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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're going
Speaker 1: to have a conversation from Chicago. This is film Spotting.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Larson and I'm Adam Kempinar Teddy.
Speaker 4: Don't believe he's lies.
Speaker 3: He's the one kill him.
Speaker 5: I finally found him if I've been looking.
Speaker 1: Not all movie narrators are created equal. Some talk to
Speaker 1: us straight, and some turn out to be not so trustworthy.
Speaker 6: This week's Film Spotting Top five unreliable narrative plus a
Speaker 6: curakura saw was nineteen fifty masterpiece Raschoman. By my count,
Speaker 6: four unreliable narrators in that one. It's all ahead on
Speaker 6: film Spotting. Welcome to film Spotting. I think Josh, the
Speaker 6: disclaimer should be don't believe anything you hear on this
Speaker 6: week's show.
Speaker 1: Just this week. Okay, you're giving us a lot of credit.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, Later in the show, a husband, a wife,
Speaker 6: a bandit, and a woodcutter all walk into a forest,
Speaker 6: and the joke has to end there because we don't
Speaker 6: know what really happened after that.
Speaker 7: You're not gonna respond.
Speaker 1: To Raschoman's been been confounding people for Oh man, do
Speaker 1: we want to do this seventy six years now?
Speaker 7: Seventy six years? Indeed?
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at that.
Speaker 7: Math nineteen fifty.
Speaker 6: It at least gave you an even nice even year
Speaker 6: to do the math with confounding people like my joke.
Speaker 7: Apparently did there a curra cur i was?
Speaker 6: Rashamon is a twenty twenty six film Spotting Pantheon nominee.
Speaker 6: We are taking another look at it, and we're gonna
Speaker 6: ask listeners to choose one and only one eighties Rob
Speaker 6: Reiner movie and take just a second and consider what
Speaker 6: that means. We don't even have to give you the
Speaker 6: titles potentially the best Documentary, best Coming of age movie,
Speaker 6: Best Romantic Comedy, and best Fantasy.
Speaker 7: That's your choice.
Speaker 1: Pretty good run, pretty good run.
Speaker 6: There a quick reminder Film Spotting is now available as
Speaker 6: a video podcast. You can now watch the show on YouTube,
Speaker 6: YouTube dot com slash film Spotting. For a link to
Speaker 6: those video episodes and all of our episodes, you can
Speaker 6: go to filmspotting dot net slash episodes. Josh, speaking of video,
Speaker 6: what backdrop are you giving us this week?
Speaker 7: What layer are you in?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Where in the world is.
Speaker 1: Josh Larson explained to our loyal video viewers. This is
Speaker 1: not I haven't upgraded the Scotland flat. I'm very flat.
Speaker 1: We are back on the road. It's my spring break.
Speaker 1: Apparently they do spring break end of February. Adam here
Speaker 1: at University of St. Andrews. So Debbie and I are
Speaker 1: yes off as I mentioned on an earlier show, and
Speaker 1: I am coming to live from Scotland. The hotel where
Speaker 1: I was kind enough, Scotland, Stockholm. I don't even remember
Speaker 1: where I am anymore.
Speaker 7: I was going to correct you. You didn't catch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, in Stockholm for this evening tomorrow we had
Speaker 1: to Copenhagen, where in a couple of days we'll be
Speaker 1: having a film Spotting meetup. So looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: It's coming up this weekend. And yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: we're doing the show tonight, very excited to get into it.
Speaker 7: I'm excited as well.
Speaker 6: First up, here is the film spotting Top five Unreliable Narrators.
Speaker 6: Of course inspired by the movie. We will discuss a
Speaker 6: bit later. Ras Oman, Josh, how did you go about
Speaker 6: approaching this list?
Speaker 1: First off, I'm glad you said that for those who
Speaker 1: in the future might just be jump being in for
Speaker 1: this top five list right and not knowing that we
Speaker 1: paired it to Raschaman. What would they have thought if
Speaker 1: they listened to this whole list and we never we
Speaker 1: never mentioned it. So this is, you know, essentially what
Speaker 1: we'd like to call a Raschaman memorial list. I'm a
Speaker 1: little more hesitant to do that than you are when
Speaker 1: it seems like there's an obvious shared number one. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because I don't like in retrospect if someone looked
Speaker 1: at the list and it is like, where is that title?
Speaker 1: So we are doing this inspired by Raschoman, And you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of felt, Adam when I sat down to
Speaker 1: make this list, that there were a handful of other
Speaker 1: obvious had to be their titles. So it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see what we share and maybe what listeners think
Speaker 1: we might have missed. I also realized, when I put
Speaker 1: together that had to be their list, that almost all
Speaker 1: of them came out around the year two thousand. I
Speaker 1: could have easily compiled a very worthy top five unreliable
Speaker 1: narrators from that era. I don't know. Was there something
Speaker 1: about the turn of the millennium that we were just,
Speaker 1: you know, insecurity in the air instability anticipated that the
Speaker 1: movies turned to these unreliable narrators. I'll leave that essay
Speaker 1: for someone else to write. But I didn't want to
Speaker 1: just do that. I wanted to spread the wealth historically,
Speaker 1: so I did look elsewhere for a couple of my picks.
Speaker 1: Hopefully between the two of this we have circa two
Speaker 1: thousand well covered. Now, as far as the terminology we're
Speaker 1: using here, what an unreliable mean to me? I think, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, it's self evident, but I did want to
Speaker 1: move beyond just the narrator of a movie. I do
Speaker 1: have some cases of that, but I also wanted to
Speaker 1: allow the movie itself to be unreliable. And my top
Speaker 1: two are actually unreliable in their very form, again not
Speaker 1: just because of a certain character, but actually how they're made.
Speaker 1: So that will be something I'm looking forward to getting into. Also,
Speaker 1: just want to stay from the top because this involves
Speaker 1: a lot of spoilers a list like this, right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna okay, some of these unreliable narrators are plot twists,
Speaker 1: so fair warning. There might be a chance that there's
Speaker 1: a movie you haven't quite seen we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1: And I don't think either of us are going to
Speaker 1: necessarily hold back if we feel like we need to
Speaker 1: talk about that. No spoiler element.
Speaker 6: No, all of these movies have been out for a
Speaker 6: while and it will be essential in some cases. Now
Speaker 6: other than the fact that, as we did previously discuss
Speaker 6: when we were teasing this top five, we're calling it
Speaker 6: unreliable narrators, but we are talking about the movies. Our
Speaker 6: picks are movies, not the characters or narrators themselves. Other
Speaker 6: than that, I was fairly literal, Josh, and not picking
Speaker 6: unreliable narratives. So I'll be interested in seeing how how
Speaker 6: you make your case. I mean, it did have to
Speaker 6: have a narrator for me in order to pick it.
Speaker 6: Now that said, I got this email. We got this
Speaker 6: email from Josh Ashen Miller in la who said, speaking
Speaker 6: of other maybe obvious picks. I know it's in the pantheon,
Speaker 6: but I have to suggest Apocalypse Now, that opening scene
Speaker 6: breakdown makes us wonder about Captain Willard for the whole
Speaker 6: length of the movie. So in doing my research, this
Speaker 6: did come up, not Apocalypse Now specifically, but Captain Willard,
Speaker 6: or the Captain Willard question, I suppose you could say,
Speaker 6: came up again and again, and it was one I
Speaker 6: had to wrestle with because I think you could ask
Speaker 6: it about this movie as well in an even more
Speaker 6: explicit way about another Pantheon pick, and that's Taxi Driver
Speaker 6: with Travis Bikel as your narrator, where their point of view,
Speaker 6: because of their state of mind, you could say it
Speaker 6: calls into question everything that they are relaying to us.
Speaker 6: I think that that's very fair, and I understand why
Speaker 6: Josh might propose that he is an unreliable narrator. I
Speaker 6: understand why they come up on lists of unreliable narrators,
Speaker 6: or at least I definitely saw Travis Bickle come up
Speaker 6: on those types of lists. For me, beyond the fact
Speaker 6: that those two movies are in the pantheon and thus
Speaker 6: ineligible for sure, either of our lists. It actually did
Speaker 6: help me crystallize how I wanted to approach this top five,
Speaker 6: and for me, I had to go beyond mere recognition
Speaker 6: of subjectivity. And in the case of the two films
Speaker 6: I just mentioned and many others skewered subjectivity, the audience
Speaker 6: has to be engaged in the act of questioning, and
Speaker 6: I'm going to go so far as to say aggressively
Speaker 6: confronted with the absence of the narrator's objectivity. So basically,
Speaker 6: from an early point in the film, if not the
Speaker 6: opening scene, you're writing along that edge the entire time.
Speaker 6: Whereas a viewer you have some skepticism, and that skepticism
Speaker 6: ends up actually being a crucial part of the viewing process.
Speaker 6: You're almost interacting with the film on that level. And
Speaker 6: because of that, I had a really good reason to
Speaker 6: leave off any movie that with the narrator has a
Speaker 6: major twist ending, because with twist ending movies that's completely absent.
Speaker 6: There's no twist with those films. The twist works because
Speaker 6: you buy into the reliability of the narrator from the jump.
Speaker 6: That's the whole point, other than the fact that you're
Speaker 6: suspending disbelief because it's a movie you are believing everything
Speaker 6: you're being fed, and so you're shocked at the end
Speaker 6: when the rug is pulled out from under you with
Speaker 6: my picks. There's no rug. No, there's nothing, there's no
Speaker 6: foundation really from the very beginning. Of course, we've also
Speaker 6: already done our favorite movies with twist ending, so that
Speaker 6: just felt like a different list to me. Now, I
Speaker 6: don't want to mention them here because one may or
Speaker 6: maybe more may come up between our lists, and I'll
Speaker 6: just save them for the end anyway, because it is
Speaker 6: very hard to separate twist ending movies and unreliable narrator movies,
Speaker 6: so we'll probably cover some by the time we get
Speaker 6: through this top five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's an interesting distinction and certainly probably
Speaker 1: helpful and narrowing down a list, as it sounds like
Speaker 1: it was for you. I didn't restrict myself that way,
Speaker 1: so I think I have I probably have two, as
Speaker 1: I think about it, that qualify as twists, but both
Speaker 1: in interesting ways, especially the one as we get higher
Speaker 1: up on my list. But yeah, my number five actually
Speaker 1: involves a twist, so perhaps a good place to start.
Speaker 1: This is also where I get quite historical, because I'm
Speaker 1: going back to nineteen twenty For this one. My number
Speaker 1: five is the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, This silent horror landmark.
Speaker 1: It's remembered, I mean the title. It's remembered as the
Speaker 1: story of doctor Caligari and his sideshow attraction, Sayzar, this
Speaker 1: somnambulist who answers questions from the crowd while in a
Speaker 1: catatonic state. But the movie is actually a narrated flashback
Speaker 1: the entire thing by a different character, this despondent young
Speaker 1: man named Francis, and Francis his friend, was mysteriously murdered.
Speaker 1: We hear at the beginning after a visit to the
Speaker 1: town fair where doctor Caligary was performing, and in Francis's telling,
Speaker 1: he goes on to discover that Calgary, yes, has been
Speaker 1: instructing Czar to kill So this movie essentially becomes a
Speaker 1: very early serial killer thriller that essentially as Francis as
Speaker 1: the hero slash investigator. But yeah, remember I said, in
Speaker 1: Francis's telling, which may not be so trustworthy, and this
Speaker 1: is a twist ending Adam, it has one of the
Speaker 1: first shock twist endings that did reveal the extent of
Speaker 1: Francis's unreliability. That's why it counted for me for this list.
Speaker 1: But honestly, I just wanted another excuse to nudge anyone
Speaker 1: who hasn't seen Caligauri to make the time for it.
Speaker 1: It's my number three horror film of all time. The
Speaker 1: expressionism that it's you know, mostly known for, I would say,
Speaker 1: has rarely ever been matched, and not just in the
Speaker 1: jagged sets that people are probably already picturing, but also
Speaker 1: that color tinting that's employed on certain frames, and really
Speaker 1: even the scrawl design of the intertitles have their own, yeah,
Speaker 1: ferocity to them, but really that reveal that we get
Speaker 1: I feel like it works on more than a gotcha level. Well,
Speaker 1: the unreliability at play is quite disturbing. It's the sort
Speaker 1: that just has you has you questioning your own mind
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. So that's why for me,
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was good enough, good enough
Speaker 1: to qualify here at number five.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a really interesting choice, one that was completely
Speaker 6: out of mind for me, and one that's been out
Speaker 6: of mind for a long time because I haven't seen
Speaker 6: it in so long. I think it might have been
Speaker 6: part of a pretty early film spotting marathon. But it's
Speaker 6: also one I remember having to watch in film school.
Speaker 6: Being glad I watched it in film school, so it
Speaker 6: was nice to be reminded of it. I'm kind of
Speaker 6: mad at you, though, for reminding me or bringing up
Speaker 6: this notion of movies around the year two thousand, because
Speaker 6: fortunately I didn't pay attention to that. I didn't note
Speaker 6: the years with my movies, Josh, at all, except for
Speaker 6: my number five pick. And so as you said that,
Speaker 6: I kind of glanced at my other choice and I realized, Oh,
Speaker 6: all of my picks.
Speaker 7: I like my list a lot.
Speaker 6: All of my picks are from the two thousands, and
Speaker 6: four of them are from right around the year two thousand.
Speaker 7: So I don't know.
Speaker 6: I like your hypothesis, yeah, but I don't know. If
Speaker 6: I had been aware of it, maybe I would have
Speaker 6: forced myself in different directions. Nevertheless, I'm going to stick
Speaker 6: with my list, and I'm going to stick with my
Speaker 6: number five, a film from the year two thousand. It's
Speaker 6: Mary Heron's American Psycho, a movie that I liked the
Speaker 6: one time I saw it back in the year two thousand,
Speaker 6: but I didn't love it, ironically, perhaps because I didn't
Speaker 6: enjoy the ambiguity of the conclusion. I couldn't rely on
Speaker 6: what Heron, as the storyteller wanted the main character and
Speaker 6: thus me as the viewer, to understand what was reality
Speaker 6: versus what was fantasy. And not only would I just
Speaker 6: generally like to revisit it because it has been twenty
Speaker 6: six years, I just wonder if I would appreciate that
Speaker 6: ambiguity much more now. What I did appreciate then, and
Speaker 6: what so many people did, was Bail's performance as Patrick
Speaker 6: Bateman and his narration adapted by Heron and Guenevere Turner
Speaker 6: from the Brett Easton Ellis novel.
Speaker 5: There are no more barriers to cross. All I have
Speaker 5: in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious
Speaker 5: and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused, am
Speaker 5: I utter indifference toward it?
Speaker 1: I have now.
Speaker 6: Surpassed that gentle precision, that too gentle precision of his voice,
Speaker 6: the hyper superficiality.
Speaker 7: Of his thoughts.
Speaker 6: They all do suggest that there has to be a
Speaker 6: much darker being lurking behind that herb mint facial mask
Speaker 6: and after shave lotion with little or no alcohol. You
Speaker 6: know that he puts on in the morning, then moisturizer,
Speaker 6: then an anti aging EYEBALLMB followed by a final moisturizing
Speaker 6: protect lotion. You know, Josh, the same routine you go
Speaker 6: through every single morning.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: We immediately have a sense that something is very off
Speaker 6: and that his perspective isn't to be totally trusted, whether
Speaker 6: he's aware of it or not. But guess what, he
Speaker 6: is aware of it, and he calls our attention to it.
Speaker 6: In the opening narration, he tells us there is an
Speaker 6: idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but
Speaker 6: there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory.
Speaker 6: And though I can hide my cold gaze and you
Speaker 6: can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and
Speaker 6: maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable,
Speaker 6: I simply am not there. That's the beginning of the film, Josh.
Speaker 6: How can you trust the musings and memories of an
Speaker 6: abstraction of a ghost at best? And also, just thinking
Speaker 6: about this movie, I have been thinking about it a
Speaker 6: lot because in terms of oppressions, I don't know sadly
Speaker 6: that this movie in some ways has ever not been.
Speaker 7: Relevant since it came out. But tell me that.
Speaker 6: If you're even familiar with this person, and in Josh,
Speaker 6: I largely hope you're not. You're leading a happier life
Speaker 6: if you're not. But tell me that some douche like
Speaker 6: clavicular isn't Jess Patrick Bateman. You know, Patrick Bateman is
Speaker 6: just the patron saint of every MAHA influencer bro on TikTok.
Speaker 6: I feel like I'm seeing Patrick Bateman every time. I'm
Speaker 6: usually not fortunately seeing them pop up on my feed.
Speaker 6: I'm seeing them pop up on my feed only when
Speaker 6: I'm seeing other people annihilating them for how douchey they are.
Speaker 6: So they're out there, man, there's way too many Patrick
Speaker 6: Bateman's out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't you know what. I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: that connection in a long time. I haven't seen this
Speaker 1: movie since it came out, but that tracks that tracks
Speaker 1: for my memory.
Speaker 7: No, Ironey, lots of Patrick Bateman.
Speaker 1: We're still stuck with guys like that, aren't we. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting scenario for the unreliable narrative because this
Speaker 1: is almost one where there isn't a twist ending, because
Speaker 1: especially going to see the movie, if you're aware of
Speaker 1: the book, you know, you just know who this guy is,
Speaker 1: and it is more about, yeah, watching the facade and
Speaker 1: how he tries to keep it up and how it crumbles.
Speaker 1: Also one that I should probably revisit because, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's been since it first came out, and I think
Speaker 1: I was probably yeah, mixed to mild on it as
Speaker 1: it sounds like you were, so do for a revisit.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to throw this number for at you
Speaker 1: ad him because another sort of theory here that I'm
Speaker 1: very curious to hear what you think of it. It's
Speaker 1: a curveball pick the top five idea prompted it for me,
Speaker 1: and then I was also prompted by the fact that
Speaker 1: there's this new documentary out Ghost Elephants Nature documentary, but
Speaker 1: directed by Werner Herzog. So here's my question. Is Werner
Speaker 1: Herzog one of cinema's foremost unreliable narrators. He is notorious
Speaker 1: for his narrations of his documentaries. Right, They're absolutely singular these,
Speaker 1: aren't you know, a calm voice delivering facts. This is
Speaker 1: someone filtering factual things the real world through his own
Speaker 1: distinctly interpretive lens. This is this is one element of
Speaker 1: what everyone calls Herzog's ecstatic truth right. His narration is
Speaker 1: part of that. So this made me wonder, do we
Speaker 1: really know Timothy Treadwell of Grizzly Man, or do we
Speaker 1: only know Herzog's particular version of him? Is there a
Speaker 1: certain unreliability in what we're being told as well in
Speaker 1: how it's being framed, especially by Herzog the on screen narrator.
Speaker 2: Treadwell is gone, the argument how wrong, how right?
Speaker 1: He was?
Speaker 2: Disappears into a distance, into a what remains is his footage.
Speaker 1: My pick isn't Grizzly Man, because I think there might
Speaker 1: be a better test case for this for this question,
Speaker 1: and it's my best fiend, So that's where I'm going
Speaker 1: here with my number four pick. This is Herzog's documentary
Speaker 1: account of his tumultuous relationship with volatile actor Klaus Kinski,
Speaker 1: who is the star of five Herzog films like Ageara
Speaker 1: of the Wrath of God Knows Fratu and Fitzkaraldo my
Speaker 1: best theme. It was made a number of years after
Speaker 1: Kinski's death, and there isn't a lot of room here
Speaker 1: for Kinski's own voice. Herzog does read a passage from
Speaker 1: Kinsky's autobiography at one point. And it's very amusing because
Speaker 1: in that passage, Kinsky is basically describing Herzog in the
Speaker 1: same egomaniacal terms that Herzog in the documentary, has been
Speaker 1: using to describe Kinsky. So you do get a real
Speaker 1: sense of, you know, the back and forth between these
Speaker 1: two men. I don't think this is a hatchet job
Speaker 1: add all. I mean you get a real sense of
Speaker 1: their relationship, of the love and respect the two of
Speaker 1: them had. But there is something inherently unreliable about trying
Speaker 1: to capture the fullness of a man through such a
Speaker 1: particularly personal lens. So yes, this is a very different
Speaker 1: kind of unreliability that we're mostly going to be talking
Speaker 1: about here. But I think it fits. I was kind
Speaker 1: of more intrigued to probe the question the more I
Speaker 1: thought about it. But I'm thrown at you because you're
Speaker 1: a huge Herzoga fan and just loved to get your
Speaker 1: thoughts on us. Yeah.
Speaker 6: My immediate response is I'm angry at you for, on
Speaker 6: one level, violating the integrity of the top five. And
Speaker 6: I say that that. I say that because kind of
Speaker 6: going back to what I was alluding to earlier, that
Speaker 6: line of even though you know you're watching a narrative,
Speaker 6: you know you're watching a fiction. We as viewers are
Speaker 6: so buying into the reality of it, but then the
Speaker 6: the unreliability of the narrator and that tension is at
Speaker 6: the core of what this top five is all about.
Speaker 6: So if you bring quote unquote actual reality into it,
Speaker 6: then it it kind of undercuts that. Though we can
Speaker 6: all we can also go into that realm of yes,
Speaker 6: but we also now know and discuss constantly how even
Speaker 6: documentaries are their own version of subjective truths. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 6: I will just say my other reaction is I'm angry
Speaker 6: at you for having thought of it first and not me,
Speaker 6: because I think it's I think it's pretty I think
Speaker 6: it's pretty brilliant, and and I think it it makes
Speaker 6: sense if you if you're willing to go into the
Speaker 6: realm of documentary for this top five. Herzog's obviously the
Speaker 6: place to go because of what you said, because he
Speaker 6: so succumbs to his notion of the extent truth, because
Speaker 6: he buys into that so wholeheartedly, he believes in it
Speaker 6: so devotedly, and he again and again displays it in
Speaker 6: his films, whether it's on grandiose levels and has grandiose
Speaker 6: displays of it or these very small displays of it
Speaker 6: that honestly, unless you're doing research on the film later
Speaker 6: or someone points it out to you, or Herzog himself
Speaker 6: points it out, you wouldn't even know it was some
Speaker 6: kind of manufacturing of the truth or a modification of
Speaker 6: the truth. But he can't help it. He likes to lie.
Speaker 6: He likes to lie within his movies. He sees a
Speaker 6: purpose to his lies within his films. And I actually
Speaker 6: was just watching it's on YouTube. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 6: Just a few weeks ago.
Speaker 7: I watched.
Speaker 6: It's only about forty five minutes long, and I think
Speaker 6: it's from I think it's from the nineteen seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy four, Herzog made a documentary about a skier,
Speaker 6: a ski jumper, you know those like the Winter Olympics,
Speaker 6: you know where they just go down the ramp and
Speaker 6: then they jump, and it's just all about distance. About
Speaker 6: this guy named Gunther Steiner, and it's called the Great
Speaker 6: Ecstasy of wood Carver Steiner and it's just about this
Speaker 6: guy and talk about ecstatic truth. This guy can just
Speaker 6: or the ecstasy right that he captures the guy can
Speaker 6: just soar farther than everybody, And the way Herzog depicts
Speaker 6: that soaring in slow motion, it is something amazing. You
Speaker 6: understand why that word ecstasy is in the title and
Speaker 6: you're watching it and at the end there's there's a
Speaker 6: poem that Herzog reads and it's like about Steiner, and
Speaker 6: you think, is that a real poem? Did Steiner write that?
Speaker 6: Where did that come from? And You're like, Herzog just
Speaker 6: made that up, you know, like none of it it's
Speaker 6: you know, like that doesn't.
Speaker 7: Come from anything.
Speaker 6: Herzog just thought it was poetic and he decided to
Speaker 6: throw it in And I can't. I feel so bad
Speaker 6: because it was just like a month ago. But Steiner
Speaker 6: at one point tells a story about growing up with
Speaker 6: some kind of bird, you know, he had, like a pet,
Speaker 6: and I wish I could remember what it was. And
Speaker 6: the story is so pedestrian in a way, but also bizarre,
Speaker 6: like things like stories and Herzog movies are that, Josh.
Speaker 6: As soon as the movie got over, all I did
Speaker 6: was start googling because I was sure Herzog made that
Speaker 6: up and made Gunther Steiner read it in his film
Speaker 6: because there was no way that was true. That seemed
Speaker 6: like one of those things that Herzog said, Hey, I
Speaker 6: think this, I think this works for my movie. Would
Speaker 6: you say this and recount this like it was part
Speaker 6: of your childhood? As far as I can tell, it's
Speaker 6: real that Steiner really grew up with that pet, But
Speaker 6: who really knows, you know. So all of that is
Speaker 6: to say, I wholeheartedly support your pick.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm so relieved. I thought I thought you might
Speaker 1: throw me out of court, so I'm glad we can proceed.
Speaker 7: No, I'm in. I like it. I like it a lot. Okay.
Speaker 6: My number four unreliable narrator is Tony Wilson. The movie
Speaker 6: is twenty four hour Party People from two thousand and two,
Speaker 6: so right around there one of my favorite cinematic pairings
Speaker 6: Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan and what I'm pretty sure
Speaker 6: was their first cinematic pairing, their first collaboration in a
Speaker 6: movie written by Frank Cottrell Boyce some may remember from
Speaker 6: the Danny Boyle movie Millions, among other movies, and this
Speaker 6: is the film that tells the story of that Manchester
Speaker 6: music scene that sprung up, you know, in the wake
Speaker 6: of the sex pistols and his music was changing. In
Speaker 6: England in the late nineteen seventies, Tony Wilson was this
Speaker 6: local TV news reporter who saw the sex pistols and said,
Speaker 6: I want to start a record label. I want to
Speaker 6: promote bands. I want to do something really important, and
Speaker 6: he ended up creating this label called Factory Records and
Speaker 6: starting or being the instigator behind a bunch of new
Speaker 6: bands and this new sound coming into fruition. He's a
Speaker 6: TV personality, as I said, a real life Tony Wilson,
Speaker 6: a real life TV personality. He's obviously ambitious and he
Speaker 6: did as he's looking back Steve Coogan playing Tony Wilson.
Speaker 6: Tony Wilson did make a major mark on popular music
Speaker 6: in Britain in the eighties, primarily And you put all
Speaker 6: of that together, Josh, and of course the person portraying
Speaker 6: him is in the way it's written. It's gonna be
Speaker 6: written in a way and performed in a way to
Speaker 6: push a certain narrative that's a little bit self aggrandizing.
Speaker 6: You know, it's going to favor what makes him look
Speaker 6: good over quote unquote what really happened. And that's easy
Speaker 6: to do when he Coogan as Tony Wilson is literally
Speaker 6: tell the story, not just with narration, but he's breaking
Speaker 6: the fourth wall. He's talking directly to the audience in
Speaker 6: many instances, and throughout winter Bottom and Cougan are constantly
Speaker 6: reminding you too, And this is not a surprise for
Speaker 6: people who know winter Bottom's work, and often his work
Speaker 6: with Kugan. They're reminding you of the mechanics of the story.
Speaker 6: They're reminding you of the fact that it is a story.
Speaker 6: So I think about a scene in this movie where
Speaker 6: Tony recounts meeting Sean and Paul Ryder of the group
Speaker 6: The Happy Mondays on a roof where they're trying to
Speaker 6: poison pigeons, and Cougan's explaining to us right that popular
Speaker 6: music's like a double helix, waves that intertwine and all
Speaker 6: this stuff, and he says, when one musical movement's descendant
Speaker 6: and other one's us send it. And so right now
Speaker 6: we're in kind of a crisscross, a kind of hiatus.
Speaker 6: But the two guys they're going to be on the
Speaker 6: crest of it are these two guys, Paul and Sean Ryder.
Speaker 8: This is a true incident. But like the Hanglining, which
Speaker 8: remember works on two levels. This takes place in nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty when Short and Paul put rock poison into some
Speaker 8: bread and fed it to three thousand pigeons.
Speaker 6: Yeah, here we are in our narrative, this narrative of
Speaker 6: the movie twenty four hour party people, one musical movement's ascendant,
Speaker 6: one's descendant. We're at this crisscross, right, but the next
Speaker 6: wave is coming, he's telling you, Right, it's because of
Speaker 6: these guys that the next wave is coming and they're
Speaker 6: going to be at the crux of it. Okay, that's
Speaker 6: why we're on this roof. There's the storytelling mechanics. Then
Speaker 6: he has to make sure we understand that, oh, this
Speaker 6: is true. You know this really happened. But then it's
Speaker 6: not completely true because you know, no pigeons were harmed
Speaker 6: in the making of this film. He does let us
Speaker 6: know that it's a reconstruction. He tells us the reconstruction
Speaker 6: that no pigeons were harmed. He wants us to be
Speaker 6: sure that.
Speaker 7: We understand that.
Speaker 6: But when he says this is true, like the hang
Speaker 6: gliding incident, it is one of those things where even
Speaker 6: if we're aware of it sort of from the beginning,
Speaker 6: because we understand the mechanism, the mechanics of storytelling. We
Speaker 6: understand the personality of Coogan and Tony Wilson and everything
Speaker 6: that's happening before us. You still can't help but believe
Speaker 6: what you're seeing before you, and that it's a true,
Speaker 6: quote unquote true story. But when he draws attention to
Speaker 6: the fact that, well, this is true and that was true,
Speaker 6: then all of a sudden you're thinking, well, then, which
Speaker 6: ones aren't true? And why are some more true than others?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: And so the entire movie, you're in this nebulous zone, right,
Speaker 6: this gray area, wondering what really am I being fed here?
Speaker 6: And doesn't matter at all because at the end of
Speaker 6: the day, it's entertaining as hell, and who cares if
Speaker 6: any of it's factually true. So I do remember watching
Speaker 6: twenty four Hour Party People in a movie theater in Chicago.
Speaker 6: I wasn't living in Chicago yet when this movie came out,
Speaker 6: just before I moved here, but coming to Chicago to
Speaker 6: visit seeing this movie in a theater and it being
Speaker 6: one of the first movies I really remember that that
Speaker 6: challenged me, not in a super challenging way, but was
Speaker 6: doing something semi sophisticated in this way with its narra,
Speaker 6: with its narrative, you know, with that breaking the fourth wall,
Speaker 6: the unreliable narrator, and it being something that I felt
Speaker 6: like was was new to me at the time.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you called out the Happy Monday's sequence
Speaker 1: because I have fond memories of twenty four Hour Party.
Speaker 1: People have not seen it since that. I was thinking
Speaker 1: as you started talking about it about the bands that
Speaker 1: were covered, It's like, is that was that Happy Mondays?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 1: I miss Happy Mondays? So yeah, a good movie, good movie,
Speaker 1: and yeah, definitely works for this list. All right. My
Speaker 1: number three is let's see here. Oh yeah, this was
Speaker 1: part of our family's COVID coping strategy a few years
Speaker 1: ago now. Thankfully we went on a Joan Crawford marathon
Speaker 1: and one of the highlights was nineteen forty seven's Possessed,
Speaker 1: which I think counts as an unreliable narrator movie for
Speaker 1: reasons I'll get to first. I want to clarify though,
Speaker 1: we also in that marathon did nineteen thirty one's Possessed
Speaker 1: with Joan Crawford. I think this one's a little better.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to choose the Possessed go with
Speaker 1: forty seven here. In this one, Crawford plays Louise Howell,
Speaker 1: who is the unreliable narrator. We basically first meet her
Speaker 1: in this incredible opening sequence where she's just wandering the
Speaker 1: streets of Los Angeles in a daze and mumbling the
Speaker 1: name David. She ends up being hospitalized and begins piecing
Speaker 1: together her past in these flashbacks that involve an engineer
Speaker 1: she was in love with who rejected her, played by
Speaker 1: Van Heflin. If I were in love with anybody else,
Speaker 1: believe me. I tell you there is another woman.
Speaker 3: I know it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, why should you suddenly decide to go out to Canada.
Speaker 5: I do know about Canada.
Speaker 2: You didn't think i'd find out about that, did you?
Speaker 4: But I did.
Speaker 2: I listened at the door.
Speaker 1: Do you see the things you make me do? All right?
Speaker 8: I'll do them. I'll do anything because I don't care anymore.
Speaker 1: You can't go away without me, David. I won't let you.
Speaker 1: I'll find a way alive.
Speaker 8: I have to, but I'll find a way.
Speaker 1: So that unspools a pretty wild plot of betrayal, potential suicide,
Speaker 1: possible murder, and this is all through the foggy memory
Speaker 1: and even the hallucinations at one point of Louise. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this fits your criteria, Adam. Of like, we know obviously
Speaker 1: from that opening scene this is a struggling woman. How
Speaker 1: much can we believe of her story? Crawford, this will
Speaker 1: not surprise you to hear commits. I don't find that
Speaker 1: this particular performance leans all the way into camp. I
Speaker 1: think the movie'll overall. I mean, this is forty seven,
Speaker 1: so it's not perfect, but I think it deals with
Speaker 1: her mental illness fairly progressively for the time. And Crawford,
Speaker 1: you know, definitely is taking this woman in her predicament seriously.
Speaker 1: The director is Curtis Bernhardt. Not incredibly familiar with Curtis Bernhardt,
Speaker 1: but there are some nice employments of point of view
Speaker 1: shots in the movie, which I especially like for this
Speaker 1: list because they emphasize the unreliable narrator element. The first
Speaker 1: one comes when she's Louise's being hospitalized, and so she's
Speaker 1: wheeled into the hospital on this gurney and we suddenly
Speaker 1: see her from her point of view, like the ceiling
Speaker 1: lamps passing overhead, and so even though we've initially become
Speaker 1: suspicious of her because we've watched her from Afar in
Speaker 1: this daze and we're either you know, nervous for her
Speaker 1: or maybe even scared by her. Here then we're put
Speaker 1: into her body and her panic becomes ours. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of messing with you in that way of what
Speaker 1: should I believe? What should I not believe? And well
Speaker 1: now I'm now I'm actually experiencing this story, so that
Speaker 1: invests us even more. Yeah, I highly recommend Possessed. I
Speaker 1: think of it as the Hitchcock film that Joan Crawford
Speaker 1: never made. So it's a good one.
Speaker 6: Joan Crawford should be. It sounds like it will never be.
Speaker 6: She will never be a marathon subject on this show
Speaker 6: because you did that marathon without me. You did that
Speaker 6: with your other family. Yeah, you did that with your
Speaker 6: actual family. Should have been a marathon topic on this show.
Speaker 6: Because I need to see a lot of Joan Crawford movies,
Speaker 6: and that, unfortunately is one of them. And you know,
Speaker 6: I already wanted to see those films, but now you've
Speaker 6: really sold me on wanting to see Possessed.
Speaker 7: So a good pick, Josh.
Speaker 6: Looking over the slate of movies that are playing or
Speaker 6: coming soon to a Regal Cinema near you. I kind
Speaker 6: of like seeing that. With the Oscars approaching, you can
Speaker 6: still go to the theater and see Marty Supreme, one
Speaker 6: of the Best Picture nominees. If you haven't already seen
Speaker 6: that movie, catch it before it's no longer available on
Speaker 6: the big screen. And of course the movie that we
Speaker 6: will be discussing next week. Look for it in your feed.
Speaker 6: Maggie jillen Hall's The Bride I have to share.
Speaker 7: I love that.
Speaker 6: I just randomly got this video served to me. You
Speaker 6: know that John mullaney story he told on the Oscars
Speaker 6: about reading putting himself on tape for Young Cop. It
Speaker 6: was so memorable as a really funny story. It was
Speaker 6: for this movie, and Jesse Buckley and Maggie Jillenhall got
Speaker 6: asked about it and they were great sports about it,
Speaker 6: and they laughed and said it was really funny. And
Speaker 6: Maggie did point out, Maggie Jillenhall that it's a good role.
Speaker 6: And Lewis can Sell Me is the actor who plays
Speaker 6: Young Cop in the movie, and she ended up giving
Speaker 6: Young Cop a name, I think after John Mulaney told
Speaker 6: that story. But she says it's a good role. It's
Speaker 6: quite a big part, so maybe John mulaney should have
Speaker 6: taken it more seriously so we can see that on
Speaker 6: the big screen, and maybe we'll discuss just how good
Speaker 6: the actor is performing Young Cop, though I think we'll
Speaker 6: be spending most of our time looking at Jesse Buckley
Speaker 6: and Christian Bale and considering their performances. I am very
Speaker 6: excited to see that one. You can see both of
Speaker 6: those films at a Regal cinema near you, and you
Speaker 6: just might be able to see them for free. Regal
Speaker 6: Unlimited is the all you can watch movie subscription pass
Speaker 6: that pays for itself in just two visits. Right now,
Speaker 6: Regal is offering film spotting listeners endless movies for less.
Speaker 6: All you have to do is sign up for Regal
Speaker 6: Unlimited using code film spot twenty six and you'll get
Speaker 6: fifteen percent off. Regal Unlimited is the only truly limitless
Speaker 6: movie subscription pass. You can see any standard two D
Speaker 6: movie anytime with no blockout dates or restrictions. And with
Speaker 6: Regal Unlimited you won't just save money on tickets, you
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Speaker 6: lap or at the link in our podcast description and
Speaker 6: use code film Spot twenty six that's film Spot twenty
Speaker 6: six to receive your discu my number three. This is
Speaker 6: the only one of my picks that doesn't come from
Speaker 6: right around the turn of the century. It's from twenty fourteen.
Speaker 6: And here's where things get really fun, because David Fincher
Speaker 6: takes Allian Flynn's Gone Girl Conceit from the book and
Speaker 6: I think really employs it so perfectly. First, we assume
Speaker 6: that this is going to be the story as told
Speaker 6: completely from Nick Dunn's perspective. Ben Affleck, can he be trusted?
Speaker 6: Josh Well? In the opening narration, we hear him talk
Speaker 6: about cracking his wife Amy's lovely skull open.
Speaker 3: When I think of my wife, I always think of
Speaker 3: her head a picture of cracking or lovely skull unspooling
Speaker 3: her brains trying to get answers.
Speaker 6: Though it's not as bad as it sounds, right right,
Speaker 6: I mean he just means he just really wants to
Speaker 6: understand what his wife is really thinking. He just wants
Speaker 6: to get inside her head. I mean we've all had
Speaker 6: the same thought about our wives, right, but sure, something
Speaker 6: about that phrasing and kind of the way that just
Speaker 6: slightly menacing way he says it. You know, it's perfect.
Speaker 6: We're immediately not sure what to think about this guy.
Speaker 6: And of course, as more details unfold, like the fact
Speaker 6: that she's missing, what happened to her? Is he in
Speaker 6: fact responsible for her disappearance? How much can we trust
Speaker 6: what he's telling the police, not just us, the people
Speaker 6: around him, what they think and what he's telling them.
Speaker 6: And then of course it gets really really interesting. We
Speaker 6: learn that Amy's still alive, and that becomes a fact
Speaker 6: that becomes something we're aware of when we get introduced
Speaker 6: to Amy and we get the famous cool girl speech.
Speaker 4: Nick and Amy will be gone. But then we never
Speaker 4: really existed. Nick loved a girl. I was pretending to
Speaker 4: be cool girl. Men always use that, don't they, as
Speaker 4: their defining compliment. She's a cool girl, coog girl is hotly,
Speaker 4: cool girl is gay, cool girl is fun. Cool girl
Speaker 4: never gets angry at her man.
Speaker 7: She only smiles.
Speaker 6: Other than the fact Josh that she faked her death
Speaker 6: and is obviously willing to go to great lengths to
Speaker 6: deceive the entire world, not just her husband. What does
Speaker 6: Amy immediately start telling us in that monologue Nick and
Speaker 6: Amy will be gone. But then we never really existed.
Speaker 6: Nick loved a girl I was pretending to be. We
Speaker 6: were happy, pretending to be other people. We were the
Speaker 6: happiest couple we knew her in her entire marriage, her
Speaker 6: her life really up to this point. And and as
Speaker 6: we you know, quickly learned too from the beginning of
Speaker 6: the film, so has his has been about deception.
Speaker 7: Right, We're in a in that movie.
Speaker 6: We are in a constant state of having to recalibrate
Speaker 6: what we think, what we believe, what we feel, who
Speaker 6: we can trust, what we can trust not trust, and
Speaker 6: certainly what's coming out of the mouths of either Nick
Speaker 6: or Amy. And in some cases in Flashbacks, Fincher understands
Speaker 6: that because we've seen it happen, because he's shown us something,
Speaker 6: it's then impossible, almost impossible for our brains to then
Speaker 6: disassociate it from reality, that that what we saw in
Speaker 6: flashback could in fact be just their version of the
Speaker 6: truth or a complete fabrication. It could be a complete deception.
Speaker 6: And I think I think that movie is so disorienting
Speaker 6: in the best way a movie can be, because Fincher
Speaker 6: does turn it back on us that way, like there
Speaker 6: are things we know that that people within the movie
Speaker 6: world don't know. We're privy to information that they're not.
Speaker 6: And yet with every new revelation within the movie world
Speaker 6: or as characters on television or anyone who's questioning the
Speaker 6: reality or or raising doubt about who did what. As
Speaker 6: those questions get raised, you can't help as a viewer
Speaker 6: start to start to question it yourself. You start to
Speaker 6: question the truth that you think you believe, the things
Speaker 6: that you've been clinging to, what you think you know
Speaker 6: from what you saw. And I think I think that
Speaker 6: that's that line again, that edge that you're you're walking
Speaker 6: that entire time with that movie, and I think that's
Speaker 6: that's one of the things that really elevates Gone Girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Fincher had to get recognition with this
Speaker 1: top five. He's one of those filmmakers and we might
Speaker 1: touch on one or maybe two others who have a
Speaker 1: number of unreliable narrator movies in their filmography. I was
Speaker 1: leaning towards Fight Club. Didn't end up spoiler on my list,
Speaker 1: It's it's probably my number, my number six, But I
Speaker 1: think I think you probably nailed the better one here. Adam,
Speaker 1: I'm just looking up. I was a little I wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as high on Gone Girl as I was Fight Club,
Speaker 1: which is probably why I didn't lean that way. But
Speaker 1: here's the first phrase of my review. I forgot about
Speaker 1: this a viper's nest of unreliable narrators. So apparently I
Speaker 1: should have just, you know, went into my my search
Speaker 1: field and typed in unreliable narrators and see what popped.
Speaker 1: Come on, therefore, Josh to use that tepneque next time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely a fitting pick there with Gone Girl. Okay,
Speaker 1: at number two, however, and here's where we really need
Speaker 1: to put the spoilers out there, even though it seems ridiculous.
Speaker 1: My number two pick is The Sixth Sense. But Adam,
Speaker 1: I've I've watched The Sixth Sense with you know, teenagers
Speaker 1: who somehow didn't know the reveal. So I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: if that's you and you happen to be listening, you
Speaker 1: need to experience the sixth Sons if it's at all
Speaker 1: possible without knowing what goes down. But as we discussed
Speaker 1: when we did our nine from ninety nine review a
Speaker 1: number of years ago, it's not just the twist that
Speaker 1: makes m Night Chamlan's breakout ghost story so incredible. It
Speaker 1: has those performances, which across the board are brilliant Haley Joel, Osmond,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, maybe above all Tony Collette. It has good creeps,
Speaker 1: good scares, They're all expertly crafted. But all that being said,
Speaker 1: it's the twist that I think does elevate the Six Sons,
Speaker 1: and for me is what really makes it eligible for
Speaker 1: this list. And this is the fact that here's the spoiler.
Speaker 1: Willis's child psychologist Malcolm Crow is in fact trying to
Speaker 1: help Osmond's traumatized boy from beyond the grave. Now we
Speaker 1: don't know he's a ghost until the end, of course,
Speaker 1: so there's maybe not that ambiguity you are looking for, Adham.
Speaker 1: But I think the brilliance of the twist here is
Speaker 1: that Malcolm doesn't realize it himself until we do. And
Speaker 1: this is when he tries to talk to his wife
Speaker 1: played by Olivia Williams, who's also very good, and discovers
Speaker 1: that he can't because he's dead.
Speaker 6: I see people.
Speaker 7: They don't know they're dead.
Speaker 1: How often do you see that of time? So Malcolm
Speaker 1: is unknowingly unreliable to himself, and for me, that adds
Speaker 1: a certain pathos to the narrative, and to me, that's
Speaker 1: also what gives the sixth sense. It's crowning achievement that
Speaker 1: this movie has everything I talked about as well as
Speaker 1: a powerful emotional punch. So it is clever and it
Speaker 1: is intricate. Right. The unreliability is baked into the actual
Speaker 1: composition of certain scenes, which is also revealed in retrospect.
Speaker 1: But for me, it's also moving as well because just
Speaker 1: because of the very nature of the unreliability of its narrator.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we will come back briefly to the sixth sense
Speaker 6: here when we get to the end of our picks.
Speaker 6: Absolutely understand why it's on your list, and I think
Speaker 6: it has to come up in any conversation of unreliable narrators.
Speaker 6: I'm as big of a fan of that movie as
Speaker 6: you are, going back to that conversation that we had
Speaker 6: about it during that nine from ninety nine series. Before
Speaker 6: I get to my number two pick, I do just
Speaker 6: want to to state, because I finally remembered it, and
Speaker 6: I know everyone's dying to hear it. Wood Carver Steiner,
Speaker 6: it was a pet raven. It was a pet Raven
Speaker 6: and who has a pet Raven? You see why you
Speaker 6: can't believe that's true.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, but they should be pets who are way
Speaker 1: too smart. I mean, that's all dangerous.
Speaker 7: I know, I know.
Speaker 6: So my number two, okay, my final two picks here,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna call the children of Rashomon. And I say
Speaker 6: that in spirit. I guess all of these movies in
Speaker 6: some way are the children of Rashomon, but especially these
Speaker 6: two picks Josh, in spirit, but also in their own
Speaker 6: distinct ways form. This is another movie, and this is
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety nine, so right around two thousand and again,
Speaker 6: another movie I have only seen once when it came
Speaker 6: out in the theater, and I would love to revisit it.
Speaker 6: I know it's a beloved film by a lot of
Speaker 6: our listeners, rightfully, so I have only seen it that once.
Speaker 6: It's not a direct parallel obviously to Rashomon. But not
Speaker 6: only does Alexander Payne's Election have four narrators, unreliable narrators, Jim, Tracy,
Speaker 6: Tammy and Paul, but they are recounting a single event
Speaker 6: in their collective pass that whole election mess. As Matthew
Speaker 6: Broderick's Jim puts it at the beginning. Like Gone Girl.
Speaker 6: This was a book construct that drew Alexander Payne and
Speaker 6: Jim Taylor, the co writer to the project. The Tom
Speaker 6: Pratta book, which I haven't read but I know it,
Speaker 6: gave each chapter over to a different character. It's all
Speaker 6: first person, different chapters, different characters, so they get to
Speaker 6: tell their own version of events and beyond recounting details
Speaker 6: of what happened as they remember it. The voice over
Speaker 6: here in Election, it's so good. It essentially functions to
Speaker 6: reveal what I think the commoner and we're going to
Speaker 6: get to Rashomon, but essentially what the commoner in Rachoman
Speaker 6: says most of the time, we can't even be honest
Speaker 6: with ourselves. Whatever these characters claim in voiceover, we as
Speaker 6: the viewer figure out pretty quickly that the opposite must
Speaker 6: in fact be true. Like take when Jim is at
Speaker 6: dinner with his wife it has to be what is
Speaker 6: yet another silent dinner where they're just looking down at
Speaker 6: their plates across from each other, and the voiceover says,
Speaker 6: thank God for Diane. She was my best friend, my
Speaker 6: source of love and strength. Oh sure we had our
Speaker 6: share of bumpy times, but we'd always seen them through
Speaker 6: after years of marriage, we were closer than ever. There's
Speaker 6: no way that's true based on what we're seeing, that clash,
Speaker 6: that ironic clash of the words to the visual, what
Speaker 6: we're actually seeing play out in terms of the action
Speaker 6: of their marriage. It's the expression of the fantasy version
Speaker 6: of his life. Or maybe Josh is not even the
Speaker 6: fantasy version of his life. It's just it's just the
Speaker 6: version of his life that he has to believe in
Speaker 6: order to get through the day. And what's funny is
Speaker 6: he says she's his source of love and strength, and
Speaker 6: so even just beyond that clash that's clearly there, he says,
Speaker 6: you know, my source of love and strength. But when
Speaker 6: she actually says to him, is anything wrong, he says, no, no,
Speaker 6: just you know school, Well, if if she was actually
Speaker 6: this source that you could confide in who helped you
Speaker 6: through your problems, then why wouldn't you share what was
Speaker 6: troubling you and maybe she'd help you. But of course
Speaker 6: he doesn't do that, So there's another layer of that irony.
Speaker 6: But it isn't just Jim, of course, it's all the
Speaker 6: other characters. I mean, there's a YouTube clip that's labeled
Speaker 6: Tracy Flick isn't upset?
Speaker 7: Who put you up to this?
Speaker 6: What do you mean you just woke up this morning
Speaker 6: and suddenly decided to run for president?
Speaker 1: No? No, I just thought that.
Speaker 3: Uh what.
Speaker 6: It starts with her haranguing Chris Kleins Paul right, so
Speaker 6: right there you get the irony, but it ends, or
Speaker 6: the voiceover begins what they're saying. You might think it
Speaker 6: up me that Paul Metzler had decided to run against me,
Speaker 6: but nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 7: He was no competition for me.
Speaker 6: It was like apples and oranges again, though this immediately
Speaker 6: follows her haranguing him. You know, she's just just yelled
Speaker 6: at him in front of everyone there in the gym
Speaker 6: because he's going to run against her. So there we
Speaker 6: have that clash once again. But back to Jim because
Speaker 6: he is kind of, you know, the movie's main punching bag.
Speaker 6: Just like Raschoman. This movie does eventually bring us sort
Speaker 6: of out of this time warp or out of this
Speaker 6: limbo into the present day. You know, the narration becomes
Speaker 6: present tense. We see and hear what everyone is up
Speaker 6: to now, because in theory, everyone has moved on everyone's
Speaker 6: moved on with their lives and they've improved their lives, right,
Speaker 6: they've gotten past the whole messiness of that. But we
Speaker 6: see that that's not really the case. And in particular
Speaker 6: with Jim, he says, you might wonder if I ever
Speaker 6: if I ever saw Tracy Flick again. And he's he's
Speaker 6: at a museum educator's conference in DC, right, and he randomly,
Speaker 6: he randomly sees her. She's working for a congressman. She's
Speaker 6: getting into a limo, and the voiceover again Josh where
Speaker 6: he's like, he's talking about how his impulse was to
Speaker 6: run over there and pound on her window, and he
Speaker 6: wanted to confront her about lying and cheating. But instead
Speaker 6: I just stood there and I realized I wasn't angry anymore.
Speaker 6: I just felt sorry for her. And he starts, he
Speaker 6: starts trying to convince us, the audience, the imaginary audience
Speaker 6: that he's talking to Slash himself right about his new
Speaker 6: life and all the exciting things he's doing, and how
Speaker 6: her life must really be pathetic, you know. And that's
Speaker 6: what's so funny is, of course he's not really angry,
Speaker 6: just like Tracy Flick wasn't really angry, and yet what
Speaker 6: do we see him do throw his drink at the limo,
Speaker 6: you know, because he's actually still crushed by all of
Speaker 6: this and just overcome with hostility towards her. So that
Speaker 6: irony and the way the voiceovers are deployed in Election
Speaker 6: is I mean, you obviously you can't imagine Election without it.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's so essential to that film and the
Speaker 6: success of that movie.
Speaker 1: Love the Rachaman parallels. I'd never thought of that before,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they're absolutely there. And this is a good
Speaker 1: case too, maybe because we've framed this as the movies
Speaker 1: and not necessarily the characters, but to give credit to
Speaker 1: the performances that are needed for a movie like this.
Speaker 1: I mean, how good are Broaderick and Witherspoon is so
Speaker 1: good in these parts and hitting all those levels that
Speaker 1: you've been describing having to perform that sort of self
Speaker 1: deception as well as they do. Man nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: I don't think, I know, we probably considered this in
Speaker 1: the mix for our nine from ninety nine series dam
Speaker 1: and we just felt like there were others we had
Speaker 1: to get to before it. What a great film that
Speaker 1: we would have been able to get to, What an
Speaker 1: incredible year. All right, we are at number one. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: almost every Christopher Nolan film could be considered for this list.
Speaker 1: I feel like, I mean, certainly the prestige, certainly, inception.
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess tenant, but I had no idea
Speaker 1: what's going on, So I'm just going to say probably.
Speaker 1: I think when you consider the very notion of unreliability,
Speaker 1: you're inherently dealing with things. You're dealing with complication, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with artifice, you're dealing with deception. Unreliability also creates,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, a multiverse, and Nolan makes
Speaker 1: movie multiverses, not non Marvel movie multiverses, but either literally
Speaker 1: in some cases, or just in the way your mind
Speaker 1: is required to function to keep up with his films.
Speaker 1: So I have a Nolan film at number one, and
Speaker 1: it is is Memento. Memento, where Guy Pierce plays Leonard Shelby,
Speaker 1: a man who has short term memory loss. While trying
Speaker 1: to solve his wife's murder, He's basically relying on a
Speaker 1: polaroid and his own tattoos as clues. Here again, Adam,
Speaker 1: the unreliability baked into the movies very form. Think about
Speaker 1: that Polaroid, the brilliant opening shot where it fades out
Speaker 1: rather than in as a Polaroid should, and really the
Speaker 1: editing throughout this movie Nolan here working with Dodie Dorn.
Speaker 1: There is that flick of a shot, just an instance
Speaker 1: where we see Leonard getting into the car of Sammy
Speaker 1: Jenkis and what that means and pretends for the levels
Speaker 1: of unreliability at play. I was thinking about this as
Speaker 1: I was putting together my list too, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about Leonard in comparison to Malcolm in the sixth sense,
Speaker 1: and I thought, man, there are some fascinating levels and
Speaker 1: comparisons at play here because they're both They're both unreliable
Speaker 1: to the audience at different phases you know of their films,
Speaker 1: Leonard obviously earlier than Malcolm, but they're both unreliable. Unlike Malcolm, though,
Speaker 1: Leonard is knowingly unreliable to himself. That's what the tattoos
Speaker 1: are about. But this is a Christopher Nolan movie, so
Speaker 1: it gets even more complicated with the ending and we
Speaker 1: learn that Leonard is also at the same time unknowingly
Speaker 1: unreliable to himself. And I'm not even gonna get into
Speaker 1: how or why we'll just leave that there. But I
Speaker 1: do think it was that level of sophistication when I
Speaker 1: started shaking things out here where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not only on theme, this not only fits,
Speaker 1: but it's it's got to be number one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I'm just laughing because as you say that,
Speaker 6: I know what you mean, Like I wanted to contradict you,
Speaker 6: but it's actually this is the.
Speaker 7: The layer that you're speaking to.
Speaker 6: It's it's unknowingly because it's like knowingly unknowingly you know.
Speaker 6: That's the beauty of this film, right, yep, And that's
Speaker 6: why it's at number one for me. Deception self and
Speaker 6: otherwise are at the core of everything that Nolan does.
Speaker 6: And I'm not denying that this film has a twist,
Speaker 6: but unlike The Sixth Sense or some other movies that
Speaker 6: I'm gonna mention in a minute, you said it, the
Speaker 6: unreliability is baked into the form from the beginning. I
Speaker 6: never believed Leonard or felt like I could believe him
Speaker 6: from the outset, and that's the essential criterion for me.
Speaker 6: That's why it qualifies. And you even get a great
Speaker 6: you get a great joke out of the narration and
Speaker 6: a great joke out of the unreliability of the narration,
Speaker 6: out of the form, maybe the only real comedic moment
Speaker 6: in the entire movie. And I remember seeing this movie
Speaker 6: in the theater and everybody laughing at it, and rewatching
Speaker 6: this scene and it's still funny. Josh, It's still funny
Speaker 6: even though I know it's coming. When when the scene
Speaker 6: begins and Leonard's running.
Speaker 7: Okay, so what am I doing?
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm chasing this guy, don't He's chasing.
Speaker 6: Me right as the gun then fires it him. The
Speaker 6: guy fires a gun at him, So that's really funny.
Speaker 6: It's it's also though, a perfect microcosm for the discombobulated
Speaker 6: state that Leonard and the audience start every single scene.
Speaker 6: But I think I think thematically too. You can put
Speaker 6: yourself in those shoes and wonder do you automatically assume
Speaker 6: that you're the good guy chasing down the bad guy.
Speaker 6: That's his first instinct, or maybe you know, you you
Speaker 6: imagine that you're in a narrative. You might even see
Speaker 6: yourself like you're in a noir, which he is, but
Speaker 6: you know he doesn't know that, but you might imagine
Speaker 6: yourself like that, right, So that's the instinct or maybe
Speaker 6: he's the bad guy getting chased by a good guy.
Speaker 6: In either case, he's the honorable one, right, except all
Speaker 6: of us would think, no, there's a there's a bad
Speaker 6: guy who's who's chasing me for for some reason, you know,
Speaker 6: or or whatever it is.
Speaker 7: So let me let me restate.
Speaker 6: That, right, he's he could be the bad guy getting
Speaker 6: chased by a good guy. But the way he thinks
Speaker 6: about it or may and the way we would is that, no,
Speaker 6: there's a bad guy chasing us. Right, no matter how
Speaker 6: you look at it, we're always going to be good
Speaker 6: in that scenario. And that's that's at the core of
Speaker 6: the film. And I'm going to tie it back to Rashamon,
Speaker 6: I said the Children of Rashaman, the movie that I
Speaker 6: think here again, the form is distinct, but I don't
Speaker 6: know that any movie more directly expresses what Rashamn expresses
Speaker 6: for eighty five minutes of its run time, let's put
Speaker 6: it that way. Maybe not eighty eight minutes of its
Speaker 6: run time, Josh, but five minutes of runtime. I don't
Speaker 6: know that any movie expresses it more cynically, more more
Speaker 6: explicitly than Memento. I think it's the perfect modern distillation
Speaker 6: of raw Choman, taking the form in a new, completely
Speaker 6: original way, a completely fractured way. But it is expressing
Speaker 6: the fundamental idea of raw Choman. And I'm going to
Speaker 6: quote the commoner yet again. Tell me this line isn't
Speaker 6: something you think is in Memento, And in fact a
Speaker 6: version of it is in Memento. But the commoner in
Speaker 6: Rachoman says it. We all want to forget something, so
Speaker 6: we tell stories. It's easier that way. That's Memento.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. You said fracturing. It is really
Speaker 1: a fracturing of Memento, which is in some ways classically
Speaker 1: we might get into this, but classically structured. As inventive
Speaker 1: as it is in terms of perspective and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, it's fairly classically structured. We follow, you know,
Speaker 1: point A to B, then we go back to point A,
Speaker 1: and then we take it to ce. Then we go
Speaker 1: back to point A and then we take you know,
Speaker 1: and whereas Memento is just like glass, it takes and
Speaker 1: just breaks it into glass shards of glass.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: Well, those are our top five unreliable narrators. Josh, do
Speaker 6: you have some additional films you would like to mention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did a fight Club at number six, though
Speaker 1: I think probably, as I said, gone girl, you had
Speaker 1: the right Fincher choice. Usual suspects again kind of around
Speaker 1: that era, maybe a little bit earlier. I forget exactly
Speaker 1: what year, but I considered I you mentioned Scorsese already,
Speaker 1: but yes, Goodfellas Taxi Driver. Shutter Island I think falls
Speaker 1: into this category, maybe even more classically so in terms
Speaker 1: of the unreliable narrator. But one I really like Shutter Island.
Speaker 1: Other ones I gave a passing thought too, but just
Speaker 1: couldn't hold up to these must haves. But Trainspotting, which
Speaker 1: we you know, recently discussed in a way we could
Speaker 1: question our main narrator there and his reliability Blade Runner,
Speaker 1: Big Fish, the Tim Burton film, and The Fall, which
Speaker 1: is a Tarsum Singh film that has an unreliable narrator
Speaker 1: in addition to its lush visuals. Those were the ones
Speaker 1: I considered.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The four big honorable mentions for me are the four
Speaker 6: Big Twist movies, and I truly do think they are
Speaker 6: among the best unreliable narrator movies because of the way
Speaker 6: they do pull the rug out from under you you
Speaker 6: mentioned it, the sixth sense, the usual Suspects, Fight Club,
Speaker 6: and I would put ahead of all of those my
Speaker 6: beloved Atonement directed by Joe Wright, three different Brian's at
Speaker 6: three different ages, and the impact, especially because I didn't
Speaker 6: know it was coming of the reveal of that, of
Speaker 6: the ending, and the construct that I didn't know was
Speaker 6: the construct. Yeah, Atonement would be in the mix for me.
Speaker 6: It would be really my number one unreliable narrator if
Speaker 6: I was counting twists in that way, and I could
Speaker 6: go back and try to retrofit it and say, am
Speaker 6: I questioning Briany throughout?
Speaker 7: Maybe? But I wasn't. That's the key.
Speaker 6: I wasn't the way I was with these other characters
Speaker 6: when I watched these films. Another interesting one to think
Speaker 6: about in this Both of these fall more into the
Speaker 6: category of Apocalypse Now Taxi driver what I was referencing earlier,
Speaker 6: a clockwork orange might be one that fits right where
Speaker 6: if you think about his perspective, his psyche, do you
Speaker 6: want to believe do you want to believe that character?
Speaker 7: Can you believe Alex? How mushy is his brain?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: At that point it's it's a fair question with him,
Speaker 6: and I even thought it was interesting. Josh, I'd never
Speaker 6: thought about this film in this way, and I obviously
Speaker 6: didn't totally buy it because I didn't put it on
Speaker 6: my list, despite the fact that it's one of my
Speaker 6: all time favorite movies, and I'm not even sure I'm
Speaker 6: including it truly as an honorable mention. I do want
Speaker 6: to at least mention it because I think it's an
Speaker 6: interesting question. I saw on at least one list this
Speaker 6: movie presented as an unreliable narrator movie, and that was
Speaker 6: Amadaeus and how much we should trust Sallyari's version of events.
Speaker 6: I think the argument was more though, again like like
Speaker 6: Apocalypse now, you know, where he's clearly a little bit deranged, unsettled,
Speaker 6: you know, can we fully believe him?
Speaker 7: Should we believe him? That kind of thing.
Speaker 6: But my experience watching the movie isn't one where as
Speaker 6: I said, I'm actively engaged in that question anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like it. I think you could make
Speaker 1: the case for it. You know, it's skewed, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's a matter of the degree and whether you're
Speaker 1: getting completely misrepresentation of these actual events or it's just
Speaker 1: or if they're just bitter versions right.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, again, those are our top five unreliable narrators.
Speaker 6: We would love to hear your picks or any other
Speaker 6: thoughts about the show. You can email us feedback at
Speaker 6: film spotting dot net and you can find all of
Speaker 6: our picks and see some clips that support our choices,
Speaker 6: the ones we referenced at film spotting dot net slash lists.
Speaker 1: Adam, let's take a moment to thank a couple of
Speaker 1: our film Spotting family members, those folks who support the
Speaker 1: show with their memberships and their donations. Both of these
Speaker 1: family members come from Chicago Jake and Chicago and Carrie.
Speaker 1: Jake share this first episode. He remembers listening to episode
Speaker 1: seven thirty nine, Blair Witch Project discussion. I had seen
Speaker 1: this movie in middle school and vowed one never to
Speaker 1: go camping again, and two never to rewatch the movie.
Speaker 1: For the rewatch, I can thank Adam and Josh's discussion
Speaker 1: of the film as I met a commentary on the
Speaker 1: nature of spectator and violent spectacle. Armed with this analytical frame,
Speaker 1: I went to revisit it. It didn't work. I was
Speaker 1: still terrified, but I have been able to go camping again.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's nice to hear Jake Carrie shared this.
Speaker 1: I'm fairly new to the podcast. A couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I typed reddit best Film podcast into a search engine
Speaker 1: and found your show recommended quite a few times. I
Speaker 1: saw that you were based out of Chicago, and I
Speaker 1: was immediately sold. I listened to a ton of your
Speaker 1: episodes during my driving shifts on a road trip to Asheville.
Speaker 1: During that drive, I heard you were doing a review
Speaker 1: of De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise for the Film
Speaker 1: Spotting Family. When I was back in the passenger seat,
Speaker 1: I signed up and never looked back. I don't always
Speaker 1: agree with your takes, but I always appreciate your analysis, expertise,
Speaker 1: and passion. I recommend your podcast often and tell my
Speaker 1: friends it's the closest thing to listening to Cisco and
Speaker 1: Ebert do a podcast, though I think you guys like
Speaker 1: each other much more. Yeah, how about that Adaly probably
Speaker 1: Phantom who do Phantom of the Paradise was going to
Speaker 1: bring in Film Spotting Family members, I mean, yeah, programming.
Speaker 6: When I read that, I got a little nervous, and
Speaker 6: it was surprised that Carrie ended up being a family member.
Speaker 6: But to prove that Carrie doesn't just talk the talk,
Speaker 6: but she walks the walk a review we got wrong.
Speaker 6: She says, you know, Phantom of the Paradise is.
Speaker 7: A perfect movie.
Speaker 6: This movie improves with each rewatch, especially if you're ever
Speaker 6: blessed enough to watch it with a room full of
Speaker 6: sickos at the music box who can sing along to
Speaker 6: the opening number. So she thinks it's a perfect movie.
Speaker 6: We were, eh, I'm Phantom of the Paradise.
Speaker 7: We didn't.
Speaker 6: We didn't quite have the experience clearly that Carrie has
Speaker 6: with that movie. And yet she still did, as she suggests,
Speaker 6: enjoy the analysis, despite the fact that she probably didn't
Speaker 6: agree with us.
Speaker 7: Now I will agree with her on this.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 6: I would truly like to be blessed enough to watch
Speaker 6: it with a room full of sickos at the music
Speaker 6: box who can sing along to the opening number. I
Speaker 6: would genuinely love to have that. But I haven't. I
Speaker 6: haven't been lucky enough yet.
Speaker 1: Well, just thanks Carrie for not demanding a refund that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, all I could say.
Speaker 6: Man, here's Jake, who says, you guys were both too kind.
Speaker 6: This is an interesting one. You're both too kind to
Speaker 6: Steve McQueen's blitz. If the Small Act series teeters on
Speaker 6: the edge of being Maudlin, blitz is steeped in it,
Speaker 6: from the period PC lighting to the cliche dialogue. It's
Speaker 6: a hard watch for me. McQueen is at his best
Speaker 6: in Widows, where he stays gritty and focused.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I like that one quite a bit
Speaker 1: more than you, Adams.
Speaker 7: She did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe this is falling falling on my lap, which
Speaker 1: I get where you're coming from. Jake. It's definitely McQueen
Speaker 1: working in a different register, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's trying to reach a different audience, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: found it interested enough in some of his same concerns
Speaker 1: that I really went for. All right, let's get some
Speaker 1: more positive stuff here. Carrie's favorite show segment. I may
Speaker 1: be biased because I was able to attend the last
Speaker 1: one in person, but I love the year under Wrap party.
Speaker 1: Thank you for introducing me to do not Expect too
Speaker 1: much from the End of the World, and also, of
Speaker 1: course Massacre Theater. All right, here's Jake's favorite segment. Top
Speaker 1: five bad Dads All right list we did a while back.
Speaker 1: Jake says, having recently become a dad, myself. I hope
Speaker 1: to never behave like the main character in Force Maseur
Speaker 1: Josh's fourth pick, or it should be said any of
Speaker 1: the other dads.
Speaker 6: You know, though, Jake, until the avalanche is coming?
Speaker 7: How do you know? How do you really know?
Speaker 6: A movie you credit with becoming a cinophile? Jake says Vertigo,
Speaker 6: great choice. Carrie says, Eternal Sunshine.
Speaker 7: For the Spotless Mind.
Speaker 6: I was working in a movie theater during that time
Speaker 6: period and was able to watch movies for free at
Speaker 6: any of the theaters in the chain, so I saw
Speaker 6: it probably five times. The movie completely entranced me. I
Speaker 6: had never seen anything like it at the time. I
Speaker 6: watched it so many times that I had to take
Speaker 6: at least a ten year break from it. I finally
Speaker 6: saw it again at last year's Crying at the Salt
Speaker 6: Shed series over Valentine's Day, where John Brian performed and
Speaker 6: gave an engaging and enlightening talkback. I still love it.
Speaker 6: That sounds wonderful, doesn't it, We do, think, Carrie. We
Speaker 6: thank Jake for being family members and for all of
Speaker 6: those years of listening. And if you think they have
Speaker 6: good taste, it sounds like they do. You can follow
Speaker 6: Carrie on Letterboxed at Cinema Mendax So Cinema m E
Speaker 6: N Dax, and you can follow Jake at JP nineteen
Speaker 6: sixty five. In addition to keeping us doing what we're doing,
Speaker 6: membership does come with perks. You get to listen early
Speaker 6: in ad free, You get our weekly newsletter, You get
Speaker 6: exclusive opportunities like being part of the Film Spotting Family discord,
Speaker 6: and you get monthly bonus shows. We have Trivia Spotting
Speaker 6: coming on March nineteenth. You get to part twoticipate in
Speaker 6: events like that. You also get voting opportunities like being
Speaker 6: the group that gets to select the next Film Spotting Marathon.
Speaker 6: You get to determine show programming. If that all sounds
Speaker 6: like fun to you. More information about joining the Film
Speaker 6: Spotting Family is available at Film Spottingfamily dot com. You
Speaker 6: can also help us by taking a minute to rate
Speaker 6: or review us over at Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It
Speaker 6: does help us reach new listeners.
Speaker 1: And the OSCAR goes to they playing us.
Speaker 6: All Maybe pop Quiz hotshot? What film won the Oscar
Speaker 6: for Best Picture last year?
Speaker 1: Oh? Come on, Honora, Sean Baker's Big Night.
Speaker 6: Okay, do you actually remember that or did you see
Speaker 6: the notes in front of you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I yeah, I mean that would come on
Speaker 1: like a come on. But we're pretty excited about.
Speaker 6: That, okay, But you know, we're also at that age
Speaker 6: where we don't remember what we had for breakfast yesterday.
Speaker 6: And when I read this, when I read this part
Speaker 6: of the script that Sam prepared for us, until I
Speaker 6: read the bullet points below it, I couldn't have pulled
Speaker 6: out anora.
Speaker 1: I mean, firutly had forgotten. It's not like either of
Speaker 1: us in most Oscar years. Yeah, complete blank. So it's
Speaker 1: not like I managed to keep track of a lot
Speaker 1: of these things. And ask me who's nominated for this
Speaker 1: year's Best Picture. I'm out of luck. I'm okay, which
Speaker 1: is not going to be helpful on next week's show.
Speaker 1: But I have been paying so little attention to awards
Speaker 1: shenanigans that I'm going to be really useless next week.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, that was the one that all three of us, you, me,
Speaker 6: and Michael Phillips got right on last year's Oscar special.
Speaker 6: Next week we will try to do it again. Who
Speaker 6: will win, who should win, and who should have been nominated? Now,
Speaker 6: last year we did all think Anora would win, but
Speaker 6: we disagreed about the movie that should. When you picked Anora,
Speaker 6: I picked the Brutalist I love Donora. I think we
Speaker 6: all three were big fans of Anora, but I did
Speaker 6: have the Brutalists slightly higher. Michael had Nickelboys as his
Speaker 6: favorite of the Best Picture nominees. Next week we will
Speaker 6: have our Oscars special and we will share results from
Speaker 6: the official Film Spotting Best Picture survey our ballot. We
Speaker 6: invited our listeners Josh to imagine themselves as members of
Speaker 6: the Academy and submit their ranked choice Best Picture ballots,
Speaker 6: so we'll see how they all stack up there somehow.
Speaker 6: We're also going to try to fit in here. It
Speaker 6: is the play and round of Film Spotting Madness, best
Speaker 6: of the nineteen forties. It is March. That means that
Speaker 6: Film Spotting Madness is upon us.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, here we go.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 6: In two weeks we'll have a Sacred Cow review of
Speaker 6: a film that we had penciled in for a review
Speaker 6: later in the year. It's a movie that not only I,
Speaker 6: but I think most people associate with Summer when I
Speaker 6: saw it when it was originally released. Rob Reiner's Stand
Speaker 6: By Me it turns forty this year. It is though,
Speaker 6: getting a theatrical re release this month, and that has
Speaker 6: inspired the new not at All Flawed Film Spotting Poll
Speaker 6: question eighties Rob Reiner movies. You can only choose one,
Speaker 6: and this, as we said earlier, is just so not easy, Josh.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's helpful that we do have distinct genres here,
Speaker 1: as you called out at the top of the show, Adams.
Speaker 1: So our four options this is Spinal Tap nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: stand By Me from eighty six, The Princess Bride from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, and then When Harry Met Sally nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. So if you're completely flummixed you love all
Speaker 1: those movies, maybe maybe just go with your favorite genre
Speaker 1: among them. I don't know, that might be what I
Speaker 1: have to do. We have a comment here that will
Speaker 1: help set up your deliberations. Andy Bucatti and Kansas City.
Speaker 1: I've shown stand By Me to both my teenage children
Speaker 1: and it still lands amazingly well. I've never seen a
Speaker 1: movie better capture the weird way boys and young men
Speaker 1: relate to each other. I tend to be very stingy
Speaker 1: with high letterboxed rankings, and I give it four and
Speaker 1: a half stars, a rating that I only tend to
Speaker 1: give to one to three films annually. That means it
Speaker 1: lands fourth in this poll. Spinal Tap invented a genre
Speaker 1: and is still hilarious, which is saying so much since
Speaker 1: humor built around gags and bits doesn't often carry over
Speaker 1: forty plus years later. And while it obviously led to
Speaker 1: the Christopher Guest films and other bangers such as What
Speaker 1: We Do in the Shadows and Nirvana the Band, The
Speaker 1: Show the Movie, it had an arguably even greater influence
Speaker 1: on the past two decades of television. Do we have
Speaker 1: the Office Parks and rec all the others without it?
Speaker 1: Five stars? That puts it third on this list. When
Speaker 1: Harry met Sally for My Money is the best roundcom
Speaker 1: ever made. Nora f Friends right in peak form, star
Speaker 1: chemistry never better, the perfect tone five stars. That's your
Speaker 1: number two on this list. If I asked every person
Speaker 1: I know what their favorite movie is, I am quite
Speaker 1: confident the most common answer will be The Princess Bride,
Speaker 1: and the age ranges and life experiences of those people
Speaker 1: will be vast. Every single person who has the ability
Speaker 1: to sit through a feature length film has the potential
Speaker 1: to not only like but love this film, whether that
Speaker 1: person is six, twenty six, fifty six, or eighty six.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I can name another film that I
Speaker 1: could fit, that I feel could fit that description. Has
Speaker 1: there ever been a perfect movie? Probably not, but maybe
Speaker 1: The Princess Bride is five stars number one on this list.
Speaker 6: So I align with Andy a little bit here. It
Speaker 6: definitely comes down Josh for me to Spinal Tap in
Speaker 6: The Princess Bride as much as I also really like,
Speaker 6: or at least I did when it came out stand
Speaker 6: by me, And I also do appreciate when har thattt Sally.
Speaker 6: Those two Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride are just
Speaker 6: my personal affection, not necessarily thinking about how well made
Speaker 6: they are, quote unquote, just my affection for those films.
Speaker 6: Those those are in another category. Those are those are
Speaker 6: in that pantheon of just all time personal favorites. I
Speaker 6: can't imagine life without those two films. So I don't
Speaker 6: know how I would pick between him and I guess
Speaker 6: I have a week or so to think about it,
Speaker 6: and I'm going to take every bit of that time.
Speaker 1: Is it fair to say that something like personal affection
Speaker 1: should be maybe given more weight. Yeah, among Rob Reiner films.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just think that's something he he had
Speaker 1: a knack for. He had a knack for making movies
Speaker 1: that audience has responded to in that way, which shouldn't
Speaker 1: be discounted. So maybe maybe in this in this case
Speaker 1: more than most, let your heart lead the way.
Speaker 6: There you go vote in that poll and leave a
Speaker 6: comment at film spotting dot net.
Speaker 7: Let your heart lead the way. As Josh said, for.
Speaker 6: Future episodes, if you want to see what's coming up,
Speaker 6: you can go to film spotting dot net. You can
Speaker 6: click on episodes and hopefully get a sense of what
Speaker 6: is in store.
Speaker 1: What's happening right now, not just coming up. On our
Speaker 1: sister podcast, The Next Picture Show is part two of
Speaker 1: their Pop Classics pairing, So they've gotten to their discussion
Speaker 1: of Wuthering Heights, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Previously
Speaker 1: they talked about Boz Lahurman's Romeo plus Juliet from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, so on this part two they're getting into
Speaker 1: the good comparisons between those two. New episodes of the
Speaker 1: Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday and you can find
Speaker 1: them wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 7: Well, pats you up.
Speaker 6: All the pigoy The Pantheon project continues, Josh. A couple
Speaker 6: of weeks ago, me you, Producer Sam, we nominated nine
Speaker 6: films for the illustrious Film Spotting Pantheon. Two of those
Speaker 6: nine will be our twenty twenty six inductees. Before we
Speaker 6: turn those nine titles over to the committee, the Film
Speaker 6: Spotting family members, we do need to make sure that
Speaker 6: we are on record having discussed every one of those films.
Speaker 6: Now we have done that with six of those films,
Speaker 6: Cleo from five to seven, Harlan County, USA, The best
Speaker 6: years of our lives, The Battle of Algiers Stopped making sense.
Speaker 6: Close up, great lineup, And just a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 6: we knocked off one more one of your nominations, john
Speaker 6: Ford's How Green Was My Valley? It is true that
Speaker 6: john Ford currently not represented in the Film Spotting Pantheon.
Speaker 6: Now we get to a film from another director who
Speaker 6: is conspicuously missing from the pantheon, a Kurri Kurosawa and
Speaker 6: the movie Raschoman, one of producer Sam's picks. This was
Speaker 6: part of a marathon that preceded your time on the show,
Speaker 6: and Rashaman is a film that made my top ten
Speaker 6: films of all time when we did that Cit and
Speaker 6: Sound exercise back in twenty twelve. On the last Sight
Speaker 6: and Sound Best Films of All Time list in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two, it came in at number forty one, and
Speaker 6: on the director's pull it was number twenty. We have
Speaker 6: been talking about Kerrosawa a lot lately. Our February blind
Speaker 6: Spotting review for family members was nineteen forty eight s
Speaker 6: Drunken Angel. Last August we talked about nineteen forty nine
Speaker 6: Stray Dog. That was another blind Spotting review. Here we
Speaker 6: are at nineteen fifty talking about rasham On, a film
Speaker 6: as famous for perhaps more famous for its multiple unreliable narrators,
Speaker 6: its examination of subjective truth than for the film itself.
Speaker 6: How long has it been, Josh since you've seen the movie?
Speaker 6: How did it play for you this time?
Speaker 1: Going through that history of our Kirosawa discussions lately, I
Speaker 1: don't think we should be allowed to have another Kurrosawa
Speaker 1: discussion until one of his movies gets in the pantheon.
Speaker 1: It's kind of ridiculous. Yeah, So somehow maybe the voting
Speaker 1: will go that way. We'll see this is a movie yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it came up when we first talked about
Speaker 1: watching this again. Is sort of a college if you
Speaker 1: did any sort of you know, cinema class or maybe
Speaker 1: even just an English class, where you ended up watching
Speaker 1: a lot of movies. You'll see Raschamon. That's the setting
Speaker 1: where I first sawt Then I saw it again. Oh
Speaker 1: this is this is amusing. What was the movie it
Speaker 1: was tied to? So when I was writing for The
Speaker 1: Naperville Sun, when I was the movie critic, I had
Speaker 1: a DVD library column, and I would basically take the
Speaker 1: excuse of a recent release to look at an older
Speaker 1: beloved movie, kind of like, you know, maybe a Sacred
Speaker 1: Cow review something like that that connected to it. The
Speaker 1: movie that I connect to Rashaman was vantage Point, which
Speaker 1: I forgot even existed. This is who's the guy from Lost?
Speaker 1: What was his name? That that actor? I know I'm
Speaker 1: putting on spotting here and I can't even remember. I
Speaker 1: should have known.
Speaker 7: This barking up the wrong tree.
Speaker 1: Okay, two thousand and eight, vantage Point, starring Matthew Fox,
Speaker 1: an unreliable narrator thriller, did not come up at him
Speaker 1: on our top five list, but at any rate, I
Speaker 1: used it as the excuse to write about Rashaman, and
Speaker 1: I still second time I saw it ostensibly a professional
Speaker 1: critic at that point, I still don't think I appreciate
Speaker 1: it as fully as I should have. I think I
Speaker 1: was still adjusting to the type of performance that you
Speaker 1: got in mid century Japanese cinema and Mafune you know,
Speaker 1: we know gave you that in full, like this very
Speaker 1: heightened style of performance. And also looking back at some
Speaker 1: of what I wrote a little bit, the talkiness of
Speaker 1: the not necessarily moralism, which we touched on in our
Speaker 1: earlier discussion of Drunken Angel, but more just talking about
Speaker 1: the themes of the film among those three characters who
Speaker 1: offer our framework at the ruined Gate, the Raschauman Gate,
Speaker 1: where the storm is the commoner, the priest, and the woodcutter,
Speaker 1: and how they would explicate the themes for us that
Speaker 1: we've just seen. I think I have more space for
Speaker 1: understanding what's going on there now and the framework for that,
Speaker 1: and of course have come to understand the type of
Speaker 1: performance that we're getting this film. So all that to
Speaker 1: say is, yeah, this just keeps getting better. Rassaman keeps
Speaker 1: getting better, and it is so much more than those
Speaker 1: ideas and then those themes. It's just so beautiful. It's
Speaker 1: so visual, not shocking to hear when we're talking about Kurasawa.
Speaker 1: But maybe you forget that because at least I tend
Speaker 1: to think about his other movies being the Spectacles, whereas
Speaker 1: here you get some composition and imagery that's as gorgeous
Speaker 1: as anything he's done.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you definitely do.
Speaker 6: It's interesting what you said about performance and adjusting to that,
Speaker 6: because I went back and looked at my notes from
Speaker 6: the marathon that we did whatever year that was two
Speaker 6: thousand and eight or nine or ten, somewhere in there,
Speaker 6: and I mentioned that as good as Muffune is, that
Speaker 6: I found myself for the second time in a row,
Speaker 6: whatever the movie was that preceded it, appreciating Takashe Shimura
Speaker 6: a little bit more. And we've recently, in these Blind
Speaker 6: Spotting reviews, been really praising Shamura in addition to praising Muffune.
Speaker 6: And it is such an animated performance. Still, it's one
Speaker 6: that's interesting for me to watch and consider and try
Speaker 6: to try to against some of his other performances, and
Speaker 6: certainly try to consider and compare against the other performances
Speaker 6: in the film like Shimuras, right, which are at just
Speaker 6: at such a different level, right, in such a different volume.
Speaker 7: But something I'll at least throw out.
Speaker 6: There that that I've been wrestling with since I rewatched
Speaker 6: this movie in preparation for this review, this recurring habit.
Speaker 6: I'll say, of his bandit character, who is named Tajamaru,
Speaker 6: his bandit, what's the defining characteristic of that character? What
Speaker 6: is the vocal tick almost that he has and the
Speaker 6: thing that makes him seem so big? And it's that laugh, right,
Speaker 6: that exaggerated laugh, the way he admonishes those he's speaking
Speaker 6: to or tries to rebuke them in some way with
Speaker 6: that laugh. And what I noticed throughout Josh is other
Speaker 6: characters in the movie actually take on a similar kind
Speaker 6: of laugh, including the wife. It's not it's not just him,
Speaker 6: And I started to wonder, I mean, of course the
Speaker 6: commoner as well, does it in response to Shimer's wood cutter.
Speaker 6: And I wonder if I'm wondering if that that laugh
Speaker 6: here takes on what Usa in Stray Dog, that yelp,
Speaker 6: that that cry that he lets out at the end
Speaker 6: of that film, that almost becomes as we talked about it,
Speaker 6: in a way this like this, this scream against or
Speaker 6: reflecting the human condition. It's almost this this animalistic yelp. Right,
Speaker 6: there's no other way to express the of the human
Speaker 6: condition and hear this cruelty of humanity, the cruelty of
Speaker 6: the universe that the men at the beginning of this
Speaker 6: movie are saying. This story depicts and proves it's almost
Speaker 6: like that that laugh is is almost the only way
Speaker 6: these characters can can react in the face of a
Speaker 6: cruel universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you noted that the other characters offer
Speaker 1: a different shade on that, because it is important to
Speaker 1: see this in the context of the mode of performance
Speaker 1: that was being given in these sorts of movies, not
Speaker 1: even just the period ones that you know, Chris I
Speaker 1: was making, but as you as you pointed out, we
Speaker 1: see some of this in the more contemporary set films
Speaker 1: of his. So yeah, it is it's a generally a
Speaker 1: mode of performance that you, as you know, a generally
Speaker 1: Hollywood viewer has to adjust to, and I think the
Speaker 1: more films that I've seen of his or in Japan
Speaker 1: from that era, generally it was helpful also in this context,
Speaker 1: specifically in Rascha Man Roussia Man I did think that
Speaker 1: the bandit is when he is most maniacal in his laughter.
Speaker 1: I believe it's when he's before the court, before the
Speaker 1: judge and he's tied, right, he's subdued and it, and
Speaker 1: yet he's not cowed by any of this. But the
Speaker 1: only expression he really has in that scenario.
Speaker 7: Is his voice.
Speaker 1: So so I did come to see that he was
Speaker 1: almost using that laugh as a weapon. Or this is
Speaker 1: tied to what you were saying about, like, it's right,
Speaker 1: it's his power, it's it's like an expression of defiance.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, all that to say is, you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was way easier this time to not
Speaker 1: have that be just a little bit of something I
Speaker 1: had to move past. It was more something I saw
Speaker 1: its relevance to this particular film and have a better
Speaker 1: understand of its context with in this genre of cinema.
Speaker 6: Was there anything on this viewing we tend to talk
Speaker 6: about this. There tend to be aspects of these films
Speaker 6: and we haven't seen them in a long time that
Speaker 6: stand out. Was there anything that surprised you? I think
Speaker 6: they didn't remember or just surprised you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's more you know, you basically you know
Speaker 1: the idea of Raschamon, right, So you're not all that surprise,
Speaker 1: even though I didn't remember exactly what every witness's story
Speaker 1: was sure or what we find out the end, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't that so much. I think, going back to
Speaker 1: that beauty that's always striking, there is one shot here
Speaker 1: that could be out of a fairy tale where the
Speaker 1: wife has been left alone by a brook with her horse,
Speaker 1: and we've been somewhere else, I forget who we're following,
Speaker 1: perhaps the husband for a bit, and it just cuts
Speaker 1: back to this, you know, wide screen, full shot, that
Speaker 1: sunlight coming through the forest trees above on her as
Speaker 1: she's in stillness, kneeling by this brook. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like something unreal, like something from an imaginary fantasy novel.
Speaker 1: So it was moments like that. But also I think
Speaker 1: the cleverness what you're surprised by is it's not just
Speaker 1: that you're getting different stories, but it's the cleverness in it.
Speaker 1: And the one element that stood out to me in
Speaker 1: this way were the two fight scenes we get. We
Speaker 1: get incredible fight scenes between the husband and the bandit right,
Speaker 1: The first one so thrilling, just intricately choreographed, athletically performed
Speaker 1: the camera movement here so exciting and sophisticated. I loved
Speaker 1: also how they used the levels of ground, like the
Speaker 1: topography where one character would be up above the other
Speaker 1: and the camera would be below to generate suspense and excitement.
Speaker 1: Then we get the second one later in the film,
Speaker 1: completely awkward, so clumsy. They both seem scared. It's like
Speaker 1: the scene you talked about in Drunken Angel right where
Speaker 1: they're slipping among the paint on the floor. And of
Speaker 1: course that second fight that's the Woodcutter's version of the
Speaker 1: story where they look like fools whose version was the
Speaker 1: first one? That the The Adventures of Robin Hood version
Speaker 1: like slashbuckling, it's the bandit right. So it's just the
Speaker 1: cleverness of, you know, emphasizing the degree of the unreliability
Speaker 1: in that sort of staging that catches you afresh and
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, oh, yeah, this really was brilliant.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, it's like you read my mind because that's exactly
Speaker 6: where I wanted to go, and and I do kind
Speaker 6: of have, maybe even more than usual, the long winded
Speaker 6: thought here. So Josh, please just jump in at any
Speaker 6: point but before I get to that, I will also
Speaker 6: say the biggest surprise for me, and you said it.
Speaker 6: I didn't remember, of course, every little permutation or distinction
Speaker 6: between the stories, but one major thing I forgot. I
Speaker 6: did forget that the Dead Man had their story told
Speaker 6: and he was told through a Shinto medium.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 6: I had completely forgotten that that that we were going
Speaker 6: to have a story told by someone who was getting
Speaker 6: that that voice, who was getting that story told to
Speaker 6: them from from the the afterlife. I had somehow, Josh
Speaker 6: completely forgotten.
Speaker 1: What a wild sequence.
Speaker 6: I still don't completely know what to make of that.
Speaker 6: It puts this movie in a different in a different
Speaker 6: type of reality. Obviously, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, proceed, But I do want to come
Speaker 1: back to that because I think, yeah, there was something
Speaker 1: that was tied to the sophistication of the film related
Speaker 1: to that sequence.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, Well here's here's the other thing I suppose
Speaker 6: I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to throw
Speaker 6: out there as what was for me a surprise about
Speaker 6: the film. I want to throw out for discussion the
Speaker 6: possibility of Raschoman as a feminist text, or one that
Speaker 6: is at least skewering fragile masculinity. And even before I
Speaker 6: get there, I'm also going to say, on our topic
Speaker 6: of unreliable narrators, how about the fact that we do
Speaker 6: have four different versions of events, but don't we also
Speaker 6: have to acknowledge that ultimately there is one meta story
Speaker 6: being told, and it's the story that's being told at
Speaker 6: the Rachoman gate. And so even the version of the
Speaker 6: bandit's story, the wife story and the husband story that's
Speaker 6: being told, is still being filtered through the woodcutter, the priest, right,
Speaker 6: or what that character is like like, it's still their
Speaker 6: version of what they saw or what they heard. It's
Speaker 6: not really completely there is either, So there's potential flaws
Speaker 6: and subjectivity even in there and versions of those stories.
Speaker 6: But what is interesting, and of course this is the
Speaker 6: I'm not breaking any ground here with this, but I
Speaker 6: want to use this as a springboard here. The thing
Speaker 6: about Raschamn, right, it's not that they recall events that
Speaker 6: they were involved in differently. It's that they recall events
Speaker 6: they were involved in differently because, as you spoke to already,
Speaker 6: their versions protect their sense of self and restore or elevate.
Speaker 6: But for the most part, restore their honor. And what
Speaker 6: I found ironic, Josh, is that if you remove for
Speaker 6: a second the abhorrent crime of rape at the center
Speaker 6: of this story, not because I want to, but because
Speaker 6: the characters within the story do, they set it aside completely,
Speaker 6: almost completely, in favor of apparently the far more egregious
Speaker 6: crime of killing the husband. Protecting their sense of self
Speaker 6: and restoring their honor actually means taking responsible for the killing.
Speaker 6: That just strikes me as interesting because if you think
Speaker 6: about it, Taja Maru says, the bandit says he kills
Speaker 6: the samurai. He claims that he kills him in that
Speaker 6: honorable battle that you spoke about after cutting him loose
Speaker 6: man de man battle. It was a throwdown and it
Speaker 6: was amazing, But I won. I killed him because I'm
Speaker 6: I'm a bigger badass than he is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the wife.
Speaker 6: Says, Even though she does say she doesn't really remember
Speaker 6: doing it and she fainted, she basically says I did it.
Speaker 6: And she says she did it because her husband stared
Speaker 6: at her with contempt, he shamed her unfairly obviously, and
Speaker 6: between that and then trying to drown herself later even
Speaker 6: though she failed, she was driven in both acts by
Speaker 6: honor by trying to reclaim some honor. The husband then
Speaker 6: says also that he killed himself, because what is a
Speaker 6: husband to do now that his wife has been so shamed.
Speaker 6: So all three cases, you know, they claim responsibility, but
Speaker 6: it's all about serving their honor, even though that's the crime.
Speaker 6: So it's just interesting to me. But if you ask
Speaker 6: the question, does Krasawa give us at any point, does
Speaker 6: he actually give us an objective truth? Like is there
Speaker 6: an overarching true version that we don't ever get? Do
Speaker 6: we still by the end of the movie know what
Speaker 6: really happened? Or do we just know the three versions
Speaker 6: and the Woodcutter's version, or is the Woodcutter's version supposed
Speaker 6: to supposed to be true? Well, we know it's false,
Speaker 6: and at least one regard right because he gets called
Speaker 6: out for that he took the dagger. He lied about
Speaker 6: that he wasn't killed by the sword, He was killed
Speaker 6: by a dagger, and he took the dagger. And this, Josh,
Speaker 6: was my favorite shot watching it this time, I definitely
Speaker 6: did not remember this and my favorite shot in this movie.
Speaker 6: How great is the match action cut we get from
Speaker 6: I think it might be if I missed it. Someone
Speaker 6: could call me out on it, but it might be
Speaker 6: the only true shot we get where Kurosawa very blatantly
Speaker 6: makes it clear that it's the woodcutter's point of view.
Speaker 6: It's the shot he's he's in the he's behind trees
Speaker 6: and is he's behind trees, and he is watching this
Speaker 6: all play out, right, And so before he goes to
Speaker 6: kill the husband, supposedly right, the band it's standing in
Speaker 6: the middle, and we know it's his point of view
Speaker 6: because of the way it's framed. But then there's a
Speaker 6: match action cut where it's now a different angle and
Speaker 6: we're back into the movie world point of view, and
Speaker 6: and in that new point of view, we see that
Speaker 6: the woodcutter can't actually see the husband. The husband doesn't
Speaker 6: know exactly what happened. The woodcutter doesn't see the husband die.
Speaker 6: He doesn't he can't see it from where he's From
Speaker 6: where he's at, that's that's shuddered to him. So then
Speaker 6: we don't don't actually see the act either. In that moment,
Speaker 6: we don't see the bandit kill the husband because the
Speaker 6: woodcutter doesn't see it. So you know, here he's at
Speaker 6: least partially unreliable because he lied right, And he also
Speaker 6: doesn't actually know exactly what happened to the husband because
Speaker 6: he didn't see it completely unfold. But that cut and
Speaker 6: that point of viewshot I think are really remarkable. Here's
Speaker 6: another question I'll throw out. What about the fact that
Speaker 6: the woodcutter, in terms of just unreliability and honor, what
Speaker 6: about the fact that the woodcutter is just a voyeur
Speaker 6: who does nothing. He watches all of this madness play out,
Speaker 6: all of this pain play out, and doesn't do anything.
Speaker 7: How are we supposed to interpret that about his character?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder for that, I wonder if it was
Speaker 1: more I get the sense from this film and a
Speaker 1: lot of films set in this period, if it's a
Speaker 1: societal role thing where you just you do not cross
Speaker 1: you know that what was happening in that Obviously the
Speaker 1: bandit is crossing societal roles. But that's why he's a bandit, right,
Speaker 1: you know, And so maybe the Woodcutter just would not
Speaker 1: step into that realm. But right, Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 7: It's entirely possible.
Speaker 6: But so back to the question of is there is
Speaker 6: there a single objective version of truth here? And I
Speaker 6: think you could argue that it is probably the Woodcutter's
Speaker 6: account minus the part about the dagger, and not just
Speaker 6: because it's the last one we hear, and because the
Speaker 6: movie obviously ultimately is sympathetic to that character, to Shimura's character.
Speaker 6: But the commoner who's played by kitchizuru Uweita, he asks,
Speaker 6: I think the crucial question of the movie. He says,
Speaker 6: out of these three, whose story is believable?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 6: And and for me, Josh that question so before he's
Speaker 6: even heard you know, the Woodcutter. That's kind of like
Speaker 6: Okham's raisor right, whenever you're presented with the situation that
Speaker 6: doesn't make sense, and you got to figure out an
Speaker 6: explanation like which one requires the fewest assumptions, which one
Speaker 6: seems the most believable, just based on the fewest amount
Speaker 6: of hoops to jump through and the fewest amount of
Speaker 6: things that had to occur, those assumptions that had to
Speaker 6: all play out. And in all the previous accounts, the
Speaker 6: three previous accounts that we heard, not only do those
Speaker 6: all have those elements of redemption for the storyteller, right,
Speaker 6: which is huge and undercuts their story. There are choices
Speaker 6: throughout all three of them, that just seem out of
Speaker 6: touch with human nature, whereas in the Woodcutter story, I
Speaker 6: think everything checks out at least for me. Okay, So,
Speaker 6: like the bandit after the act proclaiming that he'll marry her,
Speaker 6: her breaking free, and her instinct being to release her
Speaker 6: husband and wanting the husband to then defend her honor
Speaker 6: and kill the bandit, that seems logical to me.
Speaker 7: The husband.
Speaker 6: Not defending her in this time and place and instead
Speaker 6: thinking she's no use to him anymore because he's so
Speaker 6: shamed because of her shame, as absurd as that is,
Speaker 6: and not wanting her, and then the bandit seeing that
Speaker 6: and thinking, well, if if he doesn't see any value
Speaker 6: in her, then I don't see any value in her,
Speaker 6: and kind of retracting his promise to marry her. And
Speaker 6: then her response to all of that is to taunt them,
Speaker 6: right and and like demanding, demanding that they fight for
Speaker 6: her and actually like trying to claim some some honor.
Speaker 6: And then here's the key, Josh, you said it that fight,
Speaker 6: that that like clumsy fight that they have with each other. Okay,
Speaker 6: both men in this case act deplorably, but one acts
Speaker 6: like a bandit like a notorious bandit would one acts
Speaker 6: like a man would in a completely male dominated society.
Speaker 6: I think the woman acts justifiably irrationally, like someone who
Speaker 6: has just suffered a sexual assault might write. And then
Speaker 6: I go back, you said it, I go back to
Speaker 6: Drunken Angel. Why make a movie set in twelfth century
Speaker 6: Japan if you aren't intending to comment on conditions today
Speaker 6: in nineteen fifty Japan, right, and twelfth century Japan is
Speaker 6: when feudalism emerged. And during our conversation about Drunken Angel,
Speaker 6: I referenced the Criterion essay that talked about trying to
Speaker 6: wrestle with the war and the aftermath of the war
Speaker 6: and the militarists and this feudalistic warrior tradition of male
Speaker 6: domination and sacrificing for samurai honor. This is what Krasawa's
Speaker 6: wrestling with. You know this, this idea, And you have
Speaker 6: the characters in Drunken Angel, those men who he depicts,
Speaker 6: these tough, gangster characters who act like children fighting each other.
Speaker 6: It's comical how they actually fight each other. We laugh
Speaker 6: at them as viewers, and we laugh at these two
Speaker 6: men the exact same way. It's the complete opposite of
Speaker 6: any kind of virile display of masculinity. And I just
Speaker 6: think I think Carasawa intends for us to laugh at them,
Speaker 6: and I think Cursaw was asking us to align with
Speaker 6: the outrage of the wife in that final version. And
Speaker 6: I also think, Josh, for me, I'm predisposed to this
Speaker 6: a little bit, or I'm aligning with this version of
Speaker 6: events or how I see it, because one of the
Speaker 6: most striking images, lasting images, that I'll take away from
Speaker 6: this viewing of Raschoman is in her version of the
Speaker 6: story that look he gives her and her covering of
Speaker 6: her eyes. You know, just that that image of her
Speaker 6: shielding herself. Whether it happened exactly like that or not,
Speaker 6: in every one of these stories, she still is in
Speaker 6: a position. One universal truth is that woman having to
Speaker 6: is being not only objectified but violated and then having
Speaker 6: to somehow still defend her honor right. And that that
Speaker 6: image of her covering her eyes as if she's trying
Speaker 6: to shield herself from the judgment of the men, that that,
Speaker 6: to me is like the lasting image of this film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I Machico Kio playing the wife, and you know,
Speaker 1: all these performances again, as we talked about in our
Speaker 1: top five list having to work and at least double levels,
Speaker 1: right if there are movies about deception or unreliable narrators.
Speaker 1: I was wondering about that too. You know, this is
Speaker 1: obviously being set in this time and place, a culture
Speaker 1: of extreme victim blaming. What happens to this woman, and
Speaker 1: then the discussions of you know, how it is it
Speaker 1: is her shame, what they've essentially done to her, what
Speaker 1: the band is under her? And I was thinking, you know, well,
Speaker 1: how does that transfer to these movies that curs I
Speaker 1: was also making set in the present contemporary times, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're onto something there. Is it's the machismo,
Speaker 1: it's the you know, that is being exposed in both
Speaker 1: times and places. And certainly victim blaming did not go away,
Speaker 1: you know it. It maybe didn't doesn't take place or
Speaker 1: in mid century didn't take place in the same blatant
Speaker 1: way it might have in this more time way further
Speaker 1: in the past, but it's still a reality, and it's
Speaker 1: built in that same macho, you know, chauvinistic society. So
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing that's being critiqued here for sure.
Speaker 1: I also think to your point, about what is the
Speaker 1: objective truth the movie wants us to assume. Another piece
Speaker 1: of evidence why we should believe for the most part,
Speaker 1: the Woodcutter is that, as in Drunken Angel Curse, I
Speaker 1: Will wants a maybe not a hero, not a perfect
Speaker 1: heroic figure, but someone who does the honorable moral thing.
Speaker 1: And where does the movie end with the Woodcutter claiming
Speaker 1: the baby who has been abandoned? Right, So that's another signal.
Speaker 1: I feel like that this is a man who's not perfect.
Speaker 1: He obviously, like everyone, is not telling the complete story,
Speaker 1: but his story may be the closest to the truth
Speaker 1: that we're going to get, and it's the most honorable,
Speaker 1: truly honorable, not in the sense of honor that as
Speaker 1: you describe the characters are searching in this time and place.
Speaker 1: Complicating this though, Adam is, I'm so glad you brought
Speaker 1: up the medium played by Narko Hamah, which how about
Speaker 1: the performance in that sequence? I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: performance art that Hamma is giving us. It reminded me
Speaker 1: very much of Catherine Hunter's Witch in Joel Cohen's The
Speaker 1: Tragedy of Macbeth. And of course we know Crosala would
Speaker 1: adapt Macbeth as Throne of Blood in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: But just this creating some a body that seems to
Speaker 1: truly be from another world and then filtering, in this case,
Speaker 1: another body through it, which is the dead husband. I
Speaker 1: think it's also just intensely complicated in how it gives
Speaker 1: us another level of unreliability, because are we to take
Speaker 1: the dead husband at his word because he's dead? No?
Speaker 1: We you know, we already talked about that. He's just
Speaker 1: as unreliable as the others. But just as you said,
Speaker 1: think about the meta level of unreliability of we're hearing
Speaker 1: all of these eyewitness reports secondhand. Can we trust the medium?
Speaker 1: Is she translating the dead husband accurately?
Speaker 7: It's another layer.
Speaker 1: Is she translating at all?
Speaker 5: Is is she?
Speaker 1: I don't know how this works? Like this her job?
Speaker 1: Does she get? She hangs out at the needs a witness,
Speaker 1: and who knows what her motivation is. So not only
Speaker 1: is this, you know, a dramatically arresting and visually arresting sequence,
Speaker 1: I think it just kind of like starts piling up
Speaker 1: more levels of unreliability as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, a couple other just points I wanted to touch on,
Speaker 6: really quickly, and it goes with what you just said, actually,
Speaker 6: because I think Krasawa also plays tricks on us a
Speaker 6: little bit within some of the narratives, within some of
Speaker 6: the retellings of this from certain perspectives, For example, within
Speaker 6: the Bandits retelling of the story, when we understand why
Speaker 6: from his point of view he would want to tell
Speaker 6: it in such a way where she she pushes back
Speaker 6: against him fiercely at first, but then succumbs. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: she embraces him, putting her hand behind his head and
Speaker 6: kisses him deeply, right against the wall. You know all
Speaker 6: that stuff. We get that part, But why, Josh, then
Speaker 6: why does Krasawa show us from her point of view
Speaker 6: the sun as she's looking up at the sun, she's
Speaker 6: while he's embracing her. Why would we see her point
Speaker 6: of view? That's not something that the Bandit could see
Speaker 6: or theoretically could even fantasize about or imagine right in
Speaker 6: this in this construct. So it's an odd thing. And
Speaker 6: it's also odd because in that scenario he is he
Speaker 6: is effectively assaulting her again, and what's happening there in
Speaker 6: that moment is not unlike something we've seen in other
Speaker 6: depictions of that on screen and in other scenarios we've
Speaker 6: heard about in real life where it's almost like she's disassociating.
Speaker 6: It's almost like what we see is her is her
Speaker 6: just giving herself over and staring up at the sun
Speaker 6: while he's doing that. And it's just interesting that we
Speaker 6: get that. But it's it's within his version of the
Speaker 6: telling of the story.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I think you read on it is right,
Speaker 1: That's how it struck me as disassociation. And maybe this
Speaker 1: speaks to your point about we're not getting this directly
Speaker 1: from the bandit. We're getting it from you know, in
Speaker 1: this case, the woodcutter telling what he heard the band
Speaker 1: it say. And maybe it's like Cutter wanted to layer
Speaker 1: in a bit of empathy for the woman. There you go,
Speaker 1: and Chris I was giving us that visually. I mean maybe.
Speaker 7: Maybe so right.
Speaker 6: Of course, the other great formal choice that Chris Awa
Speaker 6: makes here is never showing us and never letting us
Speaker 6: hear the inquisitors.
Speaker 1: I'm asking the question about, right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: What a conceit just just making it so it it
Speaker 6: is us, the camera, the audience who become the inquisitors,
Speaker 6: the ones who are asking the questions. The judges who
Speaker 6: are dying to know the information, who effectively are asking
Speaker 6: those questions of the bandits, dying to know even more information,
Speaker 6: right to the.
Speaker 1: Point that characters will say, what but we don't hear
Speaker 1: the question, but they respond as if so, even more
Speaker 1: so to your point, puts us in that judge's seat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know totally if this matters or not,
Speaker 6: if there's any significance to it. It's just something that
Speaker 6: hit me at the last minute today. The fact that
Speaker 6: all of this again revolves effectively around the dead husband.
Speaker 6: That's the crime that matters most within this movie world.
Speaker 6: And how does the husband how is he positioned the
Speaker 6: entire film? He's that figure that has his arms tied
Speaker 6: behind his back or and or he's kneeling the entire time, right,
Speaker 6: And how do all the storytellers except the woodcutter, how
Speaker 6: are they positioned when they tell their stories? They're always
Speaker 6: in that same position, right, And the bandit has his
Speaker 6: arms tied similar But they all are kneeling in that
Speaker 6: same kind of position before the There's there's a symmetry
Speaker 6: there that, again I don't totally know what to do with,
Speaker 6: but but they're mirroring each other.
Speaker 1: It brings to mind just the incredible blocking throughout this movie.
Speaker 1: I know that's something we discussed or at least referenced
Speaker 1: in conversations about High and Low. You know, those early
Speaker 1: scenes in the apartment where the police team was there
Speaker 1: with the family, and how incredibly dramatic Krosawa made them
Speaker 1: just by positioning characters within the frame. These witness scenes,
Speaker 1: you know, will often have the speaker in the in
Speaker 1: the foreground looking right at us or just slightly off camera,
Speaker 1: and there's almost always a witness or two in the background,
Speaker 1: but position just off center a little bit. All in
Speaker 1: these you know, kneeling positions you describe, or sitting positions.
Speaker 1: But the yeah, just the blocking throughout this movie is
Speaker 1: exquisite and on point in every frame.
Speaker 6: I also love the outsized nature of it all. And
Speaker 6: what I mean is, think about how we're introduced to
Speaker 6: these characters, the lowly characters, who we know are lowly
Speaker 6: characters from the very beginning.
Speaker 7: The way they're depicted.
Speaker 6: Part of the part of the reason we know they're lowly, though, Josh,
Speaker 6: isn't just their clothes and and their appearance. It's it's
Speaker 6: how they're they're so dwarfed by the Raschoman Gate and
Speaker 6: the way Krasa films the Rachomn Gate. The size of
Speaker 6: the temple in relation to the men is just so striking.
Speaker 6: And then even the rain itself, the rain isn't rain.
Speaker 6: The rain is like biblical in this movie. Right, it
Speaker 6: looks biblical, it sounds biblical, and of course it only
Speaker 6: ends at a point when we finally get some moral clarity. Right,
Speaker 6: That's that's the kind of level we're dealing with in Raschoman.
Speaker 6: It's it's the scale that Kurosaw was working. And from
Speaker 6: the beginning, the way they're selling this story before we
Speaker 6: as viewers have even the commoner who's our surrogate, before
Speaker 6: we've even gotten into the story, they're setting this up
Speaker 6: like it's what we saw will make you lose all
Speaker 6: your faith in humanity if those are the words. It's
Speaker 6: worse than famine or plague. And you're going and build up.
Speaker 6: Could it possibly live up to the hype?
Speaker 7: And you know what, Kursawa pulls it off?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say he sets a high bar there,
Speaker 1: but I think, yes, I think we're equally despairing. As
Speaker 1: the movie goes on and part of it is that
Speaker 1: backdrop of the gate, you know, just that it's in
Speaker 1: complete disrepair, crumbled. It's the symbol for humanity itself in
Speaker 1: this crumbled, despairing state, which the weather, as you said,
Speaker 1: mirrors as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Less point when we go from that time and place
Speaker 6: the beginning fully into the past, we'd finally dive into
Speaker 6: that story. The cut from the rain and the sound
Speaker 6: of the rain to the sun and the absence of
Speaker 6: the sound of the rain, right, and we get some drums,
Speaker 6: and we get the sound of the woods. The disparity
Speaker 6: and the difference right between that world going in immediately
Speaker 6: to this world, and it feeling truly like we've thrust
Speaker 6: into some kind of different realm. And it's all just
Speaker 6: because of the It's largely just because of the sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned the drums, because I
Speaker 1: did want to call out the score as well. Fumio Hayasaka.
Speaker 1: It has this sort of propulsion, just slow propulsion to it,
Speaker 1: like we're leading towards somewhere and we don't even it
Speaker 1: doesn't even feel like we're leading toward a revelation. I
Speaker 1: mean to a larger question of what's the objective truth.
Speaker 1: Part of you feels like we're we aren't ever going
Speaker 1: to get to it because human nature is so naughty
Speaker 1: and complicated and duplicitous. But there's an inexorable forward thrust
Speaker 1: to the score and those drums that drags us along
Speaker 1: as well through each air that I really liked.
Speaker 6: Raschaman is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.
Speaker 6: It's also available VOD and maybe it's your local library.
Speaker 7: Why not check it out?
Speaker 6: One more Pantheon review to get to it is well,
Speaker 6: we're not going to stop the bleakness, are we? Josh,
Speaker 6: I don't know. Is there there's hope at the end
Speaker 6: of Rashomon? Is there hope at the end of Meek's Cutoff?
Speaker 6: It's been a while.
Speaker 1: We'll have to discuss. Depends how you read it. I think,
Speaker 1: I guess probably not.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: It's turning fifteen this year and Meek's Cutoff is currently
Speaker 6: streaming on Mobe and Peacock, also available VOD if you
Speaker 6: have homework to do and you do have some time.
Speaker 6: We have such a busy show calendar here over the
Speaker 6: next few weeks that we are not going to get
Speaker 6: to that conversation about Meek's cutoff for at least two shows.
Speaker 6: I think it's going to be three shows actually before
Speaker 6: we fit that in. So you have some time and
Speaker 6: you can find more information about the Film Spotting Pantheon
Speaker 6: at filmspotting dot net slash pantheon Josh, that is our show.
Speaker 1: If you would like to connect with Adam and the
Speaker 1: show on social media, he's on Instagram, Facebook, letterbox, and YouTube.
Speaker 1: As film Spotting, I'm at those places as well as
Speaker 1: Larsen on film We are independently produced and listener supported.
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Speaker 1: spotting dot net slash shop.
Speaker 6: In the film Spotting archive, you can check out last
Speaker 6: month's bonus show if you're a film Spotting Family member,
Speaker 6: that Drunken Angel Conversation or the Stray Dog Conversation. July
Speaker 6: twenty twenty, Josh, we did seven Samurai so yeah, a
Speaker 6: lot of Krasawa Hey family members and all those cases
Speaker 6: voted for that, so we're striving the people what they want. Yup,
Speaker 6: you know it's true, they want Krosawa And yeah, it
Speaker 6: was two thousand and nine, it turns out was that
Speaker 6: Kirosawa marathon back before you joined the show. In limited release,
Speaker 6: there is a four K restoration of Satura Raised nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy film Days and Nights in the Forest that's playing
Speaker 6: at the Cisco Film Center, and Josh, at this point
Speaker 6: we both wish we were in Chicago to see.
Speaker 1: Get it one blind Spot, I think for both of us.
Speaker 7: M Yeah.
Speaker 6: In wide release, scientists have discovered how to hop human
Speaker 6: consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with
Speaker 6: animals as animals. That's in Pixar's Hoppers.
Speaker 1: Pixar, how about that was not even aware new Pixar.
Speaker 1: Obviously it doesn't necessarily mean what it used to. But
Speaker 1: I think I'm still gonna have to check this out.
Speaker 6: See, I didn't read the Pixar part at first. I
Speaker 6: just saw below it Melia Jovovic and that really seemed
Speaker 6: like Amelia Jovovic film, like some futuristic, really bizarre sci
Speaker 6: fi scientists have discovered, you know, and it goes it
Speaker 6: all goes terribly wrong. Guns are involved, but no. Mealy
Speaker 6: Joviovich is a former war hero whose peaceful life is
Speaker 6: shattered when her daughter is kidnapped. That's in Protector and
Speaker 6: we have Yeah, what are you gonna do? You gonna
Speaker 6: see that one?
Speaker 8: Josh?
Speaker 1: No, I just that makes sense. There you go, that.
Speaker 7: Does check it r.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: We also have Maggie Gillenhall's The Bride.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's out.
Speaker 7: I'm excited.
Speaker 1: We're excited.
Speaker 6: Point next week we are planning to see that film.
Speaker 6: We will have our Oscar special with Michael Phillips and Yeah,
Speaker 6: believe it or not, it's film Spotting madness, best of
Speaker 6: the nineteen forties playing round.
Speaker 7: It's a big, big show, big week.
Speaker 1: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe Disso and Sam
Speaker 1: Van Hogren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go.
Speaker 1: Our production assistant is Sophie kempinar Special. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: at wb easy Chicago. More information is available at wbeazy
Speaker 1: dot org for Film Spotting. I'm Josh Larson and.
Speaker 7: I'm Adam Kempenar. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
Speaker 7: Good Bye,