on the train back to Moscow, where he
Speaker 2: then would record in the same studio that like later
Speaker 2: in the day, another composer was going to be using
Speaker 2: to score nineteen seventy nine Stalker, a Soviet Russian production
Speaker 2: that we just referenced.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, and so given this context, one thing
Speaker 3: that I've read about the film that makes it kind
Speaker 3: of interesting is that, despite its the weirdness, and I
Speaker 3: would argue subversiveness of the final product, this is a
Speaker 3: film that was made under, from what I understand, a
Speaker 3: heavy hand of censorship.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, the film was seemingly the product of
Speaker 2: very bureaucratic film production process. In some ways, it does
Speaker 2: seems like it held it back, and we'll discuss examples
Speaker 2: of that. But it also meant that it seems like
Speaker 2: they had everything lined up when they were about to shoot,
Speaker 2: Like when they actually went out there, it was a
Speaker 2: pretty well oiled machine. To a large extent, very streamline production.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it seems like it maybe did limit and
Speaker 2: in case in other cases almost limited the creativity of
Speaker 2: the project as well.
Speaker 3: I was reading about the making of the film in
Speaker 3: a piece by an Estonian film critic named Carlo Funk.
Speaker 3: It was an article published by the Estonian Film Institute,
Speaker 3: and Funk was sort of writing about how there were
Speaker 3: certain things you could do if you wanted to tell
Speaker 3: a certain kind of story under this environment, that you
Speaker 3: could have more leeway with your storytelling. For example, setting
Speaker 3: it in the West rather than setting it like in
Speaker 3: Estonia or something allowed more freedom allegedly to depict characters
Speaker 3: as sort of like flawed and conflicted in their official duties.
Speaker 2: Because you could you would essentially be saying like, this
Speaker 2: is the kind of potential depravity that can be going
Speaker 2: on elsewhere, but not within these borders. Right, Just a
Speaker 2: quick cap on the note about Estonia. Estonia became the
Speaker 2: I believe, the first of the then Soviet controlled countries
Speaker 2: to declare independence from Moscow and the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 2: by nineteen ninety one, I believe the sixth of September
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, the Soviet Union recognized Estonian independence. Now
Speaker 2: key to all of this, of course, is the hotel,
Speaker 2: the Dead Mountaineers Hotel, which we'll get into. We'll talk
Speaker 2: a lot about this hotel. And you know, it's film.
Speaker 2: So you have exteriors and interiors at this place, and
Speaker 2: I think if you know anything about about filmmaking at all,
Speaker 2: you know that these don't have to necessarily match up.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the place where a film is shot the interior,
Speaker 2: we are also using the exteriors of of set location.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you'll have the have exterior shots for a particular
Speaker 2: place in your film, and the inside of that place
Speaker 2: you're utilizing via another location or perhaps sets.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So in this film, we have the exterior of the hotel,
Speaker 2: which does have its own kind of character. It has
Speaker 2: this kind of like boxy look that I quite like.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look completely rustic. It has sort of a
Speaker 2: modern flare to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an asymmetrical architecture that does look like
Speaker 3: I don't know, some modern homes you would see that
Speaker 3: are like a you know, a rectangle rising up here
Speaker 3: and a slanted roof there. And it's not just like
Speaker 3: your standard sort of boxy resort hotel shape right right.
Speaker 2: And of course it is very remote and surrounded by
Speaker 2: all of these snowy mountains and all very captivating. But
Speaker 2: instead of using this location or some other kind of
Speaker 2: like ski lodge location for the interiors, and instead of
Speaker 2: engaging in perhaps the kind of expected rustic or perhaps
Speaker 2: well worn interiors of an actual remote ski lodge, they said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is a science fiction film. This film deals with
Speaker 2: futuristic ideas. We need to have a futuristic set, and
Speaker 2: so they ended up building out these sets. And what
Speaker 2: we have is this highly stylized like black and mirrored interior.
Speaker 2: There's neon and the featurette on the disc describes this
Speaker 2: as all being very much in line with Estonian hyperrealism
Speaker 2: of the time period.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what that is, but it's hyper something.
Speaker 1: It's yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like a real hotel like it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It does not at all suggest hospitality. Instead, it is
Speaker 3: an environment that suggests mystery and doubt. And yet despite this,
Speaker 3: it does still have some of the features that can
Speaker 3: make a hotel or resort an exciting location for a
Speaker 3: mystery story, like the maze like nature of hallways, and
Speaker 3: a hotel like that you never really understand, like what
Speaker 3: part of the building you're in or which direction you're facing.
Speaker 3: You're just going around corners, and this movie does. The
Speaker 3: sets do have that feeling. There's a kind of like
Speaker 3: confusing layout of the place, and it almost suggests that
Speaker 3: it's like not physically plausible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds like the set itself had this
Speaker 2: kind of like maze like quality. They were talking about
Speaker 2: like there being lots of places that crew members could
Speaker 2: sort of hide and you know, have a drink or
Speaker 2: snack and so forth. And it was apparently quite a
Speaker 2: struggle to get everybody to be quiet for the for
Speaker 2: the shoot. But yeah, it was a pretty elaborate build.
Speaker 2: It wasn't cheap. And on the other end, and certainly
Speaker 2: I have to stress that it does not feel like
Speaker 2: a set in that it feels like a real place,
Speaker 2: Like even though we are getting into this hyper realistic
Speaker 2: idea of what a remote ski lodge could be, it
Speaker 2: totally works within the context of the film. And you're
Speaker 2: never like, oh, look at this set, unless you know,
Speaker 2: unless I guess you're engaging in the film, you know,
Speaker 2: outside of the film's context. But it's hard to imagine
Speaker 2: this film having the same impact or the same flavor
Speaker 2: at all if it were set in a more traditional
Speaker 2: or rustic ski lodge setting, you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: like well worn, perhaps not as easily maintained environment that
Speaker 2: some of us may have experienced in one form or
Speaker 2: an other in remote locations. It just I can't help
Speaker 2: but suspect that if that had been the case with
Speaker 2: this movie, even if it still had the terrific score,
Speaker 2: the terrific performances and this weird plot, this film might
Speaker 2: have been more easily forgotten and it wouldn't stand out
Speaker 2: as this kind of shining gem of Estonian film from
Speaker 2: this time period.
Speaker 3: When you read people talking about this movie, they will
Speaker 3: end up saying a lot of things, but often the
Speaker 3: first thing they say is something about the striking vision
Speaker 3: nature of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And we'll keep touching on more specific examples
Speaker 2: of that as we go. I'll also point out that
Speaker 2: the featurett described this as being part of the first
Speaker 2: and only, at least at the time that this featurette
Speaker 2: was produced, wave of Estonian science fiction of the mid
Speaker 2: and late nineteen seventies. So there's like this brief blip
Speaker 2: where suddenly, and we'll touch on why someone this might
Speaker 2: have been the case where suddenly Estonian cinema was more
Speaker 2: concerned with science fiction and then it kind of dies off.
Speaker 2: Though just looking around a little bit, it looks like
Speaker 2: it looks like in recent years we have seen more
Speaker 2: Estonian science fiction come out. So it's not like, you know,
Speaker 2: Estonian creatives completely abandoned the idea of science fiction. It's
Speaker 2: more a question of, like what was being funded, what
Speaker 2: was being produced, especially during this time period in which,
Speaker 2: like we already we discussed like there were a lot
Speaker 2: of bolts in place on what sort of films would
Speaker 2: see the light of day.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your elevator pitch for the movie?
Speaker 2: It's sample a ski lodge madness Estonian style.
Speaker 1: In a world where the ski lodge is full of robots.
Speaker 1: One man will be a cop and not think too
Speaker 1: much about it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of thinking. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of contemplative characters in this. Well, let's go
Speaker 2: ahead in here, just a little bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 2: This is from the I believe, the the Estonian trailer,
Speaker 2: So we're not going to play all of it, but
Speaker 2: maybe just a little bit to give you some flavor
Speaker 2: Milli luma. All right, Now, before we go into the
Speaker 2: rest of the episode. Let's talk about where you can
Speaker 2: watch this movie as well, especially if you want to
Speaker 2: watch it before listening to us talk about all the
Speaker 2: details of the plot. I can't speak for other regions,
Speaker 2: but currently over here it looks like the only way
Speaker 2: to stream it legit is perhaps via cultpick dot com
Speaker 2: looks like they have it. I'm not familiar with cultpick,
Speaker 2: but it pops up on letterbox as being a place
Speaker 2: you can stream it. We watched it on the all
Speaker 2: region Blu ray from Camera Obscura, which also features an
Speaker 2: optional German dub. It has English subs and an interesting
Speaker 2: making up documentary that I've referred to already and I
Speaker 2: may refer to again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a good disc I liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I had no problem playing it on an Xbox,
Speaker 2: for example, which sometimes isn't the case with international Blu
Speaker 2: rays and so forth. All right, let's get into the
Speaker 2: people who made this film, starting at the top with
Speaker 2: the director Grigory Kromanov, who lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four Estonian director and occasionally actor, best known
Speaker 2: internationally for this film, which was also his last of
Speaker 2: six films. I believe this was his only genre film.
Speaker 2: Other films included the nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy historic
Speaker 2: drama also described sometimes as a swashbuckler, The Last Relic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how I've seen it, described as a sort
Speaker 3: of historical adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the screenplay. The screenplay is credited to
Speaker 2: Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky, who also wrote the novel upon
Speaker 2: which it is based. So they adapted their own novel
Speaker 2: here Okay Arkati lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one and Boris lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: so they were Soviet Russian science fiction authors and brothers
Speaker 2: who collaborated throughout their careers. Their best known novel is
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two's Roadside Picnic, which Tarkovski adapted into the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine film Stalker, which we already mentioned here.
Speaker 2: This movie is based on the nineteen seventy novel Dead
Speaker 2: Mountaineers Hotel, a detective story that veers increasingly into weird territory.
Speaker 2: Both of these books, by the way, are widely available
Speaker 2: in English translation. I think you can even get audio
Speaker 2: books of them, so you know they're they're they're they're
Speaker 2: available out there, along with other works of theirs. And
Speaker 2: by the way, in two thousand and nine, the novel
Speaker 2: Dead Mountaineer's Hotel was adapted into a point and click
Speaker 2: mystery video game. While I sent you the trailer for
Speaker 2: this and we were looking at this.
Speaker 3: Earlier, yeah, I watched this trailer for the game. I
Speaker 3: would not have imagined this would this adaptation would take place.
Speaker 3: That was a surprise for me. But you know, it
Speaker 3: got me thinking about how oh Man, back in the day,
Speaker 3: I really did enjoy some of those those point and
Speaker 3: click adventure games like you know, The King's Quest and
Speaker 3: Maniac Mansion and things like that. This could be a
Speaker 3: lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and given the source material, I guess it
Speaker 2: could be. Like I wonder, I wonder, what's if you
Speaker 2: had a video game that was not only adapted from
Speaker 2: the source material, but based on this particular cinematic vision
Speaker 2: of said book, Like what would it look like? What
Speaker 2: kind of choices would you have when you pointed and
Speaker 2: clicked on characters? You know, would you always have the
Speaker 2: option to drink and or smoke?
Speaker 3: Hold on, I'm just thinking, was there at some point
Speaker 3: a Blade runner point and click adventure game.
Speaker 2: That sounds right. I never played any of the Blade
Speaker 2: Runner video games, but there certainly were some video games,
Speaker 2: I think some PC game of note. I mean it
Speaker 2: is a it seems like a genre of video game
Speaker 2: that is well adapted to you know, detective stories are
Speaker 2: all right. So we have our inspector here, Inspector Peter Glebski,
Speaker 2: played by oldest Poopsies who lived nineteen thirty seven through
Speaker 2: to the year two thousand. Yeah, this is one rugged detective. Like,
Speaker 2: we get a lot of close ups of this guy's
Speaker 2: face and it's perfect. It is the perfect like hard
Speaker 2: boiled detective's face. The lines, the almost like geologic texture
Speaker 2: to his face, you know, the depths of his eyes.
Speaker 2: Everything you want out of a noir detective who's having
Speaker 2: troubled thoughts. This is the guy for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he uh.
Speaker 3: I mean we talk about square jaws on this show.
Speaker 3: Sometimes this is a jaw that is like fractally square.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think what actor I'm more familiar with
Speaker 3: to compare him to. He's almost got a kind of
Speaker 3: Jack Palance energy, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he reminded me a bit too of Sean Bean.
Speaker 2: He has just facial features and also the kind of
Speaker 2: like stern, distant eyed characters that that Bean has sometimes played.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can see that because he does there
Speaker 3: is a weariness about him. He has he very well
Speaker 3: does that thing that's familiar to us from a lot
Speaker 3: of movies now of the uh the police detective who's
Speaker 3: just sort of worn out and tired.
Speaker 1: Of it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's so ripe he's about to fall off
Speaker 2: the tree. I think maybe that's what that line means.
Speaker 2: This the line, Well, we'll come.
Speaker 3: Back to yea what that means, but that could be Yeah,
Speaker 3: I accept that interpretation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So this is easily this actor's best known
Speaker 2: film internationally, but he was active in TV and film
Speaker 2: of the region from the late seventies through the late nineties,
Speaker 2: and he was a Latvian actor. Okay, so again, absolutely
Speaker 2: strong presence in the film. You know, a nice central
Speaker 2: performance and physical performance to base everything on.
Speaker 3: I read somewhere online somebody saying that the casting in
Speaker 3: this movie has almost the sensibility of like a caricaturist,
Speaker 3: that the cast is really selected for extremely distinctive looks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I would say that's the case of the next
Speaker 3: actor and character we're going to talk about the hotel manager.
Speaker 2: Alex Snavar, that's right, played by Yuri Jarvitt, lived nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen through nineteen ninety five, playing the owner, the weird
Speaker 2: owner of the hotel, weird owner of a weird Hotel.
Speaker 2: Estonian actor who was also in the Last Relic and
Speaker 2: played the lead in a nineteen seventy adaptation of King Lear,
Speaker 2: which I think is it's fitting given that he has
Speaker 2: a very haunted look at times in this production, and
Speaker 2: he is most famously in Tarkovsky's nineteen seventy two science
Speaker 2: fiction film Solaris. I believe he actually had third billing
Speaker 2: in that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't remember exactly, but I think he's one
Speaker 3: of the scientists on the base.
Speaker 2: He's a doctor character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this guy. What I'm about to say might
Speaker 3: feel like it doesn't make any sense, but stick with me.
Speaker 3: I would almost describe his energy as sweet, cuddly Kinsky.
Speaker 3: Like if you could imagine a mirror image, like suck
Speaker 3: all the like evil and poison out of klaus Kinski
Speaker 3: and make like a sweet, nice version of him, That's
Speaker 3: what this guy makes me think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see that. I can definitely see that,
Speaker 2: all right. The next character is Simone Simonet. He's our
Speaker 2: wall crawling physicist, played by Limbeth Peterson born nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 2: Estonian actor. And once more, this is probably the actor's
Speaker 2: best known film internationally.
Speaker 3: This guy's got a very nervous kind of high strong
Speaker 3: energy and you really don't know what his deal is
Speaker 3: for most of the movie.
Speaker 1: But I liked him all right.
Speaker 2: And the next character is Hinkus, Oh boy, this is
Speaker 2: the only name that has ever attributed to him, played
Speaker 2: by Mick Mickeverer, who lived nineteen thirty seven through two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. Estonian actor whose credits include some of
Speaker 2: the expected sort of dramas you would imagine, because again
Speaker 2: there are a lot of more traditional dramas, less speculative
Speaker 2: work that you've seen a lot of these actors work
Speaker 2: during this time period, but also another key player in
Speaker 2: the short lived Estonian sci fi wave as well as
Speaker 2: some Russian science fiction. He appears in the Russian nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven film The End of Eternity based on the
Speaker 2: work of Isaac Asimov, as well as the bonkers looking
Speaker 2: Estonian Indiana Jones esque sci fi adventure The Curse of
Speaker 2: Snake Valley from nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: He sent me a link to this one. It looked
Speaker 3: I gotta see this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one looked it. It looks less great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: respects like it looks. It looks like it's more like
Speaker 2: bonkers and kind of like B cinema in its flavor,
Speaker 2: but also looks just irresistible. So if I, if I,
Speaker 2: if you said, okay, you have to do another Estonian
Speaker 2: film next week, it would it would have to be
Speaker 2: the Curse of the Snake Valley. I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: widely available this one.
Speaker 1: Is, though, Yeah, I've got to see it.
Speaker 3: At some point. I don't know if we'll talk about it,
Speaker 3: but I've got to see it.
Speaker 2: Nick of her Is is quite great in this and
Speaker 2: has numerous places where he really gets to shine.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Next, we have a couple of Moses to consider. There's
Speaker 2: mister Moses and there's miss missus Moss. Huh okay, And
Speaker 2: if I'll start with mister Moses played by Carlos Cerberus
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen through two thousand and nine, Latvian born actor
Speaker 2: who played Gloucester in that King Lear adaptation that I
Speaker 2: referenced earlier, and then we have Irena Crazati born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two as Missus Moses, Lithuanian actress best known for
Speaker 2: this film. But she really gets to run wild with
Speaker 2: a kind of weird performance here.
Speaker 1: Oh does she ever? Yeah, she was one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: Like her. Her character's fashion sense in general demeanor is
Speaker 2: basically that of a post zul Dana from Ghostbusters.
Speaker 1: I would say, yes, and she really loves daredevil cops.
Speaker 2: Yes, ex you're a cop, you must be a daredevil. Next,
Speaker 2: we have Lurevic played by Sulev Luik, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four through nineteen ninety seven, Estonian actor. Again, this
Speaker 2: was this was his first film, but he worked up
Speaker 2: until his untimely death in nineteen ninety seven. His other
Speaker 2: credits include nineteen ninety three's Tier Up The Prints of Darkness,
Speaker 2: a horror film concerning a cursed ring in the days
Speaker 2: before the outbreak of the Second World War. And that one,
Speaker 2: by the way, is from the director of Cursive Snake.
Speaker 3: Valley sounds thematically loaded. Yeah, this actor brings an intriguing
Speaker 3: sort of doomed mime energy.
Speaker 2: Yes, it does, and I believe by the time we
Speaker 2: really sing a lot from him. I'm like, this dude's
Speaker 2: a robot. There's no way this suit's not a robot
Speaker 2: or an alien or both.
Speaker 1: Wait, but he's actually not a robot.
Speaker 3: He's an alien. The other guy's a robot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I feel like the line between robot and
Speaker 2: alien is kind of gray in this film, especially since
Speaker 2: we never get to see alien faces or like robot interiors,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, Like, this is not that
Speaker 2: kind of film. It could have leaned into that a
Speaker 2: little bit and I would have totally would have been
Speaker 2: okay with it, but it doesn't need it.
Speaker 3: Agreed, But yeah, you are correct that even though this
Speaker 3: guy is said to be an organic alien, he does
Speaker 3: behave like the robots. But speaking of robots, this ski
Speaker 3: lodge also has like hot robots.
Speaker 2: That's right. The first character is this guy Oloff, played
Speaker 2: by tit Harm born nineteen forty six, acclaimed Estonian ballet
Speaker 2: dancer turned actor who also went on to be a
Speaker 2: ballet master, ballet manager, ballet choreographer. Like, this is a
Speaker 2: guy that's actually pretty big in the Estonian ballet scene,
Speaker 2: and I think probably well known internationally if you were
Speaker 2: like into ballet. This is his best known film. He
Speaker 2: did some acting here and there, and we do get
Speaker 2: to see him dance, and he's good. You can easily
Speaker 2: knowing that he's a dancer and watching him move you're like, yes,
Speaker 2: this checks out. But he does mention in the extras
Speaker 2: that the set was really cramped and so they didn't
Speaker 2: give him a lot of space to work with, So
Speaker 2: he's having to figure out how to move his body
Speaker 2: in a space that is not enabling him to do much.
Speaker 3: His dancing choices, though, are intriguing and a lot of fun,
Speaker 3: because he's essentially doing ballet ish kinds of moves to
Speaker 3: the sounds of Estonian prog rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about these limitations. You know,
Speaker 2: all right, you're a famous ballet dancer. We want you
Speaker 2: to dance, but this is the space you get to
Speaker 2: do it in. And I'm also guessing they might not
Speaker 2: have even had the finished music. They'll be like, we
Speaker 2: don't know what you're dancing to yet, but just go
Speaker 2: ahead and do it. Do it in a way that's
Speaker 2: not going to harm your reputation.
Speaker 3: Imagine you're an intergalactic robot dancing to King Crimson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he pulls it off, though, all right, So that's Oloff,
Speaker 2: and Oloff is kind of running around with this character Brune.
Speaker 2: Brune is played by Lithuanian actress Njoel Oslet born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four. I don't have much to add about her career,
Speaker 2: but but she's very good in this And again, this
Speaker 2: is a film that generally lets a lot of its
Speaker 2: actors play a range of different emotions, you know, from
Speaker 2: just sort of detached modern living to like a robot
Speaker 2: or alien level of detachment, and also getting into fear
Speaker 2: and horror as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the character of Bruin hides behind sunglasses for most
Speaker 3: of the runtime, but then later reveals her emotions and
Speaker 3: they're quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then finally we have this character Coled Kesa
Speaker 2: I believe, and she's like the housekeeper, the housekeeper, and
Speaker 2: so she's mostly in the background in a lot of
Speaker 2: these scenes. But she's played by Karen Rad who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen, an Estonian theater director
Speaker 2: and actor. And then the music, this is a This
Speaker 2: was again the music in this film. The score is
Speaker 2: just exceptionally effective. And this is the work of Svin
Speaker 2: Gruenberg born nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: We've summoned the spirit of spin a number of times.
Speaker 3: Now we have to explain who he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the score here is it's contemplative, it's suggestively
Speaker 2: astral in its vibes. It's an electronic score, definitely a
Speaker 2: synth score by Estonian synth master Svinn Gruenberg, whose career
Speaker 2: has also taken him into the realms of prog rock
Speaker 2: and also Tibetan Buddhism. Prior to watching this film, I
Speaker 2: listened to his nineteen eighty one album Hingus or Breath,
Speaker 2: which is widely available on music streaming platforms. So this
Speaker 2: is not somebody whose work is like super hard to find.
Speaker 2: He really made a name for himself and it is.
Speaker 2: And yeah, Hingus is quite a wonderful collection of ambient
Speaker 2: electronic tracks, and it's kind of in keeping with the
Speaker 2: music we see here. His work is typically abstract and experimental.
Speaker 2: He's well worth looking up if you're into this sort
Speaker 2: of sort of sound like I am. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of ambient DNA in his work.
Speaker 2: And and Dead Mountaineer at the hotel, his music plays
Speaker 2: again a huge role in establishing the atmosphere both inside
Speaker 2: of this strange hotel and its mini twists and mirrors,
Speaker 2: but also when we're we're contemplating the exteriors, when we're
Speaker 2: like looking up at the mountains and these just like
Speaker 2: haunting pure blue skies and these like gleaning snow banks
Speaker 2: and so forth. Yeah, the score here is just highly effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great example of musical compositions that somehow,
Speaker 3: without even having lyrics, sound like the themes you're trying
Speaker 3: to get the audience to think of. So there is
Speaker 3: a sort of recurring synthesizer theme that sounds, and so
Speaker 3: it'll be it'll happen when you're like panning up over
Speaker 3: the mountaintops and seeing the snow drifts and the glaciers,
Speaker 3: and it will sound like ice in a way, almost
Speaker 3: like snow or like kind of a freezing process, ice crackling.
Speaker 1: It has a kind of high drone.
Speaker 3: But then also as the camera sort of pans to
Speaker 3: include the sky, it morphs to suggest cosmic themes. And yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really h as you say, Yeah, it evokes the
Speaker 3: themes with the sounds quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it's it's interesting, like you know, went
Speaker 2: into this having a taste for his music, then you know,
Speaker 2: really appreciating the score itself, and then knowing about how
Speaker 2: other aspects of the production we were, you know, so
Speaker 2: planned in advanced and all, it was kind of surprising
Speaker 2: to read then on Deepbaltic dot com this is a
Speaker 2: culture blog centering in on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that
Speaker 2: Gruenberg was kind of a last minute replacement in this
Speaker 2: production for esteemed Estonian composer Arvaux part and as a result,
Speaker 2: and since no work had appe cparently been done on
Speaker 2: it yet, he had a great deal of freedom. So
Speaker 2: it's like everything was already late, like none of the
Speaker 2: music had been turned in. They needed music. He didn't
Speaker 2: have much time, but it also meant that he got
Speaker 2: to really open up and try whatever he wanted.
Speaker 3: I read in one of those articles I was looking at,
Speaker 3: I think it was the one by Carlo Funk from
Speaker 3: the Estonian Film Institute, saying something about Soviet censors being
Speaker 3: concerned that the movie was trying to trying to get
Speaker 3: some slip, some pink floyd in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read this on the Deep Baltic article as well.
Speaker 2: The author here writes, quote, the tiny budget only allotted
Speaker 2: him a few precious moments with an ems synth one
Speaker 2: hundred in Moscow, and even then what he created almost
Speaker 2: got barred by Soviet censors who are convinced that Ball
Speaker 2: was a lesser known track by Pink Floyd Ball, I guess,
Speaker 2: being one of the titles of one of the tracks
Speaker 2: on the score.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's the sort of proggy sounding track
Speaker 3: that tit haar when everyone are dancing.
Speaker 2: To, I guess. So, yeah, I kept looking around to
Speaker 2: try and find it. Why, I would love to see
Speaker 2: the score and or soundtrack, you know, featured as a release.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's released anywhere. I couldn't find any
Speaker 2: evidence of it. So I also couldn't find a listing
Speaker 2: of what tracks were actually called. But yeah, this might
Speaker 2: be that prog rock dance number that everybody's grooving out to.
Speaker 2: And it is a great number, all right. One that note,
Speaker 2: let's start get into the plot here.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: So the opening shot is ridges and peaks of the
Speaker 3: high Alps covered in snow, and there is eerie music.
Speaker 3: This synthesizer music that we were talking about already sounds
Speaker 3: kind of like drops and wheezes panning from one side
Speaker 3: to the other. And we see the lonely mountaintops and
Speaker 3: very cold feeling sunlight, and we zoom in on a
Speaker 3: snow road winding through the rocks, and a car comes
Speaker 3: around the corner, and here begins the voiceover. This is
Speaker 3: a man's voice. It's gruff, weary. This is the voice
Speaker 3: of Glebsky, the detective. And he tells us I was
Speaker 3: on a call driving to a mountain lodge called the
Speaker 3: Dead Mountaineers Hotel. It was quite a difficult drive. Many
Speaker 3: years have passed now, but on dull shifts or during
Speaker 3: sleepless nights, I often recall what happened, and even now
Speaker 3: I cannot decide whether I was right or not. And
Speaker 3: as he narrates, we see him driving through the mountains
Speaker 3: and here one thing that.
Speaker 1: I really like is that there are.
Speaker 3: Some shots that include the sun facing directly into the camera.
Speaker 3: And this is obviously this is not something you would
Speaker 3: normally do, you know, when you're shooting outside, as aim
Speaker 3: the camera right at the sun. But it works here
Speaker 3: and it happens throughout the movie. These shots with the
Speaker 3: camera just like blasting the or sorry, with the sun
Speaker 3: just blasting the camera lens. They capture the way the
Speaker 3: sun sometimes feels when you're on a snowy mountaintop where
Speaker 3: the sunlight seems colder and weirder, and it lacks that
Speaker 3: quality of gentle warmth that you might get on like
Speaker 3: a nice sunny day at sea level. Instead, it feels
Speaker 3: like just a bombardment, a blasting source of pale, hostile radiation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it really makes this whole landscape feel alien
Speaker 2: and otherworldly, quite fittingly.
Speaker 3: So there's also another shot, Rob. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you noticed at the beginning here, but I liked it
Speaker 3: a lot. There's like a framing of a gap in
Speaker 3: a giant rock face that suggests gates or a gateway.
Speaker 3: And when we see this mountain gate, the soundtrack suddenly
Speaker 3: explodes with heavy synth and an emerging beat, and the
Speaker 3: narration goes on to say, what's strange is I can
Speaker 3: tell no one how it actually happened, not my wife,
Speaker 3: my friends, or the authority. Only I know the whole truth.
Speaker 3: So we start with this idea already that Glebsky is
Speaker 3: isolated in his knowledge of what we're about to see unfold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, luckily he's going to tell us. So that's right,
Speaker 2: let's have it.
Speaker 3: So as Glebski approaches the hotel, in his car. The
Speaker 3: narration dies away and instead we just get the ambient
Speaker 3: sounds of the car ride, the sedan bumping and jostling
Speaker 3: over uneven mountain road. And there's a tiny voice chattering
Speaker 3: on the radio. It sounds like it's speaking French, so
Speaker 3: made me wonder if this is supposed to if it's
Speaker 3: suggesting this is taking place in France, or I guess
Speaker 3: also in Switzerland, where parts of Switzerland they speak French. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Glebsky arrives. He walks the snow covered path to the entrance.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in a brown leather trench coat, and I
Speaker 3: have to say, I think he looks very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like I said, this guy's perfect, and he's
Speaker 2: the costuming's great. He is our weary detective who just
Speaker 2: had a grueling drive up into the mountains on indeed
Speaker 2: some very snow covered and terrifying looking roads. Now he
Speaker 2: has to look into some sort of perhaps a murder.
Speaker 2: I just look at this man a drink.
Speaker 3: I just look at this guy, and I think, you
Speaker 3: know what, he's gonna end up taking it too personal.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, yeah, you know he will.
Speaker 3: Oh and during this moment, interesting thing like we look
Speaker 3: up in the sky, we see hang gliders.
Speaker 1: We see them swooping.
Speaker 3: Around, sometimes apparently upside down, though it's possible that I
Speaker 3: guess the film is just upside down, and it suggests like,
Speaker 3: are these hang gliders watching him approach the hotel?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they are. I think that the footage
Speaker 2: is inverted here to make it feel all the more haunting. Also,
Speaker 2: this is this is We'll find out later that this
Speaker 2: is Olof and Brun up there in the sky, turing around.
Speaker 2: I have questions about how they got up there, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. We can just take it for granted
Speaker 2: that they knew how to do it. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: an excellent weird sequence very early in the film here,
Speaker 2: especially as it is combined with the music to create
Speaker 2: this kind of horror of the empty blue sky field.
Speaker 2: Then I know I've personally long connected with since I
Speaker 2: was a child, you know, there being something about like
Speaker 2: a perfect blue sky that feels kind of overwhelming and
Speaker 2: a little uncanny. So a very creepy moment at least
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 3: Yes, So Glebsky goes inside the lobby of the hotel
Speaker 3: is empty, it's cavernous.
Speaker 1: His footsteps echoed.
Speaker 3: This doesn't feel like what you'd think of when you
Speaker 3: think a mountain ski lodge, which you know, you'd think cozy,
Speaker 3: roaring fire.
Speaker 1: I don't know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: No, this place feels cavernous and dank, and it's just
Speaker 3: a vibe. Like Rabbi attached a screenshot from the lobby
Speaker 3: that we can talk about here. There are sickly green
Speaker 3: tones over the white marble tile. There is black darkness
Speaker 3: in the recesses of the room. In the middle of
Speaker 3: the lobby, there is a prominent portrait. It's a man
Speaker 3: with shaggy hair wearing sunglasses with what looks like a
Speaker 3: neon orange tube light tracing the outline of the top
Speaker 3: of his head, suggesting a sort of tech noir halo.
Speaker 3: And the inspector stops to examine the portrait, and again,
Speaker 3: something about this place feels not quite like a hotel.
Speaker 3: It feels like some other kind of place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really feels like this could be a corporate
Speaker 2: headquarters from an early Cronenberg film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but something you pointed this out in the in
Speaker 3: the notes, Rob, there's something about the portrait of the
Speaker 3: mountaineer here, because we will find out that the face
Speaker 3: we see in this portrait is the titular dead Mountaineer
Speaker 3: of the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel.
Speaker 1: It's it suggests.
Speaker 3: Not just like a portrait, but something almost kind of
Speaker 3: like religious or there's like a it's like a shrine
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally so.
Speaker 3: Glebsky's wandering around in this weird lobby and suddenly somebody
Speaker 3: starts to speak from the shadows behind him. It's a
Speaker 3: man's voice, and he says, speaking of the portrait, that's
Speaker 3: the mountaineer. He was caught in an avalanche. He was
Speaker 3: carried five hundred meters to his death. And there's a
Speaker 3: reverse shot and we see the man speaking, and again
Speaker 3: this is just like what is going on? I guess
Speaker 3: this is the front desk of the hotel, but it
Speaker 3: could not be less hospitable. There's an old man in
Speaker 3: sort of a black turtleneck standing in the shadows in
Speaker 3: front of a window shutter. He looks like count or lock.
Speaker 3: And there's a cherry red lamp in the foreground. Something
Speaker 3: about it gives it suggests blood. And then also there
Speaker 3: is a Saint Bernard panting in the right of the frame.
Speaker 3: Just a dog sitting there like what's a leaking.
Speaker 2: Enormous yeah, enormous dog which turns out to be a
Speaker 2: real sweetheart. But you know, initially it's just like that
Speaker 2: dog's huge.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this man who looks like maybe he just
Speaker 3: drank someone's blood. He introduces himself as Alex Snavar, owner
Speaker 3: of the hotel as well as the valley.
Speaker 1: And the surrounding mountains.
Speaker 3: That's what he says. And I was like, wait, you
Speaker 3: can own a mountain. I guess he can, but you
Speaker 3: know he actually the same thing happens with Alex Snavar
Speaker 3: that happens with the dog, because Snavar looks kind of
Speaker 3: threatening at first, but he will turn out to be
Speaker 3: a sweetheart. Yeah, we learned that the Saint Bernard is
Speaker 3: named Lel, and he goes to sit underneath the portrait
Speaker 3: of the mountaineer. Snavar explains that the dog was the
Speaker 3: mountaineer's faithful companion before the accident, so the accident can
Speaker 3: have happened all that long ago, and Lel now likes
Speaker 3: to sit and gaze at the image of his old friend.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky, of course, he wants to know why he
Speaker 3: was summoned to the hotel somebody called the police and
Speaker 3: here he is. But Snavar has no answers. He claims
Speaker 3: he never called them. It must have been a guest.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky he rings up his captain and tells him,
Speaker 3: you know, it's too late to return through the mountain fog.
Speaker 3: He's gonna have to stay the night at this resort hotel,
Speaker 3: and he's gonna have to try some of the hotel's
Speaker 3: famous Adelweiss vine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like we were saying earlier, he's kind of
Speaker 2: going into vacation mode. It's like, all right, false alarm,
Speaker 2: but I've at least got the night.
Speaker 3: No taking it too personal for me tonight, I'm gonna relax. Oh,
Speaker 3: and I like how well the Saint Bernard is the
Speaker 3: bell hop here at the hotel, Like snave Bar tells
Speaker 3: the dog Glebsky's room number, and the dog picks up
Speaker 3: his bag and his big slobbery mouth and takes it
Speaker 3: to the room.
Speaker 2: Yep, So we see.
Speaker 3: The inspector settling in Outside his window, he sees a
Speaker 3: shadow in the snow. It looks like the silhouette of
Speaker 3: someone on the roof of the hotel, drinking and throwing
Speaker 3: bottles over the edge. So here we start to get
Speaker 3: glimpses of the other guests. Those two people hang gliding
Speaker 3: from earlier. They come in after they finish their hang gliding,
Speaker 3: and we learned that these are ol Off and Bruin
Speaker 3: is the man played by the dancer tit Harm and
Speaker 3: Bruin is the woman. And then also up on the
Speaker 3: roof there is a man in a fur coat admiring
Speaker 3: the mountains. He's in like a sort of lawn chair,
Speaker 3: and we meet him and learn that his name Ishnkas
Speaker 3: And I wanted to add a note about this. You know,
Speaker 3: there's that Spinn Greenberg album called Hingus, which, as you said,
Speaker 3: is Estonian for breath. So I'm wondering if this is
Speaker 3: actually different or if it's basically suggesting that this character's
Speaker 3: name is breath.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but yeah, it's a you can't help
Speaker 2: him make that connection.
Speaker 3: And it would be thematically appropriate because Hinkus tells Glebski
Speaker 3: that he is here at the hotel because he has
Speaker 3: tuberculosis and the doctors have told him that he must
Speaker 3: breathe fresh mountain air in order to recover. Now Here
Speaker 3: comes a funny moment next because Glebsky hears the dinner
Speaker 3: bell and so on the way down to dinner with
Speaker 3: all the other guests, he encounters a man jing himself
Speaker 3: between the walls up near the ceiling and the staircase,
Speaker 3: and the guy hops down and introduces himself. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm Simone Simene, commander of the cyber Forces. But then
Speaker 3: he says he's a he's a physicist actually, and this
Speaker 3: is his first vacation in four years. He says, Project
Speaker 3: Midas heard of it top secret. Then why would you
Speaker 3: have heard of it? But Simone Cimine says that he
Speaker 3: came here to climb the mountain, but there's too much snow,
Speaker 3: so he can't climb the mountain, so he climbs the
Speaker 3: walls instead. He says that the doctors prescribed him sensory pleasures.
Speaker 3: Now at the dinner table, here Snaevar introduces Glebsky to
Speaker 3: the other guests. There is a young lady in an
Speaker 3: orange top wearing huge, weird sunglasses. This is the woman Brune.
Speaker 3: Next to her is this handsome young man in a
Speaker 3: blue shirt and an orange ascot with a shaggy mulletish haircut.
Speaker 3: This is Olaf again brunan oll Off for the hang gliders,
Speaker 3: and they seem to be an item. They're kind of
Speaker 3: just smooching and cuddling at the dinner table. We also
Speaker 3: meet missus Moses, a woman in a lavender outfit with
Speaker 3: a first hole, curly hair and sort of frightening makeup.
Speaker 2: Yeah again roughly post zule Dana and Ghostbusters. That's her
Speaker 2: fashion vibe.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right right on the nose.
Speaker 3: And so Glebski comes in and she's like, she says,
Speaker 3: I love policeman, heroes, daredevils.
Speaker 1: Are you a daredevil inspector?
Speaker 3: And he's like, nope, just just regular And she says, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: any man who looks like you must be a daredevil.
Speaker 3: And the next here comes mister Moses. He's sort of
Speaker 3: a boring, seeming older man with gray hair and a
Speaker 3: gray card. Again, he almost kind of blends into the background.
Speaker 3: It's like you're not really supposed to notice him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And then there's also the housekeeper at the hotel here,
Speaker 3: this is Kaisa. So everybody settles in and the hotel
Speaker 3: manager is like, anyway, as I was saying before you arrived,
Speaker 3: I am in total agreement with mister Eric von Danikin,
Speaker 3: aliens have repeatedly visited Earth, and I was I could
Speaker 3: not believe what we were in for here was. I
Speaker 3: did not know we would get an Eric von Danikin
Speaker 3: reference in the movie.
Speaker 1: This is in the real world.
Speaker 3: The author of the book Chariots of the Gods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the with the question mark yeah, which.
Speaker 3: Is a famous book alleging on the basis of incredibly
Speaker 3: poor evidence and reasoning that aliens have repeatedly visited Earth
Speaker 3: in the in the past and are responsible for I
Speaker 3: don't remember exactly what he connects it to, probably the
Speaker 3: various ancient stories and monuments and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole alien astronaut hypothesis situation, which which we
Speaker 2: recorded a few episodes of stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 2: about a few years.
Speaker 3: Back, analyzing from a from a skeptical perspective, and then
Speaker 3: we talking about like Carl Sagan's point of view on
Speaker 3: like if aliens had visited Earth, what kind of evidence
Speaker 3: you would actually expect to see and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so Snavevar He's like, I love Eric Vondanakin.
Speaker 3: Aliens have been here, I know it. And Simon the
Speaker 3: physicist is like Fontanakin is a Charlatan, no way, and
Speaker 3: Stavar rebukes him, basically saying that his opinion doesn't count
Speaker 3: because he is a scientist and thus biased. Uh, And
Speaker 3: he says that the question of aliens is one of poetry.
Speaker 2: I kind of like that. I feel like we would
Speaker 2: be better off if all alien conspiracy theorists were so
Speaker 2: honest and self reflective where they were like, you know,
Speaker 2: this isn't a fact based thing. This is about This
Speaker 2: is about feelings, This is about art, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I know, this doesn't actually connect with reality. This
Speaker 2: is about like a mythic understanding of the world or something.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, this is I'm talking about this for fun,
Speaker 3: because it's you know, it's it's interesting and exciting to
Speaker 3: my emotions, not because you know, I'm insisting that the
Speaker 3: evidence is a must be real.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But already we get a little flavor here of Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's like, on one hand, the logical, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: something that seems illogical but also might conform to a
Speaker 2: different reality or different expectations of reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they ask the police inspector's opinion, and Glebsky identifies
Speaker 3: himself as a rationalist and I guess that means he
Speaker 3: agrees with Simone, he doubts Eric Vondanakin. So later, some
Speaker 3: time passes and there are a few different scenes of
Speaker 3: the guests hanging out together. One is some kind of
Speaker 3: Billiard's game. I assume this is not, unfortunately snooker. The
Speaker 3: Billiard's game featured in what was it called Billy the
Speaker 3: Kid in the Green Bays Vampire, a previous weird house pick.
Speaker 3: I don't could you recognize what game they're playing?
Speaker 1: Round?
Speaker 2: I don't have a good eye for these related games. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it looked like they were playing with all white balls
Speaker 2: at one point. I don't know if that means anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what all white balls means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pool enthusiasts can write let us know.
Speaker 3: But they have this conversation about whether or not the
Speaker 3: inspector is going to turn Olof into food. But then
Speaker 3: interesting thing is that like Olof is so good at
Speaker 3: the game that it's like not any fun because he
Speaker 3: just like sneaks. He sinks every shot with absolute precision.
Speaker 3: So Oloff is like the ultimate Billiard's hustler here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he's like I'm out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it'd be great to see him go up
Speaker 3: against the Green Bays Vampire Alan Armstrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been a logical sequel, right, Green
Speaker 2: Bays Vampire versus a robot versus tit harm Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, So later that night we get the scene where
Speaker 3: this is the dancing scene we've referred to a few
Speaker 3: times where everybody's like dancing to heavy prog rock. Oloff
Speaker 3: and Brun are dancing with these jerky whipping movements with
Speaker 3: their arms going out. Mister Moses is playing chess with
Speaker 3: somebody I wasn't sure who, and then Glebsky talking to
Speaker 3: snave Oar is he has questions. He's like, who is
Speaker 3: this mister Moses, and Snaevar says he's registered as a
Speaker 3: traveling businessman, but I have no idea where he's traveling.
Speaker 3: The road ends here. The only way is back.
Speaker 2: It's a great little party. We gonna say, like, I
Speaker 2: kind of want to go to this party. Always have
Speaker 2: some cool dancing, great music, and if you don't want
Speaker 2: to dance, well, you know, have yourself a drink and
Speaker 2: play some chess. You've got activities for everyone.
Speaker 1: Extroverts and introverts are welcome.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, So Glebsky dances with Missus Moses here again,
Speaker 3: she's she seems very into him. She's got like a
Speaker 3: big white feather in her hat or on her head.
Speaker 3: He seems kind of hypnotized. I wasn't sure what this
Speaker 3: was supposed to mean. Did you get the same impression
Speaker 3: that Glebsky's like sort of out of his mind here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I assumed he was drunk. That was
Speaker 2: where I was at in it.
Speaker 1: That would make sense, because.
Speaker 2: He did say he wanted to have that wine, and
Speaker 2: he had this point. He's just like, I'm off the clock.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no no crime to investigate here. I
Speaker 2: might as well have a good time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so basically everybody at the hotel's partying except Forhnkus.
Speaker 3: They say he's still up on the roof. He just
Speaker 3: doesn't come down to party. He's on the roof all
Speaker 3: the time. And there was somewhere in here there's a
Speaker 3: shot I really like, this creepy shot of a big
Speaker 3: evergreen tree back lit by the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky was dancing with miss and Moses, but then
Speaker 3: Simone comes in for his dance. He's like, Hey, you
Speaker 3: want to dance with a with a cyber commander of
Speaker 3: cyber forces, and so she dances with Simon A and Globsky,
Speaker 3: admitting in the narration that he was drunk, he steps
Speaker 3: away from the party. He goes outside for some night air,
Speaker 3: and then he discovers that someone he doesn't know who
Speaker 3: has slipped an anonymous note into his pocket. He opens
Speaker 3: the note to read it on this snowy pathway lit
Speaker 3: by these globe shaped lamps, and the note is cut
Speaker 3: and pasted with letters from a magazine, like those ransom
Speaker 3: notes in the movies, and it reads, Hinkus is part
Speaker 3: of a criminal organization. He is a dangerous terrorist called
Speaker 3: owl owl w L.
Speaker 2: That's fitting creepy night bird with you know, various supernatural
Speaker 2: connotations in different cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this this struck me as funny when I was watching,
Speaker 3: just because my daughter is currently obsessed with owls.
Speaker 1: She loves to tell us what an owl says. It
Speaker 1: says who who?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's correct.
Speaker 3: But anyway, the note goes on to say a murder
Speaker 3: is planned.
Speaker 1: Do something.
Speaker 3: So Glebski is troubled by this, and he looks up
Speaker 3: on the roof to see the outline of Hinkas still
Speaker 3: in the chair up there, and he calls out to him.
Speaker 3: He yells hing OUs, hing goose. But unfortunately this shout
Speaker 3: seems to trigger something. There is some kind of rumbling
Speaker 3: in the snow covered peaks above this. This was an
Speaker 3: unfortunate Hincus and the ominous like, there's this ominous droning sound.
Speaker 3: Matt to this pad underneath everything that begins here, and
Speaker 3: Hinkas from the roof does not respond. So Glebski runs
Speaker 3: up there, and when he arrives, he finds that the
Speaker 3: silhouette in the chair that he believed to be Hinkas
Speaker 3: is actually just Hinkas's coat stuffed with balls of snow.
Speaker 3: It's like a decoy snowman. So where is Hinkus? Well,
Speaker 3: the rumbling which started after Glebsky's shout begins to reach
Speaker 3: a sort of peak of intensity, and then the hotel
Speaker 3: guests see out the windows an avalanche coming down the
Speaker 3: mountain side.
Speaker 2: Oh man, So first he's Ferris buellerd Byhnkas here and
Speaker 2: then we get the avalanche. And I have to point
Speaker 2: out they apparently induced avalanches for the sequences we see
Speaker 2: in the film. They weren't relying on stock footage or anything. No,
Speaker 2: I don't know the full details. They may have aligned
Speaker 2: that with like planned induced avalanches that were done for
Speaker 2: safety reasons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it looked totally real. I was like,
Speaker 3: these aren't special effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are terrifying because at least later in the picture,
Speaker 2: I can't remember this sequence so much, but later in
Speaker 2: the picture where we get one where it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's coming right at the camera and like that's a
Speaker 2: lot of snow, that's a lot of mass coming at you.
Speaker 1: Totally agree. Yeah, very effective shots.
Speaker 3: So when the avalanche happens, the power goes out at first,
Speaker 3: and we will discover that the avalanche has blocked the
Speaker 3: road and trapped them on the hotel grounds. It has
Speaker 3: also knocked out the telephone lines, and according to Snavar
Speaker 3: in a later scene, it will probably be days before
Speaker 3: the authorities can clear the road and they can leave.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky's sort of on the case. He's trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what's going on. He investigates Hnkas's room and
Speaker 3: finds it empty. He searches through Hankas's belongings and finds
Speaker 3: a small pistol in his suitcase, and then Glebsky narrates though,
Speaker 3: that this is not the weapon of a career criminal.
Speaker 3: He thinks somebody must be trying to set Hankas up.
Speaker 1: But who.
Speaker 3: Next thing, Snavar and Kaisa brings someone in from outside
Speaker 3: the hotel, someone who appears to be unconscious. Globsky goes
Speaker 3: to help, and they're like, who is this. We don't
Speaker 3: know what's wrong? Possibly hypothermia, And they're like, get brandy,
Speaker 3: gotta have liquor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those movies where hard spirits
Speaker 2: are essentially potions of healing, you know what. They're two called,
Speaker 2: get him some liquor, Oh, the injured liquor, the delirium,
Speaker 2: unconscious and whatever it is, surely hard spirits can solve
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know why Hinkus is not just
Speaker 3: taking cotton candy flavored vodka for his for his tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Snaevar guesses maybe this is a friend of
Speaker 3: Hincus because he heard Hinkus dictating a telegram earlier telling
Speaker 3: someone to come quickly to join him at the hotel.
Speaker 3: Sohnkus has summoned someone.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the day, and we don't.
Speaker 3: Know who, but maybe this is who he called. Anyway,
Speaker 3: they give the guy some brandy and get him to
Speaker 3: say a couple of words, but all he can say
Speaker 3: is the name of Oloff.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Remember, Oloff's already a guest here at the hotel. This
Speaker 3: is the dancer guy. So they go to check out
Speaker 3: Oloff's room. But when they get there, uh oh, they
Speaker 3: find him lying out on the floor, pale, motionless.
Speaker 1: Dead. Oloff is dead.
Speaker 2: All right, So now we really have a murder story
Speaker 2: going on here. It's time for our inspector to get
Speaker 2: back on the clock. He's got some work to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In fact, Oloff is not just dead, like, his head
Speaker 3: is twisted around unnaturally. It's kind of the Exorcist going
Speaker 3: on here. So of course Gleb's key concludes what strength
Speaker 3: the killer must have had, and we see him like
Speaker 3: lie down on the floor and try to mimic like
Speaker 3: twisting his head around. But they also see that Oloff's
Speaker 3: hand was stretching out toward the handle of a suitcase,
Speaker 3: so it's like he was reaching for the suitcase when
Speaker 3: he died. In another room, they find Hinkas finally, but
Speaker 3: he is found tied to a bed. He says he
Speaker 3: was attacked by someone and he does not know who,
Speaker 3: and then the weird behavior just continues. We encounter Simone
Speaker 3: Simone Semone, a physicist. He's running around in his tidy whiteies,
Speaker 3: trying to hide behind a sheet that he's like holding
Speaker 3: up with his hands. That's not gonna work, buddy, and
Speaker 3: we get a confession from him. Missus Moses is dead.
Speaker 3: He swears he didn't kill her. He says that he
Speaker 3: went into her room and she was already lying cold
Speaker 3: on the floor when he went in there. The wait, no,
Speaker 3: not lying cold on the floor, she was standing upright,
Speaker 3: but cold and dead. And then her wig fell off,
Speaker 3: revealing a bald head. Things are getting stranger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're getting kind of a Blue Sunshine vibe
Speaker 2: going on in this one scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe she took the Blue Sunshine app and now
Speaker 3: she's ready to activate. But then they go to missus
Speaker 3: Moses's room to check this out, and she's not dead.
Speaker 3: She's in there, alive, reading a book. She's fine. She
Speaker 3: smiles at them. So something really weird is afoot now.
Speaker 3: And Glebsky is starting to get frustrated because I think
Speaker 3: when it was just a murder, he was sort of
Speaker 3: like he was like, okay, I'm on the case, but
Speaker 3: now everything's so weird. He's like, I don't know what's
Speaker 3: going on, and I don't like it. So back in
Speaker 3: Simone's rooms, Simon a showers, he tries to sober up,
Speaker 3: and Glebsky shows him a strange contraption that he found
Speaker 3: with Olaf. It's this weird device inside the suitcase that
Speaker 3: Oloff had been reaching for. It has this soft pulsing
Speaker 3: light and it emits low beeping sounds, and Simone says
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what it is, but it could be
Speaker 3: something military or from outer space. Better be careful.
Speaker 1: Then he runs away in fear.
Speaker 3: So they I think they like lock up this contraption
Speaker 3: in a cabinet under the dog bed, and Glebsky has
Speaker 3: the only key, so he's the only person who can
Speaker 3: get to this suitcase. Now he goes and tries to
Speaker 3: talk to Brune, and the mystery just keeps developing. He
Speaker 3: tries to talk to Brune about what happened. She apparently
Speaker 3: Sawhnkas walking in the hall after he claimed to have
Speaker 3: been attacked.
Speaker 1: And then we.
Speaker 3: Go and check with Hinkus about this what was going on?
Speaker 3: You know, were you lying, and he says that it
Speaker 3: was him that he tied himself up. The implication here
Speaker 3: is that there is another one of him.
Speaker 2: And this is a great scene. It's especially a great
Speaker 2: place for the actor Mick Micavir playing Hankas to really
Speaker 2: shine because it's he's not just saying oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I encountered me and I tied him up, Like no,
Speaker 2: this that the character is clearly confronting this moment of horror,
Speaker 2: this moment of duplication where he encountered like his own double,
Speaker 2: his own doppelganger here and had this kind of violent
Speaker 2: interaction with them, and is clearly just traumatized and confused
Speaker 2: by the whole incident.
Speaker 3: Yes, agree that Mickever is great in the scene and
Speaker 3: Glebsky is totally disturbed at this point. He wanders through
Speaker 3: the hotel by himself, thinking over the case. I like,
Speaker 3: here there's a there's a visual motif of flickering lights,
Speaker 3: Like often somewhere in the background a light will flutter
Speaker 3: on and then flutter off on a loop throughout a scene. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's also a moment in here where somebody is watching TV,
Speaker 3: or at least there's a TV on somewhere like in
Speaker 3: the lobby of the hotel, and it looks like what
Speaker 3: it's showing is like news clips of people falling out
Speaker 3: of buildings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was very disturbing. So this is like in
Speaker 2: a I think this kind of like circular room with
Speaker 2: one of these neat like central circular stoves warming everything up,
Speaker 2: and there's a TV. And Yeah, it was disturbing because
Speaker 2: on one hand, I kind of have to assume this
Speaker 2: is real footage of people falling to their deaths here.
Speaker 2: So it's outside of the context of the film, it's
Speaker 2: disturbed to see that kind of thing. But even within
Speaker 2: the context of the film, why is it playing here
Speaker 2: in the lobby of the hotel. Did they just play
Speaker 2: Faces of Death on repeat here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Do they tune into the Outlaw Videodrome snuff channel as
Speaker 2: in Cronenberg's videodrome film. It's just weird and strange and
Speaker 2: just adds to that level of uncertainty about where we're
Speaker 2: going in this film.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there were more interrogation scenes where Glebsky's trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what's happening. He interrogates Brune about what
Speaker 3: happened earlier when she went to Oloff's room. She said
Speaker 3: that they were They're dancing, kissing, having a wild time,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly they see the avalanche beginning outside the
Speaker 3: window of the room, and Oloff panics and throws Brune
Speaker 3: out of the room into the hall, and then later
Speaker 3: he's found dead. Glebsky and Alex sort of talk over
Speaker 3: the mystery together. Snaevar's sort of Glebsky's confidant, he's playing
Speaker 3: his doctor Watson, and Alex says that Gleb's he's rational
Speaker 3: investigatory tools are useless here. He says, like time at
Speaker 3: greater than light speed. That's a strange comparison. But then
Speaker 3: he says, there is nothing we can do.
Speaker 1: You are not ripe.
Speaker 3: Yet, And this is the moment when Glebsky says, I'm
Speaker 3: so ripe I will fall off the trees soon.
Speaker 2: I love this exchange. It's I assume something is lost
Speaker 2: in translation here, like it doesn't fully translate into English
Speaker 2: from the original Estonian, but I still sort of get it,
Speaker 2: like it's still it still feels very true.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the scene, also they talk about the concept
Speaker 3: of zombies, and Snavar wonders if perhaps zombie is the
Speaker 3: third state of living organisms, beyond.
Speaker 1: Life and death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very haunting.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky falls asleep listening to Snavar talk about zombies,
Speaker 3: and then he has dreams of skiing down a vast
Speaker 3: snow covered mountain side and he's going so fast. He
Speaker 3: seems to be smiling at first, but then maybe it
Speaker 3: seems his expression is actually one of fear. There are
Speaker 3: weird tones on the soundtrack that sound like animals wheezing.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly in the dream, Globski goes off the
Speaker 3: edge of a cliff and he falls and falls into
Speaker 3: the snow down below, and then from up above a
Speaker 3: figure looks down at his body. We zoom on the
Speaker 3: figure and there are two figures. In fact, it is
Speaker 3: the dead mountaineer from the portrait and his dog.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really great moment, you know, haunting and also makes
Speaker 2: us think back to that kind of the shrine like
Speaker 2: qualities of the dead mountaineer's portrait. You know, is the
Speaker 2: dead mountaineer like a even in the context of dream here,
Speaker 2: is it like a ghost? Is it a divine force?
Speaker 2: And I also have to point out this may be
Speaker 2: the only sequence in the film where anybody does any skiing? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it is within a dream.
Speaker 3: No, there is some skiing later, but it happens without
Speaker 3: skis and in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and by by robots. Yes. I guess. Well,
Speaker 2: we did see the hand gliding earlier, and I guess
Speaker 2: maybe that involves skiing. I don't know how they got
Speaker 2: up there, and they skied off of something, and yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. We'll come back to that in a minute. So,
Speaker 3: so Glebski is woken up by the Saint Bernard lel
Speaker 3: like slobbering on his face, and apparently the dog has
Speaker 3: brought him something.
Speaker 1: It is a gun covered in drool.
Speaker 3: So Glebsky's like, where did it come from?
Speaker 1: Boy?
Speaker 3: And Lell leads him outside into the snow and shows
Speaker 3: him where the gun was. Glebsky deduces that it must
Speaker 3: have been thrown from the roof, So did it belong
Speaker 3: to Hinkus? Next, Snaevar brings news, I remember that unconscious
Speaker 3: guy we found outside. He's conscious now, so they go
Speaker 3: to interrogate him. And now that he's awake, he really
Speaker 3: looks like death. There's this dark makeup under his eyes,
Speaker 3: his skin is pale, even kind of blue in places.
Speaker 3: The whites of his eyes are bloodshot and he just
Speaker 3: stares ahead in a daze, and Glebsky interrogates him, finds
Speaker 3: out that his name is Lurevic, mister Lurevic, Luarvic. He
Speaker 3: is looking for Olaf and he won't say a whole lot.
Speaker 3: Glebsky's like, who are you? Are you a foreigner and
Speaker 3: the man says, yes, a foreigner. And also in this scene,
Speaker 3: mister moses remember him. He was kind of like a
Speaker 3: nondescript earlier on. He tries to sneak in on the interrogation,
Speaker 3: but Glebsky chases him away, and Lurevic, on finding out
Speaker 3: that Oloff is dead, doesn't seem all that concerned. He says, well,
Speaker 3: he still needs to see Oloff anyway, to conduct some
Speaker 3: business with him. And Glebsky's like, no, he's dead, and
Speaker 3: Lurevic is like, yeah, let me talk to him. But
Speaker 3: in this whole scene, Lurevic is dreamy, languid, kind of unconcerned,
Speaker 3: but does look like he's in a bad state, and
Speaker 3: he does identify Oloff's body. He says he recognizes, he
Speaker 3: recognizes him, and he knew him from elsewhere and this.
Speaker 1: Was one scene.
Speaker 3: Yet again, this is all throughout the movie, but I
Speaker 3: really noticed the presence of like the modular mirrors in
Speaker 3: the sets in the scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's fitting, especially at this point in the picture,
Speaker 2: because we have already come head to head with this
Speaker 2: with a theme of duplication here, of doppel gangers and doubles,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I feel like we're constantly seeing characters
Speaker 2: in mirrors or multiple mirrors, and the hotel eventually feels
Speaker 2: like a place it's not only in the edge of
Speaker 2: the wilderness, but also in the edge of the known universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Lureovic says he's looking for the suitcase that
Speaker 3: Olaf had, and Glebsky says, I'm not just going to
Speaker 3: give it to you. You got to answer questions first.
Speaker 3: But of course Lurevic he doesn't want to answer questions.
Speaker 3: He just wants the suitcase instead of answering questions. He
Speaker 3: gets very slow and says that he must lie down,
Speaker 3: and then he just sort of slumps back and appears
Speaker 3: to go to sleep with his eyes open. Somewhere in here,
Speaker 3: there's a scene with Snavar playing the organ and he's
Speaker 3: not good at it, and Glebsky's just kind of lounging stoically,
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette and listening to the bad organ concert
Speaker 3: and so, you know, they again have one of their
Speaker 3: detective consultation sessions. They talk to each other about what
Speaker 3: could be going on, and Glebsky says, you know, he's
Speaker 3: nearly convinced that lurevic Oloff and mister Moses, or either
Speaker 3: mister or missus Moses, maybe both of them.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say who.
Speaker 3: He says they belong to the same gang, which doesn't
Speaker 3: want publicity, and he thinks Hnkas is somehow connected to
Speaker 3: them as well because of the gun he found. So
Speaker 3: Glebsky comes up with a plan. He says he's gonna
Speaker 3: stop detaining Hnkas and set him free, quote like a
Speaker 3: fox into a chicken coop to see what happens. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Glebsky is busy playing with a metal wind up robot toy.
Speaker 3: I don't know about this plan, Glebsky. Is that a
Speaker 3: good police police work plan?
Speaker 2: Yeah, seems like this is more like rogue cop territory.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, So everybody comes down for breakfast the
Speaker 3: next morning. I guess when he's gonna set Hankus loose,
Speaker 3: and simon A says, I sense the smell of death
Speaker 3: in here, and Bruin says, beautiful weather today. Poor Oloft
Speaker 3: didn't live to see it. And Lurevic is now at
Speaker 3: breakfast with the rect him. He has to be guided
Speaker 3: to his breakfast chair and he eats some piece of fruit,
Speaker 3: like letting this juice run all over his face. I
Speaker 3: think Hinkas arrives to breakfast wearing a tuxedo. That's kind
Speaker 3: of that's a choice. But Glebsky says, you know, quote,
Speaker 3: it appears some crooks selected this hotel as a place
Speaker 3: to settle their scores. With the help of mister Snavar,
Speaker 3: I sent word to the police by pigeon. The police
Speaker 3: helicopter will arrive shortly. The criminals will get their just desserts.
Speaker 3: I advise that criminal.
Speaker 1: Activity be ceased.
Speaker 3: Of course, what is missus Moses's reaction to this going
Speaker 3: to be? Of course, he's like, oh boy, how exciting
Speaker 3: killers among us?
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Stop doing crimes, everybody, because the helicopter will shoot you.
Speaker 3: Yes, I got the pigeon to bring a helicopter that
Speaker 3: will stop you from doing crimes. Of course, the pigeon
Speaker 3: thing was actually a bluff. Glebsky knows he is on
Speaker 3: his own.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: This leads up to the interrogation of Hnkas scene. Hankas
Speaker 3: is like the last one eating breakfast, and then Glebsky
Speaker 3: watches him and pulls him aside. He's like, okay, I
Speaker 3: know about you from the note I received. You're this
Speaker 3: criminal called Owl, and Hankas says, no, I'm not Owl.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're talking about. He's asked about
Speaker 3: the gun. He denies that it's his, but then suddenly
Speaker 3: he sort of busts out and unleashes martial arts that
Speaker 3: he would not have seemed prepared to deliver, like he's
Speaker 3: been playing like he's in poor health, but he easily
Speaker 3: beats up Glebsky, knocks him nearly unconscious, takes the gun
Speaker 3: with him, and then while the inspector is lying on
Speaker 3: the floor, we hear Hankas fighting with someone else off camera,
Speaker 3: and somehow I guess it is Simone, the physicist, Like
Speaker 3: Simon a beat Bestshnkas and then helps Glebsky up. That's unexpected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so now it's time to interrogate Hankas once more.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Round two here, and Hankas finally spills the beans. He's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: here's the deal. Have you heard of the hit squads?
Speaker 3: That's what he says. I was a member of one
Speaker 3: of them. Something terrible is going on here. Supernatural forces
Speaker 3: are at work. He explains that quote. Half a year ago,
Speaker 3: some guy approached us. No one knew his name. They
Speaker 3: called him Master. They assigned him the hardest jobs, remember
Speaker 3: the second National Bank job? That was his doing. But
Speaker 3: then he quit working for us, left us high and dry.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was always a bit eccentric. Wouldn't let us
Speaker 3: kill hostages or anyone. He said, we shouldn't. That's why
Speaker 3: we had a fight with the boss. And then he disappeared,
Speaker 3: along with his assistant and his wife. I was ordered
Speaker 3: by the boss to find them. And Glebsky says, and
Speaker 3: you found them here? Who are they? And Hankas says, no,
Speaker 3: you tell me who they are? What man could get
Speaker 3: the better of me as if I were a kitten.
Speaker 3: So you think he's talking about Semina here because Simine
Speaker 3: just like beat him up after the first interrogation, and
Speaker 3: we look at Semine. But actually it goes in a
Speaker 3: different direction. Hankas says, this woman Moses, no, I would
Speaker 3: not let him live, so he set his wife against me.
Speaker 3: She was coming right at me. You don't believe me,
Speaker 3: but I was approaching myself. And so we see in
Speaker 3: Hankas's flashback missus Moses in her fur coat seeming to
Speaker 3: transform into a doppelganger Ofhnkas and then attack him by
Speaker 3: pushing him out a glass window. So what's going on,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but missus Moses apparently can become can
Speaker 3: like transform her appearance and become copies of people and
Speaker 3: attack them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have shape shifters among us.
Speaker 3: Now, So Hankas admits he's here to hunt down this guy,
Speaker 3: the Master, and his assistant and his wife. Now, Hinkas
Speaker 3: says he doesn't actually know what happened to Olaf. He
Speaker 3: says he never laid a finger on him. But his
Speaker 3: gang boss is coming with three or four guys to
Speaker 3: finish the job, to kill mister Moses, who, in fact,
Speaker 3: the nondescript mister Moses, who seemed so innocent and you know,
Speaker 3: not even very remarkable, was in fact this criminal mastermind,
Speaker 3: the Master who did the Second National Bank job. And
Speaker 3: except he got into some kind of squabble with this
Speaker 3: terrorist or criminal gang and now they're they're looking for revenge.
Speaker 2: All right, So we've reached the secret mob members level
Speaker 2: of the big reveal here.
Speaker 3: But then there's going to be another reveal, which is
Speaker 3: so there's a confrontation where Glebsky goes into a room
Speaker 3: with Snaevar and Simone. They're all here gathered in the room,
Speaker 3: and when Glebsky enters the room, he sees himself what
Speaker 3: but then the other hymn transforms back into someone else.
Speaker 3: He realizes that here in the room are mister and
Speaker 3: missus Moses and someone else Luarvic, sitting doubled over in
Speaker 3: a chair, and Glebsky tries to say, okay, based on
Speaker 3: the testimony of Hincus, mister Moses, you are guilty of
Speaker 3: the robbery of the Second National Bank and of the
Speaker 3: murder of Olaf and I'm going to have to arrest you.
Speaker 1: But Simone is.
Speaker 3: There and he explains, no, no, no, you don't get it, Inspector.
Speaker 3: These are not humans. They're aliens from another planet. He says,
Speaker 3: I don't know where they're from, another dimension or galaxy,
Speaker 3: but they're in trouble and we have to help them.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 3: Mister Moses arrived here as an observer, but he made
Speaker 3: a fatal mistake. He should not have contacted humans. And
Speaker 3: mister Moses explains that. He says, it's true. I wasn't
Speaker 3: supposed to interfere with human life, but when I saw
Speaker 3: how you were living, I broke the rule. I wanted
Speaker 3: to help you so much, but your life proved to
Speaker 3: be too complex for me. So somehow this part is
Speaker 3: a little murky for me. But somehow mister Moses, being
Speaker 3: an alien, an observer of Earth who was supposed to
Speaker 3: look at human life but not interfere with it, decided
Speaker 3: that he took pity on us because of all the
Speaker 3: human suffering and got involved. But the way he got
Speaker 3: involved was with some kind of criminal gang. I'm not
Speaker 3: quite sure I'm making the connection there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe there's some sort of Robin Hood thing going
Speaker 2: on there, or maybe he was like, crime is doing
Speaker 2: a lot of damage. I'm going to get in there
Speaker 2: and do crime really well, but not hurt anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and that so I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, you know, he's going up against very difficult
Speaker 2: societal and yeah, yeah, problems and so forth.
Speaker 3: So, but given all the backstory we already got from Hinkas,
Speaker 3: now we know that the gang bosses are hunting down
Speaker 3: these these fugitive aliens, and so mister Moses is here
Speaker 3: at the hotel so he could leave the planet. They say,
Speaker 3: here in the mountains is our launch pad, but the
Speaker 3: avalanche destroyed the generator that powered our robots. So missus
Speaker 3: Moses and Oloff are the robots helpers of mister Moses
Speaker 3: and Luarvik. The man they discovered outside is the pilot
Speaker 3: of the alien spaceship and he was severely injured. They say,
Speaker 3: his spacesuit is torn. He's becoming weaker every second. So
Speaker 3: so what I mean this this reveal is very sudden,
Speaker 3: and it's just kind of like poured on Glebsky, and
Speaker 3: like how is he supposed to react?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again it doesn't come with reveals of robotic
Speaker 2: interiors to human bodies or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Right, But they say that remember that suitcase Olof was
Speaker 3: reaching for, It actually has another battery, and if they
Speaker 3: return it, if they if Glebsky will return the battery
Speaker 3: to them, Oloff can be revived and then he won't
Speaker 3: be dead at all. He's just a robot who's on
Speaker 3: low power and they'll give him more power and he's fine,
Speaker 3: so this won't actually.
Speaker 1: Be a murder. But Glebsky thinks this is all madness.
Speaker 3: He says that every crime can be explained by appealing
Speaker 3: to fantasy, and this leads to arguments between Glebsky and Semone.
Speaker 3: Simone is saying like, look, you're being offered per right now,
Speaker 3: see for yourself. But Glebsky says, interestingly, quote, I'm not
Speaker 3: a scientist, I'm a police officer. I've heard too many
Speaker 3: lies about the suitcase. So he's sort of saying that
Speaker 3: he operates not just on physical evidence, but by primarily
Speaker 3: suspicion of motive, which can even override physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Hm oh.
Speaker 3: We also find out here that mister Moses is the
Speaker 3: one that called the police and slipped the note into
Speaker 3: Glebsky's pocket, and it's because he wanted to be rid
Speaker 3: of Hinkus and he knew Hankus was there. He was
Speaker 3: the criminal who was hunting him, and so at one
Speaker 3: point in this conversation, mister Moses laments. He's like, it's
Speaker 3: it's troubling that you won't be convinced because our robots
Speaker 3: are too convincing as humans. You know, if they were
Speaker 3: just obviously robots, then maybe you'd believe us. He says,
Speaker 3: it's a pity I can't show you my real face.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is kind of getting to my earlier
Speaker 2: point about this is not the sort of film that
Speaker 2: is that needs to show you the alien face that
Speaker 2: the roboticiers. Again, I wouldn't have said no to it,
Speaker 2: but you can understand this choice based on this interaction. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But here we get this conflict with Glebsky where
Speaker 3: he's like, no, I must turn you into the law.
Speaker 3: So he's conflicted, and he wanders around the hotel alone.
Speaker 3: At one point, he even picks up a phone receiver
Speaker 3: and then says in voiceover narration that he wishes the
Speaker 3: phone would simply give him orders to follow because he
Speaker 3: sort of feels like he can't think for himself, he
Speaker 3: can't decide what's the right thing to do, so he
Speaker 3: like walks out into the snow and he meets Brune
Speaker 3: out there. Remember Brune was the one who was in
Speaker 3: love with Olaf, and Brune begs him to give the
Speaker 3: battery to them so they can revive Oloft. So she's
Speaker 3: read into the whole theory now and she believes it.
Speaker 3: He's like, Glebsky tries to tell her this is nonsense,
Speaker 3: it's a fairy tale, but she says, if there's something
Speaker 3: that even might help him, you've got to give it
Speaker 3: a try. And she says, if Olof is an android,
Speaker 3: maybe she's an android too. She says, how could I know?
Speaker 3: So this all finally leads to a conclusion where Glebsky
Speaker 3: is trying to arrest mister Moses and won't give the
Speaker 3: battery back. But eventually he is sort of overpowered and
Speaker 3: overruled by Simone and by Snaevar, who both they they
Speaker 3: are aware of the aliens and robots and they want
Speaker 3: to help them, so they sort of restrain Glebsky, and
Speaker 3: they get the suitcase and they give it to the
Speaker 3: aliens so that Olaft can be powered back up. And
Speaker 3: there are these moments in here where Semine is reflecting
Speaker 3: on the tragedy of the situation. Simone says, here is
Speaker 3: the first encounter between two worlds. Think of how amazing
Speaker 3: this is, but think that they arrive from god knows where.
Speaker 3: First they meet terrorists and then they meet a police
Speaker 3: officer like you, Glebsky, sort of saying like you're showing
Speaker 3: them the worst side of humanity. But finally, as the
Speaker 3: Aliens get the battery back and they are allowed to escape,
Speaker 3: like the whole building starts shaking and rumbling like something
Speaker 3: huge is coming. Glass shatters in the windows and we
Speaker 3: hear a voice echoing saying goodbye. Human's real contact is
Speaker 3: yet to come. And then we get one of the
Speaker 3: most striking shots in the movie, which is the aliens departing.
Speaker 3: They're like cloaked figures seemingly skiing uphill without skis to
Speaker 3: the top of.
Speaker 1: The mountain so they can get in their spaceship and leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just robots moving swiftly, unnaturally over the surface
Speaker 2: of the snow.
Speaker 3: Right, so missus Moses is carrying mister Moses, Olaf is
Speaker 3: carrying Luarvic, and they're going to escape to the stars. Unfortunately, Oh,
Speaker 3: here comes a helicopter. And at first you might think, oh,
Speaker 3: the helicopter, that's that's going to be their rescue, right, No,
Speaker 3: it's the gang. It's the gang members. It's Hinkas's gang
Speaker 3: arriving and the helicopter buzzes over their heads. Finally, after
Speaker 3: Snavar sees it and says, God, forgive us all, the
Speaker 3: helicopter unleashes its guns and it kills the two aliens
Speaker 3: and the androids and they lie dead in the snow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, blows them right up. Aliens robots completely destroyed.
Speaker 3: So the helicopter we see like the Saint Bernard howling
Speaker 3: in pity. The helicopter leaves silent mountain peaks with this
Speaker 3: with again the creepy squeaking synthesizers playing out the story,
Speaker 3: and in the end, the camera zooms in on the
Speaker 3: sun and then zooms out from the hotel. There is
Speaker 3: a lot of zooming of the camera in this film,
Speaker 3: and a huge avalanche approaches, billowing over the mountain side,
Speaker 3: finally enveloping the camera. This is one of these avalanche
Speaker 3: shots we talked about earlier, and the final shot of
Speaker 3: the film is actually Glebsky later in black and white,
Speaker 3: suddenly staring directly into the camera and he asks why
Speaker 3: you're looking at them looking at him. He insists that
Speaker 3: he acted correctly. He says, by upholding the law, he
Speaker 3: performed his duty and the law is sacred, and he's
Speaker 3: sort of like he gets defensive and angry and just
Speaker 3: repeatedly insists directly into the audience's face that he was right,
Speaker 3: he did the right thing, and considerations to the contrary
Speaker 3: are just being illogical.
Speaker 2: Now, according to the featurette, this scene this capper at
Speaker 2: the end in black and white with him speaking directly
Speaker 2: to the camera. This is actually footage from this is
Speaker 2: casting footage for the film, and they added it in
Speaker 2: post because the studio thought that the ending wasn't clear
Speaker 2: enough interesting, which is Yeah, I mean I think it
Speaker 2: still works. You know, it reminds me a bit of
Speaker 2: you know, some of those those fourth wall breaking moments
Speaker 2: in Baraka or the ending of the mission. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a and it makes sense. It's not completely out
Speaker 2: of contact with the film because we get those scenes
Speaker 2: where he's narrating, he's speaking to us, and then it
Speaker 2: seems kind of fitting that at the end he is
Speaker 2: looking at us, he is addressing us directly about this
Speaker 2: strange encounter that he had and these choices that he
Speaker 2: had to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess that does it for Dead Mountaineers Hotel.
Speaker 3: But I found this a really interesting film. It does
Speaker 3: actually raise interesting themes in the end, but they kind
Speaker 3: of come late in the film, these themes about like
Speaker 3: can this bureaucratic functionary, this policeman like make a decision
Speaker 3: that makes sense given what he's just encountered, or can
Speaker 3: he just like not accept what's in front of him
Speaker 3: and sort of act as a as almost as a machine,
Speaker 3: as a robot himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating film. I really enjoy diving
Speaker 2: into it, and I enjoyed getting into this realm of
Speaker 2: Estonian cinema. So yeah, we'll throw it out to our
Speaker 2: listeners there. If you've seen Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, or if
Speaker 2: you've read the source material, or are you yourself listening
Speaker 2: of from Estonia, do you have an additional insight about Estonian
Speaker 2: culture and cinema locations, actors and so forth right in
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: of the stuff to bliw. Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with new episod core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays.
Speaker 2: But then on Fridays, we just set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. If you want a full list of the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered over the years, go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 2: That's l E T T e r box d dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird House. You'll find a list there
Speaker 2: of everything we've covered so far, and sometimes a peek
Speaker 2: ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 3: Our regular audio producer Jjposway is out this week, so
Speaker 3: huge thanks to our guest producer Andrew Howard for helping
Speaker 3: us out today.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it, Andrew.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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