Speaker 1: On The Bechdelcast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women in them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? The patriarchy? Zeff and best start changing it
Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast. Hi, everybody, Jamie popping in at
Speaker 2: the top of the episode to ask for your humble
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Speaker 2: podcast industry award and a show a produce. We The
Speaker 2: Unhoused has been nominated in the People's Choice category for
Speaker 2: public service and activism. If you haven't listened to the
Speaker 2: show before, we've talked about it on the Bechdel Cast
Speaker 2: many times. But it is a show created and hosted
Speaker 2: by the wonderful Theo Henderson that is about issues that
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Speaker 2: a wonderful show. I am so proud of it. There
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Speaker 2: It is literally two clicks. There is a link in
Speaker 2: the description of the episode. You are listening right now,
Speaker 2: so pause the episode, vote and enjoy the show.
Speaker 3: Cast. Hey, Jamie, want to come over and meet my tentacle?
Speaker 3: Boyfriend who lives in my bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as long as it's questionably not real and created
Speaker 2: from all of the trauma you've accumulated from throughout your life.
Speaker 2: Well duh, okay, good, that's most I mean, that's most
Speaker 2: movie monsters. Right. You're just getting fucked to death by
Speaker 2: your own trauma. That's the experience of life. So why
Speaker 2: not have the guy who made ET create the monster
Speaker 2: that fucks you to death?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I didn't realize it was the same person.
Speaker 2: Oh, a legend, Carlo Rambaldi. He also, I believe he
Speaker 2: wasn't in charge of it because hr Geiger Gieger. Someone help.
Speaker 2: I think it's Geiger, hr Geiger. But he's like an
Speaker 2: hr Geiger guy Ger. And he also so made the
Speaker 2: xenomorph an alien. Yeah, yeah, so he's Carla Embaldi's all
Speaker 2: about a wet, little trauma monster, which is how I
Speaker 2: describe ET kind of. I would love to get fucked
Speaker 2: by my own trauma because then at least you know
Speaker 2: you're getting something out of it.
Speaker 3: Anyways, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Well that was a great introduction.
Speaker 3: We nailed it. This is the Bechdel Cast, our show
Speaker 3: where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. I'm
Speaker 3: Caitlyn Deronte. I don't think I introduced myself.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm Jamie Loftus. I'm the one that wanted to
Speaker 2: get fucked by the monster. I can't speak for you, Caitlyn.
Speaker 2: I can only speak for myself.
Speaker 3: You know. Let me get back to you on that.
Speaker 2: Okay. I went to the Academy Museum recently and I
Speaker 2: saw the fish from the Shape of Water again and
Speaker 2: I was like, that's not a trauma monster. That's that's
Speaker 2: a fantasy monster. Fu.
Speaker 3: Oh you also want to be fucked by?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really is pulled into sharp focus when
Speaker 2: you see that he built to scale scale. But that
Speaker 2: wasn't what I was trying to do.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: But you know what I mean. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I love it when you get punny. I know, I
Speaker 2: never see it coming. I think it's whenever I'm running
Speaker 2: on very little sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, in any case, it's the Possession episode. Guys. We're
Speaker 2: so excited the time has come to cover the movie
Speaker 2: Possession nineteen eighty one and we have an incredible guest
Speaker 2: in the house. Oh wait, we should say what the
Speaker 2: show is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean intersectional feminist film analysis where we use
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. But
Speaker 3: what's that, I wonder.
Speaker 2: Well, it actually is relevant to today's discussion, so we'll tell you.
Speaker 2: The Bechtel test is a media metric creative by our
Speaker 2: dear friend, friend of the show, Alison Bechdel, originally as
Speaker 2: a joke in her comic that went from the eighties
Speaker 2: into the two thousands called Mikes to Watch Out For
Speaker 2: about how there is very little queer representation in movies,
Speaker 2: specifically with women, but has since become a more mainstream metric.
Speaker 2: Lots of versions of this test. The one we use
Speaker 2: requires that there are two characters of a marginalized gender
Speaker 2: with names who speak to each other about something other
Speaker 2: than a man. This, I mean, I guess that a
Speaker 2: lot of you know this is just a jumping off
Speaker 2: point for discussion, But I was actually thinking about the test,
Speaker 2: which is rare these days on the show, we're mostly
Speaker 2: thinking about other things. But I was like, we don't
Speaker 2: know how the trauma octopus identifies, you know, And is
Speaker 2: that not a meaningful interaction? I certainly think.
Speaker 3: So, I would say very meaningful. Now, Anna does refer
Speaker 3: to her tentacle lover using him pronouns.
Speaker 2: Oh, but well, okay, unless we're thinking that this, we're okay,
Speaker 2: already overthinking it. Two minutes in us we're thinking that
Speaker 2: Anna's misgendering her own trauma monster, which I certainly hope
Speaker 2: she wouldn't. I think so highly of her. She's an icon,
Speaker 2: she's a legend, she's an icon, she's the moment. She've
Speaker 2: got her milk all over the place. I okay, let's okay,
Speaker 2: we have an incredible guest. That's what the Bechdel test is,
Speaker 2: whether you think it passes or not, sort of hinges
Speaker 2: on how you gender this tentacle monster, because otherwise it's
Speaker 2: a pretty solitary movie with a lot of men.
Speaker 3: Exactly. But yes, let's get our guest in here. She
Speaker 3: is a writer, illustrator, and editor specializing in horror film
Speaker 3: inspired imagery. She's the creator of the Zene resident eesel
Speaker 3: It's Alicia Burbank. Hello and welcome.
Speaker 1: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. I
Speaker 1: love this show.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, we love your work.
Speaker 2: We really do. Thank you, and we're so excited that
Speaker 2: you brought us. You brought us a little juicy bit
Speaker 2: of gristle to talk about today. Yeah, what is your
Speaker 2: history with Possession?
Speaker 1: Oh, I was. I think a lot of us might
Speaker 1: come to Possession all at the same time in our
Speaker 1: lives when we're having like a rough time, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, film with you know, someone we
Speaker 1: look up to, or you know, like someone who's really
Speaker 1: deep into the arts or whatever. This was circa twenty fifteen, twenty,
Speaker 1: you know, just hinging on twenty sixteen when I was
Speaker 1: just like, Oh, I'm so bored with everything I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I want to get back into watching horror movies. What
Speaker 1: do you recommend? And someone I just kind of peripherally
Speaker 1: knew was like, well, there are all these new films
Speaker 1: that are coming out that are just like newly available
Speaker 1: to American audiences. Have you ever seen Possession? I was
Speaker 1: like no, And he gave me a YouTube link, just
Speaker 1: like go check it out. And this was yeah around
Speaker 1: that time when I was just like glued to my
Speaker 1: YouTube like watching this repeatedly, and it really changed my life,
Speaker 1: this movie like Wow. And then after that I went
Speaker 1: on to really study a lot more horror films. I
Speaker 1: was a part of, very very briefly. I was a
Speaker 1: part of a horror film podcast with two other dudes
Speaker 1: and then left that one for probably obvious reasons during
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Yeah, so it was like, I have a
Speaker 1: past with this film. It really helped me find my voice,
Speaker 1: so to speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jamie, how about you? What's your relationship with it?
Speaker 2: Also very particular. I saw this movie for the first
Speaker 2: time a couple of years ago when I was going
Speaker 2: through a terrible breakup with a guy that sort of
Speaker 2: looks like a young Sam Neil if you tilt your head.
Speaker 2: So it was very cathartic. I think I had heard
Speaker 2: of this movie before because I think that the subway
Speaker 2: scene is something that it's like one of those clips
Speaker 2: that goes viral every six months, and so I had
Speaker 2: seen that scene before and I'm like, I like this,
Speaker 2: but I never followed up on like what it is.
Speaker 2: And then Yeah, it was when I was seeking a
Speaker 2: cathartic breakup movie to watch a couple of years ago
Speaker 2: that I was like, Oh, it's it's time. It's time
Speaker 2: to watch Possession. And I mean, I don't wish a
Speaker 2: horrible breakup on anyone, but if you've got to go
Speaker 2: through one, this movie is it's And I've seen this
Speaker 2: opinion repeated because it is such a brutal movie. But
Speaker 2: I found it so comforting at the time that I
Speaker 2: saw it, because it's just like, especially if you're watching
Speaker 2: this movie in a way that is just washing over you,
Speaker 2: which is not how we analyze movies here, but I
Speaker 2: it was. It just felt awesome to see like such
Speaker 2: intense and irrational pain, just like fully committed in the
Speaker 2: performances and all of the creative choices. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it felt weirdly validating for how out of my mind
Speaker 2: I felt while having to you know, like you have
Speaker 2: to continue to act like a person, and these people
Speaker 2: are not acting like people at all. I just I
Speaker 2: found it to be a very very cathartic breakup movie.
Speaker 2: So I think, I mean it was during a difficult time,
Speaker 2: which is like, bik, how a lot of people come
Speaker 2: to this movie, like you're saying, But I found it
Speaker 2: very soothing, and so I think I watched it like
Speaker 2: I think I watched it twice during like the height
Speaker 2: of that breakup, and then I've returned to it twice
Speaker 2: since in the years that came after, And so this
Speaker 2: was my first time watching it critically and also like
Speaker 2: learning more about the filmmaking process, and I mean you
Speaker 2: can tell like where this movie takes place. It takes
Speaker 2: place in Berlin in the early eighties, so it's like
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about the director at all, but
Speaker 2: specifically how political this movie is, because I was so
Speaker 2: distracted by the Tentacle Porn, but not this time. This
Speaker 2: time I was ready for the Tentacle porn and ready
Speaker 2: to think about the cold and feminism and.
Speaker 3: A director's who abuse power.
Speaker 2: So there's so much to talk about, but just yeah,
Speaker 2: strictly on my first watch. It also was like the
Speaker 2: exact right time the movie found me when I needed it. Caitlyn,
Speaker 2: what's your history with this movie?
Speaker 3: I had never seen it until prepping for this episode,
Speaker 3: nor was it really on my radar. As I've said
Speaker 3: in the past, I'm like not the biggest horror person.
Speaker 3: It's sort of the genre that I am least acquainted with.
Speaker 3: Over the years, I've seen more and more so I've
Speaker 3: seen like a decent handful of the classics at this point,
Speaker 3: but this one just like wasn't even on my radar.
Speaker 2: It's still pretty culty. I think, yeah, that must be.
Speaker 3: It had no idea that Sam Neil was in it,
Speaker 3: doctor Alan Grant himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I will have to say I don't like
Speaker 2: the character of doctor Alan Grant. I just like so
Speaker 2: it never occurred to me to think of Sam Neil
Speaker 2: as attractive. But I mean, obviously his character is terrible,
Speaker 2: but he is hot in this movie to me. And
Speaker 2: I was like surprised because I just found I hate
Speaker 2: I think I hate the character of doctor Alan Grant.
Speaker 2: That's like, because why is your define You're defining characteristic
Speaker 2: as you hate children and at the end of the
Speaker 2: movie you kind of don't. I hate that arc. I
Speaker 2: hate that arc. But what about Mark who hates his
Speaker 2: kid the whole time?
Speaker 3: I mean, but but also kind of likes him more
Speaker 3: at the end.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, I see, I I have a
Speaker 2: I have some hot takes on on these parents. They're
Speaker 2: bad they I mean, they're bad parents. Wow, I guess
Speaker 2: that's not a hot take. They're bad parents here first
Speaker 2: they are? Yeah, this is like I also like watching
Speaker 2: it this time. I was like, damn, if this is
Speaker 2: what divorce feels like, I'm getting unengaged, not worth it.
Speaker 3: Uh. Yeah, it was such a wild watch. I had
Speaker 3: no idea. I thought it would be more demonic possession
Speaker 3: based on the title alone, and there's definitely some supernatural
Speaker 3: stuff happening. There's a creature. There's sort of a suggestion
Speaker 3: that it's kind of religious maybe, but not really not
Speaker 3: in the way that like the Exorcist, store movies like
Speaker 3: that deal with demonic possession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like completely all over the place. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I was relieved when I was like doing research for
Speaker 2: this that it doesn't seem like there is any definitive
Speaker 2: read of this movie because it's just like it's just
Speaker 2: throwing shit out there and like you sort of latch
Speaker 2: on to it's.
Speaker 3: Throwing tentacles at the wall and seeing what sticks. And
Speaker 3: I just don't quite know. I was like, am I
Speaker 3: not like I'm not getting the metaphor.
Speaker 2: Really, I don't think you're supposed to, that's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, okay, okay, good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because as I was watching it this time, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if this movie is like necessarily quote
Speaker 2: unquote good by ordinary metrics, but I know how it
Speaker 2: makes me feel, and it makes me feel like punching
Speaker 2: a wall.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people do kind of correlate
Speaker 1: his work with Lynch or you know, someone where you
Speaker 1: are looking more at symbols and how things make you
Speaker 1: feel and you know, like metaphysical properties, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: meditate on it a bit and maybe you'll get something
Speaker 1: that contributes to your life, you know. And I even
Speaker 1: feel like maybe that's what Zulaski was thinking when he
Speaker 1: was making it, yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, and making it like post divorce, and he was
Speaker 3: like really distraught about a divorce he had gone through.
Speaker 2: And he was like sort of an expatriate, like he
Speaker 2: was like a strange from it from Poland. And I
Speaker 2: just I didn't realize like that. I knew that this
Speaker 2: was a divorce movie, because I mean, it stands to reason,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I didn't realize how we'll talk about that
Speaker 2: in the discussion. But like how he had been basically
Speaker 2: like booted from the Polish film industry because of his politics. Scary,
Speaker 2: probably a sign of things to come. Instructive filmmakers take note, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can still make possession even when you get kicked
Speaker 2: out of your country.
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come
Speaker 3: back for the recap. Yeah, all right, So here's the recap.
Speaker 3: We'll place a content warning for intimate partner abuse and
Speaker 3: suicide and goo. If you're disturbed by a lot of goo,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of that in the movie.
Speaker 2: You could probably still watch the first half. If you're
Speaker 2: not into goo, you get surprisingly far into the movie
Speaker 2: without goo. Yeah, so don't be totally put off.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we are in West Berlin in the early eighties.
Speaker 3: A man named Mark played by Sam Neil reunites with
Speaker 3: his wife Anna played by Isabelle A Johnny and their
Speaker 3: young son Bob. And it's really weird to me to
Speaker 3: see a little boy, like a five year old boy
Speaker 3: named Bob.
Speaker 2: I was, yeah, already, I was like, these parrots are
Speaker 2: weird to name your I was like, was that a
Speaker 2: thing in the eighties? I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I feel like it would have been Bobby, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right right, I don't know. Yeah, it's like meeting a
Speaker 2: baby named Linda. You're just like, what, this is a
Speaker 2: grown up name. This isn't for babies.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, So Mark returns home. He's an international spy.
Speaker 3: He was away doing like Cold war espionage stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what did every I sort of like, because it's
Speaker 2: so easy to forget that he's a spy because not
Speaker 2: only does he quit his job immediately, he's he's doing
Speaker 2: quote unquote spy work when he's stalking his own wife.
Speaker 2: But he's so bad at it and every time I like,
Speaker 2: it's one of like the dream like things. I'm assuming
Speaker 2: is intended, but who knows.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's like every time someone from his work comes up
Speaker 2: to him, they're like, you're the best buy in the world,
Speaker 2: and it's like, but we're watching him do such shoddy
Speaker 2: work that you're like, no, he's not.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is that what it's like to be a man where
Speaker 2: you're just being told you're amazing all the time, and
Speaker 2: meanwhile you have no fucking clue what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly, I think so a full disclosure.
Speaker 1: I did read a little book on this called Possession
Speaker 1: by Alison Taylor. It's like a part of this Devil's
Speaker 1: Advocate series. It's almost like thirty three and a third
Speaker 1: but for horror aficionados.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 1: I know. I didn't. I just discovered it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're out of England.
Speaker 3: You can find them online.
Speaker 1: But in those books, she did a little bit of
Speaker 1: research and found that it was more like this whole
Speaker 1: espionage thing is supposed to be a joke. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be making fun of what you see in movies
Speaker 1: and like kind of getting meta about it, like does
Speaker 1: this man where you know pink socks. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be ridiculous. It's supposed to be silly and
Speaker 1: a little bit of like like Charlie Chaplin esque when
Speaker 1: the spies are like trying to Yeah, he's poking fun
Speaker 1: at this whole idea that we're like spying on each other.
Speaker 2: And yeah, okay that makes sense. Yeah wait, sorry, what
Speaker 2: was the name of that book again?
Speaker 1: It's just Possession, but it's called, like the whole series
Speaker 1: is called Devil's Advocates.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they all have this like black background with
Speaker 1: the and then it's still from the film and they're tiny.
Speaker 1: They're like, like I said, like the thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third series that rocks.
Speaker 3: Very cool. We'll link those in the description of the episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's Mark. He's a bad spy and he
Speaker 3: and Anna are having marital troubles. She wants to split up,
Speaker 3: but she can't really say why. She doesn't really know
Speaker 3: why she's feeling the way she is, though, she insists
Speaker 3: that she has not been cheating on Mark, and.
Speaker 2: Mark immediately proves that this is a good decision she's
Speaker 2: made because he responds emotionally and physically abusive instantly, and
Speaker 2: so you're like, well, if there is any doubt about
Speaker 2: whether this is a good person to be with, there
Speaker 2: it is. And yeah, right.
Speaker 3: Then Mark goes to a meeting with his bosses and
Speaker 3: he quits his job, citing family as the reason. I
Speaker 3: guess he's trying to repair his marriage and leave being
Speaker 3: a spy behind. But Anna isn't there when he returns
Speaker 3: home to their apartment, but she does call and confirm
Speaker 3: his suspicions that she is seeing someone else, a man
Speaker 3: named Heinrich, and that he gives her more sexual pleasure
Speaker 3: than Mark ever did. And he's like, oh okay.
Speaker 2: And then you meet Heinrich and you're like, damn, I
Speaker 2: would I would lose it as well if you're like,
Speaker 2: this is the guy, no, no, no, I If I'm Mark,
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is the guy? You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly for sure. So then Anna and Mark meet
Speaker 3: up at a cafe to discuss their separation. Anna wants
Speaker 3: to keep their apartment Mark does not want to see
Speaker 3: their little son Bob for fear of like fucking him
Speaker 3: up emotionally.
Speaker 2: This is where I feel I wonder like if this
Speaker 2: is where the audience is supposed to lose any potential,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, ideally, when he is physically abusive to
Speaker 2: his wife, that is the moment where you are like,
Speaker 2: fuck this guy forever. But I, you know, made by
Speaker 2: a man in the eighties, I'm not so sure. I
Speaker 2: feel like the moment where you are supposed to lose him,
Speaker 2: even in the early eighties, is when he's like so
Speaker 2: quick to be like, well, I don't want to see
Speaker 2: my son anymore to like prove a point, which again
Speaker 2: is like something that kind of just goes away eventually.
Speaker 2: But I thought it was very whatever telling that he yeah,
Speaker 2: he's very he's a bad parent. He was so quick
Speaker 2: to be like, okay, well if it proves my point,
Speaker 2: fuck my small son that we named Bob, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's already having a hard enough time. His name's Bob.
Speaker 2: He's seven.
Speaker 3: If that I've thought he was like four or five little,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he is ready to abandon his son forever.
Speaker 3: And Anna is appalled at this, and things become violent
Speaker 3: and he chases after her. Cut to Mark on a bender.
Speaker 3: He's drinking heavily, he's filthy, he's mentally and physically unwell.
Speaker 2: It's been three weeks.
Speaker 3: Then he kind of gets his act together, not really
Speaker 3: but enough to like return turned to the apartment and
Speaker 3: little Bob is there, all messy and sticky because Anna
Speaker 3: has left him there alone. Not sure for how long,
Speaker 3: maybe a few hours, but Mark gets him cleaned up,
Speaker 3: and Anna eventually does return, and Mark, who is being
Speaker 3: extremely obsessive and possessive, maybe he feels possession over Anna.
Speaker 3: He's like, I can't live without you. We need to
Speaker 3: be together as a family. You have to call Heinrich
Speaker 3: and tell him it's over. God.
Speaker 2: Mark is just like ooh ooh, I hate him so much.
Speaker 2: It's so satisfying, Like the the sam Neil performance, I
Speaker 2: feel like it's all so good. I didn't realize that
Speaker 2: I like learned this in the research process that they're
Speaker 2: they're doing a very specific style of polish acting. That
Speaker 2: is like turning everything up to a fifteen. That was
Speaker 2: at the request of the director, which is why you
Speaker 2: don't really see any other Sam Neil performances remotely like this,
Speaker 2: but like they're pulling from a very specific playbook. But
Speaker 2: just how like he quits his job and then refuse it, Like,
Speaker 2: at no point is this man ever going to reflect.
Speaker 2: It's just like an act of yeah, like aggression toward
Speaker 2: getting what he wants. And yeah, he deserves to die.
Speaker 3: Does she know she did nothing wrong? Maybe?
Speaker 2: And Bob, you know he spoiler alert he survives to
Speaker 2: the end, but he's fucked for sure. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just there's no coming back from that. No.
Speaker 3: I usually don't read the Wikipedia synopsis because I'm like,
Speaker 3: I did a great job at this. I don't need confirmation.
Speaker 3: But because I didn't really understand a lot of what
Speaker 3: happens in this movie, I was like, maybe I'll read
Speaker 3: it and just like check my work.
Speaker 2: Oh is he supposed to die?
Speaker 3: It says on Wikipedia at least that he goes into
Speaker 3: the bathtub to drown himself. Yes, Bob, so my I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: I upon reading, like and pon watching it this time around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I first saw this, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's really dark at the end. I hate, like, sorry
Speaker 1: that we're jumping to the end. But I do think
Speaker 1: part of it is what we're talking about right now,
Speaker 1: where the instance where Mark comes back and is cleaning
Speaker 1: him up and he's going like, oh, he's like hit
Speaker 1: a new world record with deep sea diving in the
Speaker 1: bathtub because he's holding his breath, he's like playing. I
Speaker 1: feel at the end he has become so avoidant that
Speaker 1: the game he is playing becomes reality that he jumps
Speaker 1: into the tub to play and inadvertently dies. Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see this. I don't want to
Speaker 1: see this. I want to go into my fantasy world,
Speaker 1: which is in the tub, which is safe and comforting.
Speaker 1: But then, yeah, I think that's to me, that's what
Speaker 1: happens that track.
Speaker 2: That makes sense to me. I mean yeah, I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't think that's necessarily clear. But also so much
Speaker 2: of this movie isn't that does? That does make sense?
Speaker 2: And wow, way to add something horrifically tragic in literally
Speaker 2: the last thirty seconds of the movie.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, Jesus, it's either that or the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: So I suppose maybe a bathtub is better than the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 3: Seems like everyone was gonna die anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bleak okay. Ex nineteen eighty one in Germany baby.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Mark is begging Anna to end things with Heinrich,
Speaker 3: and she seems like maybe she'll comply with his request,
Speaker 3: but she leaves again to go stay with Heinrich, and
Speaker 3: Mark is trying to figure out where Heinrich is using
Speaker 3: his spy skills, I guess, but he's like, again, not
Speaker 3: doing a good job because he just calls Anna's friend
Speaker 3: Margie all the time to be like where is Anna?
Speaker 3: And it's like, aren't you a spy? What do you doing?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Anyway?
Speaker 2: And Margie, we don't. I don't know what the hell
Speaker 2: is going on with Margie. She is. It's almost like
Speaker 2: this guy cannot It's like I will write one woman character,
Speaker 2: but certainly not truly, because Margie is sort of just
Speaker 2: slipping and sliding around. She says a couple of things,
Speaker 2: but mostly she's just falling down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so much so that she broke her foot at
Speaker 1: some point off camera we don't see, right, she comes in.
Speaker 3: Just hobbling around on.
Speaker 2: The broken foot, like I thought you meant the actor.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: All we know about her is that she's like accident
Speaker 1: prone and you know, yeah, flirtatious and she gets.
Speaker 3: One of those casts that has like a high heel
Speaker 3: kind of built.
Speaker 2: Into it, which I'm kind of into that. Also, we're told,
Speaker 2: and again I'm assuming this is intentional, but I also
Speaker 2: don't understand why, which is not the last time we'll
Speaker 2: be saying that. But we're told that she is Anna's
Speaker 2: best friend, but I don't think we ever see them talk.
Speaker 2: And if she is Anna's best friend, she's a terrible friend.
Speaker 2: She's always just trying to fuck her abusive husband. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's I don't know, I'm really bizarre. And this
Speaker 2: is like Zelawski. I will talk about his personal life
Speaker 2: and his approach to working with actors as well, but like,
Speaker 2: this is the kind of movie you watch and you're like, well,
Speaker 2: this guy doesn't understand women at all, And then you
Speaker 2: look at his personal life section on Wikipedia and you're like,
Speaker 2: and he never figured it out and he never did.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Margie, I can't account for Margie.
Speaker 3: Nah, no one can. Yeah. Anyway, So Mark is trying
Speaker 3: to locate this heinrich guy. Meanwhile, he's a single dad
Speaker 3: now kind of, and so he has to drop off
Speaker 3: his son Bob at school, and he mistakes the school
Speaker 3: teacher Helen for Anna in a wig, but she is
Speaker 3: is played by the same actor as Anna Isabella Johnny.
Speaker 3: So he's not wrong, Like this person is some strange
Speaker 3: doppelganger of Anna.
Speaker 2: Right, who does all of the things that he thinks
Speaker 2: is wrong with his actual wife, where she's very nurturing.
Speaker 2: She's like quick to reassure him, like yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: she's very like she's yeah, he's cooking there, but again
Speaker 2: I don't quite get shrug. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then Mark goes to Heinrich's house and so we meet Heinrich.
Speaker 3: He's played by Heinz Bennett. But Anna isn't there, and
Speaker 3: Heinrich is. He's making some choices. He's very touchy feely.
Speaker 3: He's like, relax, we don't have to be enemies.
Speaker 2: He's a real he's a real piece of work. He's
Speaker 2: like he's a shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there are all of these because he also has
Speaker 2: said that he's like ditched his family. He's like a
Speaker 2: fuck machine. But he with his mom and like doesn't
Speaker 2: there's just so many bizarro elements of Heinrich.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wears spirituality like a costume just to seem fuckable,
Speaker 1: to seem more emotionally in tune. With women, and I
Speaker 1: really think that Zulawski was probably burned by a guy
Speaker 1: just like this, and that's why this guy is so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there do feel like certain elements of the divorce.
Speaker 2: If you're just focusing on the divorce narrative and like
Speaker 2: stay away from the doppelgegers of the tentacle port and
Speaker 2: all the other stuff going on, it does feel like
Speaker 2: this guy is too specific to not be referencing someone
Speaker 2: he actually knew exactly.
Speaker 3: He also, Heinrich also has a lot of books, and
Speaker 3: it seems like he was maybe trying to like enlighten
Speaker 3: Anna through all of his knowledge from books and so,
Speaker 3: not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but in this context,
Speaker 3: it's like you're it's like disingenuous, silly, simple woman who
Speaker 3: doesn't understand the world, So let me educate.
Speaker 2: You, right, which is like such a I don't know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: who among us hasn't gone from one abuse of relationship
Speaker 2: to a different kind of bad relationship indeed exactly.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Mark is there confronting Heinrich, and he's furious,
Speaker 3: so they end up arguing and brawling, although mostly it's
Speaker 3: Heinrich kicking Mark's ass and so Mark returns home. Anna
Speaker 3: is back. Like ninety percent of this movie is just
Speaker 3: like people returning home, and sometimes the one spouse is there,
Speaker 3: sometimes they aren't. It's just a lot of coming and going.
Speaker 3: But for now Anna is back and she's expressing how
Speaker 3: conflicted she feels about different things, though she declares once
Speaker 3: again that she does want to leave Mark for good.
Speaker 3: And they're screaming at each other and it becomes very
Speaker 3: physically abusive and Anna runs out. Mark chases after her.
Speaker 3: Either he bumps into Anna's friend Margie or maybe he
Speaker 3: has like asked her to come over.
Speaker 2: And then she says one of my favorite lines in
Speaker 2: the movie, which is something akin to like I love
Speaker 2: to see you in pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they hate each other.
Speaker 2: They do, yeah, but it's like a little but it
Speaker 2: turns her on how much she hates him, right, which
Speaker 2: is like okay, maybe sure, like sure it's happened, right,
Speaker 2: but it's just her character is so weird, so such
Speaker 2: a such a weird lady.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But she comes over to help with Bob because
Speaker 3: Mark is just not doing a good job as a parent.
Speaker 3: And then Mark hires a private detective to follow Anna
Speaker 3: to see what she's up to despite the fact that
Speaker 3: Mark is a spy and you'd think he could do this.
Speaker 3: Not that I'm like advocating for a man to stalk
Speaker 3: his wife, but I'm like, why aren't you using your
Speaker 3: skills anyway?
Speaker 2: Right, he hires someone else. It's funny, like yeah, and
Speaker 2: also just like another such a clear indicator that he
Speaker 2: does not actually care about Anna at all, because she's
Speaker 2: clearly having an episode of some sort. And what is
Speaker 2: going to exacerbate an episode, but actual surveillance like that
Speaker 2: is going to heighten any feeling of paranoid that she's
Speaker 2: clearly already experiencing. It's just like you really want to
Speaker 2: push him off the top of a building for that.
Speaker 3: One, you certainly do. So Anna once again returns home.
Speaker 3: Mark is desperate for her to communicate with him and
Speaker 3: to understand what's going on, but she's like kind of
Speaker 3: too busy slicing up some meat with an electric meat carver.
Speaker 2: And that's definitely not a like metaphor for whatever, right,
Speaker 2: it's just making raw meat really tiny.
Speaker 3: And then she uses this electric meat carver to cut
Speaker 3: her neck a little bit. It seems like she might
Speaker 3: be attempting suicide, but Mark stops her and treats her wound,
Speaker 3: and things have calmed down a.
Speaker 2: Bit, and he also like attempts to injure himself too, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: which I feel like is again another like yeah, he's
Speaker 2: trying to do something there, like I don't know, but
Speaker 2: but Mark. Mark's attempts to empathize with Anna are so
Speaker 2: half hearted and misguided that he's like, oh, I want
Speaker 2: to feel the physical pain that you're feeling, because that
Speaker 2: is like more comfortable than me actually giving a fuck
Speaker 2: off like what you're feeling or going through. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also felt like he was just acting like a
Speaker 1: complete child for most of this too. He's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, you did it, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it too, And I don't know she and she
Speaker 1: doesn't help him, like she sees him cutting himself and
Speaker 1: she's like I'm out and he's like it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 1: She's like, no, it doesn't hurt. And that was that
Speaker 1: was one moment where I was like whoa, Like you're
Speaker 1: both acknowledging that this torture that you're putting each other
Speaker 1: through actually is like, oh, I don't feel anything at
Speaker 1: all for you for this.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like I feel like it's one of
Speaker 2: the reads of it is that, like they're whatever, all
Speaker 2: the physical pain they're experiencing is our divorce feelings, and
Speaker 2: that's like part of the reason that they're heightening their
Speaker 2: actions so much is because it's like so hard to
Speaker 2: feel anything for each other, which is that's that's dark
Speaker 2: divorce heads sound off in the chat. It seems bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you'll never believe this. But Anna leaves again.
Speaker 3: She's always coming.
Speaker 2: And going, that's kind of her thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that detective who Mark had hired follows her
Speaker 3: and discovers that she's been renting an apartment in this
Speaker 3: like derelict building. So he knocks on the door, pretend
Speaker 3: to be like from the building manager's office, and he
Speaker 3: looks around and he finds something very disturbing unclear at
Speaker 3: this point exactly what we're seeing, but it's some creature
Speaker 3: that's bloody and gooey. Then Anna kills the detective with
Speaker 3: a broken wine bottle. So things have taken a turn
Speaker 3: that I certainly was not expecting.
Speaker 2: You never forget your first time seeing the big guy
Speaker 2: guy or murdered.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, right exactly. Meanwhile, at home, Bob's teacher, Helen
Speaker 3: aka the Anna doppelganger, shows up, and Mark is like,
Speaker 3: here finished giving my son a bath. Because Heinrich also
Speaker 3: shows up. He's acting very weird. He's flopping all over
Speaker 3: the place. I'm not sure if he's supposed to be
Speaker 3: drunk or something.
Speaker 2: But he's I think he's always like some manner of
Speaker 2: fucked up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He takes a lot of drugs too, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: He went to know where Anna is and Mark is
Speaker 3: basically like, get out of here, bitch, I'm not afraid
Speaker 3: of you anymore. Then Mark and Helen chat a little
Speaker 3: bit first about Bob, and then Mark says something where
Speaker 3: he's like women are evil and Helen's like I'm right here.
Speaker 2: Right well. And it's also like implied and this is
Speaker 2: where I was like, oh god, where where is my
Speaker 2: high school history education? Like where did it go? Where
Speaker 2: she implies that she is from East Germany and is
Speaker 2: now in West Germany, and there is like this whole
Speaker 2: political aspect to her identity that I genuinely don't think
Speaker 2: I know enough about to say exactly what he's getting at,
Speaker 2: but that she it's implying basically that she has seen
Speaker 2: horror so much worse than what she's She's sort of like,
Speaker 2: shut the fuck up, like I've seen people die, which
Speaker 2: I kind of appreciate. Yeah, but then she still is
Speaker 2: That's really the only moment that she really pushes back
Speaker 2: on Mark in any significant way. So I found her again.
Speaker 2: I like whatever that is. I like it, but it
Speaker 2: felt like it was like dipping its toe into doing something.
Speaker 2: But then she becomes very docile and kind of submissive
Speaker 2: to what he wants after that, So it's weird that
Speaker 2: that only happens once. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she also says something to the effect of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: she says, the only thing in common with women is
Speaker 1: like menstruation, which okay, but then yeah, exactly. But then
Speaker 1: she says something to the effect of like, you're kind
Speaker 1: of only getting angry because you don't understand freedom, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of like you are the problem here, buddy,
Speaker 1: Like you're getting mad at her for being a free person, yeah,
Speaker 1: like for for having agency and sort of I saw
Speaker 1: again there where he was being a child and the
Speaker 1: teachers stepping in and being like no, no, no, you're
Speaker 1: actually the asshole in this situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then it's just like so bizarre that that
Speaker 2: is sort of dropped to the bitter end of the movie.
Speaker 2: She's sort of just like doing whatever the plot needs
Speaker 2: her to do. It seems, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Weird, including immediately after this, they get naked together and
Speaker 3: lie down next to each other, and it's unclear if
Speaker 3: they end up having sex, but she's I.
Speaker 2: Don't think they. I've read some theories about like Mark
Speaker 2: in general, about like how Mark feels about sex and
Speaker 2: about women in general, where there are reads of this
Speaker 2: movie where Mark is thought to be closeted and instead
Speaker 2: of and this is like not a read that I
Speaker 2: have necessarily, but it wasn't something that occurred to me
Speaker 2: before I was going through this viewing. Is that Mark,
Speaker 2: I mean, part of it seems like Anna's issue with
Speaker 2: the marriage is that, like she's not satisfied sexually. There
Speaker 2: are a series of times where Mark doesn't have Well.
Speaker 2: The real sort of thing that this hinges on is
Speaker 2: there are three shots. I didn't notice it until this viewing.
Speaker 2: There's three sort of very similar shots in the movie
Speaker 2: that happened with each member of the family where it's
Speaker 2: like it's first with Mark holding Bob when he's not
Speaker 2: wearing a shirt. It's not a sexual thing at all,
Speaker 2: but he's just like looking at his son. And then
Speaker 2: there's later an identical shot where he looks at Anna
Speaker 2: in the exact same way, in the exact same shot,
Speaker 2: which I think is meant to imply that he doesn't
Speaker 2: view her sexually, he just but also you could view
Speaker 2: that as like she he views her as his quote
Speaker 2: unquote property, the way he views his son as his property.
Speaker 2: And so like, there's all of these I did see
Speaker 2: reads of this that thought that Bob was closeted. I
Speaker 2: don't really think that, but I do think that he
Speaker 2: he has no idea how he feels about anything, which
Speaker 2: is true for a lot of people, and reacts with
Speaker 2: violence instead. But this was the first time that I
Speaker 2: really noticed that. And then there's a shot where, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, what is the last version of that shot?
Speaker 2: I think it's towards the end, Anna looking at Anna
Speaker 2: looking at Mark with the same sort of like I
Speaker 2: don't know, like I don't even know how to describe
Speaker 2: that look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the read I had on it this time was
Speaker 1: that the first shot of Mark looking at Bob and
Speaker 1: holding him that way is like you are my creation.
Speaker 1: You know, like you're my son. And then him looking
Speaker 1: at Anna is a similar way of like Adam and
Speaker 1: Eve like you are part of me, like from my
Speaker 1: rib type thing. And I'm going totally biblical on this
Speaker 1: just because I grew up in an awful like evangelical
Speaker 1: like that's my upbringing, so I can't like unsee some
Speaker 1: of these things. But then when she's looking at him
Speaker 1: and she takes off his shirt and she looks him
Speaker 1: and she's like, I am God is in me, It's like,
Speaker 1: oh fuck, like I am the creator. We don't really
Speaker 1: know this about her just yet when she says that,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like I'm in control now. That's how
Speaker 1: I read it totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this movie's attitude towards sex, I guess is just
Speaker 2: really uh twisted and bizarre. All that to say, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure he does not have sex with Helen because
Speaker 2: because she says, you don't have to make love to me,
Speaker 2: and he seems sort of like few.
Speaker 3: He's like, I wasn't trying.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, we're this is just this is just
Speaker 2: a divorce, naked time whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't know right, So that happens the next day
Speaker 3: another detective who works with the first detective and is
Speaker 3: his romantic partner, is concerned that the first detective hasn't
Speaker 3: shown up. So the second detective I think his name
Speaker 3: might be Zimmerman. He goes to Anna's new apartment and
Speaker 3: finds the same bloody, gooey creature lying in the bed.
Speaker 3: Now we can see that it has tentacles. There's also
Speaker 3: some light emanating from its abdomen. It's oozing all sorts
Speaker 3: of like blood and white and green goo. And Anna
Speaker 3: is like, oh him, he's tired. He made love to
Speaker 3: me all night.
Speaker 2: Oh haha.
Speaker 3: By the way, he's still unfinished, implying that she's like
Speaker 3: working on the creature or that it's going to turn
Speaker 3: into something else, right, and then she attacks and shoots
Speaker 3: and kills the detective. Meanwhile, Mark receives a package. It's
Speaker 3: footage of someone filming a ballet class where Anna is
Speaker 3: the teacher, and we see her be very cruel to
Speaker 3: one of her young students, and then she's talking to
Speaker 3: the camera, ranting and raving about sisters and faith and
Speaker 3: chance and other things that don't make much sense.
Speaker 2: I always forget that that scene is in the movie, right,
Speaker 2: because I what does everyone think's going on? There can
Speaker 2: someone I I have theories, but I yeah, Alicia, what's happening.
Speaker 1: Well, this most recent time that I was reading it
Speaker 1: or watching it, sorry, I was thinking about Well, first
Speaker 1: the whole scene with the ballerina and her like she's
Speaker 1: being super cool to her student and whatnot. This is
Speaker 1: all filmed by Heinrich, and I think that Heinrich sent
Speaker 1: these videos to Mark to be like, see I'm the
Speaker 1: superior man. But like the whole Mark gets something different
Speaker 1: out of this. As Anna's talking, she says, this is
Speaker 1: why I'm with you, Heinrich, because you say I for me.
Speaker 1: And what she is saying and then instance this is
Speaker 1: in the past, you know, with during their relationship, you
Speaker 1: say aye for me. When I hear that, I think
Speaker 1: you speak for me. You take my agency, you like
Speaker 1: make it easier to you know, not be responsible, like
Speaker 1: to just like go about this affair, and you know,
Speaker 1: you speak for me. But then in the next section,
Speaker 1: she's sort of having a breakdown and she is starting
Speaker 1: to think about the sister's faith and chance and there's
Speaker 1: like the duality there. A very small detail that we
Speaker 1: caught at the beginning was that she was briefly with Mark.
Speaker 1: They had a child and he went away pretty quickly after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I feel like she was really taking a chance
Speaker 1: with Mark, taking a chance on being a mother, taking
Speaker 1: a chance on having this relationship with Mark and being
Speaker 1: his wife and all of that. But somewhere along the way,
Speaker 1: her faith in them gets ripped apart. So now she's
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild her faith, which could be taken as
Speaker 1: the creature, So that's one interpretation. She also talks about
Speaker 1: having to be everything to everybody else, Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: losing losing any sort of like possession of the self.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating. Okay, I I had not connected the dots
Speaker 2: in that way, so thank you for them.
Speaker 1: That's just my reading though, That's just what I'm bringing
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, this movie is Lucy goosey baby. There's
Speaker 2: no wrong answers, But that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Gooey tooey gooey.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My I always forget that scene is there, and
Speaker 2: then I like rewatched it a couple of times just
Speaker 2: to be like, huh, okay, okay, I wasn't clear. I
Speaker 2: mean they say that she stopped working about a year ago,
Speaker 2: which to me also already indicates like perhaps an impending crisis,
Speaker 2: which is certainly true for Mark who leaves his job
Speaker 2: and immediately spirals into crisis. So when I was seeing
Speaker 2: the ballet tapes, I was like, Okay, maybe that was
Speaker 2: her job that she stepped away from, because we don't
Speaker 2: really get a lot of information about or otherwise, And
Speaker 2: it felt like, I mean, and again, maybe it's like
Speaker 2: this is where I'm projecting stuff where in an environment
Speaker 2: like that it can be not always. Obviously there's plenty
Speaker 2: of dance instructors that are amazing, but you're in a
Speaker 2: room full of people you perceive as your younger self.
Speaker 2: And I do think that there are teacher student dynamics
Speaker 2: where if you are singled out as like a sight
Speaker 2: of pain and abuse, it's often because the teacher is like,
Speaker 2: I see my younger self in you, and I should
Speaker 2: have experienced that pain and then I would have been
Speaker 2: x y Z. Where I feel like that comes up
Speaker 2: in athletics a lot, or like whatever, black swant, whiplash,
Speaker 2: you name it, like the pursuit of being the right
Speaker 2: way is not to require suffering, and so it's like
Speaker 2: it's weirdly, I'm like ititon ya you know, we could
Speaker 2: keep going of just like the forceful coach who abuses
Speaker 2: the young student to quoteunqut push them to greatness, but
Speaker 2: it's also because they hate something in themselves. And again
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know exactly where that would fit
Speaker 2: into this movie specifically, but I don't know. Yeah, my
Speaker 2: read of it in this viewing was like that there
Speaker 2: is a part of Anna that does experience this like
Speaker 2: extreme self hatred or the idea that like, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is definitely clear that she is not fitting into
Speaker 2: the roles she's supposed to fit into correctly, and that
Speaker 2: she's and so much of why I love even though
Speaker 2: it's she's not great, you know, but like, uh, I
Speaker 2: love those moments of her extreme anger, even though, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this movie could be hard on the ears.
Speaker 2: There's so much screaming, so much just so much scream
Speaker 2: and the sound mixing is like it seems like it
Speaker 2: was pretty much done on the fly because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of echoes, there's a lot of tunnel echoes whatever.
Speaker 2: But when she's angry, it's just I don't know, Like
Speaker 2: I again, this is like me directing probably, but it's like, god,
Speaker 2: I've done everything I was supposed to do and it
Speaker 2: didn't work, and I'm like so much worse off than
Speaker 2: I started. And that's like I don't know, Like I
Speaker 2: just feel that in her so much, and to me,
Speaker 2: that's what the monster is, is like I did everything
Speaker 2: I was supposed to it and I'm absolutely fucked and like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, that taped
Speaker 2: this time, I was like, how does this fit into
Speaker 2: her story? And her story is vague enough that you
Speaker 2: can kind of go a lot of ways with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, truly, Yeah, and I'm still I'm trying to figure
Speaker 3: this Anna out to.
Speaker 2: This day, this diva who knows, who knows what's going
Speaker 2: on with nose rip?
Speaker 1: I mean those shoes, the sunglasses, Oh my god, wow,
Speaker 1: pause for the for the fashion, It's like so fucking truly.
Speaker 2: I also like that there's like this cartoon character quality
Speaker 2: to their clothes where we know that this movie takes
Speaker 2: place at least over about a month or so, because
Speaker 2: at one point there's just three lost weeks that has
Speaker 2: never referenced again and Bob. We're led to believe that
Speaker 2: Bob was surviving on jam or something horrible, but this
Speaker 2: movie takes place over like more than a day. And
Speaker 2: yet no, everyone's outfit is the same. It's like they're
Speaker 2: spongebobbing it very blue.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I didn't even notice that, but yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 2: The Sam Neil. And then and then even when we're
Speaker 2: seeing the flashback of the miscarriage scene, she's wearing the
Speaker 2: same dress. So it's like, this is just this is
Speaker 2: just where it is.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we're about to get there because you'll you'll
Speaker 3: never guess what happens next.
Speaker 2: But Anna returns home again and drag her.
Speaker 3: Mark of course does not yet know anything about the
Speaker 3: tentacle man in her new apartment, but he does see
Speaker 3: her being very erratic and unstable, and he's trying to
Speaker 3: understand what's going on. And then she recounts a memory
Speaker 3: and we see this flashback where she's at a church
Speaker 3: for a brief moment, looking at like Jesus on the cross,
Speaker 3: and then she's in this like metro underground hallway kind
Speaker 3: of thing. She's flinging groceries around. She might be possessed
Speaker 3: or something. There's there's red and white and green goo
Speaker 3: seeping out of her various orifices.
Speaker 2: This she picked up a bunch of goo at the
Speaker 2: grocery store and he goes.
Speaker 3: Everywhere seeping out. And I didn't connect these dots upon
Speaker 3: my first watch, but this is her having a miscarriage.
Speaker 2: I believe, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3: And so she tells this to Mark and I don't
Speaker 3: even know how he reacts. I feel like he doesn't
Speaker 3: really have much of a reaction, but he does call
Speaker 3: Heinrich to be like, hey, this is Anna's new address
Speaker 3: in case you want to go over there. So Heinrich
Speaker 3: goes to this place and he and Anna are like
Speaker 3: kissing and stuff, but he's also saying some very rapey things.
Speaker 3: Then he finds the tentacle creature as well as some
Speaker 3: human heads and other body parts in her refrigerator, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh my god, yeah, and then she stabs
Speaker 3: him a little bit and he escapes and calls Mark.
Speaker 3: So Mark goes to the apartment and the creature is
Speaker 3: gone now, but Mark does see the heads in the
Speaker 3: refrigerator and he freaks out and he goes to meet
Speaker 3: up with Heinrich at a bar and they discuss what
Speaker 3: they might do to help Anna, although Mark is like
Speaker 3: mocking Heinrich and acting like he doesn't really believe him.
Speaker 3: And then he kills Heinrich and blows up Anna's apartment
Speaker 3: I guess to hide the evidence of her recent murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mark, Mark kind of goes joker mode towards the end,
Speaker 2: where I'm like, I don't even know why he's doing
Speaker 2: what he's doing, and he clearly doesn't die either, Like
Speaker 2: he's just like, all right, how could we heighten? Okay,
Speaker 2: I just killed the guy. It also like the meanest
Speaker 2: way possible and okay there, which I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: fun to watch where he's like you can see the
Speaker 2: little cogs in his like weak brain turning. He's like, okay, frigda,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get on the toilet and in it. Like
Speaker 2: he's just such a little fucking weasel. Yeah, yeah, he's
Speaker 2: I don't like, I guess he does. He blow up
Speaker 2: the apartment to like protect her, to cover her tracks.
Speaker 2: Like it does seem like there is towards the end
Speaker 2: this like not that they're stuck together. Clearly these clearly
Speaker 2: these two aren't gonna it's not going to work out
Speaker 2: between them. Yeah, but there is still this like and
Speaker 2: I do feel like that is having divorced parents. I
Speaker 2: feel like that is divorce vibes of like, even though
Speaker 2: there's a part of me that like really hates this
Speaker 2: person and resents them and we've been through all this
Speaker 2: awful stuff, I still feel this like compulsion to protect
Speaker 2: them to some extent. I'm not saying that it's like
Speaker 2: he's actually an amazing guy, but like that is an
Speaker 2: extreme act that you're sort of led to believe no
Speaker 2: one else would take for Anna, because why would you?
Speaker 1: He does say, and I never caught this before, but
Speaker 1: and I think it's just after they've after he's like
Speaker 1: they've I don't remember what part it is. There's so
Speaker 1: much coming and going, as you said, but there's one
Speaker 1: part in their apartment where she's about to leave and
Speaker 1: he says, you are all I have. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's why, because he is so hell bent. I mean,
Speaker 1: all the men are so hell bent on trying to
Speaker 1: possess her and trying to like make.
Speaker 3: Her see them.
Speaker 1: You know that she just keeps slipping away from him,
Speaker 1: and all all he can do is just try and
Speaker 1: protect her in the in the event that maybe she
Speaker 1: will allow herself to be possessed by him. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all I can think of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that was my read as well.
Speaker 2: Also, it's just like it's just I like seeing sam
Speaker 2: Neil scoot around in that little bomber jacket. I like
Speaker 2: it when he gets on his little Viking, he zooms
Speaker 2: zooms away. I'm like, it's it's just so wild. He's
Speaker 2: he's never been hot to me, but when he's like
Speaker 2: blowing stuff up and he's in his little jacket, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're like, I love it.
Speaker 3: Right, And then he comes back home to find Margie
Speaker 3: badly wounded. It seems like Anna had stabbed her.
Speaker 2: Their best friends, so guys their best their best friends.
Speaker 2: They do anything for each other.
Speaker 3: There's a reference to Margie saw it or saw something.
Speaker 3: I guess she saw the tentacle creature and that's why
Speaker 3: Anna killed her. Anna helps Mark get cleaned up, and
Speaker 3: then they have sex, and now they're like, okay, we
Speaker 3: have to cover up Margie's death and get the hell
Speaker 3: out of here. So Mark puts Margie's body in the
Speaker 3: trunk of his car. But when he comes back inside,
Speaker 3: he discovers Anna having loud, passionate sex with the tentacle creature,
Speaker 3: and he's just sort of like, okay, again. His reactions
Speaker 3: to things are really bizarre and hard to understand, and
Speaker 3: he leaves again and pays a visit to Heinrich's mother,
Speaker 3: who realizes that Heinrich is dead and she dies by
Speaker 3: suicide and You're.
Speaker 2: Like, what what I mean? That's okay? So there I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, so this is this because there's always
Speaker 2: just a chance for this movie that this is just
Speaker 2: something that happens, because why not, because it could happen,
Speaker 2: so why not make it happen. But it also felt like, well,
Speaker 2: is that the movie's attempt to make some sort of
Speaker 2: statement on both faith and motherhood of like is this
Speaker 2: what was he saying with that? I don't know.
Speaker 3: I really don't know. Something I've been reflecting on recently
Speaker 3: after having gone to film school twice. Not that I
Speaker 3: would ever mention that, but especially in my undergrad where
Speaker 3: I took a lot of film production classes, and then
Speaker 3: I took at least one in my grad program, and
Speaker 3: like people who weren't writers, but people who were aspiring directors,
Speaker 3: and like, we're more focused on kind of the production
Speaker 3: side of things versus the development and writing side of things.
Speaker 3: They'd be on set shooting something and they would be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: in this scene, this random thing is going to happen,
Speaker 3: and then character is gonna do this wacky thing, and
Speaker 3: I'd be like, but why, and they would say, because
Speaker 3: it looks cool, yeah, And I'm like, but it. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of filmmakers just kind of make
Speaker 3: weird choices that don't necessarily make logical narrative sense because
Speaker 3: they're like they're like, I could do that because I
Speaker 3: can because it looks cool.
Speaker 2: And this is the kind of vibes driven movie where
Speaker 2: that would happen. It's just like, again, there's I guess
Speaker 2: similar to Bob Dying, which I've now seen this movie
Speaker 2: three times, didn't know, didn't know Bob died, but that
Speaker 2: you're like this, yeah, like this could be a very
Speaker 2: intentional choice that is just like kind of unclear or
Speaker 2: like you're saying, Caitlin, it might just be like, let's
Speaker 2: let's make sure every woman's dead before, right, Yeah, we
Speaker 2: got to make sure every woman we've met it is dead, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I got out of it was, again, he's just
Speaker 1: trying to make fun of Heinrich as like a mama's
Speaker 1: boy type of thing and have this this seems like
Speaker 1: this woman's only reason for living was her son, Like
Speaker 1: she had to live.
Speaker 2: Just like the real tragedy, right, and so.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit cute, see, but like she
Speaker 1: dies and the window opens, like her soul's gone. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just like it's such a weird uh.
Speaker 1: I guess it's this one more of those like religious.
Speaker 3: Scenes for this film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're kind of just scattered throughout. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: make too much of it. Okay, it could be a
Speaker 1: throwaway scene, but it could also be that I don't know, if.
Speaker 2: We don't know, it's so weird because everything happens. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's part of why I really like it. Everything happens
Speaker 2: with the same amount of intensity. But like it could
Speaker 2: be either very meaningful or just be like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know whatever likes right, Just like the long take
Speaker 2: between like Anna looking at Jesus, You're like you could
Speaker 2: either see like that is the cryptex to understanding the movie,
Speaker 2: or it might just be like.
Speaker 3: We shot it and we decided to put it in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: She says faith and then she looks at a crucifix.
Speaker 2: Later thoughts like right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right, right, who does Okay, so where are
Speaker 3: we The next day, Mark's former spy bosses slash colleagues
Speaker 3: approach him and there's a shootout on the street. So
Speaker 3: it becomes kind of an entirely different movie for a
Speaker 3: few minutes, where now it's like a spy thriller. And
Speaker 3: Mark escapes and heads into a building all bloody and injured,
Speaker 3: and Anna shows up and she's like, let me introduce
Speaker 3: you to my friend, and it's a doppelganger of Mark,
Speaker 3: also played by Sam Neil, except he has a different
Speaker 3: eye color, similar to how Anna's doppelganger has a sim
Speaker 3: has a different eye color, and so I guess this
Speaker 3: is the tentacle creature, this doppelganger of Mark that has
Speaker 3: been slowly transforming and evolving into the doppelganger. And Mark
Speaker 3: is just sort of like again weird reaction. He's just
Speaker 3: sort of like, oh okay. And then the spy dudes
Speaker 3: catch back up with Mark and shoot him, and Anna
Speaker 3: the doppelganger escapes. Cut back to Little Bob and his
Speaker 3: teacher Helen is there as his new guardian question Mark,
Speaker 3: and Mark Stoppelganger shows up at the door and he's
Speaker 3: kind of banging on the.
Speaker 2: Door like yeah, he's climbing up the door, and then
Speaker 2: and Bob is afraid and he goes in the bathtub
Speaker 2: and presumably dies there.
Speaker 3: And then and then a bunch of bombs start raining
Speaker 3: down outside as if like.
Speaker 2: Which is like it's almost like this movie takes place
Speaker 2: next to the Berlin Wall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the end of the movie. So everyone
Speaker 3: gets it right.
Speaker 2: Makes sense to I mean, like the Doppelgangers are the
Speaker 2: last one standing. So that feels like a clear something.
Speaker 3: Or an unclear or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know the last week, last thing before we
Speaker 2: got a break. I guess I forgot there. There's like
Speaker 2: I think my favorite I mean, well it's it's the
Speaker 2: tunnel scene is like the most elevated, Like that performance
Speaker 2: is like unmatching, but like a smaller moment that I
Speaker 2: really loved on this viewing in particular is like you
Speaker 2: really don't feel Sam Neil give up on the relationship
Speaker 2: until he sees an octopus fucking his wife, like you
Speaker 2: can see. Uh, there's like there's just like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: get it, this relationship will not move forward, and even
Speaker 2: though he's like his character is a piece of shit, right,
Speaker 2: but like I I've in that moment I could relate
Speaker 2: with that character where it like it takes something so
Speaker 2: extreme for you to accept like, okay, so this is
Speaker 2: a got it, got it, But it takes it takes
Speaker 2: a cryptid uh fucking your wife in front of you
Speaker 2: to be like, so she's actually not interested in me?
Speaker 2: Got it? I just love that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty great. All right, let's take a quick
Speaker 3: break and we'll come back to discuss. And we're back, Well,
Speaker 3: what should we talk about, Alicia?
Speaker 2: We're going to kick it to you. Where would you
Speaker 2: like to start the discussion? Is there anything jumping out
Speaker 2: to you on this viewing?
Speaker 1: Oh man, Well, we did talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: like here and there the two sisters.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, there's a part where she's like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: miscarried Chance, Like the miscarriage scene. It implies that Chance
Speaker 3: is gone. But Faith is the tentacle creature that she's
Speaker 3: also having sex with that she maybe gave birth to.
Speaker 3: So yes, we don't know.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest. There the thing when things get that
Speaker 2: like it's why I can't I mean whatever, it's why
Speaker 2: I can't do Like the Bible where it's like but
Speaker 2: things get that like bonk you over the head, like symbolic.
Speaker 2: My brain just kind of switches off.
Speaker 3: Yes, and like.
Speaker 2: She Okay, so we're witnessing the miscarriage of an idea.
Speaker 2: Chance is goo? We don't, Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3: What was your take on that discussion of like the
Speaker 3: sisters and those metaphors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I think she was kind of
Speaker 1: talking about her and her relationships and responsibilities and things
Speaker 1: like that. I do feel like the creature is her
Speaker 1: shot at creating something that she she thinks like, nothing
Speaker 1: has satisfied me in the past, I must create it.
Speaker 1: But then and behold, what she creates is the exact
Speaker 1: thing she already has, but in a more divine sense,
Speaker 1: because when we look at the way that there are
Speaker 1: subtle nods to the fact that the creature could be
Speaker 1: God or a devil disguising as God, because Emmanuel is
Speaker 1: the first the name of the first detective that comes
Speaker 1: into the room, and Emmanuel means God with us, and
Speaker 1: you know, every single one of those dudes who sees
Speaker 1: the creature goes my God. And Heinrich also becomes temporarily blind,
Speaker 1: So there is some sort of divine He's a divine
Speaker 1: entity that will go on to destroy the world in
Speaker 1: a very misogynistic biblical reading. You could say she's the
Speaker 1: horror of Babylon giving birth to you know, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's not true.
Speaker 2: I haven't thought about the horror of Babylon in a
Speaker 2: long time since shout out to her.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, right, But I don't think that what's happening here.
Speaker 1: I think it's more just feminine agency and the feminine
Speaker 1: feminine ability to create, because a lot of people when
Speaker 1: they see the monster, they think that all the white
Speaker 1: stuff is sperm, and I think it's milk.
Speaker 2: I think she Yeah, I give out in this milk.
Speaker 2: Yeah right.
Speaker 1: It's it feels like she is giving her all to this,
Speaker 1: including her own bodily fluids and her orgasms and like
Speaker 1: every bit of herself her responsibility, and it's sort of incestuous,
Speaker 1: which is also kind of weird, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which my understanding is that Zulowski uh does not mind
Speaker 2: throwing in some incest into his work. It seems like
Speaker 2: a consistent theme from what I've gathered. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what's so tricky in the way,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that we're going to encounter this over
Speaker 2: and over, is that like so often it really In
Speaker 2: what I was reading about this, it's presented as like,
Speaker 2: you know that Mark and and are sort of two
Speaker 2: sides of the same coin in some way, and I
Speaker 2: feel like the plot bears that out to some extent,
Speaker 2: where they both create doppelgangers that are idealized versions of
Speaker 2: the other. If we're if we're to think that Helen
Speaker 2: is like not quite real or like there's so much
Speaker 2: projection going on from March's side. But what I do, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But what I find tricky about like the way that
Speaker 2: I've seen this movie written about and I have it right,
Speaker 2: I want to read the book you have had. I
Speaker 2: didn't encounter it, but that like you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's hard because it's like we're presented with this dynamic
Speaker 2: that I don't even know if Zolowski understands, because he's
Speaker 2: clearly sorting through some very personal shit and would continue to.
Speaker 2: I saw that much later in his life. Towards the
Speaker 2: end of his life. Subsequent romantic partner sued him for
Speaker 2: oversharing about their sex life and about her life in
Speaker 2: a work of fiction quote unquote, and he lost that
Speaker 2: case because she was right. So we know that a
Speaker 2: lot of this is coming from a personal place. But
Speaker 2: I can't tell on the Zulawski side, if he like
Speaker 2: he knows that they are both deeply flawed and they
Speaker 2: are both obsessed with control. I don't know that he
Speaker 2: fully sees Mark as abusive as he really is. That's
Speaker 2: why it's like, I find some of the writing around
Speaker 2: it tricky, although I don't really have a solution for
Speaker 2: it other than to constantly kind of qualify, like, yes,
Speaker 2: Anna is a deeply flawed person. She is a negligent parent.
Speaker 2: She is like she is a very very deeply flawed person.
Speaker 2: But she is also clearly subject to horrific abuse and
Speaker 2: control by her husband from moment one. Yes, and the
Speaker 2: violence I mean, correct me, if I'm right, All of
Speaker 2: the violence we see from Anna towards Mark is reactionary.
Speaker 2: It's not She is not the aggressor, and it's like
Speaker 2: Mark is. And I do think, I guess, to this
Speaker 2: movie's credit that we do see, while we do see
Speaker 2: a lot of physical abuse coming from Mark, particularly in
Speaker 2: the first half of the movie, I feel like, I
Speaker 2: don't you don't I mean, you see this unfortunately a
Speaker 2: lot in movies, because it happens a lot in life.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: I do feel like it appropriately and maybe this is
Speaker 2: the Sam Neil performance. He seems like a coward when
Speaker 2: he is attacking her, And I don't know like how
Speaker 2: to exactly, but like you can feel that this abuse
Speaker 2: comes from a place of cowardice and self hatred, as
Speaker 2: so much abuse does, in a way that doesn't justify
Speaker 2: it or excuse it. I guess I'm more kind of
Speaker 2: inclined to give that to sam Neil because it's so
Speaker 2: like it's awful to watch, because it feels in a
Speaker 2: movie where everything feels unreal, that element to me felt
Speaker 2: very real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say. The thing I didn't know
Speaker 1: about it until I read this book by Alison Taylor
Speaker 1: is that the slapping was insisted upon by a Johnny
Speaker 1: and by Zulawski, and he did not want to do it.
Speaker 1: He sam Neil, and both him and Isabelle and Johnny
Speaker 1: were like abused by Zulowski during the course of filming
Speaker 1: this almost like in a Kubrickian Shelley Duvall way. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's I wanted to share it because, Yeah, Johnny has
Speaker 1: talked about it more, which I guess makes sense because
Speaker 1: I'm presumably she was subject to more of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, we kend in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: I really like this movie, Zulawski as a person is
Speaker 1: I mean, he's a scumbag. He's an interesting scumbag who
Speaker 1: was subject to a lot of political violet and we
Speaker 1: can talk about that side of his life too, because
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like he wasn't wronged by the state
Speaker 1: time and time again. But in terms of the way
Speaker 1: he approached it feels like a very seventies eighties male
Speaker 1: o tour thing that we fortunately.
Speaker 2: Have talked about so much on this show, like Kubrick
Speaker 2: is a big example, but this is another one where
Speaker 2: it feels like, weirdly, David Lynch is the outlier in
Speaker 2: this group of directors because actors really like working with
Speaker 2: him and will work with him time and time again.
Speaker 2: Where Isabella Johnny points out, have you ever seen an
Speaker 2: actress that's worked with him twice? Because I haven't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wanted to share some of the quotes she's given
Speaker 2: for this, mostly in the last five years or so,
Speaker 2: because she's still with us and working, as is Sam Neil,
Speaker 2: who by all accounts seems like a seems like a
Speaker 2: mench I kind of want to read his memoir, right.
Speaker 2: The most significant thing I think that comes up, or
Speaker 2: came up prior to Johnny giving these interviews about five
Speaker 2: years ago, is that Zulowski would almost like wear as
Speaker 2: a badge of honor that Isabella Johnny was in such
Speaker 2: a bad mental state after this movie that she attempted suicide.
Speaker 2: This is something that is I guess mentioned in the
Speaker 2: commentary track on a release of Possession, where I mean,
Speaker 2: I have not heard him say this, but you can
Speaker 2: feel it. So here's he said when she saw the
Speaker 2: film after she committed suicide because she never wanted to
Speaker 2: see the dailies, so she really didn't know. How do
Speaker 2: we look at her? And she committed suicide. But being
Speaker 2: Isabelle A Johnny, you must understand in Europe, isabel A Johnny.
Speaker 3: Is a diva.
Speaker 2: She's a big thing. She went to the bathroom and
Speaker 2: she cut her wrists with a G two machine raiser,
Speaker 2: which cuts you half a millimeter of skin and not
Speaker 2: much deeper. So he's both bragging that he drove which
Speaker 2: I do think a lot of directors of this ilk
Speaker 2: where is a badge of honor of like this? And
Speaker 2: I think we see this, I think the most recent
Speaker 2: movie where you really, I mean Jared Letto tried to
Speaker 2: but it did work. But like Heath Ledger's performance is
Speaker 2: brought up a lot of like a performance that brought
Speaker 2: you to the brink of your own sanity, when that
Speaker 2: is like not something to be happy about and just
Speaker 2: indicates that the production is not what it needs to
Speaker 2: do to protect their performers. Right. But not only is
Speaker 2: like Zulowski bragging that this movie he created a film
Speaker 2: so toxic that it was an active threat to his
Speaker 2: lead actor, he also in the same breath dismisses it
Speaker 2: as like, well, she's difficult to work with and she's
Speaker 2: a drama queen and she actually it wasn't actually an
Speaker 2: attempt on her life. It basically he's saying, like she's
Speaker 2: just trying to get attention because she's a diva, which
Speaker 2: is just like you know, in a paragraph, that's who
Speaker 2: this guy is, right, Like, this is a guy who
Speaker 2: is like, you know, making this very you could argue
Speaker 2: petty movie about his own divorce about a working actress
Speaker 2: who was still working at the time, and not that
Speaker 2: he's not entitled. You know, everyone's entitled to their divorce
Speaker 2: movie right, like the Brude the brute marriage story whatever. Everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like you can make your divorce movie regardless of gender, whatever.
Speaker 2: But like, I don't know, there is this meanness that
Speaker 2: you feel in this movie. And at least I guess
Speaker 2: all I can say is that he doesn't spare Mark
Speaker 2: in that appraisal. It isn't like, oh no, poor Mark,
Speaker 2: Anna was so mean, Like they're both awful. But anyways,
Speaker 2: Isabella Johnny responds to this because Zelawski died ten years
Speaker 2: ago or so, she said in various interviews. His movies
Speaker 2: are very special, but they totally focus on women as
Speaker 2: if they are Lili's. It was quite an amazing film
Speaker 2: to do, but I got bruised inside out. It was
Speaker 2: exciting to do. It was no bones broken, but it
Speaker 2: was like how or why did I do that. I
Speaker 2: don't think any other actress ever did to films with him,
Speaker 2: She said, I consider myself a survivor for a lot
Speaker 2: of reasons. What's beautiful is to make a place within
Speaker 2: yourself for a character without that character turning into a
Speaker 2: negative entity. But sometimes your life gets blown apart like that.
Speaker 2: Great actresses have been devoured from the inside. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a self cannibalism. It's not a job that facilitates
Speaker 2: a happy frame of mind, quite the opposite. That's why
Speaker 2: it's important to be surrounded by friends who can be
Speaker 2: angels but also conscientious objectors. Otherwise you can lose yourself.
Speaker 2: And then the last thing I wanted to share is
Speaker 2: I made it meaning possession so I wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: work all the time. And I was criticized for it.
Speaker 2: They said, why don't she make more films? It was
Speaker 2: because my parents were ill and needed me, and my
Speaker 2: children needed me. I even forgot that I was an
Speaker 2: actress at certain times, but that too isn't forgiven. Basically,
Speaker 2: there's no way out. So we see these references that
Speaker 2: she makes to the fact that this was clearly an
Speaker 2: ego trip male filmmaker that unfortunately, this is a narrative
Speaker 2: we're familiar with and also something that we weirdly talked
Speaker 2: about recently with Kathleen Turner, where it's a prominent actor,
Speaker 2: she's more prominent in Europe than here, but like a
Speaker 2: prominent actress who is made out to be a diva
Speaker 2: when the real she is either setting a boundary with
Speaker 2: an abusive filmmaker or she has things going on in
Speaker 2: her life that are not being made space for or
Speaker 2: accounted for, which just seems to very much be the case.
Speaker 2: And I think it seems to me that, like all
Speaker 2: things considered, she's still pretty generous with how she talks
Speaker 2: about this experience, because it sounds like, I mean, she
Speaker 2: has never pushed back on the fact that she did
Speaker 2: attempt to take her life after seeing this movie, Like
Speaker 2: that is not something that seems to be made up,
Speaker 2: and it seems to be something that Sam Neil has
Speaker 2: confirmed as well. So I just I don't know people
Speaker 2: like oh, mellowtuurs, Like obviously we've talked about this for
Speaker 2: ten years on the show, but there are so many
Speaker 2: There are not so many, but there are examples of
Speaker 2: men working through stuff in movies that is safe, and
Speaker 2: I feel like David Lynch is actually a really good
Speaker 2: example of that, as is John Water. And you know,
Speaker 2: people with very specific narrative voices you can do that.
Speaker 2: You can make a very personal movie and protect the
Speaker 2: people who are realizing that vision, and you should.
Speaker 3: But Zulaski certainly did not. So with all of this
Speaker 3: in mind, I kept kind of toiling over how sympathetic
Speaker 3: are we supposed to be to the Mark character, because true,
Speaker 3: the movie does not shy away from showing his violence
Speaker 3: and obsessiveness and abuse toward Anna. But I can't shake
Speaker 3: the feeling that we're still supposed to be on his
Speaker 3: side kind of and oh, you know, sure, he's flying
Speaker 3: off the deep end sometimes, but it's only because his
Speaker 3: wife is so hysterical. What else is he supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Because it's not as though he doesn't try to understand her.
Speaker 3: He asks her a lot of questions and there are
Speaker 3: many scenes where he's like, what can I do to help?
Speaker 3: What do you need? What is going on? Please communicate
Speaker 3: with me, which in theory is nice. Obviously his tone
Speaker 3: in the way he's handling it isn't good. But I
Speaker 3: think more the problem is that Anna is written to
Speaker 3: be a character who is just so like hysterical that
Speaker 3: we are meant to be like, oh what even the
Speaker 3: Because I watched this movie on Shutter and the short
Speaker 3: synopsis of the movie on the platform basically blames everything
Speaker 3: on her because it says something like, this stunning nightmare
Speaker 3: of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other
Speaker 3: professional spy. Mark returns to his West Berlin home to
Speaker 3: find his wife insistent on a divorce. As Anna's frenzied
Speaker 3: behavior becomes ever more alarming, Mark discovers a truth far
Speaker 3: more sinister than his wildest suspicions.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and say,
Speaker 2: I think that's AI. Like, that sounds like a very
Speaker 2: AI coded right.
Speaker 3: But I also I think a lot of people would
Speaker 3: watch this movie and agree with that assessment and be like, sure,
Speaker 3: he yelled and he struck her.
Speaker 2: But she's she like drove him to it kind of, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting. I don't really see that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I see him, as I've said it, kind of this
Speaker 1: whole time where he is a simpleton. He's kind of
Speaker 1: a childlike person totally, and I only sympathize with him
Speaker 1: in that because it's like, oh, buddy, you don't get it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's maybe a part of the reclaiming
Speaker 1: that a lot of people, especially women, have had in
Speaker 1: the in the last decade toward this movie is like
Speaker 1: it's almost an accidental it's like an accidental feminist horror film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely I.
Speaker 3: See that reading, And of course, like, obviously I don't
Speaker 3: agree with oh, like she drove him to this horrible
Speaker 3: right behavior. But I think there would be people out
Speaker 3: there who would, Yeah, particularly men who would read it
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree that that's definitely like, that's the bad
Speaker 2: faith reading that a certain kind of person is going
Speaker 2: to take, particularly have a certain generation like, But totally
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, at least I agree. I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think that even when Mark is and
Speaker 2: again I don't, I can't pretend to know what's going
Speaker 2: through Zelewski's head because he is not above abusing his
Speaker 2: own cast. So right, I think that any takeaway from
Speaker 2: this that is empowering is like you you bring in
Speaker 2: your own baggage to it. But I'm okay with that,
Speaker 2: and that is I guess the thing with like a
Speaker 2: Lucy Goosey movie like this is like there's enough sort
Speaker 2: of blank space that you can project yourself onto it.
Speaker 2: But I do think that even it's I don't think
Speaker 2: we're supposed to think that when Mark is asking her
Speaker 2: what she's thinking, that he actually means it because the
Speaker 2: way that he does it, in the way that the
Speaker 2: performance is because also, like so much of this movie
Speaker 2: is the performances. He's so fucking pathetic. Like and to me,
Speaker 2: it's like he doesn't actually mean what he's saying. He's
Speaker 2: saying the thing he thinks he needs to say, because
Speaker 2: it's like he only reacts to I think it's like
Speaker 2: a really good point Lesha that he doesn't really have
Speaker 2: any original ideas. He just sort of does what his
Speaker 2: wife just did in an attempt to understand why she's
Speaker 2: doing it. But I don't think that he's trying to
Speaker 2: understand why she's feeling because he actually cares. I think
Speaker 2: he's just trying to understand her to the extent that
Speaker 2: he can own her again. And so in different scenes,
Speaker 2: he is reacting in the way that he thinks will
Speaker 2: either trick her into being closer to him or frighten
Speaker 2: her into staying. And like, that's right, classic abuser tactics,
Speaker 2: where he just sort of seems to randomly choose the
Speaker 2: tactic he thinks will be more successful. And this is
Speaker 2: I don't know, like I it's again it's so so elevated,
Speaker 2: but like having been in an abusive relationship is like
Speaker 2: sometimes an abuser will just be like okay, am I
Speaker 2: going to like yell and shove and throw my weight
Speaker 2: around to freak you out into staying or am I
Speaker 2: gonna fling myself on the floor and be like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm so pathetic. I would do anything for you,
Speaker 2: but no one does that because they mean it. You know,
Speaker 2: like it's just like two different kinds of control tactics.
Speaker 2: And again, like speaking to your point, Kaitlin, I don't
Speaker 2: know exactly how aware this director is of abuse tactics,
Speaker 2: given that he weaponized them to make the movie. And
Speaker 2: you know, watching this movie, you're like, well, I hope
Speaker 2: his ex wife is doing well because and it seems
Speaker 2: like she is. She was in a long term relationship
Speaker 2: after this. Oh gosh, I'm going to butcher this Polish name,
Speaker 2: but it is based on his marriage with Malgorza Bronick.
Speaker 2: She went on to have a you know, forty year
Speaker 2: relationship that seemed very happy but that you know, down
Speaker 2: to They had a son, another Polish Damicut pronounce Zowery Zilowski.
Speaker 2: I don't know who at the time of this movie
Speaker 2: would have been nine years old when it came out.
Speaker 2: So it's like, I also think that there's I don't
Speaker 2: know if I'm an autobiographical filmmaker, you know, to some extent,
Speaker 2: your past relationships are going to be fair game. It's
Speaker 2: gonna come up. But like when you're he killed his
Speaker 2: own son, I'm pretty sure, Like and if you're happy, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm hoping that his nine year old was
Speaker 2: not allowed to see this movie when it came out.
Speaker 2: But it's like you grow up and see that and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, what there. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: know where I'm getting to. I think that Mark. My
Speaker 2: rate of it is that I think we are supposed
Speaker 2: to view Mark as pathetic, but I guess it is
Speaker 2: up to the viewer of how much how much rope
Speaker 2: they're gonna throw him to be like, well, he's only
Speaker 2: pathetic because and not just what I think we all
Speaker 2: agree on, which is that there is an inherent patheticness
Speaker 2: to him because of how he's been socially conditioned. Right.
Speaker 3: I also think it would have been helpful if Anna
Speaker 3: had been characterized a bit more so that we understood
Speaker 3: where she was coming from. Perhaps and we can again
Speaker 3: like speculate and insert our own experiences and kind of
Speaker 3: project those on to her in a way that does
Speaker 3: make her more empathetic and sympathetic. But the movie doesn't
Speaker 3: do all that much, so you're just like the and
Speaker 3: then she has a tentacle boyfriend who she's making and we're.
Speaker 2: Like, and that is what again, I am supportive of that,
Speaker 2: but there, yeah, I mean, I guess that my I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to play a devil's advocate too much. I
Speaker 2: just I don't think that we really know that much
Speaker 2: about either of them, because it's like even Mark's backstory
Speaker 2: of like he's a spy is kind of just like
Speaker 2: played as a joke and it seems like I mean,
Speaker 2: and this is where I feel like there are political
Speaker 2: undertones to this movie that I just kind of don't understand. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Like I don't have the like the history background to
Speaker 2: fully understand Germany in the early eighties, other than like
Speaker 2: obviously we know the Berlin Wall isn't going to be
Speaker 2: there much longer, but the whole it anytime I say this,
Speaker 2: I think, I'm like, it's like I Frankenstein, but go on,
Speaker 2: when you're in this big city but there's no people
Speaker 2: you know, like, and there is this feeling of like
Speaker 2: this large abandoned space where people are just navigating this
Speaker 2: psychological horror. But I also think that that is a
Speaker 2: statement on West Berlin at this time too, where it's
Speaker 2: like there are people, but where are they?
Speaker 3: Am?
Speaker 2: I don't know? Yeah, I honestly like if there are
Speaker 2: listeners that like understand the political undertones of this, I
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you, because I know that
Speaker 2: it's there and I just like was not able to
Speaker 2: quite get there in time to record this. But you know,
Speaker 2: suffice it to say, we've like referenced this throughout the episode,
Speaker 2: but that because of his previous films and ostentibly his
Speaker 2: like openness to leftism, Zilowski was all but thrown out
Speaker 2: of Polish cinema more than once, where kind of his
Speaker 2: whole career was bouncing back and forth to the point
Speaker 2: where this movie was a like, I believe, a three
Speaker 2: country production where it was like a Polish director and
Speaker 2: then a German French co production, because that was at
Speaker 2: the time the only way that he could make movies
Speaker 2: because previously, I think it was prior to Possession, he
Speaker 2: had worked on a movie for two years in Poland
Speaker 2: that the government ended up being like, you cannot release this.
Speaker 2: We're not gonna let you release this due to your politics.
Speaker 2: Burned the print, burned, the costume, basically like you know,
Speaker 2: nuked it so he couldn't finish it. So there is
Speaker 2: like not that it justifies his personal life, but this
Speaker 2: movie is so fraught with like anger and frustration and
Speaker 2: like impotence. And I mean I knew going in that
Speaker 2: this was related to his relationship, but also knowing that
Speaker 2: it also feels related to like creative impotence of like
Speaker 2: working on something for two years and it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: There's just like so much going on here.
Speaker 1: And then this film was kept from the public for
Speaker 1: so long because it was caught up in the video
Speaker 1: Nasties scandal.
Speaker 2: What a great wait, can you speak to that a
Speaker 2: little bit because I've just learned about it, And what
Speaker 2: a great name for a scandal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean we've had equivalent like moral panics
Speaker 1: in the States, But it was essentially this thing of
Speaker 1: the censors being like, oh no, you can't show Texas
Speaker 1: Chainsaw Massacre. You can't show any of these types of films,
Speaker 1: and so we're just going to confiscate all of them
Speaker 1: until we have rulings on each of these films to
Speaker 1: decide whether or not they're obscene. And so they were
Speaker 1: banned in the UK for a really long time until
Speaker 1: they were able to evaluate it, and like a Johnny
Speaker 1: and Sam Neil had to like write separate letters just
Speaker 1: talking about like why a quote unquote octopus fucking was
Speaker 1: not obscene? Like they were seriously talking about is this
Speaker 1: beast reality? Like what?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So they were getting really like worse than we are today,
Speaker 1: Like it really deep in on.
Speaker 2: This and it's like when we get to the point
Speaker 2: where like actors are having to do homework, I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's never that's never gonna vote well no.
Speaker 1: But so like eventually they're like, Okay, it's not that obscene,
Speaker 1: and they're like, but for us audiences, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: have to make several cuts and rearrange the field and
Speaker 1: make it linear, which what this film cannot survive that.
Speaker 1: So some you know people in the US were able
Speaker 1: to see it and they're like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 1: This as horrible. So it was trash for a really
Speaker 1: long time until it got a proper release date I
Speaker 1: believe in like around two thousand and nine, and that's
Speaker 1: when we start to see it like on YouTube and
Speaker 1: appearing at you know, midnight film forums and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the version that was initially released in the US
Speaker 3: was an edited eighty one minute version of the movie,
Speaker 3: so about forty minutes were cut out, and it basically
Speaker 3: just turned the movie into like a creature feature rather
Speaker 3: than any story about like the breakdown of this marriage
Speaker 3: and all of this sort of like psychological horror components
Speaker 3: of the movie. It was just like, and look at
Speaker 3: this gooey monster. Isn't it scary? And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: that's not what the movie's about. No, but yeah, this
Speaker 3: is a very befuddling movie that I still don't know
Speaker 3: what to make of.
Speaker 1: One last thing I kind of wanted to mention was
Speaker 1: Kila Janniee's take on this from House of Psychotic Women.
Speaker 1: You guys have yes, yes, so she says, And I
Speaker 1: totally identify with this, she says, I can relate intensely
Speaker 1: to Anna's disturbing fits. In my house growing up, it
Speaker 1: was my voice that was a problem. I was told
Speaker 1: not to talk, and as Anna struggles to talk, her
Speaker 1: whispers become growl, screams and hyperventilating. There's a freedom in
Speaker 1: this kind of self obliteration, the collapse of propriety. We
Speaker 1: all need that place, that window of time.
Speaker 2: To go crazy.
Speaker 1: So that's how whenever I watched this film, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I feel like it is about a woman finally like
Speaker 1: figuring out how to possess herself and let loose and
Speaker 1: everything that comes out of her. It's sort of like,
Speaker 1: I don't fucking care anymore. I'm gonna find my voice.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use it and fuck everybody else.
Speaker 2: Totally so.
Speaker 1: And I think that maybe a lot of people have
Speaker 1: like kind of come around to that reading.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Also, how's a psychotic woman in such
Speaker 2: an al teimer? It's so good, so good, it's really
Speaker 2: really good.
Speaker 3: I would more align with I mean, I see that
Speaker 3: interpretation for sure and again, and as a host of
Speaker 3: the Bechdel cast, my interpretation of this movie, or like
Speaker 3: my attachment to it would be aligned with that. But
Speaker 3: I'm having a hard time getting there. I think because
Speaker 3: Mark is framed as the protagonist and the main point
Speaker 3: of view character, we are with him for most of
Speaker 3: the time. When we do cut to Anna, it's because
Speaker 3: she's with Mark, and we just don't I feel, don't
Speaker 3: hone in enough on her as a character and what
Speaker 3: is fully going on with her. I feel like we're
Speaker 3: seeing her through Mark's eyes versus seeing her more objectively,
Speaker 3: I feel free to disagree, but as I'm watching this,
Speaker 3: I wish she was the point of view character.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I agree, but it's I also like,
Speaker 2: wouldn't want to see her as the point of view
Speaker 2: character from this writer's perspectives. Like, I don't really know.
Speaker 2: The thing is, I don't think that it's really possible
Speaker 2: that that's why there's there was. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's still happening. I hope that it's not. But like
Speaker 2: there was a proposed remake of this movie starring Robert
Speaker 2: Pattinson and the director of Smile. So again we're like,
Speaker 2: which is like, no, please, don't, please don't. Yeah, lived
Speaker 2: write an original story, for the love of God. But
Speaker 2: but I see what you're saying. I just like I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I don't want to know what Zilowski's like feelings from
Speaker 2: a female perspective would be. And and this is like
Speaker 2: kind of rare, and I guess sort of like pushes
Speaker 2: against what our show is really about. But like for
Speaker 2: this movie, particularly because it came it took so long
Speaker 2: for it to come out in its like intended form,
Speaker 2: I don't really care what the director's intention is because
Speaker 2: it's not clear. Like it's not clear, and I I
Speaker 2: guess I am. I really like the cathartic nature of
Speaker 2: this movie where I would like to know more about Anna.
Speaker 2: I would like it confirmed that like she was. I mean,
Speaker 2: it would make a lot of sense to me if
Speaker 2: she was a dance teacher that stepped away from dance.
Speaker 2: So not only is she in this unhappy marriage and
Speaker 2: like not happy being a mother and not fitting these
Speaker 2: roles that she's quote unquote supposed to fill, but she's
Speaker 2: also been removed from her art, and like that is
Speaker 2: really really compelling. I wish that, like, and I do
Speaker 2: think that there's space for that, because there's so much
Speaker 2: YadA YadA in this movie that yeah, I would be
Speaker 2: interested to see that version of it. But even as
Speaker 2: it is, I just like, I really like her. I
Speaker 2: like and she's and we'll get to like they are
Speaker 2: both really bad parents, which I do think is interesting
Speaker 2: in the context of like, Yeah, I will say that
Speaker 2: I think Mark is made out to be the better
Speaker 2: parent and the less negligent parent, or at least a
Speaker 2: parent who pretends to care, which does feel like uh
Speaker 2: Zilowski patting himself on the back. Meanwhile, he's killing his
Speaker 2: own child in his movie uh and amusing as actors.
Speaker 2: So fuck that, like that whole I think that that's
Speaker 2: the real angle that, Like I'm like, he's being overly
Speaker 2: generous with himself by just saying that like because his
Speaker 2: wife left him, she's a piece of shit parent, which
Speaker 2: is like, you know, something that's been weaponized against women
Speaker 2: for millennia, right, But like, but what I really like
Speaker 2: about Anna is her I don't give a fuck miss,
Speaker 2: Like that's so cathartic of like anytime he is I
Speaker 2: don't know, yeah, because it's again like you're putting yourself
Speaker 2: for the situation of like, uh, someone being like please,
Speaker 2: like do you want to be with me too? And
Speaker 2: she's like no, and he he's like what if I
Speaker 2: laid down and like kissed your feet and said love
Speaker 2: you so much? She's like whatever, I don't care. Like
Speaker 2: he cuts himself and she's like bye, Like something about that.
Speaker 2: It does feel like if you are in the quote
Speaker 2: unquote more feminine submissive role in a relationship, seeing the
Speaker 2: person who's expected to be that way just say exactly
Speaker 2: what's on their mind at all times and when they're upset,
Speaker 2: they scream, and when they're angry they act like, yes,
Speaker 2: I really connect with that, and I really like that.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, to me, it's like, I doubt that uh
Speaker 2: Zethowski was like, I'm making this movie for for people
Speaker 2: who who have felt like you know, who relate with Anna.
Speaker 2: I think he is probably making it for the people
Speaker 2: who relate with Mark. I just don't care totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. I will also say I that those two
Speaker 1: shots of the videotape of her actually talking to the camera,
Speaker 1: he could have just not put those in the film.
Speaker 1: But I do think we get at least a glimpse
Speaker 1: of exactly what you're saying Jamie about her feeling over
Speaker 1: the past year, because it is like from Heinrich's point
Speaker 1: of view and from their year together away from Mark,
Speaker 1: she is talking about this like weight that's on her
Speaker 1: and she's not even really being that articulate because she
Speaker 1: hasn't figured it out yet. She's also she's just trying
Speaker 1: to find the right words to say. She's speaking very
Speaker 1: poetically because it's all she can really think of, and
Speaker 1: it's almost from the perspective of someone panicked, like I've
Speaker 1: got myself into this really shitty position and it's still
Speaker 1: not enough like you, it's like kind of coded, but
Speaker 1: it's like you Heinrich are not exactly what I was
Speaker 1: looking for.
Speaker 3: So what is it? What have?
Speaker 1: How do I rebuild my faith in myself in like
Speaker 1: my life? Like what can I possibly do next? Like
Speaker 1: that whole scene could have been omitted, but it's at
Speaker 1: least a glimpse into that that weight of being the
Speaker 1: expected mother, the like domestic subservient person that she just
Speaker 1: doesn't want to fucking do anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also wish. I feel like there's a I
Speaker 2: do wish. I think that like if the movie had
Speaker 2: ended less tragically for her, although it's like with the Doppelgangers,
Speaker 2: it's sort of the door is open to like how
Speaker 2: you can perceive that. I do feel like you know,
Speaker 2: as is so like she gets undue punishment because it's
Speaker 2: like if we're looking at it from like she's looking
Speaker 2: for someone or something to make her feel whole or
Speaker 2: if not, like to make her feel free but not alone,
Speaker 2: which is like whatever the eternal struggle, and it's like
Speaker 2: motherhood hasn't done it, This marriage hasn't done it. Even
Speaker 2: you know, Heinrich hasn't done it, so she makes something
Speaker 2: to fill that void and it destroys her, and like that,
Speaker 2: I do feel like that is kind of misogynistic inherently
Speaker 2: to be like, you can't have it all and if
Speaker 2: you try to, you're gonna die, which you know, who
Speaker 2: knows that that's what he's trying to say. I just
Speaker 2: I don't know like it is, And it ends up
Speaker 2: kind of being a tragedy for the two of them
Speaker 2: in a way that feels I mean, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, mainly unfair to Bob. Let's not forget Bob,
Speaker 2: Bob innocent Bob child, Yeah, but also feels unfair to
Speaker 2: Anna because it feels like, I mean, she never has
Speaker 2: someone that she can fully be herself with, like we
Speaker 2: see her struggle with like that, unable to feel like
Speaker 2: fully possessed of herself. She's just possessed by other people
Speaker 2: or things. And then you know, like never sort of
Speaker 2: reaches that point where she could be herself. She dies
Speaker 2: before she ever gets there. And coming from this director
Speaker 2: in particular, that feels mean. But I also think that
Speaker 2: there's ways to view it that can be I don't know.
Speaker 2: The second act of this movie I find very cathartic,
Speaker 2: and then the end I don't love honestly, Like I.
Speaker 3: Really lose the thread at the end.
Speaker 2: I think the end is like political in a way
Speaker 2: that I don't quite understand too, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it seems like it's an attack from East Germany possibly
Speaker 2: like you know, so there is this like political tone
Speaker 2: to the end that I feel like if you're not
Speaker 2: in full understanding of what that is, it might it
Speaker 2: felt confusing to me. I also don't think Bob needed
Speaker 2: to die, Like why did it need to be so
Speaker 2: fully tragic? I don't know why doesn't Bob get a doppelganger?
Speaker 3: Riddle me that?
Speaker 2: Where's Bob? Too? I mean, what about Bob?
Speaker 3: Is the sequel?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does anyone else have anything they'd like to talk about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean the end is so the end can go
Speaker 1: either way. He could be that she created the devil
Speaker 1: or that she created God and God is so to sturt,
Speaker 1: like God hates the world so much that he just
Speaker 1: wants to fucking destroy it. So it could be that
Speaker 1: she created God like it, there are many different interpretations there.
Speaker 2: Right, Like that's the read where her doing a staring
Speaker 2: contest with a crucifix is actually very significant and not
Speaker 2: just something that happens, which is how I view it.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, I know, I said I was in
Speaker 1: my brain, I'm like, is this her losing face faith?
Speaker 1: Or is she like having an immaculate conception?
Speaker 2: Like right, because she is like she's like ah, like
Speaker 2: she's like wh what is that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I see your Jesus and I raise you
Speaker 3: a dopple Ganger tentacle god man.
Speaker 2: Like Beel's a bug? Yeah, octopus? Or is something?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean Ultimately, the takeaway for this movie is a shrug,
Speaker 2: and it depends on who you are and what you're
Speaker 2: bringing to the table. But it doesn't. But in the
Speaker 2: same way, it doesn't feel like underthought. If anything, it
Speaker 2: feels overthought and there's like too much. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: the plot's too thin. It's like no, there's just there's
Speaker 2: too much going on. Who knows yep. Indeed it doesn't
Speaker 2: pass the Bechdel test and no, yeah, I mean Anna
Speaker 2: is very isolated.
Speaker 3: She has one friend, Margie, who she doesn't actually interact
Speaker 3: with except to stab her off screen, right.
Speaker 2: And who also even if she has a friend, is
Speaker 2: not a good friend to her, we.
Speaker 3: Know, right, And then there's Helen, who we don't really
Speaker 3: know what's going on there either. Is that just kind
Speaker 3: of like a weird predicable Also, when Isabella Johnny is
Speaker 3: the Helen character, she looks so much like Dakota Johnson
Speaker 3: to me that I was getting very distracted the bangs,
Speaker 3: the bangs. Yeah, and that she has like kind of
Speaker 3: the same just like long auburnish hair.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, it's materialists, right.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Helen, I don't know what to make of
Speaker 3: that character exactly. All this to say does not pass
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test. But what about our nipple scale, in
Speaker 3: which we rate the movie on a scale of zero
Speaker 3: to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 3: Oh god, and we're just not really sure, are we? I?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, this is tough. I'm gonna go like one
Speaker 2: like because I feel like our scale is where intention
Speaker 2: needs to be considered. Yeah. Yes, And I think that
Speaker 2: he isn't not thinking about how Anna feels. But most
Speaker 2: of what I got out of the Anna character I
Speaker 2: didn't view as intended by the director.
Speaker 3: Yeah, intention is very important here, and I don't think
Speaker 3: the intention of Zelaski was to be like, yeah, definitely
Speaker 3: empathize with this woman who's behaving awesomely.
Speaker 2: I do think that he's he I don't know. The
Speaker 2: furthest I can get is like he's thinking about this woman.
Speaker 2: He's thinking about her. It seems like he wants to
Speaker 2: understand her, but also kind of gives up at some point.
Speaker 2: And I feel like that's where the Ed Johnny performance
Speaker 2: really does like, and the Sam Neil performance, I feel
Speaker 2: like they're doing so much heavy lifting where it's like,
Speaker 2: if they're not fully committed, this movie sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So with all that in mind, I'll give
Speaker 3: the movie one nipple and I'll give it to the tentacles.
Speaker 3: Or do I give the movie one tentacle? I know,
Speaker 3: you know, is the tentacle scale this episode.
Speaker 2: On one of eight one of eight tentacles, I'd still
Speaker 2: give it one. I think one tentacle.
Speaker 3: I think right, well, the the creature has I think
Speaker 3: three tentacles, one for each arm and then one large
Speaker 3: one where its legs.
Speaker 2: Would be hm hmm.
Speaker 3: So maybe out of out of three tentacles, I don't,
Speaker 3: you know, hard to say, I'm going to give it
Speaker 3: one nipple. I am going to give it to one
Speaker 3: tentacle and shout out to Tentacles, the octopus from Legend
Speaker 3: of Titanic, the animated film they stole the plot of
Speaker 3: James Cameron's Titanic.
Speaker 2: And also an American tale and also Anastasia. Yes, who
Speaker 2: can say why, we don't know. I'm going to give
Speaker 2: it one nipple as well, and I'm going to give
Speaker 2: it to Isabella A Johnny. Just an iconic performance that
Speaker 2: she should not have had to suffer the way she
Speaker 2: did to make possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right on, it's the same for me one because
Speaker 1: we're talking about intent. So yeah, and I would definitely
Speaker 1: give it to is Bella Johnny. She's iconic and yeah.
Speaker 3: What a film. Thank you so much for being here,
Speaker 3: Alicia truly, Yeah, no, thank.
Speaker 1: You for having me. This is so awesome to talk about.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, what a treat. Where can people follow
Speaker 3: your work and your social media, etc.
Speaker 1: So I'm under the another pun. I'm under the handle
Speaker 1: at Benny and the Jesuits, so a play on June's
Speaker 1: Priestesses spelled like the Benny Jesuit Priestesses. And my website
Speaker 1: is Benny and the Jesuits and my latest thing is
Speaker 1: that I just put out my most recent issue of
Speaker 1: Resident Easel, which is Western horror done entirely in like
Speaker 1: black and white and toned tan goodness. And I cover
Speaker 1: the films Nope, Brimstone, Tremors, The Burrowers, Prey, and Rabbinus,
Speaker 1: that sexy sexy movie.
Speaker 2: Who Hell yeah.
Speaker 3: You can follow us on Instagram. You can subscribe to
Speaker 3: our Patreon aka Matreon, where you get two bonus episodes
Speaker 3: every single month, as well as access to our back catalog.
Speaker 3: With that, let's all go lay down in a bed
Speaker 3: full of goo.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, let's all get fucked by our worst fearst tonight,
Speaker 2: Okay in a fun and sexy way.
Speaker 3: In a really passionate hot way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, while Sam Neil just has to stand there. Sounds great,
Speaker 2: Bye Bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia,
Speaker 2: hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and Me Durrante.
Speaker 3: The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.
Speaker 4: And edited by Caitlin Durrante. Ever heard of Them? That's
Speaker 4: me and our logo and merch and all of our
Speaker 4: artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever heard
Speaker 4: of her, Oh My God, and our.
Speaker 2: Theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan.
Speaker 3: With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.
Speaker 2: Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only
Speaker 2: Aristotle Acevedo.
Speaker 3: For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
Speaker 3: Spectelcast