Speaker 1: Oh, it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, pop, popcorn,
Speaker 3: and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 1: Got it off? Do you know this place?
Speaker 4: I want to say, yes, go in there for you.
Speaker 1: I want to I haven't said. Is there is there
Speaker 1: a duration that you feel I'm gonna.
Speaker 4: Go wherever you go.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 2: You're scaring me a little bit.
Speaker 4: I feel like, you know, won't let anyone near that.
Speaker 4: This crowd back in the corner violent. I've never seen
Speaker 4: the parents behave, so they can get very protective.
Speaker 6: The water before you is somehow special. It is better
Speaker 6: than anything you've ever tasted. Each drink is better than
Speaker 6: the last.
Speaker 2: Take a drink now, Welcome to the projection booth. I'm
Speaker 2: your host. Mike White joined me once again as mister
Speaker 2: Ben Buckingham.
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody.
Speaker 2: Also back in the booth is mister Jim Lekowski.
Speaker 7: I could be a starling.
Speaker 2: We continue sci Fi July with a film from twenty
Speaker 2: three teen, Chinkruf's Upstream Color, the story of a woman
Speaker 2: who has drug robbed and becomes soulmates with a pig,
Speaker 2: and no I'm not talking about Shinkruf himself in a
Speaker 2: complex hypnotic film about cycles, trauma, and cheens. We are
Speaker 2: going to be spoiling this film as much as it
Speaker 2: can be spoiled, So if you don't want anything ruined,
Speaker 2: please turn off the podcast and come back after you've
Speaker 2: seen it. You really need to see this film. Let
Speaker 2: me just say that right now. We will still be
Speaker 2: here when we come back. So, Ben, when was the
Speaker 2: first time you saw upstream color and what did you think?
Speaker 1: I'm not one hundred percent sure of which year it was.
Speaker 1: It was probably twenty thirteen, but it might have been
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. It was the Melbourne International Film Festival. It
Speaker 1: was at the old Grady Union Cinema in their really
Speaker 1: massive one that sat like eight hundred people, big screen,
Speaker 1: old school like seventies eighties built plays, and me and
Speaker 1: my mate wins at dead center, front row and just
Speaker 1: like completely swallowed up by the whole experience, and we
Speaker 1: loved it. I'd seen Primer ten years previous to that
Speaker 1: and had been waiting eagerly for this film because it
Speaker 1: took a while to get to Australian Shores, and yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely adored it at the time.
Speaker 2: And Jim, how about yourself?
Speaker 7: I started the Music Box Theater here in Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 7: I believe it was opening weekend when it came out
Speaker 7: in twenty thirteen with Shane Caruth in attendance for a
Speaker 7: very interesting and insightful Q and A. And my initial reaction, well,
Speaker 7: I was like, Okay, all bets are off. This is
Speaker 7: everything I want from cinema pretty much. And I know
Speaker 7: I'm prone to hyperbole, but it has become over time
Speaker 7: one of my favorite movies for a lot of reasons
Speaker 7: that I'm sure we'll talk about, but yeah, I mean
Speaker 7: that first viewing still I was disoriented and dazed and
Speaker 7: completely unsure of what to think about, what it all
Speaker 7: meant and even what Caruth's intention was, especially on first viewing,
Speaker 7: because you know it, it's just something you have to
Speaker 7: watch multiple times, I think, and to really let it
Speaker 7: sink in. But this is just everything I want from
Speaker 7: an intellectual movie experience, and I want something that surprises me,
Speaker 7: that gets me out of my comfort zone, and this
Speaker 7: is all of that and more. So we'll dive right
Speaker 7: into exactly why I think it's pretty much a masterpiece,
Speaker 7: but I have reservations that you may or may not
Speaker 7: have alluded to early on in your intro there, Mike.
Speaker 2: I saw this one on video for the first time,
Speaker 2: probably in twenty thirteen, maybe twenty fourteen, because it used
Speaker 2: to take a little while longer for things to come
Speaker 2: to VHS or DVD. It was probably DVD at that time,
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. And I'm pretty jealous of you guys having
Speaker 2: seen this in a theater. I don't know why I
Speaker 2: didn't see it in a theater. I liked Primer, liked Primer.
Speaker 2: I didn't love Primer, but I liked Primer. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it was about Primer, but I didn't have
Speaker 2: any i's really following it. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: just like locked into the rhythm or whatever. But I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, this is brilliant. But then when people
Speaker 2: were like, oh, it's so confusing and they're making maps
Speaker 2: and stuff, I'm like, I didn't really need that. It
Speaker 2: was cool for like Maholland Drive. We want to make
Speaker 2: me a map of Mahallan Drive. Sure feel free this film. Also,
Speaker 2: when I got into it, I was a little confused
Speaker 2: watching it, but then at some point I had this
Speaker 2: aha moment and I just said, oh, all right, it's
Speaker 2: all starting to make sense. What's happening between the worms
Speaker 2: and the people and the pigs and the flowers. I'm
Speaker 2: just like, okay, it's all coming to me now. And
Speaker 2: when it was done, I was breathless. I am right
Speaker 2: there with you, Jim. As far as this feeling like
Speaker 2: a really perfect film, just everything about it just really
Speaker 2: clicks for me. I know, I'm going to say the
Speaker 2: word had I'm gonna say the film washes over you.
Speaker 2: All those types of things are absolutely true. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of that has to do with the music,
Speaker 2: which is very lulling. He uses music so well, he
Speaker 2: can pose the fucking music. Caruth really fits into that.
Speaker 2: A tour model of stars in the film. He wrote
Speaker 2: the film, he directed the film, He did the music
Speaker 2: for the film. I don't know if he edited the film.
Speaker 2: I need to look at the credits again. The editing
Speaker 2: style goes so well with the music, which goes so
Speaker 2: well with the shooting style. The whole use of a
Speaker 2: very narrow depth of field so many times, and just
Speaker 2: how he uses focus, how he frames things. Everything in
Speaker 2: this movie fits together so well for me. Like this
Speaker 2: beautifully crafted puzzle and you can go back and you
Speaker 2: can just get more and more out of it every
Speaker 2: single time. Like as I'm writing my notes last night,
Speaker 2: I'm getting embarrassed because I'm like writing wah in the
Speaker 2: in the notes, you know, I'm just like, look at
Speaker 2: that shot. This is so perfect. Everything comes together in
Speaker 2: a beautiful, beautiful way in upstream color.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he wrote the score. This is very unconventional, I think.
Speaker 7: But he wrote the score while writing the script, which
Speaker 7: is not something I think most filmmakers do. And I
Speaker 7: don't know if that just led to the music being
Speaker 7: so complimentary to everything going on, but it does have
Speaker 7: this fluidity and this rhythm that makes this movie really
Speaker 7: like as much of a visual experience but an auditory
Speaker 7: one where you get really sucked into the sound design,
Speaker 7: the ambient stuff, and even just everything involving what the
Speaker 7: sampler does is very like Barbarian sound studio or Blowout
Speaker 7: to some extent. I eat that stuff up as somebody
Speaker 7: who really loves sound design. Everything you're saying is I
Speaker 7: completely echo and still love this movie. But I read
Speaker 7: some interesting articles in light of Caruth as a person,
Speaker 7: and I don't want to lean into this too heavily,
Speaker 7: because again, we have to separate the art from the artists, right,
Speaker 7: I mean, that's just the nature of the beast when
Speaker 7: you want to analyze a work of art. But at
Speaker 7: the same time, there's a part of me that wonders,
Speaker 7: whether consciously or not, if Caruth made this film about
Speaker 7: like leverage and power and inflicting psychological trauma as a
Speaker 7: window or a mirror of his own tendencies. Now that's
Speaker 7: just like me hypothesizing. But at the same time, I
Speaker 7: can't help but think of how people are saying these days, well,
Speaker 7: instead of going to therapy, men do this, well instead
Speaker 7: of going to therapy. Maybe Caruth created this work of
Speaker 7: art as his outlet in a way. But again, like,
Speaker 7: that's just something that would never have occurred to me
Speaker 7: early on with early viewings. Now it's just something I'm
Speaker 7: thinking about without it overwhelming me to the point of like, well,
Speaker 7: I can't love this movie anymore because of learning about
Speaker 7: what has done as a person. That's just something I
Speaker 7: wrestle with a little bit.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: In the case of this film, denying the connections to
Speaker 1: Cruth's own behavior and his choices is to deny the
Speaker 1: way that upstream for color functions, that the film itself
Speaker 1: is built upon the significance of these parallels and connections
Speaker 1: between diverse aspects of existence in life, and so it's
Speaker 1: almost like you're just like cutting out, like there is
Speaker 1: no disconnecting it, because that the whole film is connections,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like chin, yeah, just he did
Speaker 1: too amazing a job that he like that to curse
Speaker 1: his own film, that I can't separate it, and I
Speaker 1: think it is important the same way that the Sampler
Speaker 1: is both like seemingly a good person and a bad person,
Speaker 1: that the film is juggling a lot of these things
Speaker 1: without necessarily praising or damning, and because of the parallel
Speaker 1: and connections, because he is so essential to it that
Speaker 1: it has to be part of it. You can't think
Speaker 1: of many films that I would describe as holistic filmmaking.
Speaker 1: That it's definitely because Curate is so essential to so
Speaker 1: many artistic and technical aspects that it does feel holistic,
Speaker 1: that every part is important and essential.
Speaker 2: And an extension of him too as a person. He
Speaker 2: injects his previous film a topiary that didn't come to fruition.
Speaker 2: He injects that in there, having Chris work on that
Speaker 2: as like an effects supervisor or producer. It looks like
Speaker 2: having Chrispy played by any Amy Steinmitz, who's his significant
Speaker 2: other at the time, having him in there and having
Speaker 2: him as Jeff Jeff's pretty much a jerk.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, he's a terrible person.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, yeah, how much are you holding this
Speaker 2: mirror up to yourself as you're doing this, because so
Speaker 2: much of this feels like such a personal extension to have. Also,
Speaker 2: like you said, to have the stamp there. He is
Speaker 2: creating music, and he's creating the music that we hear
Speaker 2: in the film, which is pretty amazing as well. I
Speaker 2: mean the montage of him creating these sounds and using
Speaker 2: these sounds to form a song from that, and that
Speaker 2: we're hearing all of that being created at the same time.
Speaker 2: And then just the reliving of things, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: the whole movie is about reliving trauma. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is he showing us a cycle at some point inside
Speaker 2: of his own life or is this just kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, an extension as far as like, this is
Speaker 2: what trauma does? I have this trauma, maybe not knowing
Speaker 2: that he's expressing that trauma through abusive behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a Q and A. He gives it. The
Speaker 1: Vivian subject talks about in her film comment article where
Speaker 1: he was asked what is this about? And he said,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I was like, yeah, I probably
Speaker 1: I would say, based on the little bit that we
Speaker 1: know that, yeah, he doesn't know that, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: He wasn't at a point where he was able to
Speaker 1: recognize how much you can watch this film with a
Speaker 1: lens of knowing the allegations of domestic violence and see
Speaker 1: how much it's fair. How difficult it is to watch
Speaker 1: in places because it feels like so much of a controlling,
Speaker 1: not okay person exerting a lot of influence and power.
Speaker 1: But the film is also querying that and attacking that
Speaker 1: in other ways, not necessarily through himself, but through the thief.
Speaker 1: It's always difficult to psychoanalyze a person in the film
Speaker 1: because you don't have everything that you may need to
Speaker 1: do that fully that it does feel like it's somebody
Speaker 1: breaking apart all the parts of their personality and putting
Speaker 1: them into different sections. And the reason why Upstream Color
Speaker 1: works so well still is because those parts also connect
Speaker 1: really powerfully to the biggest social and political sphere of
Speaker 1: how systems function to control us and direct us and
Speaker 1: take away our power, and so it becomes this really complex,
Speaker 1: multilayered parable that I said that I loved this back
Speaker 1: in the day, I don't remember much of what I
Speaker 1: felt or thought about it, But returning to it now,
Speaker 1: I had a lot more of a complicated experience. And
Speaker 1: I think after watching it the second time ever last
Speaker 1: week I didn't like it, and then digging into some
Speaker 1: reading materials and ruminating on it, I didn't rewatch it
Speaker 1: again at first. For a third time, I actually put
Speaker 1: it on Vincent Bluetooth headphones and went outside and collected
Speaker 1: wood for the fire. It's the only thing we have
Speaker 1: for eating is a fireplace. And it was a very
Speaker 1: powerful experience to experience it like that, just listening to
Speaker 1: the sounds and the dialogue and the movement of it
Speaker 1: and feeling it while I did actions like occur in
Speaker 1: the film.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, you're you David there right there,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say that too, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that did sort of like fift out some
Speaker 1: of the things which I were probably having more difficulty with,
Speaker 1: and it was like again made me be turned to
Speaker 1: it as this holistic thing, which even though it is
Speaker 1: all the parts are so important, they are all yeah, moving,
Speaker 1: and it's okay to like not sit with them sometimes
Speaker 1: and sit with other parts. And then I rewatched it
Speaker 1: a third time, actually watching it, and again it sort
Speaker 1: of came and went with how I feel about it.
Speaker 1: But it was like it felt like reading reading through
Speaker 1: some of the things that people have written about it,
Speaker 1: every theory and casual viewers like watching the third time
Speaker 1: was popularly the third time was like felt like running
Speaker 1: my fingers through soil and like feeling all the parts
Speaker 1: of the soil and the bits of matter decaying or
Speaker 1: stares and things, and like getting ready to plant something
Speaker 1: like the film feels like fertile soil. And I don't
Speaker 1: know still how I feel about it now, but I
Speaker 1: love how much has grown out of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I completely echo what you're saying in terms of
Speaker 7: having a complicated relationship with it, while also acknowledging the
Speaker 7: fact that I still feel deep down that it is
Speaker 7: a great work of art, and watching it again and
Speaker 7: reading something like a research paper that Anna Maria Greisbawska
Speaker 7: wrote called Invisible Cuts, where she basically says that this
Speaker 7: film makes a spectacle out of a woman's psychological degradation,
Speaker 7: and it's really critical of Kruth as a story teller.
Speaker 7: And I struggled with watching Jeff, like you mentioned Mike too.
Speaker 7: He is kind of a jerk, and I think part
Speaker 7: of me is of course projecting, well, that's Shane Caruth.
Speaker 7: And what do I know about Shane Caruth? He was
Speaker 7: an abusive asshole, so when he was on screen, that's
Speaker 7: probably when I struggled the most. I love everything about
Speaker 7: this movie. I mean, the thief himself is responsible for
Speaker 7: stripping away someone's agency and autonomy. And even the way
Speaker 7: Jeff interacts with Chris at times it does feel like,
Speaker 7: oh yeah, he's kind of psychologically dominating her, or at
Speaker 7: the very least, especially when they're first having conversations, he
Speaker 7: does come across as very cold and calculated, like when
Speaker 7: she's trying to be open with him at the coffee
Speaker 7: shop by like showing these are the medications I'm taking.
Speaker 7: He outright like blocks that out with a menu or something,
Speaker 7: and he just comes across as lacking kindness towards her.
Speaker 7: That made me go, uh, how did they develop a
Speaker 7: romantic connection here? Outside of they have an attraction based
Speaker 7: on the fact that probably they're connected without knowing why,
Speaker 7: they've both experienced the same trauma.
Speaker 2: But how much is that them falling in love versus
Speaker 2: their pigs falling in love.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: We dove immediately into Caruth and I want to talk
Speaker 2: a little bit more as far as just the way again,
Speaker 2: talk a little bit as far as the way the
Speaker 2: film is put together. The traumatic incident that happens with
Speaker 2: Chris happens very early in the film, which I forgot
Speaker 2: about the first time, and when I went back to
Speaker 2: watch it, I was like, oh, Okay, yeah, this happens
Speaker 2: really early on. And that thing where she's abducted. She
Speaker 2: drives the thief to her house and he systematically, like
Speaker 2: you said, strips her of everything, breaks her down completely.
Speaker 2: He doesn't let her sleep, he doesn't let her eat.
Speaker 2: He just has her drink water, has her write out
Speaker 2: pages from Walden and make chains with them, paper chains.
Speaker 2: And I love the idea of the paper chains, especially
Speaker 2: because this whole thing is about these chains that are
Speaker 2: being formed, the whole cycle of the flower to the worm,
Speaker 2: to all this. I'll talk more a little bit about
Speaker 2: eggs later on. But this whole idea of like her
Speaker 2: being broken down so much. This movie is a horror
Speaker 2: movie for a good fifteen minutes. I call it a
Speaker 2: science fiction movie, and I think the science fiction and
Speaker 2: some people actually chaf about that because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's no robots or ray guns or anything. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: anything that is unexplainable. It's that old whose line was
Speaker 2: it as far as like, if it's not explainable, it
Speaker 2: could be magic or science for me, And like the
Speaker 2: science of this movie, it's like, sure, there's probably a
Speaker 2: toad that you lick, or a bug that you adjest,
Speaker 2: or something that makes you so susceptible. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: the old stories of voodoo in the old days, where
Speaker 2: it's like, no, voodoo wasn't bringing people back from the dead.
Speaker 2: It was making people mindless slaves, the same stuff that
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Dahmer was looking to try to do. He wanted
Speaker 2: to turn people into mindless slaves. The thief can do it.
Speaker 2: He's found that way. He could have fun with the
Speaker 2: neighborhood boys in a very very groomy scene. To me,
Speaker 2: I mean those neighborhood boys. Feels like he's got more
Speaker 2: going on with them, especially if he can control their
Speaker 2: minds the way that he doesn't. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he literally has sex with Chris, if he rapes Chris.
Speaker 2: But all of the stuff that happens with Chris is
Speaker 2: a rape. It is a long, prolonged rape of taking
Speaker 2: everything from her, every single thing, and especially the money.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean, twenty thirteen was a rough time.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five, you don't have that money in the bank, man,
Speaker 2: you are just about to be absolutely homeless. You know,
Speaker 2: you miss one, like one card payment comes in extra,
Speaker 2: You're ruined for your entire life. I can't imagine what
Speaker 2: she's going through, the ruination of her whole thing. I
Speaker 2: read the script of this, and I found it to
Speaker 2: be interesting some of the differences between the script and
Speaker 2: the movie, because I believe her sister is a character
Speaker 2: in the script and is completely blown away by Chris
Speaker 2: selling the coin collection, getting all the money out of
Speaker 2: her account, putting in that home equity alone, all that stuff,
Speaker 2: And of course she blames Chris. She just tries to
Speaker 2: guilt her. I can't believe that you did this. Everybody's
Speaker 2: going to be so disappointed. And then also that the
Speaker 2: thief uses her family against her, Like that's the way
Speaker 2: that he gets the money, is saying, your mother's been kidnapped.
Speaker 2: They're going to brutalize her, and what can she do
Speaker 2: and just immediately starts thinking of ways that she can
Speaker 2: get money to these kidnappers. I mean, this whole sequence
Speaker 2: of her in this house, forget the worms, forget any
Speaker 2: of that stuff. That is a horror movie for me,
Speaker 2: for a good solid chunk of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it opens with that amazing crash thunder as
Speaker 1: he opened he had in the scene where she's in
Speaker 1: a cafe or a restaurant and there's a nice verbling
Speaker 1: murmur of social sounds and then just suddenly they crash
Speaker 1: of thunder. It cuts to the door and being dragged
Speaker 1: out like she's already dead with the raid and everything.
Speaker 1: Like when I was listening to that without looking at
Speaker 1: the visuals that it didn't make me jump a little bit.
Speaker 1: It is just immediately shifts modes and that whole sequence.
Speaker 1: It can be interpreted in so many ways. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the part that I came back to the most
Speaker 1: for like digging into ways of thinking about it that
Speaker 1: what he does has her doing reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of how cult leaders will have people doing menial, mindless
Speaker 1: tasks and singing songs and doing all these kind of
Speaker 1: things so that they absorb all of their free energy
Speaker 1: and free thinking time and just drain them so that
Speaker 1: they can't think for themselves or do anything other than
Speaker 1: what the cult demands.
Speaker 8: Starting now, and not to play. If you blink, we
Speaker 8: go back to the start. Infringement. You blinked. Starting now,
Speaker 8: you're not to blink. If you blink, we go back
Speaker 8: to the start. Do you often think about how inconsequential
Speaker 8: you are? Do you believe that God will save you
Speaker 8: from your own ridiculousness? Have you ever had intercourse with
Speaker 8: someone inside your family?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 8: Have you ever had intercourse with someone inside your family?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 8: Auntie? Have you killed anyone?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: Maybe not me?
Speaker 8: Have you killed anyone? How many times do you have
Speaker 8: intercourse with your aunt?
Speaker 1: Three times?
Speaker 8: Where's your aunt?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 8: Would you like to have intercourse with there?
Speaker 4: Again?
Speaker 8: Do you regret this?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: But it also reflects on a you know, at a
Speaker 1: grander scale, how we are indoctrinated by systems of control
Speaker 1: and power in schools and parents, in peer groups, to
Speaker 1: be specific, ways, and how the idea that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't ever actually choose your life, that you get slotted
Speaker 1: into these paths and spend you know, you wake up
Speaker 1: twenty years later and you in a horrible marriage and
Speaker 1: a terrible job, and you don't feel like you've lived
Speaker 1: a life and how in a way then having Thoro's
Speaker 1: Walden is entirely about that, about how do you know
Speaker 1: that you're living your best true life to yourself if
Speaker 1: you're just slotting into the system of you know, Emerson's
Speaker 1: imitation is suicide. That had me thinking that, like, does
Speaker 1: the thief feel like this is an exchange, that he
Speaker 1: isn't just stealing from them, that he is giving them something?
Speaker 1: Tyler Durden, I was just going to.
Speaker 7: See that that definitely came to mind of like that
Speaker 7: whole idea of you know, reconstructing your narrative but taking
Speaker 7: away your identity so you can rebuild it. And you know,
Speaker 7: I think that's a new victually what Caruth kind of
Speaker 7: set out to tell with the story, But it just
Speaker 7: it became so much more like even on the surface level,
Speaker 7: you can look at it as like, well, this is
Speaker 7: what identity thieves do. In fact, that scam that he
Speaker 7: pulls with the mother is similar to what identity thieves
Speaker 7: do to the elderly. It was actually in a movie
Speaker 7: fairly recently called Thelma with June Squibb, where somebody calls
Speaker 7: her and says, hey, guess what, your son's in prison
Speaker 7: or you know, he's been kidnapped or something along those lines,
Speaker 7: and if you send ten thousand dollars, then he'll be
Speaker 7: released and he'll be okay.
Speaker 1: And she falls for that.
Speaker 7: But here it's just a whole other level with like
Speaker 7: psychological rape.
Speaker 1: Basically. Yeah, and just as you was saying, Mike, like
Speaker 1: the thing about any kind of altruistic positive outcome that
Speaker 1: the thief may think that he is performing in doing
Speaker 1: this to her is completely undermined by the economic realities
Speaker 1: of the world. That it's like, you're absolutely screwed if
Speaker 1: you don't have these things. That is interesting also in
Speaker 1: the way of how you relive in an ideological system
Speaker 1: that blames the individual, that it's not about the system,
Speaker 1: it's not about the you know, the environment that they're in,
Speaker 1: the community, they're in, the world they're in. It's all
Speaker 1: their fault if they become this or if that happens
Speaker 1: to them, which is also what happens to them, you know.
Speaker 1: And I really like how Jeff talks about what happened
Speaker 1: to him, because at first, if you're still like when
Speaker 1: your first time watching this, you're like, well, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in ten twelve years and you like
Speaker 1: still turning it all together in your head. When he
Speaker 1: talks about robbing the company, like you think of him
Speaker 1: as a thief, but it's like, oh, no, of course
Speaker 1: that's he's the incident, that's the thing that happened to
Speaker 1: him where he was controlled and the robbed the company
Speaker 1: fall on behalf of the actual thief. And it's just
Speaker 1: like it forces you to readjust how you think about
Speaker 1: that person behavior and the morality of it. It's doing
Speaker 1: so much in this very small period of time.
Speaker 2: That's the insidious thing about this is when Jeff wakes up,
Speaker 2: when Chris wakes up, when any of these victims wake
Speaker 2: up from this drug induce stupor. And I love that
Speaker 2: at one point you think that they are awake after
Speaker 2: the thief leaves, you know, there's that long sequence of
Speaker 2: Chris and I was talking about the shallow depth of
Speaker 2: field and you kind of fragment her body. We see
Speaker 2: the fingers and the feet and the legs and that,
Speaker 2: and for me, I'm like, okay, well, this ordeal is over.
Speaker 2: But then the worms come and the worms happen, and
Speaker 2: she gets hypnotized by the music, and just the same
Speaker 2: kind of music that's bringing up the worms from the ground,
Speaker 2: like earthworms rather than these drug induced worms. The same
Speaker 2: kind of thing that's doing that is the same thing
Speaker 2: that's drawing her to the farm. And it took me
Speaker 2: a while to remember, oh no, she's not done with
Speaker 2: this drug trip yet. She is still completely zonked with this.
Speaker 2: It's not until she wakes up on the freeway and
Speaker 2: that's when the drug trip is over. And that scene
Speaker 2: is horrific again to me, that you're waking up and
Speaker 2: at first it sounds like it's the wind. Talking about
Speaker 2: the way that he manipulates sound. It's wonderful. You think
Speaker 2: that it's wind, and then you're like, no, that's the
Speaker 2: sound of roaring traffic. And she wakes up and she's
Speaker 2: like in the median of a fucking freeway and you're like,
Speaker 2: how did she get here? She has no idea, We
Speaker 2: have no idea. That ride must have been really scary
Speaker 2: for her, and especially when she stopped. We don't know
Speaker 2: what that was like then she has to put the
Speaker 2: pieces back together, and this whole thing of like you're
Speaker 2: saying blaming the victim, they're blaming themselves, like what did
Speaker 2: I do? Did I have some sort of drug trip?
Speaker 2: Did I go? Because he says later on like, oh,
Speaker 2: I must have been high on cocaine, Like he thinks
Speaker 2: that he had a drug problem. Jeff had a drug problem.
Speaker 2: It's like, you probably didn't have a drug problem. Maybe
Speaker 2: he did, but I don't think so. I think he
Speaker 2: is filling in these gaps, trying to make up excuses
Speaker 2: for why the hell did I do this? She's probably
Speaker 2: doing the exact same thing. And that, again, to me,
Speaker 2: is just one of the most horrific things that you
Speaker 2: are giving people such trauma. That and this is so
Speaker 2: true to life. When you undergo really bad trauma, you
Speaker 2: try to fill in those gaps. You try to make
Speaker 2: up stories to comfort yourself. If you have gaps in
Speaker 2: your memories, you try to make up things to fill
Speaker 2: those gaps. And they are filling them with the most
Speaker 2: self indicting things, making them feel even worse about themselves
Speaker 2: for something that they had absolutely no control over.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I think of that in the context of
Speaker 7: mental health too, because people fall into those fugue states
Speaker 7: or when they experience mania, they don't always have like
Speaker 7: an awareness of what they're doing to where Yeah, it
Speaker 7: creates a lot of unfortunate tension with other people because
Speaker 7: they don't know how to perceive your state of mind.
Speaker 7: And at the same time, you're doing things that you
Speaker 7: think are the right things when they're actually the wrong thing.
Speaker 7: So it's a really layered film to discuss and think about.
Speaker 7: But like, yeah, the first time I saw it, I
Speaker 7: could not make heads or tails of why necessarily the
Speaker 7: sampler was able to what his role in everything was,
Speaker 7: especially in the beginning when they first met, Like how
Speaker 7: did he find her? I know that he was using
Speaker 7: those speakers as almost like in a dune like sense,
Speaker 7: to conjure up the worms by thumping. When I first
Speaker 7: saw that, I was like, so, what's this guy's deal?
Speaker 7: And that sequence early on again talk about body horror,
Speaker 7: just like having to extract that worm and that capacity
Speaker 7: and transferred over to the pig is pretty harrowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's the other thing. When she
Speaker 2: wakes up, she also sees how her body has been mutilated.
Speaker 2: She doesn't know that she's the one that mutilated it.
Speaker 2: She has no idea, she could be the victim of whatever.
Speaker 2: And that then also plays into the whole thing of
Speaker 2: her when she thinks she's pregnant and they go, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you're not pregnant. You have nothing going on in your
Speaker 2: body that would say that you aren't pregnant. They put
Speaker 2: her through a whole battery of tests and find out
Speaker 2: that she had had cancer stage three. It's they say,
Speaker 2: but now it's removed. And also she basically will never
Speaker 2: have children or if she can conceive, she'll never carry
Speaker 2: it to term. That scene contains to me like the
Speaker 2: lying of the movie where it's the nurse off screen
Speaker 2: just as a voiceover say, how are you supposed to
Speaker 2: help someone like that? How are you supposed to help
Speaker 2: someone like that? Total victim blaming here, thinking that Chris
Speaker 2: is just being difficult, that she pretending that she doesn't
Speaker 2: know that she's had stage street cancer and had this
Speaker 2: thing removed, no idea, And then I'm questioning, was that
Speaker 2: the sampler did he take that out? How did that happen?
Speaker 2: Or was that the thief's baby?
Speaker 1: Like what you know?
Speaker 2: Like what instance, like, is that the gift of the worm? Like,
Speaker 2: so she has been violated even more than this already violation,
Speaker 2: this violation that the thief does to her, and that
Speaker 2: then she also does to her own body. I mean,
Speaker 2: when she goes back to her house after she wakes
Speaker 2: up that on that freeway and sees all those cuts
Speaker 2: all over her body, it looks like a fucking crime scene.
Speaker 2: Just the blood everywhere. This fridge is completely torn apart.
Speaker 2: I mean, everything is a complete mess. It looks like
Speaker 2: someone went through and just destroyed everything, not knowing that
Speaker 2: it was herself.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking that in a way, this film is
Speaker 1: a Blurst film less than Cursed. There's so many things
Speaker 1: in it that are both blessed and cursed, and that's
Speaker 1: one of them that like, Okay, so she doesn't have
Speaker 1: stage three cancer anymore, but she's not going to be
Speaker 1: able to have kids. It's blest and cursed at the
Speaker 1: same time. Again, those sort of dualities that are also singularities.
Speaker 1: There's so much that's inexplicable in here, and you can
Speaker 1: like spend forever trying to figure it out, but it
Speaker 1: just isn't. Then that is a big part of the
Speaker 1: sci fi aspect of how it extrapolates and bills on
Speaker 1: sort of knowns and then into unknowns. And the thing
Speaker 1: that the upstream color does is it doesn't necessarily kind
Speaker 1: of skips over the unknown and goes into what some
Speaker 1: other known that you don't get that continuity, which is
Speaker 1: also the experience that Chris has, that she loses continuity there.
Speaker 1: Narrative has a fracture, a missing peace, and how much
Speaker 1: that destabilizes her. I wonder how much like viewers who
Speaker 1: aren't comfortable living in that sort of state that can't
Speaker 1: deal with that are the ones who get thrown out
Speaker 1: of this film and who react so intensely negatively to
Speaker 1: it because they have to have an absolute continuity of
Speaker 1: meaning and understanding. And it just like treasors buttons, because
Speaker 1: this film definitely dresses a variety of buttons. I can
Speaker 1: see it definitely being a film that would there's certainly
Speaker 1: parts that are traumatic and could definitely induce some sort
Speaker 1: of PTSD episodes for people who have gone through various experiences.
Speaker 1: And a big part of that is that it is
Speaker 1: just sitting so close to a lot of very difficult
Speaker 1: and complicated emotions. That's the primary continuity is emotional experience.
Speaker 2: When I was looking up because I will do this
Speaker 2: these days, just because there's a lot of movies that
Speaker 2: I talk about, whether there's not a lot of extras
Speaker 2: or even you know there are. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I've found a couple hundred pages worth of articles about this,
Speaker 2: so I was able to do that. But yesterday, when
Speaker 2: I was at work, I was like, I want to
Speaker 2: watch some video essays about upstream Color and just hear
Speaker 2: what people have to say about it. And when I
Speaker 2: did just a simple search on YouTube, I would say
Speaker 2: probably six out of eight videos that I watched were
Speaker 2: all narrated by people that identify as women. And I
Speaker 2: found that fascinating because I was like, normally, you know
Speaker 2: film criticism. Here we are three dudes. It's the realm
Speaker 2: of dudes. And I was so glad that I could
Speaker 2: hear these female voices talking about this film, especially because
Speaker 2: with Chris being our main character and the idea of
Speaker 2: this trauma behind I was like, Okay, yeah, I want
Speaker 2: to hear what women have to say about this, And
Speaker 2: I just found that to be wonderful that there were
Speaker 2: so many women that were talking about this movie and
Speaker 2: it wasn't just a bunch of guys being like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: like what would I do with that, you know, mind
Speaker 2: controlled drug dude, or any of that kind of I mean,
Speaker 2: not that there were any like assholes like that that
Speaker 2: I found out there. Everybody was giving some really good
Speaker 2: insights on this. I do really like the essay talking
Speaker 2: about the video essay talking about Walden and just how
Speaker 2: that connects to this. I would almost let to go
Speaker 2: a little bit further and talk about Emerson as well
Speaker 2: with this whole creedive. I am a transparent eyeball because
Speaker 2: I find that that really fits with this film too
Speaker 2: much more on the tail end when it comes to
Speaker 2: the way that the sampler can enter into people's lives
Speaker 2: and just be completely transparent but observing. And there's that
Speaker 2: moment of power that happens towards the end of the
Speaker 2: film where Chris can look back and that disconcerts him,
Speaker 2: and I love that that is like the moment where
Speaker 2: she finally gets that power back. But that's so far
Speaker 2: into this movie because you have to deal with this trauma.
Speaker 2: I mean, she wakes up about twenty five minutes into
Speaker 2: this movie, and the rest of this film is basically
Speaker 2: her trying to deal with what the fuck happened to her.
Speaker 2: And I love that this movie takes that long, because
Speaker 2: it's about an hour and a half a little bit over.
Speaker 2: It takes more than an hour for her to process
Speaker 2: this stuff. She's never going to be fully the same
Speaker 2: way that she was. I mean, she has to literally
Speaker 2: live a new life by the end of this film.
Speaker 2: But just the idea of how long it takes to
Speaker 2: process and means hundreds of hours of therapy and all that,
Speaker 2: you know, like if you're lucky kind of thing. There
Speaker 2: are so many people that don't know that they've been traumatized.
Speaker 2: She definitely knows something happened, but it takes her even
Speaker 2: then a while to figure that out. It's not until
Speaker 2: she starts to put these clues together. It's almost like
Speaker 2: she and Jeff start to investigate themselves. And I like
Speaker 2: them as a couple once they finally do get together.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it takes a while for Jeff. He never
Speaker 2: really warms up to me. I think he's a dickhead
Speaker 2: all the way through this whole film, and he gets
Speaker 2: so upset he starts to and I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's doing this on purpose, and that I don't know
Speaker 2: if she's telling the truth. The whole idea of him
Speaker 2: stealing her memories. I found that to be fascinating as well,
Speaker 2: the way that they're mixed up together, when she's telling
Speaker 2: that story about almost drowning and he takes it as
Speaker 2: his own, and I'm like, Okay, who really did have
Speaker 2: that happen? And is it one of those things where
Speaker 2: you hear somebody tell a story so many times, or
Speaker 2: you hear someone tell a story that is very meaningful
Speaker 2: to them, and you start to feel so close to
Speaker 2: them that you start to picture what if I was
Speaker 2: there as well?
Speaker 7: Yeah, where does one person end and the other begin? Like,
Speaker 7: especially when you're so fully invested in a relationship with
Speaker 7: another person. It's like, even with my partner, it's kind
Speaker 7: of funny how sometimes we pick up on, Oh, you're
Speaker 7: starting to do that little habit that I do, you know,
Speaker 7: and just because we you know, we're living together or
Speaker 7: we you know, share so much that it is kind
Speaker 7: of funny when those like correlations happen and you don't
Speaker 7: even realize it. But I do think about, you know,
Speaker 7: just the sampler as a character too, because it's interesting.
Speaker 7: I really do love you know the fact that this
Speaker 7: almost becomes a silent film for maybe the last twenty
Speaker 7: minutes or so, but that warehouse moment where they're sort
Speaker 7: of just looking at each other with and those facial
Speaker 7: expressions and body language say so much in those moments.
Speaker 7: But at the same time, I'm still not entirely clear
Speaker 7: why she chooses to kill him, because technically the thief
Speaker 7: is the person that screwed her over. I mean, my
Speaker 7: feelings were the Sampler had like helped her regain her
Speaker 7: life in a way by getting the worm out. You know,
Speaker 7: I never saw him as the quote unquote bad guy,
Speaker 7: but you know, we have talked a lot about nobody
Speaker 7: is good or bad necessarily. I just thought it was
Speaker 7: it's not the moment that like, I feel like it's
Speaker 7: completely out of place, but it's just the link angeren.
Speaker 7: Question I had was what does she gain by killing him?
Speaker 7: And is it necessary to the story too.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this as well, because it was that,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, that he starts off and you
Speaker 1: think that he is a positive character, but by the
Speaker 1: end of it, he seemingly is not. For myself, as
Speaker 1: someone who spends a lot of time over my life
Speaker 1: with animals, and I've been fostering some feral cats recently,
Speaker 1: and one of them, I'm pretty sure she had been
Speaker 1: dumped because the only thing she was afraid of was
Speaker 1: plastic bags, which tells me that she was probably stuck
Speaker 1: in a plastic bag and jumped out of a car.
Speaker 1: So the scene with the piglers where he puts them
Speaker 1: in the Hessian bag and just drops them in the
Speaker 1: creek to drown is like, even just thinking about it now,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's really just fucking horrible. It's so absolutely
Speaker 1: unforgivable to me, Like there's just no excuse, no reasons,
Speaker 1: Like because you have seen just before where the guy
Speaker 1: wants to sell the pigs and you're kind of like,
Speaker 1: oh no, don't sell the pigs. He can't split him up,
Speaker 1: and he say, oh, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh good, and then he does something worse
Speaker 1: that really complicates it. I don't exactly want to pull
Speaker 1: this idea in because I don't think it quite fits,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't escape it. On multiple viewings of it
Speaker 1: kind of looks a bit like it feels like a
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg type, like someone is hovering there at people's connections
Speaker 1: and parasitic, like getting some kind of energy off of that.
Speaker 1: He's tapping into other people's connections and networks and being
Speaker 1: present in their lives without them knowing or necessarily inviting him,
Speaker 1: but without knowing it they've agreed to that by going
Speaker 1: to him, or they're still under the spell. And so
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, social media is a positive except
Speaker 1: that it has not become a positive thing. There's something
Speaker 1: in there that there's an echo of that from me
Speaker 1: that is like, oh yeah, there is a positive aspect
Speaker 1: to what the sampler does, but it's not actually positive.
Speaker 1: It's not turned to entirely good outcomes or it's not
Speaker 1: made into something better. Like he's still keeping these people
Speaker 1: separated and disconnected, even though he has all these files
Speaker 1: of them and he has these connections to them. And
Speaker 1: that's what the actual act of the freeing moment when
Speaker 1: they break loose is not when they kill him, but
Speaker 1: when they reconnect these people by giving them their information back.
Speaker 1: It's like, actually, not instead of just being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm overseeing all of this status quo, I'm actually like
Speaker 1: breaking apart the status quo. There's no part of the
Speaker 1: film which gives him an opportunity to speak for himself
Speaker 1: and to say give his justification, which I actually respect
Speaker 1: because it's just like, yeah, nah, now you had plenty
Speaker 1: of times sitting there ruminating doing your thing, and you
Speaker 1: were still just art and about making music and sticking
Speaker 1: in nosing other people's stuff and keeping these walls up. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he's not worth the time. There's other ways and people
Speaker 1: who can do those same things and maybe not keep
Speaker 1: the walls up, and they deserve the oxygen more so.
Speaker 1: I also wonder what if actually that was one part
Speaker 1: I went back and rewatched a couple of times they
Speaker 1: see him, they look him in the eye, and he
Speaker 1: is seen, and it is in an empty office space area,
Speaker 1: and then he gets up and moves away and kind
Speaker 1: of collapses against the wall, and then they're in the
Speaker 1: pig yard, but he's started clutching his heart and then
Speaker 1: she shoots him. And I do actually wonder about what
Speaker 1: happens there and how much of it is literal and
Speaker 1: how much is symbolic. And it reminds me of the
Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett's Only film film in which Buster Keaton is
Speaker 1: attempting to flee from being observed, and how like it's
Speaker 1: there's no escape from this existential dread of being seen.
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh, it appears that it is actually
Speaker 1: the act of being observed that kills him, like his
Speaker 1: heart begins to give out, and her shooting him is
Speaker 1: more to do with her and her dominating him and
Speaker 1: in that process separating from him and obliterating him. But
Speaker 1: I think there's there, there's a the series there is complicated.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I struggle with that too. And if you
Speaker 7: intentionally drown animals, maybe you should get killed. I don't know.
Speaker 2: And symbolically the animals are her children, you know, they're true, true,
Speaker 2: absolutely the rage that she has when she feels those
Speaker 2: babies taken away, that she mutilates herself again by punching
Speaker 2: that glass. And that's the interesting part to me too.
Speaker 2: As far as the editing goes, I mean, the editing
Speaker 2: in this film is just terrific. I love when the
Speaker 2: thief talks about how his head is made out of
Speaker 2: the same material as the sun, and you get her
Speaker 2: turning away and the light on the side of her
Speaker 2: face and she turns three times. It's very John wu
Speaker 2: turning and that sun, that light on the side of
Speaker 2: her face. But when the Sampler steals the babies. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm sure. You guys have been around
Speaker 2: as I know, especially you Ben, I've been around a
Speaker 2: lot of video equipment. It reminds me of shuddling through
Speaker 2: a video, going back and forth with the control knob,
Speaker 2: and it feels like we're going back and forth in time.
Speaker 2: And this could be completely wrong. I could just be
Speaker 2: misreading this scene completely, but it feels like we kind
Speaker 2: of start with her reaction and follow how she reacts
Speaker 2: to this whole thing, and then we shuttle back and
Speaker 2: then see how Jeff reacts to this whole thing too,
Speaker 2: the way that he gets this rage and that he
Speaker 2: attacks as co workers and that they fire him, and
Speaker 2: he has that box of his stuff and he throws
Speaker 2: that down into the atrium on the fly, files flying everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's very, very beautiful the way that it's shot. But
Speaker 2: it is just so wild the way that we're going
Speaker 2: back and just this whole thing of how she calls
Speaker 2: him and he knows exactly where she's at in that
Speaker 2: he recognizes. I don't know how he recognizes if it's
Speaker 2: the way that she describes the room that she's in,
Speaker 2: but he recognizes that she's in his office building and
Speaker 2: talks her through. Reminded me a little bit of that
Speaker 2: Tony Scott from Deja Vu with Denzel Washington, where there's
Speaker 2: like two layers of reality on top of each other.
Speaker 2: But he's like talking her through the office and his
Speaker 2: car pulls up just as she's coming out of the
Speaker 2: back door, and that reunites them. And because there is
Speaker 2: a lot of struggle, there's a lot of friction between
Speaker 2: those two, and there's a moment where she like just
Speaker 2: leaves him, but that reunification happens after the babies have
Speaker 2: been taken and now they are a couple and they
Speaker 2: have to face this thing together. But they are so scared,
Speaker 2: so scared from that the way that they are in
Speaker 2: the bathtub, and I love it. It's kind of the
Speaker 2: iconic image from this movie, them and the bathtub together.
Speaker 2: But I love how them and the bathtub together becomes
Speaker 2: the wide screen of the film that we're showing them
Speaker 2: sideways from up above, and just that framing of those
Speaker 2: two together in the bathtub is just wonderful. And that's
Speaker 2: one of those things where I'm just like, I'm not
Speaker 2: just watching a film, I'm watching something that is taking
Speaker 2: me to a whole other place.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And it makes and it makes me think of
Speaker 7: what it's like to have panic attack, because sometimes you
Speaker 7: don't know why or what's causing it or what's triggering it,
Speaker 7: and you just know you have to get away. And
Speaker 7: that's kind of what they do. They sort of hunker
Speaker 7: down and try to get through whatever they're feeling together,
Speaker 7: and it's palpable fear, and you feel for them. You know,
Speaker 7: it's crazy to be like, even I feel for a
Speaker 7: couple in this movie that we don't even really know
Speaker 7: a whole lot about. It's when the sampler is observing
Speaker 7: other people's lives and kind of like this onlooker voyeuristic fashion.
Speaker 7: And there's that couple that's constantly like when one of
Speaker 7: them is leaving for work and the wife keeps saying
Speaker 7: the same thing over and over again, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: I don't even Yeah, I find that so moving, even
Speaker 7: though I had no context for who these people are.
Speaker 7: It's just it works in of itself all by itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really taps into such a wealth of human experiences
Speaker 1: and emotions, and it isn't it isn't bogs down by
Speaker 1: having to set it up or explain it or context it,
Speaker 1: which really works in its favor. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: it's having rewatched Primer, I have might I have a
Speaker 1: theory that I think the Primer actually had a lot
Speaker 1: more in the back end and care maybe realized was
Speaker 1: better to have nothing and leave people with a mystery
Speaker 1: than to like saple the energy out of the film
Speaker 1: by having more. And it kind of I both respect that,
Speaker 1: and also it feels a bit like a grift que
Speaker 1: you've got to like cheated that you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm actually an amazing deep films like no, you just
Speaker 1: cut out a junk the and I think that works
Speaker 1: better here in upstream color. It doesn't feel so much
Speaker 1: like it's a cheat. It feels genuinely like, oh, you've
Speaker 1: just managed to capture the bit that connects us to it,
Speaker 1: and it becomes that reflecting pool. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think you see the lot of people who do connect
Speaker 1: with this film like it really stirs something up in
Speaker 1: them and generates a lot of feelings and thoughts. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of that is the
Speaker 1: aspect of bonding over trauma and how that can generally
Speaker 1: be not a great thing. But it's it can be
Speaker 1: important sometimes to have somebody that you connect with like that,
Speaker 1: even if it's just to get through your stage of
Speaker 1: your life to progress to the next part. And I
Speaker 1: think that the film does that well. And that is
Speaker 1: where it's like that thing of that it's not necessarily positive,
Speaker 1: that relationship isn't necessarily good or healthy, and that they
Speaker 1: do bounce off each other in quite difficult and chaotic
Speaker 1: way is and it feels best when they're both on
Speaker 1: a path moving forwards, like it's mystery that they're solving.
Speaker 1: But that is necessarily a good relationship thing. It's very
Speaker 1: like complex and difficult to keep saying. I think, I
Speaker 1: go how many times I get to say the word
Speaker 1: complex and difficult.
Speaker 2: As many times as I say hypnotic.
Speaker 1: It's aging really well with film. It's funny because it
Speaker 1: has aged really badly because of roots himself. I watched
Speaker 1: it with my coworker here and in his early twenties
Speaker 1: and had never seen any career of films, and he
Speaker 1: knew all about a career before that. He saw the
Speaker 1: film and he had a real difficult time with it
Speaker 1: because he just couldn't see any other aspect of it,
Speaker 1: which was interesting to see, and I don't disagree with
Speaker 1: that viewing experience. But there's other ways, like the social
Speaker 1: media stuff, which social media hadn't really become a thing
Speaker 1: at the time it was made, the connectivity of that
Speaker 1: and the networks. But there's also the ecological environmental collapse aspect,
Speaker 1: which that he experience that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: having of like extreme depression and fear and panic over
Speaker 1: the horrific things that are happening in the world to
Speaker 1: the environment, to ecologies, to animals, extinctions and things, and
Speaker 1: how that's something seemingly so disconnected from us but is
Speaker 1: absolutely connected to us. And being struck by these intense
Speaker 1: emotional feelings from things happening so far away, it just
Speaker 1: it really, it's just another layer that feels this is
Speaker 1: exactly why it's a science fiction film, because the things
Speaker 1: that may be seem more abstract and fantastical have now
Speaker 1: just become normal.
Speaker 7: Yeah, prescient, for sure.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how much of the script didn't get shot,
Speaker 2: or if it did, that they left it out. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so much dialogue that is in the script that
Speaker 2: just didn't happen. There's a thing that they do around
Speaker 2: trying to locate. It's like that I think of like
Speaker 2: Odd Thomas, like how they'll just kind of wander around
Speaker 2: and then be able to find things they can. They're
Speaker 2: trying to find things, they're searching for things. They're trying
Speaker 2: to really connect with that missing time, with that trauma
Speaker 2: that they had so they can start to understand it.
Speaker 2: They will do this thing where they will go out driving,
Speaker 2: and they showed in the film a little bit as
Speaker 2: far as like, well, you know, is it two lefts
Speaker 2: and a right or this kind of stuff. They end
Speaker 2: up coming up with this whole thing of like index cards,
Speaker 2: so they're not showing each other their answer. Well, they
Speaker 2: they'll have a card in their hand that says left
Speaker 2: or right and then they have to show it at
Speaker 2: the same time, and then they go from that. And
Speaker 2: later on in the film they really cut this whole
Speaker 2: part out, which I was glad for actually, which was
Speaker 2: when all of the trauma victims are coming together and
Speaker 2: going to the farm. They're doing the same thing and
Speaker 2: they're all in a van and they're all like saying
Speaker 2: left or right, and they find that there are two
Speaker 2: people that don't belong there, that they didn't undergo this
Speaker 2: trauma that they're just there for somebody that they know,
Speaker 2: and they're screwing up the whole left or right game
Speaker 2: that they're playing. It's not a game, but the whole
Speaker 2: left or right thing. And we kind of get that
Speaker 2: too when it comes to some of the shots of
Speaker 2: the birds in the way that the birds are all
Speaker 2: moving together like a flock, it's like these people have
Speaker 2: become a flock of people. They've become what's a group
Speaker 2: of pigs called.
Speaker 9: A group of pigs is called a drift or drove.
Speaker 9: A group of young pigs is called a litter. A
Speaker 9: group of hawks is called a past sell or team.
Speaker 9: A group of sline is called a sounder. A group
Speaker 9: of bores is called a singular.
Speaker 2: But they become a group of pigs, you know, all
Speaker 2: kind of going around like these birds flying, you know,
Speaker 2: like which way do we need to go? Okay, we
Speaker 2: are like locating where we all belong because we're connected
Speaker 2: to these pigs, We're connected to what the sampler is doing.
Speaker 2: And I just really quick wanted to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about one of the most obvious metaphors or the
Speaker 2: whole movie is the chain, you know, having the paper
Speaker 2: chains that she's making starting the whole movie off with
Speaker 2: the paper chain and showing him throwaway, showing the thief
Speaker 2: throwaway a bag full of paper chains. This is a
Speaker 2: link in a chain as far as these event goes.
Speaker 2: And I always talk about these cycles that are happening,
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate it. It's a pretty simple metaphor,
Speaker 2: but it's really a nice metaphor. It also really talks
Speaker 2: to the whole cycle of abuse and everything. Because one
Speaker 2: thing that gets cut out of the film that's also
Speaker 2: in the script are the two people that are finding
Speaker 2: these flowers and find the blue flowers, and the blue
Speaker 2: flowers have I think there are orchids. Maybe maybe they're
Speaker 2: orchid thieves.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The blue flowers have the worms. And that's what the
Speaker 2: thief is looking for. Are these blue flowers. The blue
Speaker 2: dust that they have tells him that there are worms
Speaker 2: in there. And these two people that find these flowers
Speaker 2: are a granddaughter and grandmother. And in the script there's
Speaker 2: this whole thing of like how they find these flowers
Speaker 2: and they get to name the flowers and they what
Speaker 2: the young girl is like, oh, we get to name
Speaker 2: these flowers because they're you know, like we get we
Speaker 2: found them, and she says that she wants to name
Speaker 2: the flower after the grandfather, Granddad Walter. The grandmother is like, no,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't name him after We should name these flowers
Speaker 2: after him. Never says why, but I'm just like, did
Speaker 2: he do something bad? Is that like this cycle of abuse?
Speaker 2: Like the grandfather did this and did something bad, and
Speaker 2: like it's passing through these people. It's very much like
Speaker 2: that whole idea of like, if the father's an abuser,
Speaker 2: the son's going to be the abuser. Has his son's
Speaker 2: going to be the abuser. Because what's the most beautiful
Speaker 2: part of this whole movie for me is when she
Speaker 2: shoots the sampler, the cycle's over. You know, we are
Speaker 2: done now with this whole thing. We are not going
Speaker 2: to drown any more pig babies ever again.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and the thief can't continue to do what he's
Speaker 7: been doing.
Speaker 2: Right, and you see him sadly going through those plants.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's pretty remarkable too, to like begin on that image.
Speaker 7: And yet you know, I think somebody watching it for
Speaker 7: the first time may not necessarily pick up on you
Speaker 7: know though these are chain links and this has been
Speaker 7: a scam that the thief has been doing over and
Speaker 7: over again. We don't even know how many times he's
Speaker 7: done it, but it's clear that he has. And I
Speaker 7: wonder about that in terms of you're saying that the
Speaker 7: original script had a lot of dialogue, because this is
Speaker 7: kind of the anti prime or Primer has so much
Speaker 7: exposition and dialogue and people trying to, you know, explain
Speaker 7: their way out of what's happening or at least figure
Speaker 7: out or together like collaborate on what's going on. And
Speaker 7: here it's kind of, yeah, like the antithesis of that,
Speaker 7: where it's basically characters figuring things out without explaining it outright,
Speaker 7: and that allows the audience to sort of project themselves
Speaker 7: into this experience more. My takeaway has always been, well,
Speaker 7: this is about reconstructing your narrative, losing your identity, and
Speaker 7: processing trauma, and how all those things sort of interplay
Speaker 7: with you throughout your life and how do you come
Speaker 7: to terms with that and find your sense of community
Speaker 7: In the end, I get the sense of interconnectivity with
Speaker 7: everything going on, like, yes, we've all experienced horrific things
Speaker 7: in life, and yet we've all experienced wonderful things in
Speaker 7: life too, So there is that kind of duality and
Speaker 7: the ultimate balance that we get to by the end
Speaker 7: of the film. That sort of leaves me more on
Speaker 7: a hopeful note than anything else. The visual storytelling here
Speaker 7: is just impeccable, because every shot means something. You just
Speaker 7: don't know what it is entirely, you know, especially in
Speaker 7: a first viewing, this means something.
Speaker 2: We'll think of the shot of the pig pens at
Speaker 2: night and the doors are opening, and then cut to
Speaker 2: the subway or the train car and the doors are
Speaker 2: opening there, and I'm just like, this is amazing, and
Speaker 2: it's what two three seconds at most. I mean, the
Speaker 2: pace of the editing of this movie is wonderful. It's
Speaker 2: also very disorienting, which I think is perfect for this,
Speaker 2: that we are cutting to things that we don't necessarily know.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a whole idea of that. You know,
Speaker 2: we can talk about editing styles, when we can talk
Speaker 2: about Hollywood editing and all this kind of stuff, and
Speaker 2: I just think that this editing style, it's been and
Speaker 2: we can talk about influence, but it's been up by
Speaker 2: a lot of other people, and I don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: that they do it as well as this, And even
Speaker 2: this probably isn't the origin of this style of editing,
Speaker 2: but the way that he disorients us every time he cuts,
Speaker 2: and it takes us just it might be a fraction
Speaker 2: of a second, but takes us a little bit of
Speaker 2: time to get ourselves situated again. And that constant re
Speaker 2: evaluation of where am I, what's happening, I'm sure feels
Speaker 2: very much like what Chris and Jeff go through every
Speaker 2: second of the day, just they still feel completely out
Speaker 2: of sorts with us.
Speaker 1: In the audio commentary that's on the Unbrellably ray, the
Speaker 1: commentator mentions May and Darren, Oh, yes, editing connection. And
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've dug into her work,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't really add to that, but I was
Speaker 1: worth bringing up as a connection because thinking back to
Speaker 1: what I remember, Yeah, very strikingly similar. But also another film,
Speaker 1: The Shout Skoleamowski. The Shout feels like it was a
Speaker 1: big influence on this, in both the sound being about
Speaker 1: a musician, sound sampler kind of guy, and also the
Speaker 1: fact that it's in someone invading their life and taking
Speaker 1: over it and controlling and splintering it. That it feels
Speaker 1: like that is I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but
Speaker 1: it was just like, oh, the shout is so all
Speaker 1: through upstream color well.
Speaker 2: And then John hurt is a composer in that as well.
Speaker 7: Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, no, good point. But I'm
Speaker 7: glad that those two influences came up because I think
Speaker 7: like just relying so heavily on like it's very much
Speaker 7: like Terrence Maw like kind of got old. I could
Speaker 7: see it obviously, but there's more to it than just like, oh,
Speaker 7: yeah that's poetic. It's elliptical and you know the editing style.
Speaker 7: It's like, oh yeah, that's lots of shots of nature. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it's kind of surface level stuff to me.
Speaker 1: It's also feels like Jeff Nichols Take Shelter, and Jeff
Speaker 1: nichols work in general was a big influence on him.
Speaker 1: I Reckon takes Shelter, especially given it as the ecological
Speaker 1: aspects of dealing with trauma and community and isolation and thoughts.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go way out there when it comes
Speaker 2: to a potential influence on this as well. All throughout
Speaker 2: the entire script, there's a location which is called the
Speaker 2: Seruleian Plaza Hotel, and that location keeps coming up and
Speaker 2: I don't think you even see it in the movie
Speaker 2: at all. And that's where the flower show is. There's
Speaker 2: because there's a flower show. When they find these things,
Speaker 2: they get awarded for having the blue orchids or blue flowers.
Speaker 2: And the Cerulian goes through this whole thing. And as
Speaker 2: soon as I see the word Serulian, I start thinking
Speaker 2: about one of my favorite episodes of The X File,
Speaker 2: which was called The Pusher from Season three, episode seventeen,
Speaker 2: and that was a guy who has a brain tumor.
Speaker 2: It's a little man who suddenly gets power and he
Speaker 2: wants to become a big man and he can control people,
Speaker 2: he can push them, thus the name of the episode.
Speaker 2: And there's a wonderful moment in the very first part
Speaker 2: of the episode that I just love so much where
Speaker 2: the Pusher has been arrested and he's in the back
Speaker 2: of a police car and he starts to talk to
Speaker 2: one of the officers and he just says, that's a
Speaker 2: really lovely shade of blue, you.
Speaker 5: Know, Debuty, I just got to say that your uniform
Speaker 5: is really the most soothing shade of blue. I'm not
Speaker 5: kidding you. I notice those things. It's a sky blue,
Speaker 5: very calming, very tranquil. I think the word for that
Speaker 5: particular shade is Cerulyan, actually Cerulean blue.
Speaker 6: Okay, we get it.
Speaker 1: It's a nice shade of blue.
Speaker 5: Cerulean blue. Cerulian makes me think of the breeze.
Speaker 6: Gentle.
Speaker 1: Hey, mister Blackwell, put a socket and.
Speaker 4: A gentle.
Speaker 2: Gentle basically hypnotizes this police officer to drive in front
Speaker 2: of a truck which has a Ceruleian shipping company on it.
Speaker 2: So as soon as I see Serulian, and there's mind control,
Speaker 2: like he must have been a fan of The X Files.
Speaker 7: Definitely, I definitely remember that episode now that you mentioned it,
Speaker 7: because I think it even ends with like Skinner and
Speaker 7: Russian Roulette.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's Molder with that, yeah, okay, And Molder
Speaker 2: points the gun at Scully, and you know there's a
Speaker 2: one bullet in there somewhere. She pulls a fire alarm,
Speaker 2: disrupts the whole thing, and then he shoots the pusher
Speaker 2: right in the head, and it would have been the
Speaker 2: bullet that he had shot Scully with. Shoots him in
Speaker 2: the chest, I'm sorry, suits him in the chest, just
Speaker 2: like how the same a good shot in the chest.
Speaker 7: I don't want to give you more podcast projects, Mike,
Speaker 7: but I want to hear you talk X files episodes.
Speaker 2: There have been so many better X files podcasts than
Speaker 2: what I could ever do.
Speaker 1: As I was reading some of these materials this morning,
Speaker 1: I was like, hmm, I bet somebody has written something
Speaker 1: somewhere about Annihilation and Jeff Vandermir's Southern Reached trilogy in
Speaker 1: relation to Upstream Color.
Speaker 2: I can see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I went to Google. I typed it
Speaker 1: in BAM right there.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a really good comparison GA.
Speaker 1: That was published in twenty fourteen, and they're so much
Speaker 1: there because like the cons that's well. Learn about the
Speaker 1: concept of tero terroir. I'm bad at my French terroir,
Speaker 1: which is the French wine making term that relates to
Speaker 1: how all the factors that influenced the creation of rapes
Speaker 1: in the soil, how it can differ even you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred meters apart art, and it relates to you
Speaker 1: that all the things that have happened over time in
Speaker 1: that spot, so like, for instance, a great battle happened
Speaker 1: there five hundred years ago on one side of the
Speaker 1: heel and not the other, and all the blood soaked
Speaker 1: into the soil and changed the composition. And obviously that's
Speaker 1: the same kind of idea of the upstream color of
Speaker 1: like what trickles down and altars and changes, and how
Speaker 1: you can never know how far back those linkages of
Speaker 1: change go. Thanks all the chains and linkages that I'm
Speaker 1: stumbling it. So the article I found was by Joshua
Speaker 1: Rothman on Jeff Vanderman. It was called the Weird threroaw
Speaker 1: but he talks that about Timothy Morton's twenty thirteen called
Speaker 1: hyper objects. Probably is the same year that ustream color
Speaker 1: comes out. Have you heard of hyper objects? I'll give
Speaker 1: you this definition from David Tompkins, writing another article in
Speaker 1: LA Review of Books. He said that Morton's hyper objects
Speaker 1: are events or systems or processes that are too complex.
Speaker 1: It's too massively distributed across space and time for humans
Speaker 1: to get a grip on. Black holes are hyper objects.
Speaker 1: Nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium with their deep
Speaker 1: time half lives, are hyper objects. Global warming and mass
Speaker 1: species extinction are hyper objects. We know we live with
Speaker 1: the local effects of these phenomena, but mostly they are
Speaker 1: quite literally beyond our ken. In one sense, they are
Speaker 1: abstractions in another. They are ferociously catastrophically real because they
Speaker 1: are so massively distributed in terms of causality and consequence.
Speaker 1: They refute or distort our homely notions of time and space.
Speaker 1: Is that a description of upstream color or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And speaking of that of the umbrella blu ray, there's
Speaker 7: something interesting written on the back and I don't know
Speaker 7: the source of who wrote this, but it really dives
Speaker 7: into the idea of being in an altered state, particularly
Speaker 7: when it mentions how correlations have been found between the
Speaker 7: parasite as well as OCD, as well as suicide among
Speaker 7: people with mood disorders, including bipolar disorder. Although there is
Speaker 7: a correlation between the parasite and many psychological disorders, the
Speaker 7: underlying mechanism is unclear. When it talks about this, it
Speaker 7: made me think of toxoplasmosis, which is this crazy parasite
Speaker 7: that creates this enzyme that does kind of alter your
Speaker 7: behavior and like rewiring the production of dopamine in the
Speaker 7: brain to where it actually can cause schizophrenia and people.
Speaker 7: And oddly enough, it is often found in cat poop
Speaker 7: and affects it infects pregnant women. It's not an alarming thing.
Speaker 7: That actually happens on a regular basis, Like, don't worry
Speaker 7: if you own a cat and you're pregnant. Don't think
Speaker 7: you're in trouble or in danger or anything.
Speaker 2: But it's just just if you're pregnant and you have
Speaker 2: a cat, hopefully your partner is the one that's changing
Speaker 2: the litter. There you go.
Speaker 1: You're not going to go down like Tommy and Chainspotting,
Speaker 1: It's okay.
Speaker 2: Or like Adrian and Rocky. She was lifting up that
Speaker 2: big bucket of dog food when she had her near miscarriage,
Speaker 2: so thank goodness that didn't happen. I wanted to really
Speaker 2: highlight the scene of when the sampler is making the music,
Speaker 2: and I love that it becomes a symphony, not just
Speaker 2: with him creating the music, but then it's Chris and
Speaker 2: Jeff are adding to the music. The sound of Chris's
Speaker 2: printer as it's going across and printing up blue flowers,
Speaker 2: which I found would be fantastic. Also, the sound of
Speaker 2: the water that Jeff is running becomes part of that
Speaker 2: music as well. And I just love that word cross
Speaker 2: cutting between all I mean, again, the editing fucking brilliant
Speaker 2: for this, and just cross cutting between these things and
Speaker 2: doing all of this and creating this song throughout the movie,
Speaker 2: and then that the sampler doesn't like it. And once
Speaker 2: he do, he doesn't just tear up the music. He
Speaker 2: literally just takes it and throws it into the river,
Speaker 2: presaging the whole thing that happens to these poor piglets,
Speaker 2: and the whole idea of like the music, because the
Speaker 2: music is really what draws them to him. There's something
Speaker 2: that you can't really see very easily. But when he
Speaker 2: goes right before this whole sequence starts with this music
Speaker 2: that he's creating, he stops at his mailbox a sampler,
Speaker 2: and on the mailbox it says king WA Records or
Speaker 2: king Wa label I think it is. And eventually Jeff
Speaker 2: finds that label, he finds all these CDs with that,
Speaker 2: and the whole idea of reliving trauma through music. I mean,
Speaker 2: sometimes a song is it's as powerful as a smell.
Speaker 2: It can take you back to a particular time so easily,
Speaker 2: and you just start to feel those same feeling. And
Speaker 2: using music as this way to connect to the sampler
Speaker 2: and to connect to this trauma, I just think that
Speaker 2: that's absolutely brilliant. And the script again, sorry to keep
Speaker 2: harping on this, but they actually go to a concert.
Speaker 2: Like all of these people, they kind of all merge
Speaker 2: into this concert hall, all of the people that have
Speaker 2: their pigs on the Sampler's farm, and the Sampler, after
Speaker 2: working on all of his compositions through the rest of
Speaker 2: the film, gives a concert at one point, and that's
Speaker 2: before they eventually find the farm.
Speaker 7: Wow, I would have loved to have seen that scene. No,
Speaker 7: that's powerful.
Speaker 1: I was sort of having a thought earlier, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of brought me back around to it of how
Speaker 1: I'm currently in the middle of working on a project
Speaker 1: where I'm watching dailies every day, you just seeing the
Speaker 1: all the you know, it's from like episode one and
Speaker 1: then the shooting five minutes later it gets from episode six,
Speaker 1: and how the act of editing brings parts that you
Speaker 1: shot ninety days ago together with stuff that you spot now.
Speaker 1: And so he end up with these two times, two
Speaker 1: places connected as a whole of one person who has
Speaker 1: gone through so much and there's a different person to
Speaker 1: who they were ninety days ago, holding that together as
Speaker 1: a single character. And how music what you said there,
Speaker 1: and how music can transport you, It can transport you
Speaker 1: back time and place like decades before, and also how
Speaker 1: we're like listening to something that was made so long ago.
Speaker 1: But it's also a transformation. It's definitely how it to
Speaker 1: present music is presented, and the film is transformative in
Speaker 1: that he is taking an object and transforming the sound
Speaker 1: of the object to create music, and we are seeing
Speaker 1: a visualization of music in him doing that. So you've
Speaker 1: got this real zigzagging backwards and forwards between different states
Speaker 1: and way of being in process. Is all kind of
Speaker 1: happening simultaneously. That it's doesn't it's it isn't kind of
Speaker 1: magical that that literalization, but also you know de.
Speaker 2: Literalization commodification as well, that he's taking something natural, making
Speaker 2: it digital, putting it out as a CD, and then
Speaker 2: somebody buys that and that becomes the cycle. You know,
Speaker 2: he gets more money, he can buy better equipment, he
Speaker 2: can make more music, et cetera, et cetera. Like that's
Speaker 2: a cycle as well, which is fascinating. I'm talking all
Speaker 2: about editing, but I have to say one of my
Speaker 2: favorite shots in the movie doesn't even have an edit,
Speaker 2: and it's when he's going through all of these people's
Speaker 2: lives and touching the pigs and then suddenly going to
Speaker 2: their lives. One thing that's horrific is how many people
Speaker 2: has the thief done this to, because it feels like
Speaker 2: a never ending cavalcade of all of these people. There's
Speaker 2: only so many pigs on this farm, but you're just like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, so many people have had their lives
Speaker 2: are ruined by the thief. And at one point there's
Speaker 2: a guy that comes in. He puts a quarter in
Speaker 2: a meter or something, and he moves out of the
Speaker 2: way and there's a sampler right behind him. That reveal
Speaker 2: always kind of takes my breath away because we keep
Speaker 2: seeing these ways of like using editing to bring him
Speaker 2: to a place he'll be. You know, there's a woman
Speaker 2: who's eating and then somebody passes by and then he's
Speaker 2: sitting there. There's a guy in a car, and then
Speaker 2: we pan over and he's sitting there. That's not a
Speaker 2: cut obviously, but there's you know, that pan over and
Speaker 2: it's just like, Okay, this is fascinating the way that
Speaker 2: they're bringing us in and that he's already there. It
Speaker 2: feels like when the guy puts that quarter in the meter,
Speaker 2: it's just oh, in that whole sequence. And I think
Speaker 2: Jimmy mentioned this before with the woman who keeps saying
Speaker 2: I love you to her husband, and that the husband
Speaker 2: is it his mother, that isn't the ambulance, Like, I
Speaker 2: don't know exactly where we come in, because again it
Speaker 2: feels like we're going back and forth in time. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's his wife in the ambulance and maybe and I
Speaker 2: think that's what's happening. I think the wife is in
Speaker 2: the ambulance and we're with the guy, and we're with
Speaker 2: the guy as he is starting to remember. So the
Speaker 2: Sampler not only is visiting this guy, but the Sampler
Speaker 2: isn't shown in the guy's memories, but he's seeing the
Speaker 2: guy's memories, and he is experiencing the guy's memories. And
Speaker 2: because we see him when it's more present, when it's
Speaker 2: the ambulance, when it's the hospital bed, and then it
Speaker 2: feels like we're seeing then the memories that this guy
Speaker 2: is having as he's sitting there by his wife in
Speaker 2: the hospital. And I think that that whole sequence again
Speaker 2: two characters that we don't know, we've never experienced these
Speaker 2: two before. But then when you realize this guy's gone
Speaker 2: through all that shit, and here's his wife trying to
Speaker 2: reach out to him and she can't make that connection.
Speaker 2: She just keeps saying I love you, and he's like
Speaker 2: those words don't mean anything anymore. It just breaks you
Speaker 2: freaking heart.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I really do wonder how many victims there were. Like,
Speaker 7: it's also interesting that a really hunting shot is when
Speaker 7: Chris first comes home after being on the freeway and
Speaker 7: she arrives home for the first time, there's like these
Speaker 7: silhouettes of people that are just there as she's walking through.
Speaker 1: I thought that too, and I skipped back, and you're wrong.
Speaker 1: It's before he awakens on the highway. It's actually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you were saying for that you think that she's
Speaker 1: come out of it, there's actually a second time when
Speaker 1: you think that she's come out of it, as that
Speaker 1: where she's in her house and she closes an external
Speaker 1: door and starts to move through it, and there's all
Speaker 1: these people standing in the house looking outwards from the house,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't make I look at them or acknowledge
Speaker 1: them or anything. She moves through and she goes and
Speaker 1: runs the water in the bathroom sink and then kind
Speaker 1: of like starts to sort of go huh. And as
Speaker 1: she moves out and then she snat wakes up and
Speaker 1: she's in the car, so it's yeah, I thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. I thought, Oh this is and it's like no,
Speaker 1: it's actually their editing is like a big chicks you
Speaker 1: so beautifully in a couple of places. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people in that house. It certainly was a
Speaker 1: lot of people that have been affected by this.
Speaker 2: I mean when they make love the first time and
Speaker 2: they're in the pig pen in the sky and waking
Speaker 2: up in the sty and just that image of those
Speaker 2: beautiful clean white sheets amongst the mud, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: they are the pigs, right then they are the ones
Speaker 2: that are having the sex and conceiving the babies, and
Speaker 2: just that tie between the pigs and the people just
Speaker 2: becomes this really beautiful thing, especially towards the end when
Speaker 2: you see her with that piglet and it's like she
Speaker 2: finally has her baby and it's not hers, you know,
Speaker 2: it's got to be one of the other pigs because
Speaker 2: she can't conceive, but it's basically it's her pigs baby
Speaker 2: and that becomes her baby, which I just I think
Speaker 2: that's wonderful and just such a nice way of giving
Speaker 2: her some closure to this, because otherwise there's nothing. I mean,
Speaker 2: just kind of going back to the whole psychology angle
Speaker 2: of it again, those rituals that they do that they
Speaker 2: don't even know that they're doing, and it takes a
Speaker 2: while for them to kind of awake to them. And
Speaker 2: it feels very much like therapy, like where you're just
Speaker 2: talking about this bad behavior, things that are going on
Speaker 2: in your life, and it takes another person to kind
Speaker 2: of push you into that and say like, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: there's a pattern going on here, like you picking out
Speaker 2: of all the blue Eminem's out of your cup, you
Speaker 2: with this huge thing of straws and making chains out
Speaker 2: of the paper, her even knitting stuff just like well
Speaker 2: she knitted for the thief and now here she is
Speaker 2: knitting on the train. But this whole thing of her
Speaker 2: throwing out rocks into the pool and then die and
Speaker 2: quoting from Walden and she's basically re reading Walden to
Speaker 2: herself as she's doing this. And I love when he
Speaker 2: starts to recognize Jeff Reckne, He's almost the therapist in
Speaker 2: that scene where he starts to recognize what she's doing
Speaker 2: and then starts to read along with her, and he's
Speaker 2: reading and she'll pop up and finish the line kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And for the longest time, I'm just like,
Speaker 2: is she aware of this? Is she aware of him
Speaker 2: that he's even standing there? Is he Is he just
Speaker 2: witnessing her reliving this trauma with these stones and going
Speaker 2: down and picking up these stones putting them onto the
Speaker 2: side of the pool. Is that's what's going on? Or
Speaker 2: is she aware? And it feels like towards the end
Speaker 2: she starts to gain awareness, and that's again another strength,
Speaker 2: and finally it's like, Okay, we're starting to have more
Speaker 2: of a breakthrough.
Speaker 1: I think the significance of this story within the world
Speaker 1: it peaks is that these are the first two that
Speaker 1: have come across each other, that no other victims have
Speaker 1: encountered their other and become aware of the other. And
Speaker 1: I think that partly because of how important the being
Speaker 1: seen aspect is. That when she's moving through the house
Speaker 1: and we can see all these people there, but she
Speaker 1: doesn't see them, and then when she looks at the
Speaker 1: sampler and he is seen, it changes things. And so
Speaker 1: I think there is something significant to that in the
Speaker 1: not experiencing something in isolation that being seen by a
Speaker 1: person who has a similar experience or identical experience allows
Speaker 1: something to shift, that you're not stuck in that kind
Speaker 1: of loop. And also that that's why it does, even
Speaker 1: after so many horrific things happen in this film, that
Speaker 1: it ends feeling incredibly positive and optimistic and beautiful because
Speaker 1: the ending is a refutation of disconnection, Like it refew
Speaker 1: us is that we are disconnected. It refuses the systems
Speaker 1: and everything that pulls us apart and says that no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if we destroy the planet or we
Speaker 1: do this or we do that. It's like no, at
Speaker 1: the end of it is like we are connected. I'm
Speaker 1: connected to this animal, I am connected to this earth,
Speaker 1: and that has meaning, and that is It's just incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful And it doesn't without saying it, which means it
Speaker 1: really hits that something low down like deep psychological level.
Speaker 1: They actually really feel it, and that's super powerful.
Speaker 7: Yeah, for me, it always feels like it ends on
Speaker 7: a hopeful note, show showcasing the possibility of resilience, you know,
Speaker 7: just sort of realizing, yeah, I've gone through all this
Speaker 7: trauma and all these horrible things, but there's still a
Speaker 7: sense of interconnectivity with everyone and everything. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: it's that final image always brings tears to my eyes
Speaker 7: because it does make me think of like the kind
Speaker 7: of connection I have with my cat. You know, like,
Speaker 7: despite war and capitalism and the hordes of selfish people
Speaker 7: that exist in the world, I can come home and
Speaker 7: almost like experience something very pure about like the kind
Speaker 7: of love not just a cat, any animal can have
Speaker 7: with their owner. It's just you know, they look at
Speaker 7: you and they just know there's love there, and there's
Speaker 7: love for each other. And I mean, I imagine that
Speaker 7: could happen to me too, if I were living on
Speaker 7: a farm with a lot of little piglets around, like
Speaker 7: I would just feel a little more centered and hopeful
Speaker 7: and just like grateful that all these these animals are
Speaker 7: not out like to steal my money. Well, they're just
Speaker 7: here to survive and eat and live. I certainly have
Speaker 7: this awareness all the time that the outside world is
Speaker 7: falling apart, and that human beings are often you know,
Speaker 7: selfish and kind of nasty, but there's there is a
Speaker 7: sense of unconditional love and a feeling of we're not
Speaker 7: all alone and that we can get through it together.
Speaker 7: And that's kind of the note that the movie ends
Speaker 7: on for me, even though again, like a lot of
Speaker 7: people sort of hang on, you know, the fact they're like, oh,
Speaker 7: is this opaque? Is this ambiguous? I feel like it's
Speaker 7: about overcoming what you've been through and realizing that you
Speaker 7: can get through it in the right ways, hopefully with
Speaker 7: the right people. And that's kind of when all those
Speaker 7: victims come together. It feels like a sense of community
Speaker 7: that I think a lot of people want out of
Speaker 7: life in the end, find like minded people who understand
Speaker 7: where you're coming from.
Speaker 2: Well, I like what you had to say, Ben, as
Speaker 2: far as these two might be the first two who
Speaker 2: have ever found each other, who have recognized the trauma
Speaker 2: in each other, And I wonder if I can relate
Speaker 2: it to music, as far as those two together are stronger,
Speaker 2: because it's like when you play two notes together, you know,
Speaker 2: it takes three to make a chord, but they're forming
Speaker 2: something a little bit wronger together. Now when they do
Speaker 2: that thing, whether they're saying is it a left turn
Speaker 2: or a right turn to get back out to the farm,
Speaker 2: they have that togetherness. They have the strength of their
Speaker 2: decisions being made together rather than just one person trying
Speaker 2: to feel their way along in the metaphorical dark. And
Speaker 2: I think that's also when all of those people show
Speaker 2: up at the farm. Now it becomes a symphony. Now
Speaker 2: we have so many notes. Now we have all of
Speaker 2: these people who have the same communal and I think
Speaker 2: that word is very important when it comes to living
Speaker 2: out a farm. They have that communal aspect. And now
Speaker 2: they all come together. They repaint the fences, they fix
Speaker 2: up the farm. They all bring this togetherness. Now they
Speaker 2: all care for these pigs together. Now they all have
Speaker 2: their other halves that they're reunited with. I like what
Speaker 2: you're saying to Jim as far as that unconditional love,
Speaker 2: and it just so reminds me of like people being
Speaker 2: split apart and that headwords wig song, right, like we
Speaker 2: had two sets of arm, two sets of legs, you know,
Speaker 2: one giant head with faces on either side, and then
Speaker 2: we were torn asunder by the gods. And now you're
Speaker 2: always looking for that other half of yourself. It feels
Speaker 2: like they are all coming together as a whole as
Speaker 2: that one big beast at the end of it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's very significant that Chris and Jeff
Speaker 1: aren't presented ever as a whole. That the other half
Speaker 1: is the pigs that they find. And at the end,
Speaker 1: we don't end with Jeff and Chris and they are
Speaker 1: two pigs to get them like a big happy family.
Speaker 1: We end with Chris and her pig. It's it's a
Speaker 1: singular journey to find the whole, singular the other half.
Speaker 1: That reconnection happens there and that it isn't shared necessarily
Speaker 1: but together, as you said, like that communal experience that
Speaker 1: each of them together is finding their holes which allows
Speaker 1: them to then hopefully come together as a larger hole.
Speaker 7: Oh, I'm grateful that we had this communal experience to
Speaker 7: share our love of this movie.
Speaker 2: It doesn't get better than this for me when it
Speaker 2: comes to just all of the elements talking to each
Speaker 2: other and just really you know, I wrote in my
Speaker 2: notes yesterday when I'm talking about the cross cutting and
Speaker 2: when Nora finally looks up and sees the sampler, I wrote,
Speaker 2: I'm fucking giddy, you know, And that's how I feel.
Speaker 2: I feel giddy when I watch this movie because it
Speaker 2: is just such a cinematic experience where I'm just like,
Speaker 2: look at how all of these elements come together to
Speaker 2: tell me this story to take me someplace else. That
Speaker 2: weird sensation that you get when you're watching this when
Speaker 2: Caruth has been playing music throughout so much of this
Speaker 2: and then I'll stop the music and you just feel
Speaker 2: this absence. Right, it's just like you just broke me
Speaker 2: out of this hypnotic spelled because it feels like this movie.
Speaker 2: I said before, like people when they talk about this movie,
Speaker 2: they talk about how it washes over you. I think
Speaker 2: it's that music and that editing style that literally hypnotizes
Speaker 2: you as you're watching it, because you get the drone
Speaker 2: and you get the little pieces being added to the drone,
Speaker 2: and we'll change tempo a little bit here and there.
Speaker 2: But the edit style also keeps you involved in that.
Speaker 2: When he'll stop that music, you're just like whoa. He's
Speaker 2: like suddenly shocked out of it, and you're almost like, no,
Speaker 2: bring back the music, bring back that feeling. And then
Speaker 2: he'll slowly start to reintroduce it again, and it's just like,
Speaker 2: this is great. I'm so happy when I watched this film,
Speaker 2: even though it's super traumatic, you know, like that we
Speaker 2: talked about the trauma at the beginning. I talked about
Speaker 2: how it's so horrific at the beginning, and then the
Speaker 2: loss of the pigs is another horrific. I mean it
Speaker 2: feels like it feels like a setback, right, like when
Speaker 2: you think that you're starting to get better and suddenly
Speaker 2: something will trigger you and you suddenly start to feel
Speaker 2: really awful again. And sometimes, like you were saying, Jim,
Speaker 2: for no reason, you're having this horrible day and you're
Speaker 2: really angry or you're really upset, you're really confused, and
Speaker 2: you're like, where is this coming from? And that's the feeling.
Speaker 2: It feels like there could be something happening, you know,
Speaker 2: so far away that is making me feel this way.
Speaker 2: You have to own that, but it's just like, what
Speaker 2: is happening to me? It's that setback. And then finally
Speaker 2: we start to get back on our feet and we
Speaker 2: take charge of things. And like I said, when she
Speaker 2: makes eye contact with the sampler and you're just like
Speaker 2: she has taken control of her situation, it's such a
Speaker 2: feeling of elation that comes over me. And a lot
Speaker 2: of that elation comes from look at how beautifully this
Speaker 2: film has been put together.
Speaker 1: And that music changes as soon as they stop being lost.
Speaker 1: Once the music becomes so active and shift speed. It
Speaker 1: stops being wind chimy, like blown awaund around the way
Speaker 1: kind of sounds. It's like suddenly like don't like a heartbeat, don't, don't,
Speaker 1: don't don't. And they're like, oh, they have focused, they
Speaker 1: have mating, they have purpose, they like getting on with
Speaker 1: it and things are going to get better. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a powerful shift. When that last chunk of
Speaker 1: music kicks in.
Speaker 7: I always get goosebumps. And it's now my ring tone.
Speaker 2: Which she sees the flower underwater and keeps grabbing it,
Speaker 2: and every time she grabs that, she gets new flashes,
Speaker 2: like new stuff is coming back to her. How liberating
Speaker 2: is that.
Speaker 7: I don't want to end on this note, but I'm
Speaker 7: just so mad that chink Ruth turned out to be.
Speaker 7: I watched this and I'm like, God, damn it, why
Speaker 7: do you have to be in a hatch? Because this
Speaker 7: is only your second movie, and I want I wanted more.
Speaker 7: I really did, like he had. I believe the Modern
Speaker 7: Ocean was a script that he it might be out there,
Speaker 7: isn't it, Mike? I think it is.
Speaker 2: I think it is. I didn't find it when I
Speaker 2: was doing my research, but yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.
Speaker 7: People were saying like that was like one of the
Speaker 7: best scripts they ever read, like the actors who were
Speaker 7: gonna sign Iron for it, but for whatever reason, it
Speaker 7: didn't turn out to be. And it's just really sad
Speaker 7: that we'll probably never have another Chain career movie. But
Speaker 7: I'm glad we have this one.
Speaker 2: Out on archive dot org, so feel free to grab it,
Speaker 2: and I think you can probably even download the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty okay with this being it. Like I said,
Speaker 1: if this feels like it's such fertile soil, it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like an end. And given that he fucked up
Speaker 1: things in his own life, I'm fine with him not
Speaker 1: having had the chance to fuck up his filmography.
Speaker 2: Like that band that puts out the one perfect album
Speaker 2: and then breaks up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it would be amazing. You know, it'd be
Speaker 1: fantastic to have Kurt here, or he could have gone
Speaker 1: and become a Las Vegas loungeinger. You never know. It's this,
Speaker 1: As I said, this is such rich, fertile soil. And
Speaker 1: you can just even just a brief skim over what
Speaker 1: people have written and thought about this. It's clearly like
Speaker 1: people have like sown some seeds in this soil and
Speaker 1: it's just grown for them, and that just is beautiful,
Speaker 1: and that is more than you could ever hope for
Speaker 1: with one film, let alone a whole filmography. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks, but also like it doesn't feel final or hopeless.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so much here that we'll keep growing
Speaker 1: and expanding in people's hearts and minds and helping them
Speaker 1: to like find their path in their art and maybe
Speaker 1: even their own life and in the world. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the most important, powerful thing we can take
Speaker 1: away from it. And it's important to remember all those
Speaker 1: other aspects and as I said, think of denying them,
Speaker 1: deny as part of what this film is about. But
Speaker 1: the positive is where it ends, and that is a
Speaker 1: beautiful positive note that we can keep close to our
Speaker 1: hearts forever.
Speaker 7: Well said, Now that's the final note you want to
Speaker 7: end on.
Speaker 2: And with that, we're going to take a break and
Speaker 2: play a preview for next week's show. Right after these
Speaker 2: brief messages, return of.
Speaker 3: The Jedi from the desert fortress of Java the hut
Speaker 3: Ji after the death Star.
Speaker 1: Of the Galactic Empire, to the forest city of the Ewoks.
Speaker 3: This is the climactic chapter in the Star Wars saga
Speaker 3: Remember the Force, great choice in a triumph Return of
Speaker 3: the Jedi rated PG, now playing at a theater in
Speaker 3: your galaxy.
Speaker 2: That's where we'll be back next week with a very
Speaker 2: obscure film called Return of the is a gd jed
Speaker 2: JEDDI yeah, I think that's great. Until then, I want
Speaker 2: to thank my co host Ben and Jim. So Ben,
Speaker 2: what's been keeping you busy?
Speaker 6: Sir?
Speaker 1: Just working away on Apple TVs. The Dispatcher. God knows
Speaker 1: when will turn up, but it looks like it's going
Speaker 1: to be pretty good. Bit of Australian like gothic crime,
Speaker 1: something else and just pottering away in my letter box
Speaker 1: as usual. You can find me on letter Box to
Speaker 1: Dissolve Pet and I'm on Blue Sky now, so you
Speaker 1: can go and say that I'm like rejoining the social
Speaker 1: media world and establishing my worm connections. Dissolved pat On
Speaker 1: Blease guy as well.
Speaker 2: Very cool and Jim, how about yourself?
Speaker 7: Well, I wear many hats.
Speaker 1: But in addition to.
Speaker 7: Continuing to work on a documentary about mental health and
Speaker 7: movies that I would like to get done within the year,
Speaker 7: we'll see I mainly host a monthly podcast called Director's Club,
Speaker 7: which is now over on substack, where I kind of
Speaker 7: keep everything readily available, so my reviews, by writing music,
Speaker 7: pretty much all things me is now at directors Club
Speaker 7: dot substack dot com, or you can find me on
Speaker 7: letterbox and occasionally on Blue Sky and Instagram under Jim Lanskowski.
Speaker 2: Thanks Mike, thank you well, Thank you both so much
Speaker 2: for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear more of Meshing off my Mouth,
Speaker 2: check out some of the other shows that I work on.
Speaker 2: They are all available at weirdingweightmedia dot com. Thanks especially
Speaker 2: to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 2: visit patreon dot com. Comp Slash, Projection Booth and Jim
Speaker 2: thank you for joining or rejoining today. Appreciate that every
Speaker 2: donation may get help some Projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 5: S The
Speaker 7: Men w