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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're going
Speaker 3: to have a conversation from Chicago. This is Film Spotting
Speaker 3: celebrating our twentieth year. I'm Josh Larson and I'm Adam Kempinar.
Speaker 3: Could you answer the next series of questions about blinking
Speaker 3: your eyes? It was out fear and hesitation. Answers quickly
Speaker 3: as you can sure. This week, our Best of the
Speaker 3: Centre Conversation continues with our favorite actors and actresses of
Speaker 3: the last twenty five years, and.
Speaker 2: We're going to do it master style, Josh, no fear,
Speaker 2: no hesitation, and no blinking. Also, it's a draft plus.
Speaker 3: Our Andre Tarkowski Marathon continues with nineteen seventy nine Stalker.
Speaker 3: It's all ahead starting now. If you blink, we go
Speaker 3: back to the start on Film Spotting.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Film Spotting narrowing down the films of the
Speaker 2: century to twenty five, which we did last week. Josh
Speaker 2: was a chore picking five only five of our favorite
Speaker 2: actors and actresses of the century. This is only going
Speaker 2: to end in failure and disappointment.
Speaker 3: Right, failure is a strong word disappointment. I have a
Speaker 3: theory that there's a path where we can both come
Speaker 3: away pretty happy. Okay, there may be there may be
Speaker 3: two names we're going to be tussling over, but I
Speaker 3: don't know. I think we could come away not too disappointed.
Speaker 3: We'll have to see.
Speaker 2: We will see. I'm guessing we won't tussle too much
Speaker 2: over nineteen seventy nine Stalker the Fourth film and our
Speaker 2: Andre Tarkowski Marathon. We start with our draft. We're going
Speaker 2: to make this more concise and call it the Actors
Speaker 2: of the Century Draft. Josh actors, actresses all eligible. Producer
Speaker 2: Sam hates it when I say Performers of the Century.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Definitely. The only real rule here is we only get
Speaker 2: to choose one Chris each.
Speaker 3: Was the Chris is our first draft ever? Or was
Speaker 3: that just a ranking?
Speaker 2: It was just a ranking? Yeah, not a draft? Okay,
Speaker 2: that would have been a pretty short draft, right.
Speaker 3: A two person draft.
Speaker 2: How this is going to work, and really why we're
Speaker 2: even doing it? Is a draft? Is pretty simple? Are
Speaker 2: we trying to sports of all?
Speaker 3: This thing?
Speaker 2: Not really one? It ensures ten unique choices, no overlap,
Speaker 2: that's the main thing. And then it's film spotting the stakes.
Speaker 2: When I don't know if I'm going to get my
Speaker 2: next pick, it really does change everything. That's why we're
Speaker 2: doing it that way. Now, did you have any criteria
Speaker 2: as you set about to prepare for this draft?
Speaker 3: Josh, I did use, as has been mentioned, our best
Speaker 3: of the twenty tens list as a starting point, But
Speaker 3: the more I got into it, it wasn't entirely helpful
Speaker 3: because a lot of the actors on that list. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say it was recency bias, but just working with
Speaker 3: only those ten years we did that in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: you know, it did obviously weigh heavily on people who
Speaker 3: we were excited about then and are excited about moving forward,
Speaker 3: or were in twenty twenty. So here I had to
Speaker 3: think about an entire body of work, not looking ahead
Speaker 3: so much. Okay, it's this particular period, and I thought
Speaker 3: about this, thinking of speaking of sports bawling. In the NBA,
Speaker 3: you have the MVP Most Valuable Player Award, and that
Speaker 3: is a regular season award. It's announced will be announced
Speaker 3: I think within this week during the playoffs. But really
Speaker 3: the idea is to look at what the players have
Speaker 3: done during that season, not their playoff potential or even
Speaker 3: how they've performed in the first week or so of
Speaker 3: the playoffs. So I had to think about it similarly,
Speaker 3: is that body of work from two thousand to twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, and then this length of time twenty five
Speaker 3: years I found for me absolutely benefited the vets, you know,
Speaker 3: those who had been doing it pretty much right from
Speaker 3: two thousand and sustained it up through the last couple
Speaker 3: of years. That narrowed things down pretty quickly for me
Speaker 3: for the actors and actresses who I needed to have
Speaker 3: on my team in this draft.
Speaker 2: So I also look back at my list of the
Speaker 2: top ten actors of the Decade from twenty twenty. Of course,
Speaker 2: I also had the actors of the decade or whatever
Speaker 2: we called it from the two thousands, the first part
Speaker 2: of this twenty first century. We did that in twenty
Speaker 2: ten on film Spotting, just before you joined the show
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty. My criteria was these actors and
Speaker 2: actresses had to have at least three great performances. I
Speaker 2: approached it this time as a mount rushmore. I needed
Speaker 2: to envision four characters' faces that would define the period,
Speaker 2: this entire twenty five year period for that performer, and
Speaker 2: then I had to consider to extent that quartette of
Speaker 2: faces might define the period itself. I get to have
Speaker 2: the first choice. We didn't do anything convoluted here. We
Speaker 2: didn't have any ping pong balls or bring in Ernst
Speaker 2: and Young or Price Waterhouse. We just alternated. The last
Speaker 2: time we had a draft, I think it was our
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five movie preview, and You've got to go first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, so.
Speaker 2: Now so I get to go.
Speaker 3: I think it's fair. I think it's fair. I do
Speaker 3: think for our next draft we got to shake it up, though.
Speaker 3: I do like the suspense of seeing who's gonna get
Speaker 3: especially again seeing what happened in the NBA, the chaos
Speaker 3: that was unleashed. We always want more chaos on this show, Adam,
Speaker 3: so moving forward, we'll have to go back to that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, for tonight, first pick goes to you. It's
Speaker 3: only fair. I think I know where you're gonna go.
Speaker 3: But again, here's where the strategy comes into play, because
Speaker 3: I honestly think there are only two or maybe three
Speaker 3: names we both would love to have on our team,
Speaker 3: and are you going to try to snatch one of
Speaker 3: those or are you just gonna claim who you absolutely
Speaker 3: have to have? Not taken any.
Speaker 2: Risks here, I ended up going the latter route because
Speaker 2: I really couldn't figure you out, Josh, I didn't have
Speaker 2: enough intel to go on. As you noted, yes, that
Speaker 2: list back in twenty twenty is somewhat helpful, but once
Speaker 2: you add in not only the past four years, you
Speaker 2: add in the first part of this quarter century, it
Speaker 2: really does change the game. And I guess I didn't
Speaker 2: feel like I had a really strong sense of who
Speaker 2: your top one, two three performers of the past twenty
Speaker 2: five years were, and so I stopped overthinking it and
Speaker 2: decided to go with my heart. I'm picking who is
Speaker 2: genuinely my number one choice, even though I feel like
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have been your number one choice, and from
Speaker 2: a strategic standpoint, I'm probably misplaying it. You mention that
Speaker 2: you look back and you didn't really consider at all
Speaker 2: moving forward whether or not these performers would be in
Speaker 2: our lives, what kind of performances they might give us
Speaker 2: in the future. Sadly, that's very much the case with
Speaker 2: my number one choice. I am going with Philip Seymour
Speaker 2: oh oh. Recently, just a day or two ago, Josh
Speaker 2: got an email from a listener, Nate Dean, who said, Adam,
Speaker 2: I can't believe you have William Miller as your profile
Speaker 2: pick on Letterboxed, but failed to put Almost Famous in
Speaker 2: your top twenty five films of the century. Almost Famous
Speaker 2: is my favorite film of all time, So I'm kind
Speaker 2: of offended. Please change your profile pick, Nate. I hear you,
Speaker 2: I feel you. I will not change my profile pick.
Speaker 2: It has been my profile pick since profile picks existed,
Speaker 2: really in the wake of me seeing Almost Famous originally
Speaker 2: in theaters back in two thousand and one. To try
Speaker 2: to make up for it a little bit here, Philip
Speaker 2: Seymour Hoffman was my number two actor of the two
Speaker 2: thousands on that list in twenty ten. And Josh, even
Speaker 2: though this is how great Philip Seymore Hoffman is, even
Speaker 2: though we lost him in twenty fourteen, I do believe
Speaker 2: he's still worthy of the number one choice. Here's the
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore Lancaster Dodd the Master in twenty twenty, I
Speaker 2: suggested that that processing scene which we heard at the
Speaker 2: top of the show was maybe the scene of the
Speaker 2: decade him and jauquein in Phoenix, number two, Capodi in Capodi,
Speaker 2: for which he won the Oscar. Nate. Here it is
Speaker 2: number three on the Mount Rushmore. A supporting turn Lester
Speaker 2: Bangs and Almost Famous, and then rounding out the mount Rushmore,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with Caden Coutard from Sinec to Key,
Speaker 2: New York. And if you want more lead performances, Josh, great,
Speaker 2: how about Lamette's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead? Opposite
Speaker 2: Ethan Hawk A Most Wanted Man is a really good film.
Speaker 2: I don't love this Savages or Doubt, but I have
Speaker 2: nothing against Philip Seymore Hoffman's performances in either. And the
Speaker 2: thing about Philip Seamore Hoffman, and we talked about this
Speaker 2: back when we paid tribute to him after his passing.
Speaker 2: You can talk about those lead performances, but it's so
Speaker 2: much fun to talk about how good he is in
Speaker 2: his supporting turns like Spike Lee's twenty fifth Hour, Your Beloved, Punch,
Speaker 2: Drunk Love, mattress Man, Dean Trumpele. How memorable is he there?
Speaker 2: How much of a memorable scoundrel is he even in
Speaker 2: something like Red Dragon as Freddie Lownds gust In Charlie
Speaker 2: Wilson's War. I mean, it's a mostly forgettable movie, but
Speaker 2: he's not forgettable. I still get served scenes from that
Speaker 2: movie occasionally on Instagram, and I watch them every time
Speaker 2: if they're a scene that Philip Seymour Hoffman is in,
Speaker 2: and then he even brings the heat to something like
Speaker 2: the Hunger Games franchise or another franchise, The Baddie in
Speaker 2: Mission Impossible three, it.
Speaker 5: Was you in the bathroom, and you're gonna tell us everything,
Speaker 5: every buyer, you've worked with, every organization, What the hell
Speaker 5: is your name?
Speaker 3: Names? Contacts, and Victory listens.
Speaker 6: My wife, girlfriend, it's up.
Speaker 3: To you had his ghost, he does, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do next. I'm gonna find her, whoever she is.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find her, and I'm gonna hurt her.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hurt her. Josh, I watched that scene again today,
Speaker 2: just trying to put my finger on what Hoffman is
Speaker 2: doing there that makes it so special, that makes it
Speaker 2: something you do remember that exact line reading. It's it's
Speaker 2: something about the nonchalance. It's something about even a hint
Speaker 2: of petulance. It's like he can't believe this guy. He
Speaker 2: keeps asking Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise is Ethan hunt. What's
Speaker 2: your name? It's like he just can't believe this guy
Speaker 2: has the audacity to question him to capture him, to
Speaker 2: tie him up like this, and he is sure he
Speaker 2: is going to pay him back for this. It's not
Speaker 2: the performance or the movie that will define Filtzeymour Hoffman's
Speaker 2: career or this period, but it is one I love.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask you all more time. What's your name?
Speaker 3: What is your rats?
Speaker 7: Who are you?
Speaker 3: Who's the Meyer? You don't have any idea what that
Speaker 3: was going on here? And he saw what I did.
Speaker 6: You a little blond friend at the factory, right, Oh
Speaker 6: that was nothing.
Speaker 5: That was fun.
Speaker 6: Fun.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you got who you really wanted. He was
Speaker 3: not at risk, however, I did.
Speaker 2: I had a feeling.
Speaker 3: I did look at his filmography quite closely. Definitely an
Speaker 3: honorable mention. I understand the pick. For me, it all
Speaker 3: came down to the pre twenty ten work because as
Speaker 3: much as I admire what he does in The Master
Speaker 3: and yeah, yeah, like you said, very good in Hunger Games,
Speaker 3: that just wasn't enough for me to have him on
Speaker 3: my previous list. So the titles that gave me pause
Speaker 3: among the ones you mentioned where I thought, ooh, I've
Speaker 3: really got to think about this. Ah yes, almost famous,
Speaker 3: absolutely punched drunk love, and probably oh before the devil
Speaker 3: knows your dead for sure. Those three are the ones
Speaker 3: that almost pushed him into my consideration to be on
Speaker 3: my board, but decided I had other performers I preferred.
Speaker 3: And you've now put me in a difficult but enviable
Speaker 3: position because you're first to the opportunity to take my
Speaker 3: first choice as you did, or really grab the person.
Speaker 3: There's one person who I think we both want. Okay,
Speaker 3: I do not have this person in the first slot
Speaker 3: on my draft board.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: So I realize if I take the person I need,
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you your one and two.
Speaker 2: And I don't know quite frankly which option i'd rather
Speaker 2: have you choose at this point.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm I'm going to follow you following
Speaker 3: your heart, Adam.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I'm going to go put a sweet episode
Speaker 2: with the actor who.
Speaker 3: I have ranked first. It was the person who when
Speaker 3: I realized we were doing this expanse this twenty five years,
Speaker 3: I thought, I've got to check out the filmography because
Speaker 3: I bet it is packed. And though it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 3: someone I had on the previous list or very high,
Speaker 3: I don't think I had on the list. I just
Speaker 3: had a feeling that if you add those ten years
Speaker 3: to what has been done in the past fifteen, you're
Speaker 3: going to have a powerhouse. And you do. You have
Speaker 3: Kate Blanchett, had to have Kate Blanchett. Again. It was
Speaker 3: the research that confirmed it. This is not black bag
Speaker 3: recency bias. Look at this track record and look at
Speaker 3: this range. This is the thing with her tour to
Speaker 3: fourth dramas that I would argue she carried on her
Speaker 3: back like she made the movie Blue Jasmine. Where do
Speaker 3: you Go, Bernadette. People probably forget that one, but she
Speaker 3: is a force in that one. And then Tar, she
Speaker 3: is Tar, so you have that category also. I think
Speaker 3: this is how she came to be known as this
Speaker 3: arresting figure in historical dramas or period pieces. I think
Speaker 3: you could put Carol in this category. The Aviator, The
Speaker 3: Good German, speaking of Sodaberg, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,
Speaker 3: which I like more than most people, Nightmare Alley Falls here,
Speaker 3: and Elizabeth her breakout doesn't fit our timeframe, but Elizabeth
Speaker 3: the Golden Age does, and she is different in that film,
Speaker 3: but equally impressive. Kate Blanchett can also do sci fi
Speaker 3: and fantasy. She can be Galadriel in Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: She can be the step mother in Cinderella. I love
Speaker 3: that performance. And of course Hella in Thor Ragnarok phsy
Speaker 3: fun you could put Thor Ragnarok in that category. But
Speaker 3: I'm thinking more here about Ocean's Eight, The Life Aquatic
Speaker 3: with Steve Zazou, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Speaker 3: Crystal Skull. Sure, why not? I like that movie more
Speaker 3: than most people, and she's amusing it, she is. And
Speaker 3: then here's the topper. Is all of that are things
Speaker 3: you can envision that is what a great actor would
Speaker 3: do performances like these, Maybe not one that'd be a
Speaker 3: lot task of one. She does that, then she gives
Speaker 3: us something that I can only call experimental her Bob Dylan,
Speaker 3: and I'm not there.
Speaker 8: Well, is it your belief then that folk music has
Speaker 8: a chance failed to achieve its goals with the Negro
Speaker 8: calls or the cause of peace?
Speaker 9: You know, saying cause of peace, it's just like saying
Speaker 9: it's like a hunk of butter. You know, I don't
Speaker 9: know how you can listen to anybody who wants you
Speaker 9: to believe is dedicated to the hunk and.
Speaker 6: Not the butter.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I thought that.
Speaker 9: You know, I didn't come out of some cereal box.
Speaker 3: This is like, I mean, irreproachable, and the range, the
Speaker 3: vastness of it, the consistency of it, the fact that
Speaker 3: she was doing this in the first couple of years
Speaker 3: of this century. An just dropped black bag on us.
Speaker 3: I had to take her at number one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had her at number five, and depending on
Speaker 2: how this shook out, it wasn't a lock that I
Speaker 2: would take her if she was still there, because I've
Speaker 2: got some amazing choices right behind her. But the Mount
Speaker 2: rushmore Tar, of course, Carol, and I was wondering when
Speaker 2: you were going to get to it. Jude Quinn, I'm
Speaker 2: not there. I'm not sure if you said this one
Speaker 2: or not. I don't love this Woody Allen film. But Jasmine,
Speaker 2: did you say Blue Jasmine?
Speaker 3: She's in that category where she carries the movie, she
Speaker 3: makes the movie, right, she does.
Speaker 2: That's the top four right there. But I also seriously
Speaker 2: considered putting in her performance as Daisy in the Curious
Speaker 2: Case of Benjamin Button as Lilith Ritter in Nightmare. Ali.
Speaker 2: I love that movie. I think it made my top
Speaker 2: ten of that year, and you mentioned a few others,
Speaker 2: like the Life of Quatack, like Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 2: Where'd you go? Bernadette? And I'm not sure if you
Speaker 2: mentioned this one either, but she's really good in notes
Speaker 2: on a scandal as well.
Speaker 3: What I don't think I've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Kate Blanchette is a fantastic choice. She is
Speaker 2: off the board. The pick does come back to me.
Speaker 2: Now I have to decide whether or not to take
Speaker 2: the person that I have at number two? Do we
Speaker 2: do we keep the sweet sentiment going here, Josh? Do
Speaker 2: we continue to play nice? Or do I take the
Speaker 2: person that I think you think that we both want.
Speaker 2: And you're about to speak, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say anything, Okay, I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I don't want to. I don't want to nudge you
Speaker 3: either way.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing. The person that right now I
Speaker 2: have at number two is just ahead of the person
Speaker 2: I think you think we think we want, and that
Speaker 2: person at number three I had at number one at
Speaker 2: various points throughout my day. So I really don't feel
Speaker 2: like I'm being that rude if I take this person
Speaker 2: at number two instead, and I'm going to add to
Speaker 2: my reasoning that I kind of have a feeling that
Speaker 2: my number two choice may not be in your top five,
Speaker 2: So I have to go with my number two pick
Speaker 2: someone I called back in twenty twenty, the Chameleon Collaborator
Speaker 2: till the Swinton.
Speaker 3: Ahah proceed, not the pick I have till the I
Speaker 3: also had her on my top tip okay, but not
Speaker 3: the one. But here she is an honorable mention. Wow,
Speaker 3: and I can explain why, but definitely gave her consideration.
Speaker 3: Go ahead. I think it's a completely reasonable pick. How
Speaker 3: did she stick around for you?
Speaker 10: So?
Speaker 2: The Mount Rushmore is so hard because there's so many
Speaker 2: movies and so many good performances. You almost have to
Speaker 2: break it up. In terms of directors collaborators that she's
Speaker 2: worked with. You've got the Wes Anderson Side, Asteroid City,
Speaker 2: French Dispatch, Grand Budapest, Moonrise, Kingdom, Isle of Dogs. You've
Speaker 2: got the Luca Guardanino movies like I Am Love and
Speaker 2: a Bigger Splash Suspiria. Not a huge fan, really like
Speaker 2: her in that film, the Jim Jarmish films like Limits
Speaker 2: of Control, The Dead Don't Die, only Lovers Left Alive.
Speaker 2: As I say, those three titles. I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 2: I actually have seen the limits of Control, so we
Speaker 2: can strike that. But I have seen only Lovers Left
Speaker 2: Alive and the Dead Don't Die. And they're both wonderful films.
Speaker 2: The Coen Brothers Hail Caesar, a movie we both like,
Speaker 2: You love. I like quite a bit, really appreciate her
Speaker 2: in Burn after reading. Add to that the Bong June
Speaker 2: Hoe performances in Oakja Snow Piercer, her collaborations with Joanna
Speaker 2: Hogg in Eternal Daughter and The Souvenir Parts one and two.
Speaker 2: And then, of course, if she hasn't made enough of
Speaker 2: a mark on the last twenty five years, you have
Speaker 2: her appearing and performing quite well in various MCU installments.
Speaker 2: She's also so great. And how about these titles, Josh,
Speaker 2: I haven't even said yet. The David Fincher film The Killer.
Speaker 2: We need to talk about Kevin the Deep End from
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, the movie she won an Oscar
Speaker 2: for Best Supporting Actress. Michael Clayton. So I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: a little bit of a Maya culpa here. Michael Clayton
Speaker 2: didn't make Madness, didn't even make the shortlists for Madness
Speaker 2: probably should have. It's a movie that a lot of
Speaker 2: people really revere, and I do love her performance in
Speaker 2: that film. I don't think it's a matter of going
Speaker 2: against type necessarily because I don't think Tilda Swinton has
Speaker 2: a title. You can you can look at a movie
Speaker 2: like The Deep End, where she plays a mom, an
Speaker 2: everyday mom trying to protect her son. In something like
Speaker 2: We Need to Talk About Kevin, she's a mom trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how to live with her son. She
Speaker 2: does play quote unquote normal characters in both of those cases,
Speaker 2: and I just picked two where I can recall her
Speaker 2: playing those kind of everyday characters. She is playing different
Speaker 2: forms of desperation, but there's something entirely different about her.
Speaker 2: Karen Crowder and Michael Clayton a woman who is herself,
Speaker 2: always performing, always projecting an image of control in a
Speaker 2: corporate world that seems to demand it. And that big
Speaker 2: scene with Clooney at the end, I love the moment
Speaker 2: just before it she's putting this proposal before the board.
Speaker 2: She walks out the door and there's nothing really smug
Speaker 2: about it, but there's just kind of a little bit
Speaker 2: of self satisfaction on her face, like I geared myself
Speaker 2: up for this moment, and I did it. I delivered.
Speaker 2: And she's walking with a precision, and she brushes kind
Speaker 2: of at her jacket, you know, kind of you pull
Speaker 2: it down behind you, just making sure you're prim and
Speaker 2: proper and everything is perfect. And then you watch her
Speaker 2: get confronted by Clooney and the way she throughout that
Speaker 2: entire exchange tries to calculate the right next move. I'd
Speaker 2: say it's like a robot short circuiting, except Swinton makes
Speaker 2: Karen all two humans.
Speaker 11: It's a drag. I got a thousand of these things.
Speaker 11: What the hell am I going to do with them?
Speaker 4: I'm calling Marty.
Speaker 3: Good Good do it.
Speaker 11: That's a great place to start. Let's find out who
Speaker 11: told him that Arthur was calling Anakaiserson. Let's find out
Speaker 11: who tapped those phones.
Speaker 2: This this memorandum, even if it's authentic, who chied out?
Speaker 2: I highly I know what you did to Arthur's protected
Speaker 2: It belongs to you.
Speaker 7: North.
Speaker 11: I know you're killed.
Speaker 6: It's a cot and dry case of attorney clients.
Speaker 11: Now, that's just not the way to go here, Karen,
Speaker 11: For such a smart person, you really are lost, aren't you.
Speaker 2: This conversation is over, and I love that line for
Speaker 2: such a smart person. You really are lost, aren't you?
Speaker 2: And man' That's what Swinton plays when she's playing Karen Crowder.
Speaker 2: That last scene really is as rewatchable a scene as
Speaker 2: there is from the two thousands, thanks to both Tilda
Speaker 2: Swinton and George Clooney. Oh you know what else I
Speaker 2: haven't mentioned. She's in three Thousand Years of Longing, The
Speaker 2: Curious Case of Benjamin Button adaptation, wonderfully funny. In train Wreck.
Speaker 2: She's in Vanilla Sky, Memoria, and Mike Mills Thumbsucker. There
Speaker 2: are others. Those are just all movies I like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the filmography is incredible. Michael Clayton is the title
Speaker 3: that almost pushed her onto the board for me because
Speaker 3: it was all about the pre twenty ten work. As
Speaker 3: I said, you know, she was my number eight in
Speaker 3: the Best of the twenty tens, so there's nothing to
Speaker 3: complain about her work. She's been doing since Michael Clayton
Speaker 3: Burn after reading I think you mentioned prior to twenty
Speaker 3: ten adaptation. These are the ones that stood out to me.
Speaker 3: Broken Flowers, The White Witch, and Narnia.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Broken Flowers. I didn't say that another good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jarmush very good. And you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is fair. It probably isn't because I have
Speaker 3: another person I hope I get who also does you know,
Speaker 3: works often in smaller parts. But that's something that sort
Speaker 3: of held me back for this list. And then I
Speaker 3: just have in my notes here may have hit her
Speaker 3: stride post twenty ten question mark, which I know applies
Speaker 3: post twenty ten applies, and that's quite a stride. So
Speaker 3: as you were going through all those titles, the regret
Speaker 3: was definitely seeping in. But hey, I came here with
Speaker 3: her as an honorable mention, so I'm not gonna regret
Speaker 3: it all that much. Okay, I'm gonna grab him. I
Speaker 3: can't believe you didn't grab him. Yeah, how is how
Speaker 3: is Joaquin Phoenix here?
Speaker 2: So woking Phoenix? Somehow is it? Let me be clear,
Speaker 2: He's not here off my board.
Speaker 3: He's off everybody's board because I just took him. He
Speaker 3: just took him.
Speaker 2: It's crazy because he was my number one, and that
Speaker 2: was a slam dunk number one back in twenty twenty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and and nothing's really changed either as far as my
Speaker 2: perception of him, to be honest.
Speaker 3: Oh, of course, yeah, of course. And as I'm as
Speaker 3: I was describing how I thought about Tilda Swinton, it
Speaker 3: was very similar for him. Unimpeachable in the section the
Speaker 3: work where we considered last time, the period we considered
Speaker 3: last time, I don't even know if we talked much
Speaker 3: about Coman. Come on, I love him as joker. I
Speaker 3: think that only adds to his credibility for me. But
Speaker 3: let's look at prior to twenty ten. I feel like
Speaker 3: that period. Not only there's not only a lot of
Speaker 3: films here that show his promise, obviously much younger than
Speaker 3: I think, he has films that delivered on that promise already.
Speaker 3: To die For, I mean this is where everyone came
Speaker 3: to recognize that there was something special here Gladiator. You know,
Speaker 3: maybe not an amusing performance. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: would put it on that rushmore you've been talking about,
Speaker 3: but I do like it as a pivot from to
Speaker 3: Die For and just you know, kind of jumping into
Speaker 3: a big blockbuster and kind of grabbing it in a way,
Speaker 3: making his scenes his own.
Speaker 2: For sure, now the just would just want to be
Speaker 2: sure you're not counting to die for in the two thousands.
Speaker 3: Today, for is oh, remind me what it's in your nineties.
Speaker 2: It's like ninety five.
Speaker 3: Oh, never mind, Okay, strike that from the record.
Speaker 2: Everything you said still stands, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but that, But yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 3: that would would that have eh No, I don't think
Speaker 3: that would have swayed me because I also really like
Speaker 3: his work with James Gray. So we're talking about the Yards,
Speaker 3: we on the Night, two Lovers, and then you know,
Speaker 3: it was it was brief, but his collaborations with m
Speaker 3: Night Shamalan in Signs and The Village probably some of
Speaker 3: the if you set aside the sixth Sons, some of
Speaker 3: the best acting done in a Shamalan film. I really
Speaker 3: think he's quite strong in Walk the Line, even though
Speaker 3: that's not my favorite genre of film. You can usually
Speaker 3: get really strong performances from it. And Phoenix gave one
Speaker 3: and Walk the Line, So yeah, for me, you know,
Speaker 3: you add that to stuff like I'm Still here, the Master,
Speaker 3: Her in Her and Vice Joker and come on, come on, yeah,
Speaker 3: gotta have him glad.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 3: I've got a couple songs I were wrote in the
Speaker 3: Air Force.
Speaker 6: You got anything in the Air Force?
Speaker 3: Nope, I do.
Speaker 10: I hear the train coming, it's rolling around the Bend
Speaker 10: and nine seen the Sunshine scenes. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 10: stuck in fullsome prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic choice. And he was one in that mix
Speaker 2: when I said that Kate Blanchett I had at number five,
Speaker 2: but I had kind of two other choices that when
Speaker 2: it got there, would I really pull the trigger or
Speaker 2: would I go in a different direction. He was one
Speaker 2: of those names. The Mount Rushmore is pretty clear, Freddie
Speaker 2: Quell the Master, I think Dox Sportello and Haron Vice
Speaker 2: obviously his character in Her. And then it gets really
Speaker 2: difficult because you've got a character like Joe and Lynn
Speaker 2: Ramsey's you were never really here. I love him as
Speaker 2: Leonard and James Gray's two Lovers, which you mentioned. I
Speaker 2: know a lot of people would put Joker probably in
Speaker 2: the mix or perhaps in come On, Come On. The
Speaker 2: fact is there are a lot of good choices, maybe
Speaker 2: Josh since twenty twenty when I look at the titles,
Speaker 2: other than come On, come On, it's Joker, Joker too,
Speaker 2: Bo was afraid. Joker might have been twenty nineteen, so
Speaker 2: just before twenty twenty, but Joker to Bo is afraid.
Speaker 2: In Napoleon, I guess didn't do a ton to raise
Speaker 2: Phoenix in my estimation, but then he really didn't need
Speaker 2: to be raised.
Speaker 3: And I probably like some of those performances more than
Speaker 3: you exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, I am going to go with my third choice.
Speaker 3: If I can get past this pick, I will have
Speaker 3: everyone I want to have.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's the one that either is someone you
Speaker 2: of course have on your list, because when you think
Speaker 2: about the mount Rushmore of actors period, certainly living but
Speaker 2: living or dead, this is a name that's going to
Speaker 2: come up. This is a name that's going to come
Speaker 2: up in the conversation in the top five or ten.
Speaker 2: But I think you like to look at body of work,
Speaker 2: and quantity seems to matter to you, Josh, in addition
Speaker 2: to the quality, and I think that might rule this
Speaker 2: person out, but it's not going to rule him out.
Speaker 3: I know where you're going for me.
Speaker 2: I am going with Daniel day Lewis.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I love the pick. You're considered the pick
Speaker 3: an honorable mention, not who I was thinking of. Actually
Speaker 3: my first, my first honorable mention, so I would have
Speaker 3: gone there. I definitely gave the limited body of work consideration,
Speaker 3: and then said I don't care. I don't care that
Speaker 3: he only made what six six films in this period,
Speaker 3: two of which I haven't seen. I still don't care.
Speaker 3: I would I would have easily taken him if I
Speaker 3: had to go that direction, and happily so I can see.
Speaker 2: You can see those chiseled faces in the rock now,
Speaker 2: Daniel Plainview, there will be blood. Reynald Woodcock Phantom Thread Build,
Speaker 2: the Butcher Gang of New York, still one of the
Speaker 2: scariest non horror movie characters ever put on screen. And
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. If we were just doing
Speaker 2: an actor's draft, as I was alluding to earlier, like
Speaker 2: you're drafting a team. You don't know what movie you're
Speaker 2: going to make, but you know you're gonna need talent.
Speaker 2: Dandrew day Lewis is probably your number one pick, right,
Speaker 2: And when you think about those four characters, it's hard
Speaker 2: to come up with more disparate but equally compelling characters
Speaker 2: than those four. He is, as I said back when
Speaker 2: we revisited, there will be Blood, and I'm sure many
Speaker 2: others have said about him, to use a cliche, he's
Speaker 2: a force of nature on screen, and yet he is
Speaker 2: someone who can do and who does such subtle work,
Speaker 2: and he's someone who, with every expression and with every
Speaker 2: line reading, seems to be given you three or four
Speaker 2: different ways to interpret what might be going on in
Speaker 2: his head. And I think it's such a feat Josh,
Speaker 2: to be inscrutable, to inhabit characters that in their own
Speaker 2: way are inscrutable without being alienating or distancing, and also
Speaker 2: to be that big as his characters are without being
Speaker 2: alienating or distancing. You do still have to be drawn
Speaker 2: to these characters, and he can be distancing. My first
Speaker 2: time with There Will Be Blood, the calibration was off
Speaker 2: for me, But it has never been off with that
Speaker 2: character in that movie since it's never been off with
Speaker 2: Daniel day Lewis, since I think that is a film,
Speaker 2: and that's a performance that you can recalibrate yourself around.
Speaker 2: And I know everyone thinks about I've abandoned my child
Speaker 2: and I drink your milkshake, But when I think about
Speaker 2: Daniel Plainview, I think about the oil rig explosion and
Speaker 2: the urgency to get his son to bring him to safety,
Speaker 2: and then not too long after that, the train scene
Speaker 2: where he does abandon his son and the anguish the silent,
Speaker 2: mostly silent anguish that we see Daniel da Lewis's character
Speaker 2: going through.
Speaker 3: Do you just tell me how to run my family?
Speaker 3: It might be more important now that you've proven the field.
Speaker 3: We're offering to buy you out. One night.
Speaker 12: I'm going to come to you inside of your house
Speaker 12: wherever you're sleeping, and I'm going to cut your throat.
Speaker 2: Okay, So not much in terms of quantity. I think
Speaker 2: with those four movies and four performances, the quality is
Speaker 2: pretty high. Josh, and you said you hadn't seen the
Speaker 2: other two I have. Nine isn't great, but he's still
Speaker 2: Daniel day Lewis, and he's still entirely watchable and magnetic
Speaker 2: in that film. And you know what is a really
Speaker 2: good film that more people should see with another really
Speaker 2: good performance by Daniel day Lewis, The Ballad of Jack
Speaker 2: and Rose. So you do have six movies to go
Speaker 2: off of, all of which I would recommend seeing, and
Speaker 2: recommend seeing for his performances.
Speaker 3: Only fair if you've seen all of his films during
Speaker 3: this period, that you should get him in this draft.
Speaker 3: So that that worked out, okay, which means I can
Speaker 3: take the one person that I thought left at least
Speaker 3: we might both want it's Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after I realized it wasn't Tilda, I knew it
Speaker 2: had to be scar Joe because we both had her
Speaker 2: quite high in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: We did. And the instinct might be to say, well, sure,
Speaker 3: she's had a great run the last ten fifteen years,
Speaker 3: but has she been around that long? And actually she
Speaker 3: has because she came to the screen as I don't
Speaker 3: know if you'd say a child actor, but a younger
Speaker 3: teen actor, certainly in the horror Swhisper and and I
Speaker 3: remember calling out her performance in that, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of sitting up and like, who is this kid? And
Speaker 3: it's only been proven from there. So if you look
Speaker 3: at her filmography pre twenty ten, she has the prestige
Speaker 3: match point. Here's the big one, here's the one. The
Speaker 3: fact that Lost in Translation came in this period for
Speaker 3: me is probably enough to say, okay, you're still you're
Speaker 3: still ready for this top five in this draft. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the younger performances are strong. Think about something like a
Speaker 3: film I like people have probably forgotten in Good Company,
Speaker 3: but Ghost World, which has become something of a cult film.
Speaker 3: The Cohen's the man who wasn't there. You know, she
Speaker 3: has a smaller part but is good. And you know,
Speaker 3: here's here's what pushed her over the edge. Honestly, it's
Speaker 3: the fact that since twenty twenty, since we did those
Speaker 3: lists and we both had her on ours, she had
Speaker 3: a Asteroid City, which I think we both had is
Speaker 3: like one of the favorite performances of the year of
Speaker 3: the year, and you know what, Hey, she's a lot
Speaker 3: of fun and fly Me to the Moon, so throw
Speaker 3: that in here as well. But I was a little surprised, honestly,
Speaker 3: Adam to see when I sat down and looked at
Speaker 3: the work outside of that twenty ten to twenty twenty
Speaker 3: period and that it resonated held up and I wanted
Speaker 3: to have her on this list too.
Speaker 7: I'm not a good mother. I love my daughter, but
Speaker 7: I'm not a good mother because, unfortunately for her, she's
Speaker 7: not my first priority on account there's always already the
Speaker 7: thing I planned to do next. I love my daughter,
Speaker 7: by the way I love all my children. We have
Speaker 7: a magical time when we're together. I have another girl
Speaker 7: and a boy. They lived with my second ex.
Speaker 6: Husband in Utah.
Speaker 7: He rarely sees them either. I wish I felt guilty
Speaker 7: at least, but I don't experience that emotion. If I
Speaker 7: understand it correctly, I played it.
Speaker 6: Of course, you never feel guilty in real life.
Speaker 2: I'm looking back at my notes now from twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and I mentioned the three great performances in three great films,
Speaker 2: thing Josh, I have Marriage Story and Under the Skin
Speaker 2: and her Indible Right, I'm not even listing their lost
Speaker 2: in translation. And let's be clear, I may not love
Speaker 2: it as much as you and Sam do, but I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure I gave it four and a half stars,
Speaker 2: and I think her performance is pretty wonderful, so it
Speaker 2: belongs in that mix. There's a very clear Mount Rushmore there.
Speaker 2: And I forgot the Ghost World was two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: I had to look that up. I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to catch you in another nineties blunder, but no,
Speaker 2: that's two thousand and one. And yeah, you had Asteroid
Speaker 2: City into the mix. You've got Hail Caesar in the mix.
Speaker 2: She is in those MCU turns.
Speaker 3: You did catch me. Horse Whisper was too early, yes,
Speaker 3: of course eight yes, take that one off the board,
Speaker 3: but I'm still putting her hud By less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a wonderful choice, and she was in
Speaker 2: my top ten for this draft. It was certainly possible
Speaker 2: that it would get to her. But you got her
Speaker 2: with your third choice, which brings me to my fourth pick,
Speaker 2: and I am going to take the person I have
Speaker 2: at number four, an actor who's praises I was singing
Speaker 2: just last week when we were doing our top twenty
Speaker 2: five films of the century. The actor is certainly one
Speaker 2: of my favorites. Denzel Washington, Josh the Mount Rushmore, and
Speaker 2: if you'd go here, yeah, The Mount Rushmore is Detective
Speaker 2: Keith Frazier from Inside Man. I don't think Training Day
Speaker 2: is an incredible film. I think it's a good film.
Speaker 2: That performance, of course, is a detective Alonzo Harris is
Speaker 2: charismatic as hell. Flight is a movie I was mixed on,
Speaker 2: but I think that performance as Whip Whittaker is among
Speaker 2: Denzel Washington's best. And then I'll go ahead and throw
Speaker 2: in a movie that is beloved by me and almost
Speaker 2: nobody else. His turn is Creasy in Man on Fire.
Speaker 2: There are much more respectable performances to throw in a
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore for Denzel, though from this period. Ben Marco
Speaker 2: in what I think is a really good remake by
Speaker 2: Jonathan dem of the Manchurian Candidate. It is Troy Maxon
Speaker 2: in Fences, Frank Lucas an American gangster. His turn is
Speaker 2: Macbeth in the Tragedy of Macbeth. All of those are good,
Speaker 2: great performances. But he is an actor, and I think
Speaker 2: this is the key. And those are good movies for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But the thing about Denzel is he elevates everything he
Speaker 2: is in. When you have material, and he has made films,
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you some titles, Josh. When you
Speaker 2: have material that nobody is going to argue is necessarily
Speaker 2: great cinema, it still delivers legitimate entertainment because of Denzel
Speaker 2: Washington and his commitment to the material and to his character.
Speaker 2: Deja Vu, the Book of Eli, Gladiator too, the Magnificent Seven,
Speaker 2: and yeah, exhibit A would be any slash all of
Speaker 2: the Equalizer movies, which would be otherwise unwatchable. And yet
Speaker 2: something about the earnestness, the sincerity of that character and
Speaker 2: the conviction that Denzel Washington brings to those roles makes
Speaker 2: those movies something Josh, that at minimum, I can watch
Speaker 2: on an airplane, and you know what, at the very
Speaker 2: bottom of this list for an actor I already adore
Speaker 2: who's given me performances like Keith Fraser an inside man
Speaker 2: and like Alonzo Harris. That just rounds out what I
Speaker 2: think makes him so special as an actor.
Speaker 6: I'm still crying out giving me your phone.
Speaker 3: Right or left?
Speaker 6: What you mean and it?
Speaker 3: Are you right or left handed?
Speaker 13: Right?
Speaker 8: Call nine one one, tell them the truth about what
Speaker 8: happened in it, and I get Daddy's money.
Speaker 3: He's not going to save you this time. You understand, Yes, sir,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. No, her name is Amy. Give
Speaker 3: me your left hand, Give me.
Speaker 2: Your left hand, and yes, I'm leading out. Remember the
Speaker 2: Titans in John Q. Because I don't care for them
Speaker 2: that much. Even though, yes, of course he's Denzel. He's
Speaker 2: very good in those movies.
Speaker 3: Well, that's just it. I'd be tempted to say, you know,
Speaker 3: he's never been bad, except I haven't seen everything he's done,
Speaker 3: and maybe there's a chance he is in something and
Speaker 3: I avoided it because I didn't have a good instinct
Speaker 3: about it. But everything you've mentioned pretty much, he's fantastic
Speaker 3: in Uh. He was number seven on my board, so
Speaker 3: definitely in the mix for me, and you highlighted the ones,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, I don't think think it should be
Speaker 3: his best actor win in Training Day, but it was
Speaker 3: really these titles that had him this high for me.
Speaker 3: Manchuri Candidate, Inside Man, Flight Fences, the Tragedy of Macbeth,
Speaker 3: and maybe the poster child for you what you were
Speaker 3: talking about him elevating material Gladiator too, such fun in
Speaker 3: that one. So yeah, definitely in consideration for me. All right,
Speaker 3: So we are up to my fourth pick, which means
Speaker 3: you only have one left.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: This is someone I wanted on my board at number four.
Speaker 3: But I think it could also be a gift for you, Adam,
Speaker 3: because I think this will offer you a chance to
Speaker 3: get someone who might be your last pick. You've been
Speaker 3: surprising me though, so maybe not. I'm taking Tony Leung
Speaker 3: instead of Leonardo DiCaprio. You can have Leo, thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm taking Tony, and I think of them as a pair,
Speaker 3: of course, because Young was just so good in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two's Infernal Affairs, which Martin Scarcese remade in
Speaker 3: six with DiCaprio as the departed. I do think I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this too today. They kind of share
Speaker 3: equality in some of their films, not all their films.
Speaker 3: They can be dreamboat weasels when they want to be,
Speaker 3: and I love that. I mean, those are my favorite
Speaker 3: performance of DiCaprio, and I love when Leung has leaned
Speaker 3: into that as well. Let's focus on him though now,
Speaker 3: because this is one that Yeah, had that instinct of
Speaker 3: don't forget to don't forget to look up what he's
Speaker 3: done in this period and holy smokes, so Tony Deong
Speaker 3: gets this era started with obviously the one everyone thinks
Speaker 3: of in the Mood for Love and his presence opposite
Speaker 3: Maggie Chung there in one carwise masterpiece. I mean, it
Speaker 3: should be enough to put him on this list on
Speaker 3: its own. Then in two thousand and two, he was
Speaker 3: in Zongimo's Hero. This reunited him with Maggie Chung. They
Speaker 3: played dueling assassins. It's a martial arts drama and it's
Speaker 3: kind of the flip of in the Mood for Love
Speaker 3: where they're they're giving in to all this fiery emoting
Speaker 3: compared to the subdued nature they had to have in
Speaker 3: the earlier film. So yeah, two thousand and two Infernal
Speaker 3: Affairs that same year as I mentioned he's the undercover
Speaker 3: cop as was Leo. Now, I wasn't as high on
Speaker 3: Wang Kar Wai's pseudo follow up to Two in the
Speaker 3: Mood for Love twenty forty six, but Leung is still
Speaker 3: mesmerizing in it. On Lee's Lust Caution, which I think
Speaker 3: has been forgotten in Lee's filmography but is an incredibly
Speaker 3: fascinating erotic spy thriller that Leung is incredible in. We
Speaker 3: on the show, Adam reviewed him quite favorably. If I
Speaker 3: remember in another Wan Kar Wai film, The Grand Master,
Speaker 3: that was twenty thirteen, and you know what, he brought
Speaker 3: more gravitas to the MCU than it probably deserved in
Speaker 3: Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, which
Speaker 3: I insist is a very good MCU film. So those
Speaker 3: are the list of films Leong films, just the ones
Speaker 3: I've seen, And if you look at his filmography, there's
Speaker 3: clearly a lot of non English language stuff that I
Speaker 3: need to catch up with. I feel good about this
Speaker 3: pick just because there is so much more I need
Speaker 3: to see, and I think anything I choose to watch
Speaker 3: is only going to bolster my choice. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: taking Tony Leong with my number four pick.
Speaker 2: Good pick my number three actor of the two thousands,
Speaker 2: and that was largely on the strength of, of course,
Speaker 2: Infernal Affairs, a movie I love and in the mood
Speaker 2: for love. And yes, this is a really nice connection
Speaker 2: you're making between the two movie stars here, and they
Speaker 2: do have that connection in terms of the material between
Speaker 2: Infernal Affairs and The Departed. I am you are correct,
Speaker 2: Josh taking Leo Dicapriaz, and I feel really good about
Speaker 2: it taking him at number five closing out my draft.
Speaker 2: He was my number one of the two thousands. He
Speaker 2: was my number three of the twenty tens. Picking a
Speaker 2: Mount Rushmore was tough for me. Billy Costigan from The
Speaker 2: Departed is there? I think that's number one, even though
Speaker 2: for a lot of people it would probably be a
Speaker 2: different Martin Scorsese performance. It would be Jordan Belfort and
Speaker 2: the Wolf of Wall Street. Well, he'd be in my
Speaker 2: top three or four. And then it's one of those
Speaker 2: Quentin Tarantino collaborations, Rick Dalton Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and it's very tempting to go with another Quentin Tarantino collaboration,
Speaker 2: Calvin Candy in Django. Unchained on that table top.
Speaker 12: If you lift those palms off that tuntal cell tabletop,
Speaker 12: mister pooch is going to lose both fails that sought off.
Speaker 12: There had been a lot of less set around the
Speaker 12: dinner table yet tonight, but that you can't.
Speaker 2: Believe it's the movie.
Speaker 5: Would you be so kind as a collective pistol hanging
Speaker 5: off these boys hipsy.
Speaker 2: I think if I'm rounding out that Rushmore, I would
Speaker 2: go away from Tarantino, I'd go away from Scorsese, and
Speaker 2: I'd go with Frank Abagnail. I'd go with Spielberg's catch
Speaker 2: me if you can. A weasel you're right, and a
Speaker 2: dreamboat too, a pretty dreamy exactly weasel in that film.
Speaker 2: And I do love that relationship, of course, that that
Speaker 2: father son relationship that inevitably builds between him and Tom
Speaker 2: Hanks's character in that film, even though that's not something
Speaker 2: either of them are consciously looking for. Hugh Glass, his
Speaker 2: Oscar winning turn in the Revenant is also very good.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not a huge fan of that movie.
Speaker 2: But you also have Don Cobb an inception. You have
Speaker 2: his performances in other Martin Scorsese movies like Shutter Island,
Speaker 2: in Gangs of New York with DiCaprio. I think the
Speaker 2: only reason maybe he's not higher for me, Josh, is
Speaker 2: when you look at his filmography. And actually I wanted
Speaker 2: to say this about Leung. I think what's hard for me?
Speaker 2: And you alluded to this a little bit. I just
Speaker 2: haven't seen so many of his films when I look
Speaker 2: at IMDb since twenty ten, and DiCaprio just hasn't made
Speaker 2: very many movies in the last five or seven years.
Speaker 2: But the ones he has made once upon a Time
Speaker 2: in Hollywood stands out. Killers of the Flower Moon stands
Speaker 2: out as another one that I think is a great performance.
Speaker 2: It does all come back to The Departed for me.
Speaker 2: And you may recall, just maybe a month ago or
Speaker 2: so here on the show a little over a month ago,
Speaker 2: I talked about how that's my comfort food. I was
Speaker 2: on a plane coming back from my trip to Italy
Speaker 2: and I threw in that Departed and I said, there
Speaker 2: was that one line reading that scene that I just
Speaker 2: cannot get enough of, that scene with Vera Farmega where
Speaker 2: he is confronting her as a therapist and making her
Speaker 2: very uncomfortable, basically because he just refuses to you allow
Speaker 2: her to get away with her usual bs that she
Speaker 2: probably gets away with with most cops who come into
Speaker 2: her office. And he's very confrontational but also very incisive,
Speaker 2: and I think it's DiCaprio maybe at his best. I
Speaker 2: think it's the best scene in the film and one
Speaker 2: of DiCaprio's best scenes overall. And that line reading about
Speaker 2: what the policeman signed up for, well, let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and hear it.
Speaker 5: So do they all come in here and cry? Your cops?
Speaker 13: Sometimes they do?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Sure, Sometimes they cry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if they've had trouble at home, if they've had
Speaker 4: to use their weapons.
Speaker 5: Use their weapons. Let me tell you something. They signed
Speaker 5: up to use their weapons, most of them, all right,
Speaker 5: but they watch enough TV so they know they have
Speaker 5: to weep after they use their weapons. There is no
Speaker 5: one more fullish than a cop except for a cop
Speaker 5: on TV.
Speaker 2: With your theory, Josh, how about his character in Killers
Speaker 2: of the Flower Moon? Just full blown weasel right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, though though you know his his eventual wife
Speaker 3: thinks he's quite the dream That's true. Comments on that,
Speaker 3: that's true.
Speaker 2: But maybe maybe the weaseleest of all of DiCaprio's characters.
Speaker 3: Fair to say fair to say yes for sure.
Speaker 2: Your final choice, Josh, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know if you're ready for this, Adam, I think I
Speaker 3: think you're going to want this to be struck from
Speaker 3: the Film Spotting records, get smirching this whole exercise. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you saw, but for Film Spotting family members,
Speaker 3: we have this discord set up.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I'm on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, okay, Yeah. There was an interesting conversation where
Speaker 3: should a comic actor be considered for this list? A
Speaker 3: comic first actor, I think, is how we were talking about.
Speaker 3: It's somebody who's, you know, not a dramatic actor who's
Speaker 3: been funny in occasional roles, or even a comedian who
Speaker 3: eventually went for full drama, but someone who was just
Speaker 3: pure comedy. And a lot of names were thrown out.
Speaker 3: I considered many of them some good choices for me.
Speaker 3: There was only one realistic possibility, and once I added
Speaker 3: these up, I just could not stop myself from wanting
Speaker 3: to draft Will Ferrell.
Speaker 2: Really, Okay, that's not where you were going. I know,
Speaker 2: I know, I thought for sure and I didn't hear
Speaker 2: that discord. I thought for sure or yeah, you were
Speaker 2: going a little bit more respectable with John c Riley
Speaker 2: or Bill Murray. And of course, considering your love for
Speaker 2: Murray and your love for his performances in Wes Anderson films,
Speaker 2: how is it that you're going with Will Ferrell instead, Josh.
Speaker 3: Let me just quickly say about Murray is that you know,
Speaker 3: his golden age, though he's done good stuff since kind
Speaker 3: of ended around twenty fifteen, and in terms of that
Speaker 3: stuff that would really put him at the top. He
Speaker 3: was on my Honorable Mentions list though on my board
Speaker 3: would have taken him if I needed to go in
Speaker 3: that direction. But for Farrell, you know, Murray is also
Speaker 3: someone the movies that we think of him as being
Speaker 3: great and are also great, and Farrell that's not always
Speaker 3: the case. But this is a list about the performances
Speaker 3: at him. It's not necessarily a list about the movies
Speaker 3: as a whole. So even if his comedies tend to
Speaker 3: be uneven on the whole, I'm gonna list some that
Speaker 3: aren't necessarily all that great. Who has had a better
Speaker 3: run of comic characters since two thousand than these names?
Speaker 3: And I'm just picturing listeners, I hope just the smiles
Speaker 3: growing wider and wider with each one. Mugatu in Zulander, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Frank the Tank in Old School, of course, Buddy the
Speaker 3: elf Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, Chazz Wedding Crashers, small part,
Speaker 3: but crucial, crucial to what that movie is all about.
Speaker 3: Adam Ricky, Bobby Talladega Knights. He's in the title for
Speaker 3: goodness sake. As you know, so many of these characters
Speaker 3: are we get another Chas Chas, Michael Michaels Blades of Glory,
Speaker 3: Jackie Moon semi pro. Things are a little sketchy movie
Speaker 3: wise there, but great characters. Brennan and Stepbrothers. I love Stepbrothers.
Speaker 3: I also love the other guys where he's alongside Marley
Speaker 3: Wahlberg as Alan Gamble. You know, I mean I haven't
Speaker 3: brought this up maybe in five years at least. Adam
Speaker 3: Casa Daemi Padre Armando. I mean, I haven't forgotten that
Speaker 3: rest of the world has forgotten. I have not President
Speaker 3: Business among other parts in the Lego movie, and of
Speaker 3: course his counterpart, Lord Business's cousin mattel Ceo in Barbie.
Speaker 2: Are any women in charge?
Speaker 3: Listen?
Speaker 8: I know exactly where you're going with this, and I
Speaker 8: have to say, I really resent it. We are a
Speaker 8: company literally made of women. We had a woman CEO
Speaker 8: in the nineties, and there was another one at some
Speaker 8: other time.
Speaker 3: So that's that's two right there.
Speaker 8: Women are the freaking foundation of this very.
Speaker 3: Long, phallic building. You're my Legit may vary on the ease.
Speaker 3: There might be some of you like better that I
Speaker 3: that I missed. I didn't even mention. That is an
Speaker 3: astonishing run of ridiculousness.
Speaker 2: You forget all the sun contest the story of.
Speaker 3: Good one another good one, Thank you, thank you. I
Speaker 3: mean think about that for an snl alum to keep
Speaker 3: this up in all these different ways for over twenty
Speaker 3: five years. Okay, you need some drama in the mix.
Speaker 3: You need to not feel terrible about this being on
Speaker 3: the film spotting web page. Be a little bit respectable.
Speaker 3: He's very good in Stranger than Fiction.
Speaker 2: And I've got no apologies, Josh, I'm.
Speaker 3: Okay, good good and Will and Harper. Let's just throw
Speaker 3: Will in Harper. Sure, I know it's a documentaries playing itself,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, just just for being a part of
Speaker 3: that project, maybe that'll help swing a few folks over
Speaker 3: to my side. And I won't be entirely public.
Speaker 8: That's nice way to go, nay boy oh Man. That
Speaker 8: is good news, good news.
Speaker 2: That is our actors and actresses of the century so far. Draft.
Speaker 2: You can find our complete list anytime you would like
Speaker 2: at film spotting dot net slash list to quickly review
Speaker 2: Josh hit him with your five picks.
Speaker 3: Kate Blanchett, Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Leung, Will Ferrell.
Speaker 3: And that was my board. I thought we might both
Speaker 3: come away happy. I think you are too right.
Speaker 2: Philip Seymour Hoffman is my number one, till the Swinton,
Speaker 2: Daniel Day, Lewis, Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio. That's my board.
Speaker 2: Other than the fact that I had Blanchett at five
Speaker 2: DiCaprio at six, and I was gonna make a final
Speaker 2: call between them at the last minute if that choice
Speaker 2: was there, that choice was not. I have no complaints
Speaker 2: about my board. We hope you enjoyed this frivolous little exercise.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear your picks. You can email
Speaker 2: us feedback at filmspotting dot net.
Speaker 3: Listening is the number one thing you can do to
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Speaker 3: film spottingfamily dot com. We want to thank family member
Speaker 3: Adam Graff in Portland, Maine. Adam's letterbox handle is Linus
Speaker 3: calledwell seventy five. Went to check today and yep, I
Speaker 3: am following Adam, speaking of the discord, the Film Spotting
Speaker 3: Family discord, I went through a flurry. I had been
Speaker 3: behind on people sharing their letterbox profiles. Finally some time
Speaker 3: opened up. I just went on there and went through
Speaker 3: a burst of following. So apologies if you're a family
Speaker 3: member and I haven't followed you there yet. Hopefully I'll
Speaker 3: catch up at some point. But yeah, good to follow
Speaker 3: Adam there as well. Linus caledwell seventy five.
Speaker 2: A reference to Ocean's eleven, so we must have a
Speaker 2: Soderberg fan in our midst. Adam writes about how he
Speaker 2: found us. I think it was a simple Google search
Speaker 2: back in twenty fifteen, when I was first getting into
Speaker 2: podcasts and looking for something about movies. His letterbox top
Speaker 2: four Into the Wild, the Assassination of Jesse James by
Speaker 2: the coward Robert Ford in Bruges, and The Tree of Life.
Speaker 2: Not bad, a favorite movie he revisited recently, but Bett's
Speaker 2: Feast a random film or filmmaker that you love.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: This submission came in before the Oscars. Filmmaker Sean Baker
Speaker 2: film Cutter's Way. He says, I think the filmmaker and
Speaker 2: the movie are terribly underrated, but maybe not now with
Speaker 2: the Palm Door Win. Yeah, and maybe not now.
Speaker 3: With that us just getting started.
Speaker 2: Actually a movie you credit with becoming a sinophile, The
Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings trilogy, especially watching every second of
Speaker 2: the bonus features of all three extended edition DVDs and
Speaker 2: getting a sense of how much work and collaboration goes
Speaker 2: into the craft of filmmaking. Finally, a book about movies
Speaker 2: or movie making. This was Hollywood for Gotten Stars and
Speaker 2: Stories by Clara Valderrama, which helped teach me about some
Speaker 2: of the unknown aspects of the beginning of Hollywood and
Speaker 2: let me to watch the greatest dance sequence in all
Speaker 2: of Cinema, which is the performance by the Nicholas Brothers
Speaker 2: with Cab Callaway at the end of Stormy Weather. We
Speaker 2: thank Adam for being a part of the Film Spotting
Speaker 2: Family and for all of the years of listening. In
Speaker 2: addition to keeping us doing what we're doing. Your support
Speaker 2: comes with perps. You get to listen early in ad free,
Speaker 2: You get a weekly newsletter, You get exclusive opportunities like
Speaker 2: being part of the Film Spotting Family discord. You get
Speaker 2: our monthly bonus shows like the quarterly Film Spotting Advisory
Speaker 2: Board meeting. We just dropped audio of that into our
Speaker 2: family members' feeds, and we are just under a week
Speaker 2: away from recording our main bonus draft with our Film
Speaker 2: Spotting Madness Bracket contest winner Ricky Kendall. We are doing
Speaker 2: dead directors.
Speaker 3: I think there's gonna be some more fighting with that one. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's my instinct.
Speaker 2: Yes. And we'll wait to reveal the draft order and
Speaker 2: how we came upon that draft order when we record
Speaker 2: the show. But let's just say I won't be getting
Speaker 2: my number one choice probably.
Speaker 3: I don't think I will either. We were both way
Speaker 3: off on our guests. We were way off for that.
Speaker 2: You can learn more at Film spottingfamily dot com. Did
Speaker 2: you show up in Vienna that December?
Speaker 3: Did you?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 8: I couldn't, But did you?
Speaker 5: I need to know?
Speaker 3: It's important why if you didn't?
Speaker 2: Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawk there in Before Sunset. Next week, Josh,
Speaker 2: we plan to revisit the second film in Richard Linklater's
Speaker 2: Before trilogy as part of our ongoing Pantheon project. Yes,
Speaker 2: all three films in that trilogy are currently in the
Speaker 2: Film Spotting pantheon. But we have never discussed in depth
Speaker 2: Before Sunset, and we really hadn't discussed Before Sunrise either
Speaker 2: until that is our recent Film Spotting Fest. We closed
Speaker 2: out the fest with a Q and A. Our friend
Speaker 2: Scott Tobias joined us for that. So next week on
Speaker 2: the show, you're going to hear that Q and A,
Speaker 2: but you are also going to hear our conversation about
Speaker 2: Before Sunset. Now, Before Sunset did not make your top
Speaker 2: twenty five of the century last week. I think I
Speaker 2: had it at number two. Should I be worried about
Speaker 2: your Sunset and a Visor too bold?
Speaker 3: No, you shouldn't be worried. That's a wonderful movie. And
Speaker 3: the question I have that I'm curious about I'm eager
Speaker 3: to watch it again. Is will it bump its way
Speaker 3: even higher? And maybe, as some people have it, supplant
Speaker 3: Before Sunrise as my favorite in the series because that
Speaker 3: seems like a take that for me, at least, it
Speaker 3: would require some time to get around to. But I
Speaker 3: can understand after years of not only think about these
Speaker 3: movies but just living that you could get there. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I haven't watched Before Sunset and I don't know how
Speaker 3: long and can't wait to do it. Do it for
Speaker 3: this conversation.
Speaker 2: More about the Film Spotting Pantheon, which is effectively our
Speaker 2: movie hall of Fame at film Spotting dot Net slash Pantheon.
Speaker 2: Also next week we will wrap up our Andre Tarkowsky
Speaker 2: Marathon with nineteen eighty three's Nostalgia. For a schedule of
Speaker 2: future shows film Spotting dot Net slash episodes, we do
Speaker 2: have some good stuff coming up that unfortunately you won't
Speaker 2: be here for, Josh, You're going to be off in
Speaker 2: Japan having meet up with film Spotting listeners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I'd just throw it out there see
Speaker 3: what happens, and there's a good group getting together. The
Speaker 3: list is growing, I mean we're we might have to
Speaker 3: find a new place if we're get to be too
Speaker 3: big for the place. We have plans, So it's great,
Speaker 3: can't wait to do that. And yeah, just spend a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks traveling. But unfortunately random and Michael Phillips
Speaker 3: at a screening last night and he's gonna come in.
Speaker 3: I'm going to miss a couple of good top fives.
Speaker 2: It sounds like, yeah, well, we're gonna do Mission Impossible,
Speaker 2: the Final Reckoning, and we are going to do our
Speaker 2: top five movie stunts. So if you have any options
Speaker 2: that you would like us to be sure not to overlook,
Speaker 2: send us a note feedback at film spotting dot net.
Speaker 2: And then the week after that, how about this, Aisha
Speaker 2: Harris is going to sit in for a full show.
Speaker 2: She's going to guest host and in honor of the
Speaker 2: thirtieth anniversary of Clueless, we're gonna give that the sacred
Speaker 2: cow treatment. She wrote about Clueless in her book Wanna
Speaker 2: Be Fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't wait for both of those. You probably wouldn't,
Speaker 3: but just you know, remember folks like Keaton and Chaplin
Speaker 3: for your stunts, right, it doesn't have to be the
Speaker 3: big budget action stuff for those lists. At least that's
Speaker 3: what I'd want to consider.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I've already decided that it's all fast and furious.
Speaker 3: I mean, that is a completely honorable way to go.
Speaker 2: As well, speaking of the Pantheon, as we just were,
Speaker 2: we did want to note the passing last week of
Speaker 2: director James Foley. He has a film in the film
Speaker 2: Spotting Pantheon. It is nineteen ninety two's Glen Garry Glenn Ross.
Speaker 2: Fully also directed a couple of Fifty Shades sequels. He
Speaker 2: directed nineteen eighty six Is at Close Range, starring Sean
Speaker 2: Penn and Christopher Walking. Somehow, Josh at Close Range remains
Speaker 2: a blind spot for me. Maybe in honor of James Fully,
Speaker 2: I'll finally watch it. Have you seen it?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. If I had it, I shouldn't have.
Speaker 3: I wasn't supposed to sure, but may may have snuck
Speaker 3: it on VHS, you know, a year or two later
Speaker 3: at a neighbor's house. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, he directed the stalker thriller Fear with Mark Wahlberg,
Speaker 2: and he directed Madonna in Who's That Girl?
Speaker 3: Rip? James Fully and yeah, you know, speaking to Madonna
Speaker 3: and looking over some of his work, his filmography. If
Speaker 3: you grew up on Madonna music videos, a handful of
Speaker 3: those were fully as well.
Speaker 2: I wasn't aware of that.
Speaker 3: This week, on our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show,
Speaker 3: looking at cinema's present via its past, they have a
Speaker 3: new pairing. They are diving back into the MCU with Thunderbolts,
Speaker 3: and they'll be pairing that with nineteen ninety nine's not
Speaker 3: so super superhero movie mystery Men, which I think has
Speaker 3: grown in appreciation over the years. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's reached cult status yet, but yeah, I like that
Speaker 3: one a fair amount when it came out. Will be
Speaker 3: interesting to hear them talk about it in connection with Thunderbolts.
Speaker 3: Mystery Men had Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy,
Speaker 3: Greg kinnear. So pretty solid cast there, pretty fun film.
Speaker 3: New episodes of The Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday,
Speaker 3: and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6: Okay, there's not a word or a sentence or a
Speaker 6: concept that you can illuminate for me. There is one
Speaker 6: thing of the reason I keep coming here true November fourteenth,
Speaker 6: nineteen fifteen nine, three years ago, three years that it's
Speaker 6: all the money here from you.
Speaker 2: Philip Seymour, Hoffmann Oscar nominated three times for Best Supporting Actor.
Speaker 2: Josh didn't win for any of those, but he did
Speaker 2: win Best Actor for that role Capodi back at the
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven Oscars. He was my first choice
Speaker 2: in our Actors of the Century draft. Now that we've
Speaker 2: done the hard work of narrowing down the best actors
Speaker 2: and actresses of the last twenty five years, it is
Speaker 2: our listeners turns. It's full time. We got five picks each.
Speaker 2: They only get one pick, and they've got six options
Speaker 2: to choose from however they want to do it. The
Speaker 2: best actor or actress definitive actor or actress of the
Speaker 2: last twenty five years, their favorite, they can go however
Speaker 2: their heart leads them. The options are we went with
Speaker 2: three each from our lists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, three from each of our lists. And also, you know,
Speaker 3: if you think we were misguided, there is the other category.
Speaker 3: But the names are Kate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel da Lewis,
Speaker 3: Philip Seymour, Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson, and Joaquin Phoenix. So give
Speaker 3: it some thought, look at those filmographies and vote in
Speaker 3: that poll. Also leave a comment. You can do that
Speaker 3: at Film spotting dot.
Speaker 13: Net Sonata, but should slow to This is Tima.
Speaker 2: That's from Andre Tarkowski's Stalker, which was released in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine. It's the fourth film in our Tarkovsky Blind
Speaker 2: Spots Marathon. Our mission with this marathon to complete the
Speaker 2: Russian Masters filmography. I think, Josh, you're now already there.
Speaker 3: I'm there. I can say I've seen them all and
Speaker 3: I only need to see each of them ten more
Speaker 3: times to feel like I've wrapped my arms around them.
Speaker 2: I've got one more to go. The film spotting marathons,
Speaker 2: which we do once or twice a year, are our
Speaker 2: opportunities to fill in cinematic blind spots. We've done marathons
Speaker 2: dedicated to directors like Tarkovsky, to genres, to various countries
Speaker 2: or region specific cinemas. We both had a couple of
Speaker 2: Tarkowski films we needed to catch up with, including for
Speaker 2: me this week's film, which is not just my biggest
Speaker 2: Tarkovski blind spot, but among my biggest cinematic blind spots period.
Speaker 2: Stalker did come to theaters in seventy nine, but mostly
Speaker 2: in what was then the USSR. It didn't make it
Speaker 2: to the US until the early eighties and earn it's
Speaker 2: reputation thanks to art house screenings throughout the decade when
Speaker 2: cit sounded spanned its once a decade Greatest Films of
Speaker 2: All Time lists from a top ten to a top
Speaker 2: one hundred. In nineteen ninety two, Stalker made the list
Speaker 2: of forty one, one of three Tarkovski movies to make
Speaker 2: the cut. Curiously, it missed the list in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two. Tarkovsky's Solaris made it for the first time instead,
Speaker 2: but it was back in the top fifty and twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: and it came in at number forty three on the
Speaker 2: most recent list in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Stalker is based loosely on the nineteen seventy two Russian
Speaker 3: novel Roadside Picnic, which was about the aftermath of an
Speaker 3: extraterrestrial visit. Here, it follows a may and a guide
Speaker 3: played by Alexander Kadanovsky, who risks arrest and imprisonment to
Speaker 3: lead a small group through a dangerous area known as
Speaker 3: the Zone. Inside the Zone is the Room, this mythical
Speaker 3: place that has the reputation of being able to fulfill
Speaker 3: your greatest desires. So adam, yeah, this was the title
Speaker 3: that I think absolutely drew you to this marathon, and
Speaker 3: I have already suggested in previous shows that, based on
Speaker 3: the movie's metaphysical sci fi premise, it's similar to the
Speaker 3: spirit of Tarkovski's nineteen seventy two Solaris a movie you
Speaker 3: do love. I cannot wait. This has also been the
Speaker 3: moment for me of the marathon is getting to hear
Speaker 3: from someone who just watched Stalker for the first time
Speaker 3: what they made of it, because I don't think it's
Speaker 3: as dense as some of the Tarkovski films we've watched
Speaker 3: or even discussed on this show. Take take Mirror for example.
Speaker 2: I've got to figure it out.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that, but
Speaker 3: I think I'm just excited because I do think it's
Speaker 3: one you can come away from a first viewing with
Speaker 3: and having at least a concrete reaction too.
Speaker 2: So What's Yours Solaris still carries the mantle as my
Speaker 2: favorite sci fi Tarkovski and favorite Tarkovsky period. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: the one that stirs me both in intellectually and emotionally
Speaker 2: the most. We'll see if that changes with one blind
Speaker 2: Spot remaining next week here as part of the marathon.
Speaker 2: But I do understand the reverence for Stalker because I
Speaker 2: just finished it earlier today, and I still feel like
Speaker 2: I'm a bit in its trance. Despite its slowness and
Speaker 2: often its stillness, Tarkotski's tracks pull you and his trio
Speaker 2: inexorably forward. If we ever do a top five movies
Speaker 2: that demand you get on their rhythm, Stalker is a
Speaker 2: lock because not only is it precise in its deliberation,
Speaker 2: but the sound design features the recurring sound of a
Speaker 2: train chugging along at a reasonable pace, So there's this
Speaker 2: near constant thrum just kind of carrying you along. And
Speaker 2: I said inexorably because there is a sense of inevitability
Speaker 2: from the opening scene and of obsession, Josh. That reminded
Speaker 2: me of Close Encounters of the third time.
Speaker 3: I know it, I know which. I don't know why
Speaker 3: it never struck me this way?
Speaker 2: Behuh it did this time though?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, for sure, oh right away? Right away.
Speaker 2: Coincidentally was released at the end of seventy seven, and
Speaker 2: Tarkowsky started shooting this film early in seventy seven, so
Speaker 2: definitely wasn't an influence, right Something was in the air
Speaker 2: back in seventy seven. What prompted that thought was that opening,
Speaker 2: that haunted, emotionless look on Stalker's face as he walks
Speaker 2: out on his wife and child. She's pleading with him
Speaker 2: to stay, and he is absolutely determined to go, and
Speaker 2: his line is, I'm imprisoned everywhere. She says, you're going
Speaker 2: to go back to prison. He says, I'm imprisoned everywhere.
Speaker 2: At this point, we don't as viewers, know anything really
Speaker 2: about what the zone is or what his job is,
Speaker 2: but the implication is is that if he's not doing
Speaker 2: whatever it is he's setting out to do, if he's
Speaker 2: not there, then he's in a metaphorical prison, kind of
Speaker 2: like roy Neiri who has to chase his vision. Ironically,
Speaker 2: of course, you mentioned the book Roadside Picnic. I learned
Speaker 2: later that that book does directly address what this film
Speaker 2: never does, which is that it was this extraterrestrial event.
Speaker 2: Supposedly it was aliens who caused this dystopian landscape to
Speaker 2: come about, and presumably the creation of the Zone. There
Speaker 2: are no aliens or as I recall, mentions of aliens
Speaker 2: in this film. But how fortuitous, Josh, was it that
Speaker 2: our Marathon jumped from Andre Rublev thirteen years over the
Speaker 2: Mirror and Solaris movies we had both seen before to
Speaker 2: this one where Tarkovsky continues his aggrandizement of holy fools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 2: I hope. I would have processed this on my own,
Speaker 2: but Tarkovsky did it for us. The writer says to
Speaker 2: Stalker near the end of the film, you are simply
Speaker 2: one of God's fools. And at the end of the movie,
Speaker 2: in that really stunning address to the camera, his wife says,
Speaker 2: he's one of God's fools. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that stands out to me about Stalker isn't just that
Speaker 2: he so clearly is a holy fool someone's society would
Speaker 2: deem foolish. Andy's someone driven by his faith who unreservedly
Speaker 2: and unequivocally believes he has a calling to give people
Speaker 2: hope when they most need it. It's how Tarkovsky asks
Speaker 2: us to believe along with him, which I want to
Speaker 2: dig into, but I want to get your thoughts on
Speaker 2: Stalker first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love all that. The close encounters thing is great, though,
Speaker 3: I think it's also important to note the distinction, particularly
Speaker 3: as it applies to the stalker. You know, eventually we
Speaker 3: discover and you are touching this. I would say roy
Speaker 3: Neery is more of a seeker. He's in some ways
Speaker 3: he's more aligned to the writer or the professor on
Speaker 3: this journey, and where's the stalker is more of a
Speaker 3: guide and that's where the holy fool, God's fool that
Speaker 3: all comes in. So yeah, definitely had that on my
Speaker 3: mind and it was kind of fascinating. I think the
Speaker 3: sound design, I'm glad you called that out as well.
Speaker 3: This is a very quiet movie, so it's not necessarily
Speaker 3: the thing that first comes to mind. There's almost no music,
Speaker 3: very little music, but those effects you're talking about are
Speaker 3: so instrumental. And the one thing that stood out to
Speaker 3: me is note that the first sign we get that
Speaker 3: something is different in this zone is audible. It's a queue.
Speaker 3: They're on this rail car on those railroad tracks, and
Speaker 3: we hear those click of the tracks, right, that sort
Speaker 3: of monotonous lulling thing. But then you also get, and
Speaker 3: this is before they've gone very far, this weird metallic
Speaker 3: echoing that follows them, and it's communicating that this is
Speaker 3: a different spaces, It has its different rules, different sounds,
Speaker 3: different feelings and so yeah, the sound design is you know,
Speaker 3: absolutely key here. And just to go back to this
Speaker 3: figure of the stalker, I also want to give a
Speaker 3: little time to something maybe we wouldn't discuss otherwise. The
Speaker 3: performances and Alexander k. Kaidanowski in this lead role, because
Speaker 3: I remembered him as this striking figure, very pale. He's
Speaker 3: got this cropped hair. He's almost like a human, not
Speaker 3: yet fully formed in some ways, and I was thinking
Speaker 3: about does this apply to his sort of seeking but
Speaker 3: also guiding. But I was struck about you know what
Speaker 3: a charismatic is maybe too strong of a word, but
Speaker 3: an arresting figure he is in this film because he's
Speaker 3: not just this stoic guide. He's eager and almost giddy.
Speaker 3: What does he say when they first arrive in the
Speaker 3: zone home at last? This speaks to his lays down
Speaker 3: in the grass. Yes, and the way this is he's
Speaker 3: following through on what he told his wife. He's feverish
Speaker 3: to get away from them, but not because of them,
Speaker 3: but because of where he needs to be. So I
Speaker 3: liked that quality to the performance. I liked how he
Speaker 3: gets agitated when the writer and the professor aren't showing
Speaker 3: the proper commitment.
Speaker 2: When they don't behave, which is the wordy at least
Speaker 2: in the subtitles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and how irate he is at the end of
Speaker 3: the film about their lack of belief. And you know,
Speaker 3: this God's fool thing is interesting because the writer says
Speaker 3: it with disdain his wife, and that incredible monologue where
Speaker 3: she's looking directly at the camera, I feel like she's
Speaker 3: saying it with more of a note of I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's admiration or it's understanding. I would say
Speaker 3: it's empathetic understanding more than she showed him in the
Speaker 3: beginning when he abandoned them. Clearly she was not approving
Speaker 3: of it then. And then she makes this interesting comment
Speaker 3: about you know how sorrow, without sorrow there cannot be hope, right.
Speaker 2: Or happiness she says first, and then no hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And that's bringing us to this, you know,
Speaker 3: this giant idea. Maybe we'll tiptoe towards at some point
Speaker 3: of what is the room offering? What is the room?
Speaker 3: You know, what's the room? And that and that is
Speaker 3: sort of her theory shared with his theory, I think.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think the form of this as you
Speaker 3: were saying, it is one of those you have to
Speaker 3: be on its rhythm. But for me and why I
Speaker 3: would recommend it as a entry point, possibly also with
Speaker 3: Solaris for someone new to Tarkovski, is because it does
Speaker 3: have this propulsive narrative framework of this fascinating place you
Speaker 3: want to explore, a goal to get to, and then
Speaker 3: the aftermath of once you're there, and so that really
Speaker 3: does carry you through what is a nearly three hour
Speaker 3: movie with long conversations, an incredibly patient camera, and to
Speaker 3: me it was more gripping than I had expected. It's
Speaker 3: been a long time since i'd seen it, and I
Speaker 3: was settling in for something that was more meditative, perhaps,
Speaker 3: and I found it. Yeah, just incredibly gripping and yeah,
Speaker 3: one more thing to throw out there at you before
Speaker 3: we can go wherever you want to go. But I
Speaker 3: was struck as well by this. The camera work made
Speaker 3: me think of this. It is a relatively still camera
Speaker 3: even for Tarkovski, because production design seems to be at
Speaker 3: the forefront here it is in so many of his movies,
Speaker 3: and he's working. Tarkovsky got a production design credit along
Speaker 3: with Alexander Boim. The interior of these rooms, especially outside
Speaker 3: of the zone, looking charred. Inside the zone, these spaces
Speaker 3: are you know, waters everywhere. Of course there's decay, but
Speaker 3: balanced with growth. And these static shots of the characters
Speaker 3: in these spaces, it's almost like they're moving through art installations.
Speaker 3: And this was stage like in some ways made me
Speaker 3: think of something like you know, Becket's Waiting for Good
Speaker 3: Oh in sort of the material, but also the staging
Speaker 3: and the recreation of these spaces. I had forgotten that
Speaker 3: as well, that it's a very still movie even in
Speaker 3: terms of the camera work, but not dull for me
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to what I was saying
Speaker 2: about the faith. I think Tarkovsky demands of us as viewers,
Speaker 2: and you were talking about the zone, and I think
Speaker 2: the zone itself is a huge part of it, and
Speaker 2: the room within it. Until the very end, there's one
Speaker 2: shot where we don't see the exact room, but we
Speaker 2: get the idea of the location. It's housed in the
Speaker 2: Stalker I've been calling of Stoker. I'm probably gonna stick
Speaker 2: with that Stocker references it it's right over there, but
Speaker 2: otherwise we don't really see the room. It's withheld from
Speaker 2: our site. Even when they can turn and look at it.
Speaker 2: The camera doesn't show us until the very end, of course,
Speaker 2: when the camera finally goes into the room. But the
Speaker 2: entire movie, Josh, how do we know? How do we
Speaker 2: know that the room can actually perform the miracles that
Speaker 2: Stalker claims it does. We don't know. We can't know.
Speaker 2: And I mention close encounters. I imagine when Alex Garland's
Speaker 2: Annihilation came out in twenty eighteen, or when the book
Speaker 2: it was adapted from came out in twenty fourteen, everyone
Speaker 2: who had seen Stalker thought, hmm, there's some similarities here.
Speaker 2: That's neither here nor there for me, except in one regard.
Speaker 2: It's been a while since I've seen Annihilation. But as
Speaker 2: I recall, when they go into the Shimmer, as it's
Speaker 2: called there, a lot of crazy stuff goes down. All
Speaker 2: of the things that Stalker says about the zone, how
Speaker 2: it's impossible to navigate because it's constantly shifting. He says,
Speaker 2: the moment someone shows up, everything comes into motion. Old
Speaker 2: traps dis and new ones emerge. Safe spots become impassable.
Speaker 2: Now your path is easy. Now it's hopelessly involved. That's
Speaker 2: the zone. It may even seem capricious, but it is
Speaker 2: what we've made it with our condition. He makes it
Speaker 2: sound like it's a video game, as if the land
Speaker 2: is literally shape shifting in front of us. That's more
Speaker 2: applicable to a movie like Annihilation. We don't see any
Speaker 2: of that happen in this film. There are no bizarre
Speaker 2: or really supernatural occurring save for possibly two moments right,
Speaker 2: which is when the writer moves forward even though he's
Speaker 2: told not to, and he hears a voice, and we're
Speaker 2: left to wonder is that a voice inside his head
Speaker 2: or is that actually the zone, the zone talking to him.
Speaker 2: And then later there's a telephone call. There's a telephone
Speaker 2: call in a place where I'm guessing no one, no
Speaker 2: one's actually set up a telephone. But other than that, Joss,
Speaker 2: there's really no special effects. There's no sense of anything
Speaker 2: within the landscape that's actually alive or shifting. We're just
Speaker 2: left to believe what Stalker tells us, even when our
Speaker 2: own eyes, the camera and other characters eyes say that, look,
Speaker 2: where we're going is right there, it's straight ahead, but
Speaker 2: Stalker's telling us, no, you can't go that way. You
Speaker 2: have to take a different much more convoluted round, so
Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of it. But also
Speaker 2: it's how Tarkovsky brings us into the world of the zone.
Speaker 2: And you reference this with the sound design, but it's
Speaker 2: that hypnotic ride in the railcar and the close ups
Speaker 2: of the faces, that long ride on the railcar, the
Speaker 2: closeups of the faces, the sound along the tracks. Then
Speaker 2: we get mixed in Edward Artemyev's ambient electronic music clanking
Speaker 2: around as well. He also did Mirror and Solaris and
Speaker 2: everything up to this point has been that black and
Speaker 2: white cinematography that's like a saturated yeah, CPIA tone, it's
Speaker 2: like a decaying CPIA tone. And suddenly, but still subtly,
Speaker 2: with one cut, we're in full color, lush greens, the
Speaker 2: blue sky flowers. It's it's just in that shot, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, we believe that the Zone is this enchanted,
Speaker 2: otherworldly place that stalker claims that it is. And I
Speaker 2: think it's also Josh in one last thing, how he
Speaker 2: uses the camera almost like a spectral presence, like when
Speaker 2: the camera does pull back into the room otherwise unmotivated,
Speaker 2: when it lurks around corners, like lurks around trees, with
Speaker 2: the corners of that tunnel, like it's another presence is
Speaker 2: observing all of this. How about the shot and I
Speaker 2: think I referenced this before when the writer starts walking
Speaker 2: and oh, actually this is the professor. Later when the
Speaker 2: professor's in the lead. It's the shot where we're sure
Speaker 2: that we're seeing the professor's point of view as he
Speaker 2: walks along, because in the previous shot he has just
Speaker 2: started walking along the path. And then we cut to
Speaker 2: a shot where clearly the camera is moving, it's handheld
Speaker 2: as it looks like a set of eyes is moving
Speaker 2: along this path, and then all of a sudden, all
Speaker 2: three characters are ahead of the camera in the shot.
Speaker 2: It's the shot that occurs through that burned out car,
Speaker 2: I think, with some bodies inside of it. Right, So
Speaker 2: we think it's the professor's point of view, but then
Speaker 2: the Professor's in front of the camera. It's as if
Speaker 2: this entire space somehow is alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we could chart and discuss in detail. I
Speaker 3: don't think we'll have time for it tonight. The use
Speaker 3: of that CPA and switching to the full color here
Speaker 3: because it breaks where you describe. But then later on
Speaker 3: we'll go back and forth a little bit in snippets
Speaker 3: that are curious to me. Alexander Kenyazhinsky is the cinematographer here.
Speaker 3: But let me go back to what you're talking about
Speaker 3: with this faith element, because I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: There is a counter. If someone wanted to argue that
Speaker 3: this is a film about having faith, you know, an
Speaker 3: argument about having faith of some sort, you could counter
Speaker 3: that and say, you know, based on largely what we see,
Speaker 3: as you've been saying, this could all be mythology built
Speaker 3: around let's say, a devastating nuclear accident. And worth noting
Speaker 3: as we're placing this in timeframe, Chernobyl wasn't till eighty six,
Speaker 3: so this is something that maybe, you know, whether it
Speaker 3: was the novelists or Tarkowsky, are thinking about possibilities in
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. It's not like this had happened. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you could counter and say this is all mythology. This
Speaker 3: space suffered a devastating nuclear accident, and now to kind
Speaker 3: of like in the years after this myth has built
Speaker 3: up around it. Think about one thing. The writer also says,
Speaker 3: all of this is someone's idiotic invention, and it's the writer.
Speaker 3: I thought this was interesting who calls out the soccer
Speaker 3: for enjoying the power that selling this mystery gives him
Speaker 3: when they really start going at each other near the end.
Speaker 3: That's exactly how some people see clergy, see the church
Speaker 3: right as just manipulating religious belief for power. So that's
Speaker 3: definitely there's enough of that there in this film to
Speaker 3: allow for that sort of reading. I think that's the
Speaker 3: part where the writer might also call him one of
Speaker 3: God's fools, and in his use of it, it's literal fool.
Speaker 3: It's like you are unintelligent and you know, and in
Speaker 3: this case also taking advantage of us. All that being said,
Speaker 3: just based on you know, the other Tarkowski films and
Speaker 3: especially something like Andrea rubelev I, this strikes me when
Speaker 3: it comes to the faith question as this apocalyptically eerie
Speaker 3: argument that there's something, there's just something more than the
Speaker 3: material world, and we do get hints of this. I
Speaker 3: think that incredible shot when they're in that room with
Speaker 3: the piles of dust, the mounds of dust, a bird
Speaker 3: comes flying through, and that edit where the bird just
Speaker 3: disappears mid flight. In the next shot the bird comes
Speaker 3: back and then we see it land. I think that's
Speaker 3: never explained what the heck is going on there, but
Speaker 3: it's something unnatural, to be sure. But for me, it's
Speaker 3: a through line more that's going across this movie. When
Speaker 3: we meet the writer for the first time, he's talking
Speaker 3: to this woman, he's waiting to meet the Stalker and
Speaker 3: lamenting the lack of the metaphysical in the modern world.
Speaker 3: I think he references ghosts. I think he might even
Speaker 3: say flying saucers. Doesn't he say something about the Middle
Speaker 3: Ages life was more interesting because you know, there was
Speaker 3: the potential for the metaphysical. And of course we could
Speaker 3: get into the ending here if we want. This is
Speaker 3: the fire final shot where we're back outside of the
Speaker 3: zone where I believe in the stalkers home with his daughter,
Speaker 3: who's been called Monkey and has been described as you know,
Speaker 3: being a mutant, a zone mutant, something like that that
Speaker 3: lends towards the nuclear disaster theory. But here, and this
Speaker 3: is in color, even though we're in the CPIA world. Here,
Speaker 3: this is in color. This is where she's been reading
Speaker 3: a book. We hear the poem read by a woman's voice,
Speaker 3: but then she just turns and looks at the table
Speaker 3: and there's a glass and dark liquid there. She stares
Speaker 3: at it and it begins moving, and you get this.
Speaker 3: It's hard to describe because what's happening is so simple,
Speaker 3: But at the end of this film, to have this happen,
Speaker 3: I think it's because it's the revealing of what the
Speaker 3: film believes reality to be, is that there is something
Speaker 3: metaphysical and unexplainable. This is the mystery that Tarkowsky's movies
Speaker 3: are always trying to solve. I feel like is that
Speaker 3: she somehow is moving these these glasses. She does it
Speaker 3: three times, one falls off the table, and the music,
Speaker 3: the rare music we hear faintly in the background is
Speaker 3: Beethoven's Owed to Joy. So all of that adds up
Speaker 3: to me to be this argument that there is something
Speaker 3: going on here in this room. That's the question I
Speaker 3: want to ask you, how did you read what's in
Speaker 3: the room, if anything, because there's a counter that there's
Speaker 3: nothing there.
Speaker 2: So for me, it goes back to this question of faith.
Speaker 2: And I don't think it's cop out to say that
Speaker 2: we're not supposed to know. I think that is entirely
Speaker 2: the point, and I think it's worth noting that having
Speaker 2: not read really anything about this film. I don't know
Speaker 2: what the prevailing sentim it is. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the conventional wisdom is in terms of how the room
Speaker 2: itself is interpreted, or what the most provocative questions that
Speaker 2: this film leaves people with are. What some of the
Speaker 2: larger philosophical questions are that people have really been wrestling with.
Speaker 2: But I imagine, Josh that one of those provocations goes
Speaker 2: back to something the writer says when he decides ultimately
Speaker 2: that he's not going to go in. He says that
Speaker 2: the room doesn't grant your wish. What the room does
Speaker 2: is it reveals to you your true nature and what
Speaker 2: you truly wish for, essentially revealing who you really are.
Speaker 2: But what strikes me about that, Josh, is even that
Speaker 2: is potentially just the writer's interpretation. And he is a
Speaker 2: writer after all, So that's his interpretation, That is his
Speaker 2: invention in the moment now that is based on what
Speaker 2: he knows about what Stalker has told him about his
Speaker 2: former mentor, a man known as Porcupine. So he's reading
Speaker 2: into that and determining that this man ultimately killed himself
Speaker 2: because he went into the room and he learned something
Speaker 2: about himself that he didn't want to learn, but that's
Speaker 2: still his interpretation. At the end of the day, Tarkovsky
Speaker 2: offers no concrete evidence that that room grants any wishes,
Speaker 2: your true nature, bags of money, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: We have no sense of that one way.
Speaker 3: Or the other. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, this is completely open
Speaker 3: to many interpretations, including the counter I was discussing. I
Speaker 3: do think my sense, or at least my reading, I
Speaker 3: should say, is that the writer is closer to what's
Speaker 3: possibly the truth than the room being like a genie
Speaker 3: in a bottle.
Speaker 2: Right, It's more interesting, sure it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know that's been the myth that's why
Speaker 3: people go. But I do think, yes, it's not only
Speaker 3: revealing what your deepest desire is, but broader than that.
Speaker 3: I think the movie is suggesting that the Room represents
Speaker 3: what it means to encounter the divine, and I'm basing
Speaker 3: that on some other things a stalker says about the Room.
Speaker 3: He says, I think it lets through all those who've
Speaker 3: lost hope, not the good or the bad, but the unhappy.
Speaker 3: And what that led me to think about is those
Speaker 3: are people who are willing to surrender, to realize they
Speaker 3: can't save themselves. They're helpless, and part of that surrender
Speaker 3: is admitting who you are. So if the rumor reveals
Speaker 3: who you are, your deepest desire is part of that.
Speaker 3: It's maybe not the entire thing, but it's definitely part
Speaker 3: of it. That is kind of submitting to the divine
Speaker 3: is to humbling yourself, exposing yourself, and in that somehow
Speaker 3: finding hope. I think that's what his wife is talking
Speaker 3: about when she says, without sorrow, there is no hope.
Speaker 3: That you have to admit that. There's maybe an element
Speaker 3: of confession at play here. Stalker says something else like
Speaker 3: this is the only place to come when all hope
Speaker 3: is gone. So that's kind of a release and a
Speaker 3: surrender idea as well. And yeah, I think there are
Speaker 3: some other sort of details that support this. There's that
Speaker 3: whole weird sequence where the three of them are falling
Speaker 3: asleep just before they get to the room, and the
Speaker 3: movie it's maybe lags a bit because you're like, we
Speaker 3: want to see what happens and they get drowsy. It's
Speaker 3: like they're in the field of Poppies and the Wizard
Speaker 3: of Oz. But we hear a woman quote during that
Speaker 3: passage from Revelation six, which is this apocalyptic passage about
Speaker 3: falling before the face of God. Stalker later quotes the
Speaker 3: story the New Testament story of the disciples encountering the
Speaker 3: risen Jesus on the road to Amais and they don't
Speaker 3: recognize him. And I think he says right around that
Speaker 3: time to the professor and the writer something like do
Speaker 3: you see or something like that, Like basically, this idea
Speaker 3: of being open to the divine in some way and
Speaker 3: the fear and trembling that comes with that is what's
Speaker 3: in the room. It's not like, you know, I want
Speaker 3: pizza every day for the rest of my life for free.
Speaker 3: That's not what the room is giving. It may give freedom,
Speaker 3: but it's what's going to come first is some sort
Speaker 3: of honesty, humility, confession, submission, and that's what's terrifying. So yeah,
Speaker 3: and all that is to say is I don't think
Speaker 3: this is a tract in any way, but just piecing together,
Speaker 3: I think that's what the Stalker is suggesting without explicitly
Speaker 3: explaining to them. And then you throw in you know,
Speaker 3: so what does it mean that the professor is essentially
Speaker 3: there to blow the room up? You know, that's a
Speaker 3: whole nother threat. We could talk about as well, that
Speaker 3: he sees this as I think his excuse is that
Speaker 3: this is too powerful for anyone to have, right, so
Speaker 3: he wants to destroy it. Now, how does that apply
Speaker 3: to what I've been talking about. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: still have plenty more questions. But as that was how
Speaker 3: I sort of started to wrap my mind around.
Speaker 2: The room, the ending in terms of the glass of
Speaker 2: water with the daughter, I do want to say a
Speaker 2: couple things struck me, first of all, entirely appropriate that
Speaker 2: this key moment the end of the film, that it
Speaker 2: would culminate with a glass of water being Tarkovski not
Speaker 2: only because of the place water holds in this movie,
Speaker 2: but the place water imagery holds in all the films
Speaker 2: we've seen in this marathon and films we've seen outside
Speaker 2: of this marathon, but also the beginning of this film
Speaker 2: is a shot of a glass of water shaking as
Speaker 2: that train goes by. It's almost as if it's going
Speaker 2: to tremble enough that it might fall off the edge,
Speaker 2: and it never does. And then we come around to
Speaker 2: the end. It feels like a callback to that moment,
Speaker 2: not a direct callback, but a close enough callback. What
Speaker 2: I thought of Josh more specifically, more pointedly, is what
Speaker 2: the writer says earlier in the film. What you're referencing.
Speaker 2: He's bemoaning. And this is ironic in a way because
Speaker 2: he's not the scientist, he's not the professor, he's the writer.
Speaker 2: And I know ultimately he's wishing that there was more
Speaker 2: metaphysical aspects to the universe and that there was something
Speaker 2: more profound that we could all experience. But what he's
Speaker 2: saying is something a scientist would say. The world is absolute,
Speaker 2: we're governed by laws. Yeah, it's ironclad and law. That's
Speaker 2: ultimately what he's upset about. And that moment seems like,
Speaker 2: and I think this supports exactly what you were saying
Speaker 2: and you're reading, but it's a direct rebuke of that.
Speaker 2: At the end of this movie, it's Tarkovsky's way of saying,
Speaker 2: not so fast. We don't live in a world that
Speaker 2: is as immutable in terms of its laws as you
Speaker 2: think it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree. And again it's like, what I
Speaker 3: love about his films is that it's suggesting that it's
Speaker 3: more saying, yeah, but what if this, and then showing
Speaker 3: us something visual that makes us ask that same thing.
Speaker 3: We've talked about like the wind, the use of the
Speaker 3: wind and mirror and the water as well. And then
Speaker 3: here there are a couple of instances. You know, I've
Speaker 3: talked about Tarkovsky as being more sorcerer or conjuror than
Speaker 3: film director, and we have a couple of instances of
Speaker 3: that here with which connect to what you're saying. You know,
Speaker 3: there are hints of those moving glasses to come. This
Speaker 3: is again when they first enter the zone and they're
Speaker 3: on a hill overlooking it. The track, the road track
Speaker 3: is still there. They're kind of in darkness, it's foggy,
Speaker 3: and then the sun pierces through the fog and seems
Speaker 3: to anoint them. There's even a flare on the lens,
Speaker 3: and then the fog returns and it fades away. Like
Speaker 3: they couldn't have planned for that. They could not have
Speaker 3: planned for that. Yeah, Like the camera was just there
Speaker 3: and it's exquisite. There's a shot when they're closer to
Speaker 3: the room this well and the camera is looking down
Speaker 3: on it and there's these ripples of dark water sort
Speaker 3: of undulating in mesmerizing ways. And how about that shot.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you caught this, or maybe I was
Speaker 3: just you know, getting dizzy at this point. There's a
Speaker 3: shot of a dry river about at one point in
Speaker 3: the zone, and I could have sworn the lower half
Speaker 3: of the frame of the dirt was almost undulating in
Speaker 3: a weird way. And then at the end of this
Speaker 3: shot again had to be unplanned. This little dust devil
Speaker 3: just forms and blows around and then disappears. These are
Speaker 3: like the conjuring sorcerer moments that Tarkovsky seems to somehow
Speaker 3: either find or create. But I think their hints of
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. They're just saying, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we know laws of science, and we follow them and
Speaker 3: believe them. But what's this? What is going What is
Speaker 3: going on here?
Speaker 2: So two other quick points, something of a thesis statement
Speaker 2: I think is said, and it's informed for me by
Speaker 2: his thesis film, which we saw at the beginning of
Speaker 2: this marathon, the Steamroller and the Violin. We have here
Speaker 2: a character called the Professor, a character called the writer.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the strengths of this film
Speaker 2: that they are not reduced to just allegorical figures. They
Speaker 2: have their own frailties and insecurities, and they are individuals,
Speaker 2: and I don't think they just represent sort of the
Speaker 2: fields that they come from. But nevertheless, there is very
Speaker 2: clearly a major allegorical element at play with this. STU
Speaker 2: Sure as we're talking about what does the room represent? Right,
Speaker 2: what does the zone represent? And at one point I
Speaker 2: think it is the stalker who says, or it's actually
Speaker 2: in a voiceover, it's him and a voice over where
Speaker 2: he says, for softness is great and strength is worthless.
Speaker 2: That which has become hard shall not triumph. And maybe
Speaker 2: I'm taking it too literally. This is a film that
Speaker 2: you do that at your own risk. But I go
Speaker 2: back to a film, another allegorical film like The Steamroller
Speaker 2: and the Violin, a movie that's very much about saying, yes,
Speaker 2: we live in a world where we need we need
Speaker 2: people doing tough jobs like running this steamroller, and there
Speaker 2: are battles to be fought and soldiers that have to
Speaker 2: fight them, and it's a brutal, tough experience for all
Speaker 2: of us. But that's why we need beauty, and we
Speaker 2: need kids who play the violin. And and this seems
Speaker 2: to be one of those things that is constantly warring
Speaker 2: in Tarkovski as well, this recognition of the brutality of
Speaker 2: the world, but also that need as we've discussed with
Speaker 2: other films, that need for beauty. And it's almost like
Speaker 2: with his voice over Josh, it's it's as if Tarkovski
Speaker 2: is trying to usher it into reality. He wants to
Speaker 2: make it a reality that everyone understands that we need
Speaker 2: to embrace softness. We need to abandon the notion that
Speaker 2: being hard, that strength, that might is the only thing
Speaker 2: that we should aspire to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love the callback to steamroll learn the violin.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. I hadn't thought of that. And I
Speaker 3: think that monologue, which I just love, is also related
Speaker 3: to this idea of surrender at the foot of the room,
Speaker 3: because you know you would not do that if you
Speaker 3: want to be in a position of strength, that is
Speaker 3: a position of softness. And I think that's yeah, a
Speaker 3: thesis statement for the film, and also an argument for
Speaker 3: the professor and the writer, like you're going, if you
Speaker 3: really want to go and do this, this is the
Speaker 3: posture you need to it adopt. Not go in there
Speaker 3: and ask to be the strongest man in the world,
Speaker 3: but to become the weakest essentially.
Speaker 2: Right at the end of this film, can I ask
Speaker 2: you a theological question can we end here? Okay, because
Speaker 2: this kind of confused me. At the end of the film,
Speaker 2: when he's returned and he's exhausted and his wife is
Speaker 2: tending to him, he's talking about the intelligentsia. He's really
Speaker 2: just being highly critical of modernity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's going off at this point.
Speaker 2: He's angry at the modern condition, right, everything that everybody
Speaker 2: day to day is aspiring to their lack of faith.
Speaker 2: They're putting all of their hopes in materialism, in things
Speaker 2: that may satisfy them in the short term but not
Speaker 2: potentially in the long term. And he's saying, really, even
Speaker 2: though he's not thinking about it in these exact terms,
Speaker 2: he is talking about it as if without people who
Speaker 2: have faith, if this continues, he doesn't have a job.
Speaker 2: There aren't people who are willing then to venture into
Speaker 2: the zone anymore. People won't be seeking out the room,
Speaker 2: right because no one will have the faith to go there.
Speaker 2: They'll need more proof, they'll need more evidence, whatever the
Speaker 2: case may be. But in that conversation Josh where he
Speaker 2: talks about the unhappy and why people go there, my
Speaker 2: thought is, forget faith. As long as there are people
Speaker 2: who are unhappy, won't there always be a need to
Speaker 2: go to the room. And won't there always be unhappy people?
Speaker 3: Yes, So why won't.
Speaker 2: He have a job?
Speaker 3: Oh? Okay to tell one, Yeah, I don't know about
Speaker 3: sort of you know, the logistics of that as you're
Speaker 3: describing him, though, I think in his mind he's God's fool,
Speaker 3: He's a holy fool. Those are also terms to describe
Speaker 3: like prophets, right, So I think he sees himself as
Speaker 3: a prophet where it's single minded, he's going to seem illogical,
Speaker 3: but but he is there too in a sense. It's
Speaker 3: like Old Testament Holy of Holies, and he is this
Speaker 3: prophet who has access to it, and he's being this
Speaker 3: conduit between the divine and regular people. And for him,
Speaker 3: everything else probably is extraneous. Everything else in the world
Speaker 3: is extraneous. This is his purpose, this is why he's
Speaker 3: been put on this earth. He and you know, in
Speaker 3: terms of modernity, yeah, I think that part you're talking about.
Speaker 3: He says something like their capacity for faith has atrophied,
Speaker 3: and I think that's you know, that's what concerns him
Speaker 3: is not so much that whether or not he has
Speaker 3: a job, but that these are lost people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, it's not about the job,
Speaker 2: it's about Yeah, what we were referring to in the
Speaker 2: opening scene, this is his calling.
Speaker 3: His calling. Sure, absolutely, if there.
Speaker 2: Are people who are willing to venture into the zone
Speaker 2: and go to the room, he can't fulfill his calling,
Speaker 2: is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but won't.
Speaker 2: There always be people who feel that need to go
Speaker 2: because there will always be unhappy people, won't there always be.
Speaker 3: Lost there souls. Maybe he's referring to, you know, the
Speaker 3: willingness to address that unhappiness by seeking the room, because
Speaker 3: I mean, Lord knows, there's a million ways to address
Speaker 3: that unhappiness, which a lot of those ways lead to
Speaker 3: more unhappiness, and he may feel like, here's here's a
Speaker 3: difficult way, a challenging way, a surrendering way, but it's
Speaker 3: a way that can actually bring hope and comfort. And
Speaker 3: so what he's bemoaning there is that he believes he
Speaker 3: has a way to address it, and by negating that,
Speaker 3: denying that it's even a possibility, that's the tragedy. That's
Speaker 3: the tragedy for him. Maybe I don't know. So wait
Speaker 3: now I'm gonna throw you a quick question, what's with
Speaker 3: the dog with that? And well, maybe a listener will
Speaker 3: help us, because a listener was kind enough to help
Speaker 3: us with the horses at the end of Andre Rubelev Yeah,
Speaker 3: I forget their name, but had a very thoughtful, reasonable
Speaker 3: explanation that, you know, these peaceful horses that are the
Speaker 3: last shot are a counter to the horses in physical
Speaker 3: strikeing we saw throughout the film, which I think made
Speaker 3: a lot of sense. But there's this dog that appears
Speaker 3: in the zone, and I guess the Stalker takes home, yeah,
Speaker 3: with him, but he also seems to appear. The dog
Speaker 3: also seems to appear in visions. Right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I got nothing on it.
Speaker 2: Well, all I got is I like the touch that
Speaker 2: the dog being there at the end does at least
Speaker 2: signal that everything we saw before it actually happened.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, there's a world where there's a link.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know how much of this is potentially
Speaker 2: in someone's head. Is it a fever dream? How long
Speaker 2: has he been gone? We still don't really know how
Speaker 2: long they've been gone, but we do at least know
Speaker 2: that they were gone and they somehow got back.
Speaker 3: Because the dogs there. That helps, right, that helps?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, stalker is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel
Speaker 2: and on Max. It's also available VOD next week. The
Speaker 2: final film in our Tarkovsky Marathon, nineteen eighty three's Nostalgia.
Speaker 2: That one is available VOD on most platforms. More about
Speaker 2: the marathon at filmspotting dot net slash Marathons. If you
Speaker 2: have any comments about the show, we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from you, feedback at filmspotting dot net. Josh, that is
Speaker 2: our show.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to connect on social media, Adam and
Speaker 3: the show are on Instagram and Facebook and letterboxed. He's
Speaker 3: at film Spotting. You can find me in those places
Speaker 3: as Larsen on film. We are independently produced and listeners supported.
Speaker 3: You can support the show by joining the film Spotting
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Speaker 2: Shop available now streaming in VOD. Deaf President Now That's
Speaker 2: on Apple TV plus a documentary about a nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight protest at a Washington DC university that's the world's
Speaker 2: only university for the death and heart of hearing. Our
Speaker 2: friend Maria Gates calls it a firebrand historical documentary that
Speaker 2: is as crowd pleasing and informative as it is innovative
Speaker 2: and inclusive. It won the south By Southwest Audience Award
Speaker 2: out wide. Final Destination Bloodlines the sixth in the series,
Speaker 2: but the first since twenty eleven's The Not So Final Destination.
Speaker 2: I added the Not So Josh Hurry Up Tomorrow The
Speaker 2: Weekend is a musician plagued by insomnia, pulled into an
Speaker 2: odyssey with a stranger played by Jenna Ortega who begins
Speaker 2: to unravel the very core of his existence. Sounds like
Speaker 2: Tarkowski Very Kogan stars. It's directed by Trey Edward Schultz,
Speaker 2: who made Soavognesha and Waves and It Comes at Night.
Speaker 2: In limited release, this one seems to be getting some
Speaker 2: good buzz. Friendship, starring Tim Robinson as a suburban dad
Speaker 2: who falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor played by
Speaker 2: Paul Rudd.
Speaker 3: Just saw this today and can add to the positive reviews,
Speaker 3: though I also have to give a warning. First off,
Speaker 3: this thing is really weird. I mean it's I don't
Speaker 3: know what I still don't know what the tone is,
Speaker 3: but it's committed to it and it at least has
Speaker 3: a firm control of it. The one warning I would
Speaker 3: give folks is it's way more a Tim Robinson movie
Speaker 3: than a Paul red movie. So I'm sure a fan
Speaker 3: of the series, I think you should leave with Tim Robinson.
Speaker 3: You'll probably get a lot out of this if you're
Speaker 3: going to it for a lighthearted Paul Rudd buddy Rop
Speaker 3: not so much.
Speaker 2: In addition to talking about Tarkovsky's Nostalgia, next week, we're
Speaker 2: going to get nostalgic with Richard Linklater's Before Films. We
Speaker 2: will talk about Before Sunset as part of our Pantheon project,
Speaker 2: and we will share our film Spotting fest Q and A.
Speaker 2: Talking about Before Sunrise. I think we were kind of
Speaker 2: delirious that Sunday morning at the music Box. Did we
Speaker 2: actually even capture this audio?
Speaker 3: We'll have to see, Thank good, as Scott Tobias was
Speaker 3: there to carry most of the weight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe to Soo and
Speaker 3: Sam van Holgren. Without Sam and Goldenjoe, this show wouldn't go.
Speaker 3: Our production assistant is Sophie Kempenard special Thanks to everyone
Speaker 3: at wb eazy Chicago. More information is available at wbeazy
Speaker 3: dot org. For film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 2: And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 9: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. The Barn.
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Speaker 2: at filmspotting family dot com and get access to add
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Speaker 2: the first time, all in one place, the entire film
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Speaker 2: a film Spotting Family dot com panoply