Speaker 1: We're Tomy Lorenzo and this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club.
Speaker 1: Halliciten's welcome back to another edition of the BKMC, a
Speaker 1: supplemental edition of the PSO where we take a look
Speaker 1: at one film per week and unpack its themes and
Speaker 1: try to come to some sort of conclusion about it. Basically,
Speaker 1: we're here to start a discussion. And this week's film
Speaker 1: is director Paul Schrader's first Reformed, starring Ethan Hawk and
Speaker 1: Amanda Sifried. This came out in twenty seventeen. It was
Speaker 1: a highly critically acclaimed film, and the reason I chose
Speaker 1: it for this month is partially because it was a
Speaker 1: critically acclaimed film when we're trying not to pick like
Speaker 1: pieces of trash, because what what is there to talk
Speaker 1: about if it's if it's a piece of trash. But
Speaker 1: more importantly, it was a film that I had not seen,
Speaker 1: you had not seen, and I didn't know anything about it, and.
Speaker 2: Which that's how I like it.
Speaker 1: Uh, Well, we just did Babbett's Feast, which which you
Speaker 1: and I and a couple of weeks ago we did
Speaker 1: Wings of Desire, and that that film practically taught me
Speaker 1: German So you know, it's nice to switch things over
Speaker 1: to a film that we are completely unfamiliar with.
Speaker 2: I had no idea where it was going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in a way I regret that, you know,
Speaker 1: we we had a busy week in terms of whatever
Speaker 1: we had. We were watching Widow's Bay to do the
Speaker 1: podcast on the finale, and then last night was my birthday,
Speaker 1: and we went out to dinner for my birthday and
Speaker 1: we sat down to watch this last night. And when
Speaker 1: I got up this morning thinking about it, because it
Speaker 1: is the kind of film that really really sticks with you,
Speaker 1: I thought that sucks. I wish I'd had a chance
Speaker 1: to see it twice before we had to, you know,
Speaker 1: put together this podcast and review where we're to. I
Speaker 1: feel like whatever I say about it today is going
Speaker 1: to be a little incomplete, because it really is kind
Speaker 1: of fun.
Speaker 2: We have the post on a site you need.
Speaker 1: To, but I'm not gonna be able to watch it
Speaker 1: twice before I do the post. That's my point. There's
Speaker 1: so much in it. There's so much I wish I
Speaker 1: could have unpacked. And I did think in the first
Speaker 1: twenty five thirty minutes of the film, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh God, this was a mistake. I should not have
Speaker 1: picked this one for the movie club because it's ponderous
Speaker 1: and slow in a way that might not be right conducive.
Speaker 1: But in fact, I think it is a film that
Speaker 1: demands discussion, demands that you unpack it, demands that you
Speaker 1: come to terms with it. Right, So I should just
Speaker 1: say here to the all the bitter kittens out there,
Speaker 1: Lorenzo has a very bad caul that he got overnight,
Speaker 1: practically the hell, and we're trying to limit how much
Speaker 1: he speaks, otherwise he's going to be coughing into a
Speaker 1: into a microphone.
Speaker 3: So but I I like when I watch a movie.
Speaker 3: I like all kinds of movie. I like movies that
Speaker 3: have like a whole story that you know from from
Speaker 3: beginning to end. And I also like movies like this one.
Speaker 3: I feel that they have moments, you know, you watch
Speaker 3: you were to my in my mind, you're just watching moments,
Speaker 3: you know, like moments of things.
Speaker 2: Happening, right, which I like.
Speaker 3: But it got to a point that I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm enjoying this because there are scenes where
Speaker 3: they're talking about things that are making me think, But
Speaker 3: I don't see the overall point of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't feel interesting for a long time, okay,
Speaker 3: and then it got better. Then I finally got the point.
Speaker 3: But but it was just like, all right, where are
Speaker 3: we going with this?
Speaker 1: Yere No, I had that failing to and we both
Speaker 1: said at various times, this film is trying to do
Speaker 1: way too much. But I don't think that's actually the
Speaker 1: case by the time you get to the end of it,
Speaker 1: about halfway through the film, because I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're referencing the Iraq War, we're referencing climate change, we're
Speaker 1: referencing capitalism, we're referencing you know, megachurches. Like there was
Speaker 1: so much, and I thought, I don't I feel like
Speaker 1: this is sort of scatterbrain. And you know, director screenwriter
Speaker 1: Paul Schrader is I don't know his exact age, but
Speaker 1: he's a contemporary of Scorsese. He's roughly around eighty. He
Speaker 1: would probably have been around seventy when he wrote this
Speaker 1: film and directed this film. So there was a part
Speaker 1: of me that thought, well, this is just an old
Speaker 1: man coming to terms with the modern world, and there's
Speaker 1: a certain sense of despair in the film, and I
Speaker 1: thought that's what it was. I thought that it was
Speaker 1: an older direct unpacking life in the twenty first century
Speaker 1: in America. Because you know, a couple of times I
Speaker 1: was looking at this film and trying to place it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, twenty seventeen. It was the first
Speaker 1: year of the first Trump administration. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much of this film was written. I don't know when
Speaker 1: he wrote some of this stuff, but it felt very
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six to me. It felt very much of
Speaker 1: this moment rather than twenty seventeen. And part of me
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, he really predicted where America was going,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's an underlying discussion not just about
Speaker 1: climate change, but about capitalism and about corporate corruption and
Speaker 1: about essentially how corporations are literally buying religion in order
Speaker 1: to you know, market themselves.
Speaker 3: I think the main point of the whole movie it's despair.
Speaker 3: I think it's how people are. Yeah, it gets to
Speaker 3: a point where people are just they can't take it
Speaker 3: anymore and they have no hope anymore. And I feel
Speaker 3: very much that's the kind of the point here of
Speaker 3: faith and despair, you know, like sort of like.
Speaker 1: I think there is yeah, at tension, there a conversation
Speaker 1: there in fact that you see it in the conversation.
Speaker 1: It was actually a fascinating scene to watch between Ethan
Speaker 1: Hawk's Reverend Toller and Amanda Seifried's husband Philip Edinger, I
Speaker 1: think is the name of the actor, when he's counseling him,
Speaker 1: and the man is the is clearly clearly depressed, beyond depressed,
Speaker 1: and this Reverend Ethan Hawk is trying to counsel him,
Speaker 1: and you can see how ineffective his responses to this
Speaker 1: guy are. And not only that, but will you come
Speaker 1: away from that conversation back the rest of the film
Speaker 1: realizing that that conversation went in the opposite direction exactly.
Speaker 1: The reverend did not influence that man. That man wound
Speaker 1: up influencing the reverence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which, yeah, yeah, that's another interesting part.
Speaker 1: I thought their conversation theologically was very interesting, and there
Speaker 1: were times where I thought Ethan Hawk's character was making
Speaker 1: very very good points, and I was thinking, oh, so
Speaker 1: he's actually good at his job. He's decent at his
Speaker 1: job as a preacher. But then I don't know. I
Speaker 1: halfway through that scene, I was like, is he making
Speaker 1: good arguments or does it just sound like religiosity. It's
Speaker 1: like the things you're supposed to say during these moments.
Speaker 1: I do want to address your point, though, that this
Speaker 1: film is a film about despair and I I'm in
Speaker 1: the process of writing the posts that this podcast will
Speaker 1: be attached to, but I actually wrote that line and then,
Speaker 1: pardon me, struck it out or deleted it from the
Speaker 1: post because I kept strtruggling with is this really a
Speaker 1: film about one thing? Or are we supposed to just
Speaker 1: here's something I want to say. It comes down to
Speaker 1: for me, that final scene. The entire film comes down
Speaker 1: to the final scene, and it comes down to what
Speaker 1: you think is actually happening in that final scene. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a quote from the director, Paul
Speaker 1: Schrader that he gave to Indie Weier in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: It was an interview about the film, and he's when
Speaker 1: asked about the ending, I don't know what the ending is.
Speaker 1: It can be read in either one of two ways.
Speaker 1: One that a miracle has occurred and his life is spared.
Speaker 1: The other is equally in my sense, optimistic, which is
Speaker 1: that he drinks the draino and he's on all fours,
Speaker 1: he's throwing up his stomach, and God comes over to him,
Speaker 1: who has not talked to him for the whole movie,
Speaker 1: and says, Reverend told her, you want to know what
Speaker 1: heaven looks like. Here it is. This is exactly what
Speaker 1: it looks like. It looks like one long kiss. And
Speaker 1: that's the last thing he sees. M Okay.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: So I think Schrader's trying to have it both ways here, huh,
Speaker 1: because I don't think the ending is all that ambiguous,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest. Yes, it's possible you could read
Speaker 1: it that, Amanda saiv reads. Mary comes in at the
Speaker 1: last second before he drinks the draino and saves his life,
Speaker 1: and he runs into his arms and they kiss dramatically
Speaker 1: and he achieves grace. That doesn't seem likely given the
Speaker 1: film that we just watched. Putting aside the fact that
Speaker 1: and as Schrader points out, the lighting in the scene changes.
Speaker 1: The door was locked, so there was no way for
Speaker 1: Mary to get in there. He's covered in barbed wire
Speaker 1: and bleeding out, but they're hugging and kissing and as
Speaker 1: if he's not. And I thought it was fairly obvious
Speaker 1: that all of that was not happening as we were
Speaker 1: seeing it, that he was actually dying and this was
Speaker 1: the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: Probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Schrader feels that way too. I think Schrader
Speaker 1: feels that that the ending is that he dies, that
Speaker 1: he completes his suicide and he dies, it's not that
Speaker 1: he is rescued by her. But I did think it
Speaker 1: was interesting how when you unpack that quote of of
Speaker 1: of Schrader, like he stacks the deck. He says, you
Speaker 1: can read it either one or two ways, and he
Speaker 1: describes it one way in a very flippant, one off sentence,
Speaker 1: and then he describes it in the other way, in
Speaker 1: this long sentence that very very detailed, and like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is clearly what you thought this scene was.
Speaker 1: But you're leaving it open to interpretation, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's interesting because I think he
Speaker 1: does allow for grace and hope in that final moment,
Speaker 1: and he implies that Mary, that vision of Mary. And
Speaker 1: let me just say, the two women in the film
Speaker 1: are named Mary and Esther. It's very interesting that he
Speaker 1: chose these extremely biblical names, one from the Old Testament
Speaker 1: and one from the.
Speaker 2: New Oh wow, yeah, I didn't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Mary, who is a mother figure, she's pregnant.
Speaker 1: She shows up as this you know, she's God in
Speaker 1: that moment. She is God offering him grace in that
Speaker 1: moment and pulling him to the other side gracefully, which
Speaker 1: in that sense that's a very uplifting sort of how
Speaker 1: do you feel?
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I was conflicted. But first of all, the
Speaker 3: kiss went on forever, and I was like, all.
Speaker 1: Right, it didn't seem realistic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, this is not real. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's going on forever. Where are we going with this?
Speaker 3: And then the movie ends.
Speaker 1: Because he died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because clearly.
Speaker 3: He's I don't know, delirious there, and you know he
Speaker 3: died obviously, right, It's interesting that how things switched because
Speaker 3: he saw her present there, you know.
Speaker 2: The whole are we going to talk about the bomb
Speaker 2: thing and all the why.
Speaker 1: Don't we wait until after the break?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's also that that kind of shocked me
Speaker 3: a little.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, all right, why don't we take a short break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to what he was planning to
Speaker 1: do and whether or not why he stopped doing it.
Speaker 1: Let's we'll be right back. We're back talking about First Reformed.
Speaker 1: I do want to take a moment and note that
Speaker 1: the performances are fantastic in this film, very subtle, very layered.
Speaker 1: Ethan Hawk really is a fantastic He's a very good actor,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that he's very, very very
Speaker 1: good at is that sort of middle aged, broken down
Speaker 1: despair kind of thing. He's very very good at giving
Speaker 1: that life and nuance. Similarly, Amanda Sifried, who I think
Speaker 1: is great. She's just a great actress. I think she's
Speaker 1: I don't want this to sound dismiss him, because she's beautiful.
Speaker 1: She's a beautiful blonde woman. She's a more interesting actress
Speaker 1: than she had to be. She could have relied on
Speaker 1: her lives a lot, but she is interesting and given
Speaker 1: her first movie, like you know, first big movie, what
Speaker 1: do you mean mean girls? Yeah, like you know, like
Speaker 1: playing this dumb girl right right right, she could have
Speaker 1: done a career at dumb blonde. But she's interesting. And
Speaker 1: what I liked, what I found about interesting about her
Speaker 1: is that her performance is inscrutable. At one point I
Speaker 1: turned to you and I was like, I don't trust
Speaker 1: this girl. I kind of thought she was leading him
Speaker 1: on or and this was back when I thought this,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, so this is like an old
Speaker 1: man musing on the world, how confusing the world is,
Speaker 1: and he has this this sort of fum fatale. We
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on with her, And I do
Speaker 1: think part of that was deliberate. Like the film does
Speaker 1: have a feeling through a good portion of it. It
Speaker 1: feels like a horror film. The way that it's shot.
Speaker 1: There's like this low rumble on the soundtrack and everything.
Speaker 1: There is this sense of it being very, very ominous
Speaker 1: throughout the entire film, and I again, I think all
Speaker 1: of this was delibered on Schrader's part. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a a misdirect. You think it's you're wondering whether this
Speaker 1: woman is reliable, You're wondering whether he's getting pulled into
Speaker 1: something that might be, But it's really just all about
Speaker 1: his mind and where his thoughts were. It was really
Speaker 1: about ideas and how people are relating to the world.
Speaker 1: There was no major plot, there was no there.
Speaker 2: Was no twist.
Speaker 1: He was just a man full of despair. And we
Speaker 1: should also mention we haven't brought this up. He's dying, right.
Speaker 1: I mean that despair is it's not just about the
Speaker 1: state of the world. In fact, that's something I want
Speaker 1: to point out here is that again this was a misdirect.
Speaker 1: It's not a film about climate change. It's not a
Speaker 1: film about big relie a general, megachurches or capitalism. It's
Speaker 1: about one guy who's dying, who is loaded with regrets
Speaker 1: and who was having a crisis of faith. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, it's a very very internal story.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting all the points made in the
Speaker 3: movie when he talks to he's to the business speaper business,
Speaker 3: you know, like the company and and all that, like
Speaker 3: you know how you know, they see things completely different.
Speaker 2: They see religion as just one.
Speaker 1: Way of something else they can buy.
Speaker 3: They can buy and then they can use, you know,
Speaker 3: to their advantage. It's it's very interesting. I also like
Speaker 3: the husband a lot. That's I think the husband. I
Speaker 3: can't I can't stop thinking about the husband. The activists
Speaker 3: who Philip ad in Jersey actually he I think his
Speaker 3: character is very very interesting because sometimes you don't stop
Speaker 3: to think how people think, right, And that was a
Speaker 3: moment when I was like, Wow, that's how activist thing,
Speaker 3: you know, like that's how the how, that's how their
Speaker 3: mind works. Which it's interesting because it's very easy to
Speaker 3: just be dismissive.
Speaker 2: About the whole thing. Are you just crazy? Who cares?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Just depressed?
Speaker 3: You just depressed, you know, like yeah, so the world
Speaker 3: it is what it is, and you know, but it's
Speaker 3: interesting to pay respect to someone who thinks that like that.
Speaker 3: That was my point there. I mean, I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, it's interesting. I really want to tell me
Speaker 3: how you think.
Speaker 1: That's why that scene with the tell of them was
Speaker 1: actually one of the best scenes in the film is
Speaker 1: because it was really well written and engrossing. You were
Speaker 1: listening to both sides of this argument.
Speaker 3: And you can see the despair and the disappointment and
Speaker 3: lack of hope. You know, from his sport he mentioned
Speaker 3: people who have fought so hard, right and died, like
Speaker 3: the people in the Amazon region and then somebody else.
Speaker 1: I believe those were all actual really yeah, real activists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like how we do so much and then
Speaker 3: at some point it means nothing, you know, And that's
Speaker 3: how he's So that's his despair, right, like his disappointment,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't want to have a child. He doesn't
Speaker 3: want to bring a child into this kind of where
Speaker 3: that he lives in, which is interesting because yeah, it's
Speaker 3: very interesting.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 3: I want to make the point that it's very easy
Speaker 3: to be dismissive about how people think and you know,
Speaker 3: things like that because they don't line up with how
Speaker 3: you feel about things, and you think you just roll
Speaker 3: your eyes. And at that time, I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I really want to listen to him and see what
Speaker 3: he has to say, and here and listen to what
Speaker 3: he has to say because it's interesting. Because then when
Speaker 3: you stop and think about and pay attention to someone
Speaker 3: like that, it's easier to understand them when you when
Speaker 3: you when you find out where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I can.
Speaker 3: My point with all this is that I can see
Speaker 3: the preacher feeling the same way, like he's like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: Well, that's just the thing I think. You know, there's
Speaker 1: this conversation between these two people, and it should be
Speaker 1: a conversation about hope versus despair, but they are both
Speaker 1: wallowing in their despair. And the reason I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to see the reason that Michael winds up
Speaker 1: killing himself is because the Reverend Toller is simply incapable
Speaker 1: of pulling him out of that funk.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The film presents Mary as this figure of hope, because
Speaker 1: throughout the film she is, you know, relatively implacable and unruffled.
Speaker 1: Even on the day her husband kills himself, she is
Speaker 1: still relatively right. That's why I was like, what's wrong
Speaker 1: with this chick? What's going on?
Speaker 2: I thought she had plot the whole thing. Yeah, plot
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Because she wanted to have the child and he didn't,
Speaker 3: so kill the outman.
Speaker 1: In the end. I think she's just this figure of grace,
Speaker 1: like she is uncomplicated, she has faith and her husband doesn't,
Speaker 1: and she I guess I don't let me ask you something,
Speaker 1: do you? How do you look at her relationship with
Speaker 1: the Reverend. First off, there is that scene where they
Speaker 1: which we haven't even touched, where they levitate through space.
Speaker 1: And what I loved about that scene what it felt
Speaker 1: like a pure David Lynch moment because up until that
Speaker 1: point the film is static. It is very controlled, it
Speaker 1: is very spare, and it's and it's you know, he
Speaker 1: talked about Schrider, talked about some of the influences you know,
Speaker 1: other directors that and I know he talked about Bergmann
Speaker 1: and Theodore Dreyer, and he talked about Ozu, who you
Speaker 1: love well.
Speaker 3: I can see, I can see I can see the
Speaker 3: I see I can see Bergerman in dialogue, the way
Speaker 3: they spoke.
Speaker 1: Yes, it had that very sort of Scandinavian spaireness to.
Speaker 3: And the some of the scenes where the way they
Speaker 3: were shot, I can see.
Speaker 1: Ozu like everything's framed in the center of the frame
Speaker 1: in mid distance from you know, and the camera doesn't move,
Speaker 1: and so it has a very very spare interior sense
Speaker 1: to what OsO films are like that. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: there's this moment, this Lynchian moment, where just reality gets
Speaker 1: slipped away, and I first I had a split second
Speaker 1: like what the what the hell? And then I loved it.
Speaker 1: I love that suddenly we were on this metaphysical journey,
Speaker 1: whether real or not. And I think that moment helps
Speaker 1: to secure the final moment of the film, which also
Speaker 1: can be seen as purely fantasy, as something that's not
Speaker 1: really happening outside of that man's mind. So I think
Speaker 1: it established a motif. But I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of that scene actually had. Did she actually lay on
Speaker 1: top of him like that?
Speaker 2: I think that whole thing happened.
Speaker 1: I think does she have something for him?
Speaker 2: Is she? I don't know. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Maybe he has some feelings towards her.
Speaker 1: Well, obviously by the end he's making out with her
Speaker 1: or he's dreaming that he is.
Speaker 3: But I don't think not not her. I think she's
Speaker 3: just very spiritual in a way. Yeah, and she's just
Speaker 3: seeking for that that kind of and she's grieving. Yes,
Speaker 3: I that's how I felt about the whole thing. I
Speaker 3: actually thought of it the way everything, the way the
Speaker 3: whole thing was talked about. I just loved when she's
Speaker 3: when he's like, do you want me to do this,
Speaker 3: and and it's like, yeah, sure, why, yeah you know what, Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do it. I thought it was great. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: felt real. Uh that's how you know. I guess people
Speaker 3: would talk and it's just it was nice, I thought.
Speaker 3: I thought, again, listening, I think I think he just
Speaker 3: he was listening to her, giving her something, right, And
Speaker 3: that's that's.
Speaker 1: Not it had an effect on him because he still
Speaker 1: wounds up killing himself.
Speaker 3: I know. I I guess because he was going to
Speaker 3: die anyway.
Speaker 1: I I he was dying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was dying anyway. I So I guess he
Speaker 3: felt like he needed to do something. I don't understand
Speaker 3: the the so, you know, the whole bomb thing, I
Speaker 3: don't understand that, the vest and all that, well, he
Speaker 3: wanted to take out right. But to me, corporate guy basically,
Speaker 3: I know. But to me that but that came out
Speaker 3: of nowhere, out of nowhere to I agree. And it
Speaker 3: also I think it speaks to how how much despair
Speaker 3: he was feeling and how fucked up his mind was.
Speaker 3: Because you know, the church, they establish it several times,
Speaker 3: and it's like this very important historical right they called
Speaker 3: a tourist church, but you know, the literal underground railroad
Speaker 3: runs underneath the church, and they make a point of
Speaker 3: trying to you know, and he seems to be somewhat
Speaker 3: proud of that fact that he is the steward of
Speaker 3: this church. So the idea that he would blow up
Speaker 3: this historic church, I was like, he's lost it. I
Speaker 3: don't think he's thinking this through. I don't think anything.
Speaker 3: I don't think any of that makes any sense. He
Speaker 3: was in the throes of despair, dying and having a
Speaker 3: christ A fate. Judging by the way he talked to
Speaker 3: the activist, the husband and the arguments, the points he made,
Speaker 3: it doesn't make sense that he would do that. I
Speaker 3: was really surprised.
Speaker 1: Well, I just think he deteriorated over the course of
Speaker 1: the film. But as the viewer, you don't get that. No,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, I agree. Like I said, it's the
Speaker 1: kind of film that I wished I could have sat
Speaker 1: and watched a second time before we had this conversation,
Speaker 1: because it kind of demands that sort of you know,
Speaker 1: once you know where the film winds up, you kind
Speaker 1: of want to go back and see how how all
Speaker 1: the things were laid out and whether things make more
Speaker 1: sense the second time around. But this film will stick
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a fascinating film. I think the
Speaker 1: performances are fantastic. I think the direction is so inte
Speaker 1: like beyond my pay grade, intelligent, like just like I
Speaker 1: really have to work to unpack this film. A really
Speaker 1: great film, I really great quiet film that is, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it could have been a lot
Speaker 1: more depressing than it is. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 1: It is not an uplift thing film, but it's not
Speaker 1: actually as depressing as it as we're making it sound.
Speaker 2: No, But but I I'm it.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting to question things. And I think
Speaker 3: again back to the conversation with the husband, I thought
Speaker 3: that was very interesting h of it because because the
Speaker 3: preacher thought he had it, oh in the bag, you know, Oh,
Speaker 3: this is easy, I'm just going to talk to him,
Speaker 3: and and and all of a sudden the conversation turned uh,
Speaker 3: and the activist the husband had very interesting points. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he made very interesting points. And I think even the
Speaker 3: Preacher realized that. And then they were in a situation
Speaker 3: where like, Okay, I wasn't surprised that he killed himself
Speaker 3: the the no, I think it was pretty clearly.
Speaker 2: It was clear.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I thought, yeah, which is very sad because
Speaker 3: I think in a way, I think preacher made the
Speaker 3: made things worse.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was k bull of meeting that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was dying himself. He was racked with guilt over
Speaker 1: the death of his own child, which he felt that
Speaker 1: he had caused. Oh and then we didn't even get
Speaker 1: into like the scene with Esther the choir director, where
Speaker 1: he tells her, I despise you and all of that,
Speaker 1: and I went two ways with that. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's pushing her away because he doesn't want her there
Speaker 1: when he blows up the church. But no, I think
Speaker 1: that just speaks to how how dark he is and
Speaker 1: how how lost he is. He's gone, He's gone at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 2: But again, he.
Speaker 3: Made some very interesting points. The reason why he because
Speaker 3: he felt that the way she behaved was actually making
Speaker 3: him worse mentally, right, which is very It was a
Speaker 3: very interesting he put it in a very interesting way,
Speaker 3: I thought.
Speaker 1: But he was fucked up because she's only showing concern
Speaker 1: for him. I agree if he If your response to
Speaker 1: someone showing concern is I despise you, well, you are lost.
Speaker 1: You are very very.
Speaker 3: Lost, because concern points out certain things that you sometimes
Speaker 3: don't want to hear. That's the point that I'm trying
Speaker 3: to that, that's what I'm trying to make. I mean,
Speaker 3: she had a very good intention, so like she wanted
Speaker 3: to help him, but in his mind, whatever she did
Speaker 3: or said was triggering things that he didn't want to acknowledge,
Speaker 3: which I thought it was very interesting. He did a
Speaker 3: very good job pointing it out to her.
Speaker 2: I think, although you know.
Speaker 1: The relationships and what's going on inside people's heads in
Speaker 1: this film is very very complicated and grown up and
Speaker 1: you need to unpack it. It's not something that you know,
Speaker 1: this is a good person and this is a bad person.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's all people.
Speaker 3: There are some so some very clever interesting conversation, like
Speaker 3: when when they're talking about whatever they had that was brief, brief,
Speaker 3: and then he says, she says, do you think what
Speaker 3: we did was the sin? And it's like, no, I've
Speaker 3: seen real sin. That wasn't that. That wasn't it. Which
Speaker 3: I thought it was very interesting because he's aware of things.
Speaker 3: He's completely aware of things.
Speaker 1: So my question to the kittens listening is, I have
Speaker 1: several questions. Do you think this is a film about
Speaker 1: hope or do you think it's a film about despair?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's about faith? Do you think the
Speaker 1: reverence act at the end was an act of faith
Speaker 1: in you know, believing that God was going to come
Speaker 1: and lead him to salvation. Do you think Mary was
Speaker 1: a dark figure or a savior? There's just a lot
Speaker 1: there to unpack. Do you think this film had anything
Speaker 1: to say about climate change, anything to say about a
Speaker 1: big religion, anything to say about corporate control, because personally,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it had much to say
Speaker 1: about any of those things they were dressing for a
Speaker 1: basic question of hope versus despair and whether faith has
Speaker 1: a role in navigating that.
Speaker 3: I also think the way he wanted to die, I
Speaker 3: mean like a cremated and whatever and then had its
Speaker 3: spirit spread all over the do you mean the husband
Speaker 3: the hutband, I thought that was it. I mean, clearly
Speaker 3: they were talking about the climate there that the kids
Speaker 3: were singing some weird song about Yeah, it was fired anyway.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's an interesting movie and it makes you
Speaker 3: think about all these things that goes on in your
Speaker 3: head sometimes and you're you're not aware.
Speaker 2: Of great Like I said.
Speaker 1: I I would love to hear your answer to any
Speaker 1: of those questions. And we'll be back next week to
Speaker 1: talk about The Bride, which we have also never seen,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it'll be quite as downbeat as
Speaker 1: this one. Uh So, until then, take care of ussel
Speaker 1: I love you mean it.
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye