Speaker 1: Oh yeh is bot it's shut.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie when they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater. They are cold sodas, hot
Speaker 2: popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring a Diagnosa Jodensa Naples ad
Speaker 3: Horace Bolotchnowski, mister Justice Lupus labna to hold, not to
Speaker 3: dizzily have a regime.
Speaker 4: Dizzily have Miss Sammi Rannie the hanaka.
Speaker 5: Not Boy. Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host,
Speaker 5: Mike White join me once again. Is mister Jonathan Owen.
Speaker 4: Hello, happy check Timber.
Speaker 5: Also back in the booth is ms Angela Mack.
Speaker 6: Very nice to be that.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Check Tember continues with one from Slovakian filmmaker Dushan Hannok
Speaker 5: three twenty two. Released in nineteen sixty nine, the film
Speaker 5: was banned immediately after its premiere. We'll be discussing why
Speaker 5: and ruining the film as we go along, So if
Speaker 5: you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast
Speaker 5: and come back after you've seen it. Pro tip. The
Speaker 5: movie is available in full with English subtitles on archive
Speaker 5: dot org. So Jonathan when was the first time you
Speaker 5: saw three twenty two and what did you think?
Speaker 7: I think I saw it maybe about fifteen years ago,
Speaker 7: and I've seen quite a lot of the Czechoslovak New
Speaker 7: wave film by then, and it was probably the second
Speaker 7: film that I saw by Hanak. I must admit that
Speaker 7: the first time I saw it, I don't think it
Speaker 7: fully landed with me, because I think there's so much
Speaker 7: going on in it, and I think, in comparison with
Speaker 7: some of the other Slovak films of that time, it
Speaker 7: quite subtle and restrained, and I probably just found it
Speaker 7: a little difficult to get a handle on when I
Speaker 7: first saw it. I was impressed though by the visuals,
Speaker 7: I think, by the editing, the composition. I think I
Speaker 7: was just also really taken by the fact that there
Speaker 7: were hippies in Ratislava in nineteen sixty nine, and subsequently
Speaker 7: other films I've seen have confirmed that. And so yeah,
Speaker 7: I think I was very taken with the Vladco character
Speaker 7: and angel.
Speaker 5: But how about yourself? Was this the first time viewing?
Speaker 3: For you?
Speaker 6: God, this's feel familiar. And then I got to the
Speaker 6: slaughterhouse part, it was like, oh, I have started to
Speaker 6: watch this before, and then I thought it getting into
Speaker 6: like cannibal holocaust territory or something and turned it off.
Speaker 6: I had only watched the bad parts and then miss
Speaker 6: the rest of the movie. So I was glad that
Speaker 6: you steered me towards it, because I'm glad I watched it.
Speaker 6: It certainly lingers in your mind, and honestly, I don't
Speaker 6: know if we could actually spoil even though you could
Speaker 6: tell a person everything about it. It's an experience, certainly, it.
Speaker 5: Definitely is, And yeah, I think it might be better
Speaker 5: this one might be better to listen to our episode first,
Speaker 5: just because yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on
Speaker 5: in here. This was a first time watch for me,
Speaker 5: so you guys both have one up on me. I
Speaker 5: first heard of this film because even though I found
Speaker 5: an article where this was voted the best Slovakian film
Speaker 5: of all time, and a lot of those films it's nicer.
Speaker 5: All from the sixties my sweet spot with this stuff.
Speaker 5: But it give me a lot of good things to
Speaker 5: look up. I hadn't heard of it until I watched
Speaker 5: Martin Sulik did that whole series of the Golden Sixties,
Speaker 5: but plus he also did one called twenty five from
Speaker 5: the sixties or the Czechoslovak New Wave that he directed
Speaker 5: and Jan Lucas wrote, and that's where I first heard
Speaker 5: of this film, and just the visuals from it were
Speaker 5: so striking that I wrote it down was just like
Speaker 5: I have to see this movie. I want to talk
Speaker 5: about it in check timber because it just feels right
Speaker 5: up my street. And it didn't disappoint. This is a
Speaker 5: movie where I was like, Okay, these are the kind
Speaker 5: of things. It's almost we talk about the Czech New Wave,
Speaker 5: we talk about our front Guard films, but this feels
Speaker 5: really out there. It's maybe not as out there as
Speaker 5: something like Daisies, but it's very avant garde.
Speaker 7: One of the interesting things about the way that the
Speaker 7: two different parts of Czechoslovak cinema develop during that time
Speaker 7: is that obviously, people I think generally are more familiar
Speaker 7: with the Czech side, and I guess Czech cinema has
Speaker 7: a longer history as an institutionalized film industry, and Slovakia
Speaker 7: is often seen as the one that was slower to
Speaker 7: develop as a set of institutions. And yet in the
Speaker 7: sixties you see this development where I guess by the
Speaker 7: end of the sixties, I would say some of the
Speaker 7: things that the Slovak filmmakers are doing are almost about
Speaker 7: doing what the Czech filmmakers were doing in terms of
Speaker 7: just their commitment to the avant garde and to experimentation.
Speaker 7: And it's just people like Hanak Yakabisco in a more
Speaker 7: kind of overt or extravagant way. They're just really throwing
Speaker 7: things at you that are very experimental, and as you say,
Speaker 7: it really delivers. If you want that kind of avant
Speaker 7: garde's sixties experience, this really does deliver.
Speaker 6: As that speaking as an American, there's just so much
Speaker 6: propaganda about the communism and the Eastern Bloc and just
Speaker 6: the oppression that it almost paints everything gray and drab,
Speaker 6: that you just assume the books are great and dred
Speaker 6: like you hear about like war and Peace and things
Speaker 6: like that, that you're not really jumping at the bit
Speaker 6: to read or it's not going to be this exciting
Speaker 6: psychedelic experience. And yet all of this was being created.
Speaker 6: It's just such a travesty that it was buried for
Speaker 6: so long, not being able to get out into the
Speaker 6: rest of the world, into what the late eighties, and
Speaker 6: I'm so glad that the projection booth can cover things
Speaker 6: like this and get it out there.
Speaker 5: Not a ton of podcasts on three twenty two, as
Speaker 5: far as I've found. There might be a whole group
Speaker 5: that's doing that, but I haven't found them yet.
Speaker 6: They're probably are rated. Something that I love about sixties
Speaker 6: European cinema is the Americans did too, but I think
Speaker 6: a little more different angle. So it's surprising to me
Speaker 6: to see it that the sexuality that's discussed is just
Speaker 6: so much more cansually brought to bear. There are so
Speaker 6: many nods to sexuality in this, just a alide from
Speaker 6: the cuckholding, but seeing so many ladies bending over and
Speaker 6: nods to things that people would find arousing. Western cinema
Speaker 6: has to ham fist those things or shy away from them.
Speaker 6: It's like they're either blatant or skirted around. So it
Speaker 6: was nice to see it through it, and especially that
Speaker 6: grappling with oppression through sexuality in a way.
Speaker 5: It's very striking. And just the visuals for this, and
Speaker 5: of course I love visual rhymes, and I'm just seeing
Speaker 5: visual rhymes throughout this whole thing, even from the attack
Speaker 5: on our main character in the beginning of this film,
Speaker 5: and how these thugs you put shaving cream all over
Speaker 5: his face. And then later on we see his ex
Speaker 5: wife in how she's putting cold cream on her face,
Speaker 5: and there's a moment where she moves from one room
Speaker 5: I think, into another room and she's got the cold
Speaker 5: cream on both places. But I think they're separated by
Speaker 5: time and space, but the cold cream ties the rooms together,
Speaker 5: which is interesting.
Speaker 6: When he gets the cream on his face, it's not
Speaker 6: a good end and it's compromising to him, but he's
Speaker 6: accepting of it, whereas when she has the cold cream
Speaker 6: on her face, she's expecting happiness from it, like she
Speaker 6: has a totally different sett and she's not going to
Speaker 6: accept any or she's at least not going to feel
Speaker 6: satisfied with anything less than that. It was so smartly done,
Speaker 6: how brilliantly done.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it with the shaving cream
Speaker 7: at the beginning, And I think it takes maybe a
Speaker 7: couple of viewings to get what's going on there, isn't it?
Speaker 7: And you have the yeah one of the third she's
Speaker 7: carrying the shaving brush on the top of his head
Speaker 7: at the beginning, and then he's actually like lathering it
Speaker 7: on Loudcow's face, and it's easy to miss that. You
Speaker 7: just see the scream on his face and you think, like,
Speaker 7: where has that come from? And then yes, second viewing,
Speaker 7: you get what they're doing because it's such a strange
Speaker 7: thing as a sort of a method of assault. It's
Speaker 7: very original, isn't It's very strange thing to do. And
Speaker 7: then yet he's forced to thank them, And yeah, I
Speaker 7: guess you get that idea of like masks, don't you really?
Speaker 7: And I guess shaving is an ambiguous image. It's a
Speaker 7: way of revealing the face, isn't it. Whereas what she's doing,
Speaker 7: she's like masking her face. And it's all about the
Speaker 7: display and the consumption. And yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: those loaded motifs like that. Really, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: imagery of like eyes and of covered eyes as well,
Speaker 7: isn't there. I think you get the eyes of the cattle,
Speaker 7: you get like image that you get of course Joseph
Speaker 7: Abraham with those joke glasses that he's wearing. You get
Speaker 7: the sunglasses that Mata weez when she crashes, and you
Speaker 7: get the blindfolded cow. And yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: imagery of light COVID eyes and there's a paratly multiple
Speaker 7: meanings that you can get from that.
Speaker 6: What was that odd at the beginning that one of
Speaker 6: the thugs was female. It almost looked like pieces of
Speaker 6: paper instead of eyelashes that she had glued on. It
Speaker 6: was so bizarre, and I was hoping they'd be an explanationally.
Speaker 5: And yeah, in one scene, josepher Brown is walking around
Speaker 5: with sunglasses on that only have one lens in it.
Speaker 5: And then later on you see a still image of
Speaker 5: Lauca's wife and she's got the sunglasses on with one
Speaker 5: glass in it. Because we should probably say this right
Speaker 5: here at the beginning, this movie, like I said, it's
Speaker 5: avant garde, so they're doing a lot of interesting things
Speaker 5: in here. There's a lot of still frames, there's some animation,
Speaker 5: which we'll talk about in a bit, but the little
Speaker 5: things like the apple disintegrating, that's actually Jan Swankmier. I
Speaker 5: didn't realize that that he did that, and that actually
Speaker 5: covers some material that was cut out of the film.
Speaker 5: So what we're watching is actually slightly censored version. That
Speaker 5: original version does exist, but with burned in subtitles on
Speaker 5: their German subtitles. I believe, which is also interesting because
Speaker 5: you get a lot of languages in here. Even during
Speaker 5: the opening credits, there's people talking and it's not subtitled,
Speaker 5: and I'm just like okay. And then throughout the movie,
Speaker 5: I kept and I don't know if this was just
Speaker 5: a bad subtitling job or not, but there were a
Speaker 5: lot of times where people would say things and they
Speaker 5: weren't being subtitled, which was a real pain, but especially
Speaker 5: like on screen titles and quotes and things like that.
Speaker 5: Even during the opening credits, you have those very stark
Speaker 5: stenciled credit letter and then you have the fragmented body
Speaker 5: parts that look like they're being taken right out of
Speaker 5: like Gray's Anatomy or something, and you have the whispering
Speaker 5: stuff going on, and I'm just like, oh, I'm in
Speaker 5: for a ride with this movie. It's already presenting me
Speaker 5: with three very disparate things just right here in the
Speaker 5: opening credits.
Speaker 6: The opening credits, even though I had that grating sound,
Speaker 6: there was like a tension sound for grinding I don't
Speaker 6: know how, but grinding your nerves. But it was exciting
Speaker 6: that it was like, oh, this is something that's.
Speaker 4: It probably takes a second viewing.
Speaker 7: At least it did for me to realize that kind
Speaker 7: of harsh sound over the credit is actually the sound
Speaker 7: of the machine during his scans, isn't it later in
Speaker 7: the hospital there's that there's like an interplay I think
Speaker 7: in his work between diagetic and non diagetic sounds. So
Speaker 7: are the sounds that could be part of the movie's
Speaker 7: world and then the sounds that are just being layered
Speaker 7: off on as part of the kind of formal arrangement,
Speaker 7: And it's sometimes difficult to know, and often it happens,
Speaker 7: I think, Mike you mentioned this in your notes, that
Speaker 7: it's sometimes difficult to tell where voices are coming from
Speaker 7: and who's speaking. And the sound really is very playfully used,
Speaker 7: isn't it really?
Speaker 4: Sound?
Speaker 7: And voices and captions they are an element in their
Speaker 7: own right, As you said, like with the captions, they're
Speaker 7: not really designed to illustrate or clarify the action, but
Speaker 7: they are texts that I guess work in interesting ways
Speaker 7: with the images, so you're meant to think about them
Speaker 7: and can compare or contrast with what's happening on screen,
Speaker 7: and they're never really doing a sort of just a
Speaker 7: simple thing. They may be quoting sometimes from the dialogue,
Speaker 7: but that in itself is interesting because you think, what
Speaker 7: is it doing there? Why is it highlighting this line
Speaker 7: or this idea? And one of the ones that I
Speaker 7: find particularly amusing for some reason is you get that
Speaker 7: action that says the influences of literature, which comes at twice,
Speaker 7: and I still haven't worked.
Speaker 4: Out what is the point of that.
Speaker 7: I'm wondering, maybe because I guess the sort of whole
Speaker 7: Marter plot is the part that comes most directly from
Speaker 7: the original story, so maybe it's indicating that that was
Speaker 7: closer to the original text. But even that doesn't seem
Speaker 7: satisfying really, So yeah, there is that constant, sort of
Speaker 7: playful juxta position. It reminds me a lot of macave
Speaker 7: of actually, although I think they have quite different techniques.
Speaker 7: But I was thinking a lot of the Switchboard Operator,
Speaker 7: especially as I was watching this, and there was even
Speaker 7: specific things that reminded me. I think one of the
Speaker 7: things especially was the when you have that couple, they
Speaker 7: seem to be on stage performing and there although it's
Speaker 7: black and white, they seem to be painted gold. And
Speaker 7: I've been various kind of tableau and there's like elderly
Speaker 7: people in the audience watching in a kind of amused way.
Speaker 7: And Yeah, that really reminded me of the Switchboard Operator.
Speaker 7: And I think just as you do in Switchboard Operator,
Speaker 7: you have that feeling of it's like a society itself
Speaker 7: that's almost like a collage too, because it's this juxtaposition
Speaker 7: of you have very traditional styles and traditional ways of life,
Speaker 7: and then you have this very modern element, very kind
Speaker 7: of sixties style Western style clothing or cosmetics or kind
Speaker 7: of commercial products, and then you have the sense of
Speaker 7: this older, more traditional society where you have chickens wandering
Speaker 7: around and people in the kind of the traditional costume,
Speaker 7: and it's almost like the society itself is this hodgepodge
Speaker 7: of different things, just as the style is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, whenever I talk about visual rhymes, I always think
Speaker 5: of macave of in just the way that he would
Speaker 5: bring in things and then you had because he would
Speaker 5: always have multi media stuff going on, so like you
Speaker 5: would introduce documentaries in introduced still images and all of
Speaker 5: these things, and you could pick up on, oh, that
Speaker 5: thing from that documentary is very similar to this, or
Speaker 5: you'd have fake documentaries like in Switchboard Operator, where you
Speaker 5: had the little movie about ridding the city of rats,
Speaker 5: and then you find out that the boyfriend in that
Speaker 5: is a rat catcher, and oh, he's actually in the documentary.
Speaker 5: I think that was all stage. I thought it was
Speaker 5: real at first, or even man is not a bird,
Speaker 5: where you get like the ideal Soviet images countered with
Speaker 5: what people are actually doing and just how slovenly and
Speaker 5: just trying to get along in life that they are.
Speaker 5: They're not these men of marble to coin a phrase,
Speaker 5: and with this one, it's a simple story at the
Speaker 5: heart of this. For me, it's really a story of
Speaker 5: a relationship and a man with cancer. But as far
Speaker 5: as I can tell, and now please correct me if
Speaker 5: I'm wrong, Lauko, our main character, played by vaklav Lo Lonninsky,
Speaker 5: he doesn't get told throughout the entire film that he
Speaker 5: has cancer, and does he even have cancer? Does he
Speaker 5: come out with a clean bill of health at the end.
Speaker 6: I assume he had the gallstones and that was just
Speaker 6: spreading infection in his system. I assume at the end
Speaker 6: he is healthy. But I wasn't one hundred percent on this,
Speaker 6: which I think is the problem. That maybe the truth
Speaker 6: of the communism is that they'll tell you what they
Speaker 6: want and you have to take it. So three two two.
Speaker 6: But he wasn't even told.
Speaker 5: He wasn't told that because three two two. The title
Speaker 5: of this is the medical coding at this time for
Speaker 5: cancer And yeah, I think it's our old from Miroslav
Speaker 5: matcha match a check from Fifth Horseman is fear in here.
Speaker 5: Great seeing him show up again, and he doesn't seem
Speaker 5: to be a very his bedside manner would be better
Speaker 5: as a doctor.
Speaker 7: I love the fact that he asked Lauco about smoking,
Speaker 7: and then in the same scene he himself is actually
Speaker 7: smoking and he has a big bottle of I think
Speaker 7: maybe whiskey.
Speaker 4: Or something on his desk.
Speaker 7: And yeah, slightly rather relaxed approach in regard to the illness.
Speaker 7: I got the same feeling. I think that probably he's
Speaker 7: okay at the end. But yes, it leaves you hanging.
Speaker 7: It doesn't have that big moment of relief, and I
Speaker 7: guess there is a tone. The tone is one of
Speaker 7: relief of affirmation, but it doesn't link that explicitly to
Speaker 7: him having a clean bill of health. But yes, I
Speaker 7: think we are meant to construe that it was just
Speaker 7: the gallstones and that those are past, and I think
Speaker 7: by the time you get to the end of the movie,
Speaker 7: it's preoccupied with another level. Really, I think it's more
Speaker 7: I guess we might say like a spiritual, psychological kind
Speaker 7: of relief that he's going through at the end. And yes,
Speaker 7: it doesn't really give you that kind of moment and
Speaker 7: of clarification really, And yeah, I think that use of
Speaker 7: the number is really interesting too. Isn't it the three
Speaker 7: two two, Because I think that's another kind of recurring
Speaker 7: motif throughout the film. I think, isn't it the idea
Speaker 7: of numbers and bureaucracy and the way people and things
Speaker 7: are categorized or codified. And you have the I guess,
Speaker 7: you have the children with the number tags, you have
Speaker 7: the cattle with the number tags. And one of my
Speaker 7: favorite things is that you have the hippie character of
Speaker 7: lad Coo who has the his I believe it's like
Speaker 7: identity number that he's painted on the back of his coat.
Speaker 7: So he's taken that principle of like classification and turned
Speaker 7: it into a kind of art object. And that's a
Speaker 7: beautiful piece of subversion I think.
Speaker 5: So we've got the whole story of the cancer with Laco.
Speaker 5: And then we also find out that Laco, who works
Speaker 5: in a restaurant, he lives with his ex wife, and again,
Speaker 5: please correct me if I'm wrong at any of the stuff.
Speaker 5: He lives with his ex wife and she's having an
Speaker 5: affair with Joseph Abram, who plays Peter, and they're pretty
Speaker 5: open about it. She's definitely an older woman for him.
Speaker 5: I'd love seeing him show up and stuff, and I
Speaker 5: just I was finding him to be such a great actor,
Speaker 5: and at this point in his career, he's just so handsome,
Speaker 5: I think, and I just I always find him very captivating.
Speaker 5: So those two going at it together, and then there's
Speaker 5: also at one point another woman that shows up and
Speaker 5: he is maybe I should go with this younger woman.
Speaker 5: But we get to see a little bit of him
Speaker 5: at work, and mostly it's him and Marda just going
Speaker 5: out and dating and doing their thing. And you do
Speaker 5: get to see them, not necessarily in flagrante, but you
Speaker 5: see them sharing a bed together, and at one point
Speaker 5: Laco even walks in on them, and like you were saying,
Speaker 5: Angela with the cuckholding He's just like, oh, hey, yeah,
Speaker 5: you left your light on or whatever I thought. Sorry,
Speaker 5: I didn't realize anybody was up. It's okay, just walks
Speaker 5: right out and then yeah, you've mentioned Vodko a few times.
Speaker 5: Vlodko's the wild card for me because there are times
Speaker 5: with v Loodko the hippie, where I'm just like, is
Speaker 5: this guy even real? Is he a spirit that's been
Speaker 5: conjured up? Because he just seems to like show up.
Speaker 5: He hangs out with Lauco at times. Laco's in the hospital,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, v Loadko's there as well, talking
Speaker 5: about glasses and eye stuff. He puts on the one
Speaker 5: patience really super thick coke bottle glasses, and he's wandering
Speaker 5: around in the room with his arms outstretched like Frankenstein.
Speaker 5: You're just like, is he does anybody else see this guy?
Speaker 5: Like I wrote my notes, is he a ghost? I
Speaker 5: don't get this guy.
Speaker 6: There was an interview with Slush Michael's tripping over all
Speaker 6: these names and Okay, the director, so he has a
Speaker 6: strong background in doing documentaries, and I guess it kind
Speaker 6: of merges, which makes sense. You wouldn't have thought it
Speaker 6: watching it, but thinking about it after and reading about it.
Speaker 6: Vlad Co, in reality, the actor was a hippie nearby
Speaker 6: and some nudist hippies hanging out in the woods, kind
Speaker 6: of commune Panac liked, he wanted to film them and
Speaker 6: wanted to just capture that freedom on film. So I
Speaker 6: guess the character of lad Coo is a mixture of
Speaker 6: basically him just being given a very small directive and
Speaker 6: doing his thing, which seems right because he's so whimsical
Speaker 6: and just so captivating, And then it seems so right
Speaker 6: that's him, and there's so little like I tried to
Speaker 6: look up things about there's nothing, like he's into movies
Speaker 6: and doesn't exist otherwise, and he was so wanted him
Speaker 6: film like I would have loved to have seen more.
Speaker 7: But yeah, he's such a just naturally sympathetic presence, isn't
Speaker 7: he really? And that's right about the Yeah, the documentary.
Speaker 7: I think that's a really important point to bring up,
Speaker 7: really because ya Hanakh by this point had only made documentaries.
Speaker 4: This was his first.
Speaker 7: Feature film, his first narrative feature. And despite the fact
Speaker 7: that at the beginning it's clear to tell you that
Speaker 7: this is a work of fiction, it is very much
Speaker 7: like an integration of documentary and fictional techniques, And I
Speaker 7: guess interesting in terms of Hannah's career, because I think
Speaker 7: this is really the only place where he fuses like
Speaker 7: a narrative feature film with the kind of techniques that
Speaker 7: he was using in his documentary work, whereas his other
Speaker 7: films tend to be they're either documentaries in a kind
Speaker 7: of poetic essay style or they are more kind of
Speaker 7: straightforward narrative features, and I guess this is the one
Speaker 7: where he's doing both together, and probably one of the
Speaker 7: reasons why it is rather overwhelming, I think first viewing,
Speaker 7: because yeah, I think the kind of the narrative, the
Speaker 7: fictional narrative, it's not that it gets lost, but it
Speaker 7: just blends together, doesn't it with a lot of the
Speaker 7: other things that are going on. And I think in
Speaker 7: regard to the use of non professional actors like the
Speaker 7: guy playing vlad Co, I think that again, I think
Speaker 7: fits in with I think Hannah being really interested in
Speaker 7: He was really interested I think in the happening, like
Speaker 7: the idea of the happening. And he made a film
Speaker 7: a few years later called A Day of Joy, which
Speaker 7: is a good title because it is a really joyful
Speaker 7: short film about this. It was actually a record of
Speaker 7: a happening by a Slovak artist called Alex Minacik, and
Speaker 7: that's full of this kind of imagery of these kind
Speaker 7: of like young hippies and people just celebrating. It's all
Speaker 7: about this train ride, and it's just really hard to
Speaker 7: imagine that this was made like four years after the
Speaker 7: invasion of Czechoslovakia. And yeah, I think he was really
Speaker 7: captivated by that sense so of just like joyful anarchy
Speaker 7: and of this sense of being an outsider. I think
Speaker 7: this is like an important idea for him. He's really
Speaker 7: fit fascinated by the outsider. And one thing I love
Speaker 7: about the street scenes in the film is I think
Speaker 7: it does show that it's that kind of ambiguity, isn't it.
Speaker 7: I guess on the one hand that you have this
Speaker 7: sense of control that's ever present. You have the police car,
Speaker 7: you have these At one point, there's this strange voiceover,
Speaker 7: isn't the announcing like prohibitions and telling people what to
Speaker 7: do and what not to do. But then in other
Speaker 7: scenes you have these beautiful kind of just demonstrations of
Speaker 7: this anarchic freedom. And it's almost like he's filming a
Speaker 7: kind of there's a constant like street theater going on.
Speaker 5: What's so interesting. I think one of the very first
Speaker 5: times that you meet for that CO, you see him
Speaker 5: and there's an off duty cop that is starts harassing him,
Speaker 5: and the camera's in I believe it's inside of a place,
Speaker 5: and Vlodko's outside, as is the cop, and Vlodko's just
Speaker 5: walking and talking with this guy, and the cameras panning
Speaker 5: along with them, and we are, like I said, we're
Speaker 5: inside the building. And as the camera pans there's a
Speaker 5: guy standing there inside of the building, it almost looks
Speaker 5: like he's wearing like a groucho mark snows and glasses,
Speaker 5: and I'm just like, is this the Secret Police? What
Speaker 5: is going on? And they just move right past them.
Speaker 5: That's the scene that I or the shot that I saw,
Speaker 5: I believe in that documentary, and plus it was definitely
Speaker 5: in that Golden sixties episode about Hannak and I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 5: we're not going to talk about that at all, But
Speaker 5: just to have this person standing there draw so much
Speaker 5: attention to itself, and I love it.
Speaker 6: There are so many small nuts, like the thugs at
Speaker 6: the beginning. One guy has a mask on the back
Speaker 6: of his head, and right, it's interesting the disguises that
Speaker 6: are just subtenly done in the background almost along the
Speaker 6: way that are just never explained.
Speaker 5: The other thing I didn't mention about this is that
Speaker 5: mirrors are everywhere in this film, and there are so
Speaker 5: many times where you think you're looking at a real
Speaker 5: object quote unquote. I know everything's reproduced because it's film,
Speaker 5: but we're looking at something and we realize, oh, we're
Speaker 5: actually looking at the reflection. I mean, even just like
Speaker 5: little things like when we go to Matarek's office and
Speaker 5: he's taking the little mirror and putting for the flame,
Speaker 5: and then he's got a big mirror on the there's
Speaker 5: cap or whatever you call that thing, like the how
Speaker 5: it reflects the light and all that. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: just one example, but you get mirrors constantly. There's even
Speaker 5: talking about the street scenes, just a random dude carrying
Speaker 5: a mirror across the street. It's like they are every
Speaker 5: place in the movie, and it's wild how much they
Speaker 5: integrate into this and the camera work required to do
Speaker 5: some of these shots with these reflections is fantastic as
Speaker 5: well as just like when they introduced the character of Sisnick,
Speaker 5: eventually we find out she's a pregnant woman and one
Speaker 5: of the first times we see her, it's maybe the
Speaker 5: second shots she's in. There's a guy in the back.
Speaker 5: I want to say, he's like the mar d or something.
Speaker 5: He's filling these glasses with the fruit juice and then
Speaker 5: watering it down, and we go from him, we rack
Speaker 5: to another guy, and then we rack to Sisnick. Yes
Speaker 5: to Sisnick. I'm just like, that's so nice. It's like
Speaker 5: triple rack focus that we're doing. Just little things like that.
Speaker 5: But I'm just like, this is really well shot.
Speaker 6: Do you see why? He's one of the what was
Speaker 6: it out of sixteen people in the program.
Speaker 5: Who was like the four the yeah, yeah, one of
Speaker 5: the few FAMU graduates of that class.
Speaker 6: It's so weird that habits never die in film, that
Speaker 6: one of the cutest girls in the movie is supposed
Speaker 6: to be less than average looking. It's like she's one
Speaker 6: of the cutest ones. She alluded to a lover that
Speaker 6: she had. I assume the lover hid, But then again,
Speaker 6: I hope that the main character ended up with her.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was my impression that he did. I
Speaker 6: don't know what else was the.
Speaker 5: Way and who got her pregnant? Was that our main
Speaker 5: character was that somebody else.
Speaker 7: Another of the few things that are actually in the
Speaker 7: story as well, I think, isn't it. I think that
Speaker 7: the silk subplot and the story, I think it does
Speaker 7: seem to indicate that, yes, she's pregnant by another lover.
Speaker 7: But yes, it does establish the relationship, I think a
Speaker 7: bit more solidly than in the film. But yeah, hopefully
Speaker 7: they do go off together at the end. And in
Speaker 7: regard to pregnancy. That just reminded me as well about
Speaker 7: the scene with Joseph Abraham at the end with the girl,
Speaker 7: the other student, And that's another interesting scene, isn't it,
Speaker 7: Because initially she tells him she's expecting and that it's his,
Speaker 7: and then she just says that she lied, And I
Speaker 7: don't think there's any other mention of that at any
Speaker 7: earlier point, and we don't really get what the relationship
Speaker 7: is between them, and I think Abraham's character at one
Speaker 7: point also says to Marta Lauku's wife that he's a virgin,
Speaker 7: So we don't know has he slept with the other girl.
Speaker 7: It's very kind of unclear, isn't it. I think the
Speaker 7: sort of that set of relationships.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then who's to believe what you know? When
Speaker 5: she tells them, oh, I'm pregnant, and then within two
Speaker 5: minutes now I lie, I'm like, wow, okay, no.
Speaker 6: Mystery here, and the cadence these things are done with it.
Speaker 6: It almost I mean, it brings to mind like absurdism
Speaker 6: to me when you're reading something and it's just so
Speaker 6: abrupt of this thing happened, this disjointed thing happened, And
Speaker 6: there seems to be a touch of that throughout it,
Speaker 6: of just things blatantly happening that I have no rhyme
Speaker 6: or reason to anything else unless you really think about it,
Speaker 6: and then maybe you could draw a line between the two.
Speaker 6: At the opening with I thought it was so tremendous
Speaker 6: of someone who has lost faith, but it hasn't the
Speaker 6: courage not to believe. It tells you straight up that's
Speaker 6: what the movie is about. But as you're watching it,
Speaker 6: I don't know if I would have ever concluded that
Speaker 6: on my own, of all the threads I would have
Speaker 6: weaved together, I don't think believe for faith or not
Speaker 6: to believe it would never have come up for me.
Speaker 7: It doesn't really do anything very explicit with that, does
Speaker 7: it With that idea of faith. It's definitely not religious
Speaker 7: faith or political faith. There's a critic of Batslav Martzek
Speaker 7: who's written quite a lot about Hannakh, and I guess
Speaker 7: his interpretation is it simply this just affirmation at the
Speaker 7: end of humanity. So I guess that's as much of
Speaker 7: a faith as we can have at the end. And
Speaker 7: you get that scene. I guess, again, vlad Coe is
Speaker 7: quite significant, isn't it, Because I think if to the
Speaker 7: extent that he is, that's why I like the idea
Speaker 7: that he may be a ghost. He may just be
Speaker 7: the simply symbolic figure, because I guess in and of itself,
Speaker 7: the fact that he kind of bonds and forms his
Speaker 7: friendship with Louco is a little bit improbable, isn't it?
Speaker 4: Anyway?
Speaker 7: But I think that, yeah, he does have a symbolic
Speaker 7: purpose by the end of the movie, because yeah, I
Speaker 7: guess he's showing Louco those drawings, isn't he. He's they're
Speaker 7: naming things like apple, apple, meadow, tree, isn't it?
Speaker 4: I think?
Speaker 7: And I guess relating back to the image of the
Speaker 7: apple that decays, So I guess you've got a kind
Speaker 7: of an inversion of that. So you're seeing earlier on
Speaker 7: this apple that decays, and then at the end, I
Speaker 7: guess you have this image of the apple, and I
Speaker 7: don't know whether I'm like overreading, maybe I've just watched
Speaker 7: Kitty Loo Ours films too much, but I'm thinking there
Speaker 7: is a kind of like an Edenic motif there somehow,
Speaker 7: But it could also be paganistic as well, because it's
Speaker 7: things to do with nature. I guess there is some
Speaker 7: kind of affirmation, but as you say, it's obscure as
Speaker 7: to what kind of faith or what kind of affirmation
Speaker 7: that it's really showing us.
Speaker 5: And this is yet another movie that I see from
Speaker 5: Czechoslovakia during this time that has butterflies in it. I
Speaker 5: don't know if it was a cultural thing or a
Speaker 5: symbolism thing, but there are always, not always, but there
Speaker 5: are so many butterflies that are in movies. And this
Speaker 5: is another one where you even have led Coo going
Speaker 5: into a bookstore and picking up a book about caterpillars
Speaker 5: and butterflies, and then there's in the doctor's office there's
Speaker 5: a big butterfly over one's shoulder, and I'm just like,
Speaker 5: all right, I mean, of course, butterflies transformation, but I'm
Speaker 5: surprised it wasn't what I usually see in these movies,
Speaker 5: which is butterflies that are inside of glass case, pinned there.
Speaker 5: Because you see that a lot. I'm thinking of like
Speaker 5: Valerie in a Week of Wonders, And I know almost
Speaker 5: every single time I see one of these movies, I'm
Speaker 5: just like, here's more butterflies. Oh they're on the wall
Speaker 5: in all my good country men, just that it's everywhere.
Speaker 5: So again, it could be a culture thing, or could
Speaker 5: be a symbolism.
Speaker 6: You can hatch at a horse, but pinning a butterfly
Speaker 6: is just one to trustee too far for here.
Speaker 7: It's really interesting that you mentioned that, because yeah, I
Speaker 7: was just trying to wrap my brains then, and maybe
Speaker 7: it was just yeah, I had a bit of a
Speaker 7: false memory. Yeah, did I actually see a pin butterfly
Speaker 7: in the movie, because it would make sense given the style,
Speaker 7: Because the style is very composed and very framed. The
Speaker 7: actors themselves are almost like butterflies in the within frame,
Speaker 7: aren't they. I remember from reading an essay on daisies
Speaker 7: by Petro Hanakova, she said that apparently the line in
Speaker 7: check would you like to see my butterfly collection? Is
Speaker 7: it's like a sexual invitation. Basically, so I don't know
Speaker 7: how relevant that is to this film. I just took
Speaker 7: it as an image of freedom, really, because I think
Speaker 7: there is a kind of consistent interest in a number
Speaker 7: of Slovak films in flying. I guess you see it
Speaker 7: in Birds, Orphans and Fools. You see it a bit
Speaker 7: later in another film by Hanak Roast Into Dreams from
Speaker 7: the mid seventies. There's a kind of constant motif in
Speaker 7: that of flight. And yeah, I just took it as
Speaker 7: another kind of use of the idea of flight as
Speaker 7: an image of freedom, because I guess when you see
Speaker 7: blad Co for the first time, he's waving his arms around,
Speaker 7: isn't he as though he's flying? And yeah, I just
Speaker 7: took it as meaning that, really.
Speaker 5: I guess that's the old would you like to see
Speaker 5: my butterfly collection? My mom used to tell me that
Speaker 5: when men were trying to pick up women, they would say,
Speaker 5: do you want to see my etchings?
Speaker 6: I kind of walked away with the thought that everything
Speaker 6: is what you make of it because of being an
Speaker 6: overall theme, because he and his ex wife were inhabiting
Speaker 6: the same apartment but having two very different existence and
Speaker 6: I I just felt like there throughout is I didn't
Speaker 6: feel that it was explained in depth, but the idea
Speaker 6: that he had been someone in a place of authority
Speaker 6: in communism and possibly I don't know if he would
Speaker 6: have been responsible in part for the deaths of people
Speaker 6: or maybe just the terrible demotions, but it alluded to
Speaker 6: that repeatedly of him having to make decisions, and the
Speaker 6: wife mentioned a few times asking if he felt that
Speaker 6: people reached what they sewed, and that all seemed to
Speaker 6: come into play. But it was like the wife didn't
Speaker 6: do anything that he didn't allow, even though she was
Speaker 6: called a hussy, and she was really thought ill of
Speaker 6: by the neighbors and the people listening with the stethoscope
Speaker 6: on the wall, which wow, it's good use of a stethoscope.
Speaker 6: But she was doing what she was lost. Was she
Speaker 6: really a bad person? Of the guys that letting her
Speaker 6: do it is inviting her to do it. He walks
Speaker 6: into the room with her lover, and it's like, oh, oh,
Speaker 6: you guys are fine. Carry on. Why would you stop?
Speaker 5: Carry on? Carry on? She says, as you see her
Speaker 5: looking at them in a mirror. I mean, the very
Speaker 5: first time you meet Marta, she's in a mirror, and
Speaker 5: then she the next scene she's also in a mirror,
Speaker 5: and then you go back to her and she's got
Speaker 5: I don't know if that's a kendole in front of
Speaker 5: her face, but her whole face is split in two
Speaker 5: with this line, and you're looking at her like, is
Speaker 5: it even is the side of her face even like this?
Speaker 5: It was such an interesting way to have this character.
Speaker 5: And you're just like, I mean, these characters having their
Speaker 5: faces split or you know, being reflected in mirrors. I'm
Speaker 5: just like, is this just how duplicitous all of these
Speaker 5: people are? Just this era of communism, like where you
Speaker 5: do have to worry about people listening to you through
Speaker 5: with this stethoscope. I mean, this is maybe the same
Speaker 5: year that the Year comes out, I think, And you
Speaker 5: know this, it's odd that this comes out in sixty
Speaker 5: nine because this is post prime Spring.
Speaker 7: It was one of those films that was initiated before
Speaker 7: the invasion, so I believe it was first approved I
Speaker 7: think as a script in about sixty seven, and then
Speaker 7: I think they started filming it after the invasion, but
Speaker 7: in that period where it was still liberal before the
Speaker 7: normalization kicked in. Really, so it was just in that
Speaker 7: weird window that you get of very like audacious and
Speaker 7: radical films that are made like after the invasion, but
Speaker 7: before things like tighten up again, and it's it's just
Speaker 7: such such a strange period because yeah, you get a
Speaker 7: lot of the most like outspoken and critical and experimental
Speaker 7: films in that time, and yet the invasion has happened,
Speaker 7: and I guess filmmakers know that the end is coming.
Speaker 7: Things I think in a way almost like defiantly in
Speaker 7: regard to the politics, I think it's very subtle, isn't it.
Speaker 7: It's very densely woven into the story. And what his
Speaker 7: job is meant to have been before is that he
Speaker 7: was part of the I think they say the KNV,
Speaker 7: which was the regional National Committees, which was basically a
Speaker 7: kind of an arm of the Minute. I think came
Speaker 7: under the Ministry of the Interior, so basically they were
Speaker 7: part of the state apparatus. And I think Lauka makes
Speaker 7: a reference at one point to going to the countryside,
Speaker 7: and I think we could maybe surmise that he was
Speaker 7: involved in the collectivisation of agriculture, which would have been
Speaker 7: in the early years of the communist regime, and at
Speaker 7: the end when he's in the going through the operation.
Speaker 7: I think those little fragmented senses that are coming out
Speaker 7: are a confession to things that he had been involved in.
Speaker 7: And it doesn't really make it clear though exactly what
Speaker 7: he did. There are certain crimes that he either was
Speaker 7: complicit in or that he actually carried out. And I
Speaker 7: felt watching it again that when they go to the
Speaker 7: slaughter when he goes to the slaughter house, that there's
Speaker 7: almost a kind of like a re evocation of that,
Speaker 7: and that that's possibly the reason why he feels sick
Speaker 7: in that moment, that maybe it re evokes because I
Speaker 7: think he mentions like a gun. I think there's a
Speaker 7: gun shot, isn't there in the slaughter house scene, and
Speaker 7: then during his confession in the bed he mentions like
Speaker 7: a revolver, And so there's possibly some flashback there that
Speaker 7: he's having. But yeah, it's very it's almost subliminal. I
Speaker 7: think that whole level. Really, when you read like synopsies
Speaker 7: of it, it sounds like it's very clear cut, doesn't
Speaker 7: it really that he was the former political functionary. But
Speaker 7: as you watch, it's difficult to keep handle on that really.
Speaker 7: And one thing I find really interesting is that this
Speaker 7: is coming in sixty nine, or it's in that period
Speaker 7: when they find have the freedom to look back at
Speaker 7: this sort of the crimes of the Stalinist period. And
Speaker 7: yet he's actually a sympathetic character, isn't he.
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 7: They could have made that kind of figure like the villain,
Speaker 7: and they could have made the Joseph Abraham character the hero.
Speaker 7: But I feel it's almost the other way round in
Speaker 7: a way. I feel that Abraham's character comes off much
Speaker 7: less sympathetically than the character of Lauco.
Speaker 6: Really, I think that's a non to. Surely at the time,
Speaker 6: Hannah couldn't he couldn't make a movie where he boldly said, oh,
Speaker 6: this guy used to be a communist figurehead and now
Speaker 6: all these horrible things are happening. I guess he would
Speaker 6: have had to have done it subtly. His hands would
Speaker 6: have been a bit found with that you're.
Speaker 5: Talking about what he might have been guilty of. And
Speaker 5: I love that. As he's on his way to the slaughterhouse,
Speaker 5: there's a girl in front of him on the back
Speaker 5: of a motorbike and he's flourid with her, and he's
Speaker 5: looking at a newspaper that says no one is guilty,
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh okay, And I'm like that looks like
Speaker 5: a headline from a trial, and probably not a show trial,
Speaker 5: because I imagine everybody was found guilty at a show trial.
Speaker 6: Oh that's right, because the driver was saying something about
Speaker 6: they were found not guilty because they weren't experienced enough
Speaker 6: with that, So how could they be responsible when they
Speaker 6: weren't even experienced enough to do the job they couldn't
Speaker 6: be expected to. I liked the idea that depending upon
Speaker 6: which angle you see any character from, if you're the
Speaker 6: policeman vlad Coo, this kind of loser, hippie, possibly a
Speaker 6: nayer do well wandering about, and if you're the neighbor,
Speaker 6: you think the wife's a hussy, but if you're her lover,
Speaker 6: you think she's amazing. And if you're married or your
Speaker 6: ex husband is loud co you think that he's a
Speaker 6: good guy. But if you were the person who was
Speaker 6: on the receiving end of that gun shot all those
Speaker 6: years ago, he would never be able to be a
Speaker 6: good person. That's so far removed from the what it
Speaker 6: says at the beginning of a loss of faith? What
Speaker 6: does any of that have you?
Speaker 7: Mart is quite an interesting character, isn't she? Because she
Speaker 7: could have been portrayed very unsympathetically, because I guess on
Speaker 7: paper she is like a bad character because she's materialistic.
Speaker 7: She says that one like thing. She's very like upfront
Speaker 7: about that. But Lauco says in the story, because I
Speaker 7: guess I think Luco's narrating the story, is that he
Speaker 7: admires her desire for happiness. It's the willingness to just
Speaker 7: go out and grab happiness where you can. And although
Speaker 7: I don't think I can't remember if that line is
Speaker 7: actually used in the film, but I feel that is
Speaker 7: the tone in regard to her, that yeah, she could
Speaker 7: have been an unsympathetic character, but somehow I think there
Speaker 7: is something about that strength of will that she has
Speaker 7: and that just that straightforward desire to be happy.
Speaker 4: Why not, It's what we all want.
Speaker 6: And yet it's sad that he's drawn to her rainbow
Speaker 6: coat and it feels like he's drab and she's all colors.
Speaker 6: The reality is she was so unhappy that he was
Speaker 6: actually living this drab existence where he was walked on
Speaker 6: and was rather ambitionless, so much more satisfied. And also
Speaker 6: the actress I don't want to butcher her name. Lucina Winnica.
Speaker 6: What a wonderful actress, like what a Polish Gina Rollins
Speaker 6: or Angie Dickerson.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's interesting that she's in it, isn't it that
Speaker 7: there are a few occasions of that, but not a
Speaker 7: lot of Yeah, like well known Polish or actors from
Speaker 7: other Eastern Bloc countries coming to do performances in Czechoslovak film.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's great to see her, isn't it?
Speaker 7: Because she's famous from Mother Joan of the Angels and
Speaker 7: Night Train?
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's nice to.
Speaker 7: See her doing not even a lead run, it's I
Speaker 7: guess second lead role, but still, yeah, it's nice to
Speaker 7: see her in there.
Speaker 6: I think how sixties that you mentioned night Train? So
Speaker 6: Night Train causes a big stir at the Cairns sixty
Speaker 6: eight and then in sixty nine was the hoop Lover
Speaker 6: three twenty two, So two years in a row she's
Speaker 6: the rebel.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember, and please Jonathan correct me if
Speaker 5: I'm wrong. But wasn't Fifth Horseman a sphere? Wasn't that
Speaker 5: also censored or pulled?
Speaker 4: Fifth Horseman? I think was okay?
Speaker 7: I believe I think the issue that had was that
Speaker 7: was that whole weird thing that happened with the distribution
Speaker 7: via Carlo Ponti when they added the brothel suit. It's
Speaker 7: an interesting case of not being sent but rather than
Speaker 7: things being caught, things were added. So yeah, you could
Speaker 7: say another kind of betrayal of the original intention.
Speaker 5: Well, I have to thank you for connecting me with
Speaker 5: Radoslav Storenka from the Slovak Film Group, because he was
Speaker 5: able to send me a little bit more information about
Speaker 5: speaking of being censored, about the censored version that we're
Speaker 5: watching of this and the nonsensor version, which they call
Speaker 5: the Mannheim print because it was smuggled by Fee valent
Speaker 5: I believe it's how you say the person's name via
Speaker 5: Vienna to Mannheim in the trunk of her car, and
Speaker 5: she got pulled over at one point, but they didn't
Speaker 5: search the trunk, which was pretty good, and she had
Speaker 5: this original print of the film in there, and he
Speaker 5: was able to share a little interview with me and
Speaker 5: they showed here's the original and here's the censored version,
Speaker 5: and it was for instances it wasn't a but you
Speaker 5: can kind of see when you're watching the movie. Now
Speaker 5: there's a couple of times where the film almost stops,
Speaker 5: Like I mentioned the apple shot being thrown in there.
Speaker 5: You know, it's it's got to be easy to censor
Speaker 5: this film because it cuts away to so many things
Speaker 5: so often. And plus one thing that we haven't said
Speaker 5: yet is that these scenes are very very short. But
Speaker 5: this movie moves along. It's not like you linger on stuff.
Speaker 5: This is not like this plotting art house kind of thing.
Speaker 5: It's just like you're going from one thing to another
Speaker 5: and there's no real transitions. You just move into another space.
Speaker 5: And like that also helps confuse people sometimes, where it's
Speaker 5: just like, oh, now, suddenly it's this person talking over here.
Speaker 5: We've not met them before, but okay, here we are.
Speaker 5: We're now in a new scene. And yeah, a lot
Speaker 5: of the stuff that was censored was writing on walls
Speaker 5: about the Red Army and things, and it's just like,
Speaker 5: oh okay. So even though Hannak agreed and made those changes,
Speaker 5: the film still ends up being banned. I think they
Speaker 5: showed it once the censored version and that was it
Speaker 5: no more. And thank goodness, there is this other version
Speaker 5: of it out there. I would love to see that restored.
Speaker 5: I'd love to see this whole movie restored and just
Speaker 5: out in a much easier to find version, because it's
Speaker 5: a great film. I had so much fun watching this.
Speaker 6: It really was that and a little marvelous story. I
Speaker 6: love the heroism of tucking it under her clothing and
Speaker 6: getting it out of the country.
Speaker 7: It's sad that I think the Slovak clide of the
Speaker 7: New Wave really came to fruition just at that point
Speaker 7: when the invasion happened, and then suddenly we were seeing
Speaker 7: the film industry being reorganized and shit reimposed, And I
Speaker 7: think it's amazing what they managed to do really under
Speaker 7: the shadow of the invasion and of normalization. For me,
Speaker 7: I think is one of the few filmmakers I think
Speaker 7: who's able to really continue in fairly uncompromising vein into
Speaker 7: the seventies. Really, I think he albeit having his films
Speaker 7: banned along the way. I guess this was banned. He
Speaker 7: made a film couple of years later, Pictures of the
Speaker 7: Old World, which also went through a similar process where
Speaker 7: he was asked to cut it. He cut it, but
Speaker 7: it was banned anyway. And that's a really beautiful film.
Speaker 7: That's an amazing kind of poetic documentary, which again is
Speaker 7: integrating like still photography with cinema. It's using like electronic
Speaker 7: music and classical music together. And it's a beautiful, sort
Speaker 7: of poignant documentary about elderly villagers.
Speaker 5: And it tears your heart out, the thing with the
Speaker 5: old man who is the plowhorse and plows his own
Speaker 5: field with the yoko. I'm like, oh, oh my.
Speaker 7: God, that's such a beautiful film. But not in a
Speaker 7: kind of sentimental way. I think it's able to keep
Speaker 7: that balance of that sense of absurdism. I think, like Angela,
Speaker 7: like you mentioned, which is there I think in this
Speaker 7: film too, but also that sense of poignance and of
Speaker 7: respect for people too. I think he was really interested
Speaker 7: in life at the peripheries, and I think you see
Speaker 7: it in this film too, done in a kind of
Speaker 7: patronizing way. It's this there is this sense of sympathy
Speaker 7: or empathy with outsiders for want of a better word.
Speaker 7: And yeah, and in regard to absurdism, I think there
Speaker 7: are these nice little touches here of that kind of
Speaker 7: that kind of comedy of bureaucracy, isn't there, which I
Speaker 7: guess is like a recurring feature throughout works that were
Speaker 7: made under communism. You have the little episode about the
Speaker 7: man's lost briefcase, don't You, where you have the porter
Speaker 7: and the man arguing about whose responsibility it was that
Speaker 7: this briefcase has gone miss And then you have that
Speaker 7: story about you at a collapsed house, and then the
Speaker 7: work is not being held responsible for it, And you
Speaker 7: got a few of those nice little touches of just
Speaker 7: absurd realities of the time.
Speaker 5: Well, just the absurdism of our main character who might
Speaker 5: be dying of cancer but nobody's going to tell him that.
Speaker 5: And there's even that story about, oh, they told this
Speaker 5: woman that she had cancer, she went home, gassed herself,
Speaker 5: They did an autopsy and she was fine.
Speaker 6: It seems like he's so drawn to the outliers and
Speaker 6: how they're different from society, but at the same time
Speaker 6: he's also portraying just how everyone is truly an outlier,
Speaker 6: Like when you get past the surface and the sacarine smiles,
Speaker 6: everyone's a little weird. Everyone is looking at the lady
Speaker 6: bending over or using their napkin to go catch chicken.
Speaker 1: Notes.
Speaker 6: But also on the censorship, when I heard that there
Speaker 6: were four spots that had been censored from the original,
Speaker 6: I assumed that you must have sent us the uncensored version.
Speaker 6: I was so surprised at the things that were sent me.
Speaker 6: It was the government that was censoring, not the MPAA,
Speaker 6: totally different. Just given everything we saw the slattering, I
Speaker 6: just assumed it was unsins It was like, oh no,
Speaker 6: it was just words on a wall. They didn't want
Speaker 6: the words on the wall that was censoring. I think
Speaker 6: we saw the slattering, I just assumed it was unsins
Speaker 6: It was like, oh no, it was just words.
Speaker 5: On a wall.
Speaker 6: Which I wonder, is it some sort of allegory on
Speaker 6: the loss of innocence or how horrible things just splatter
Speaker 6: onto everything around them, or is that a sixties thing?
Speaker 6: Was that an edgy trope in the sixties, I don't.
Speaker 5: Know, showing the horse being killed three times? It's fine.
Speaker 5: I was distressed to even just seeing those guys on
Speaker 5: that pig by the ears and the hearing it squeal. Oh,
Speaker 5: this is really unnerving. And yeah, even a dead catling
Speaker 5: in an alley and I'm like, ah, what was that
Speaker 5: documentary from?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 5: Was it Chile?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: Our are the furnaces? Yeah, because there's a lot of
Speaker 5: slaughterhouse in that one too.
Speaker 7: That's rough, and I guess it was part of the
Speaker 7: sort of culture of happenings too, wasn't it. I think
Speaker 7: Hudderofski when he was doing those kind of crazy performances
Speaker 7: with the Panic Theater, I think there was probably a
Speaker 7: lot of very dubious treatment of animals in that, And
Speaker 7: so yeah, I think Angela, as you said, I think
Speaker 7: it is part of that vibe. And I guess this
Speaker 7: is maybe a little bit too stereotypical of a reading,
Speaker 7: but I guess in regard to Slovak cinema, I feel
Speaker 7: this is more probably relevant to someone like Yakabisco. But
Speaker 7: I think there's an argument that I think Anthony Leam,
Speaker 7: the critic, makes in regard to him, where he says
Speaker 7: that somebody like Yakabisco is coming from a context where,
Speaker 7: you know, animal slaughter and blood, we're just very much
Speaker 7: part of everyday life. I'm not sure how true that
Speaker 7: is of Hannak too. I feel Hannah has a sort
Speaker 7: of a rather different sensibility. But yeah, I think it
Speaker 7: certainly does tie in with that whole sort of sixties
Speaker 7: thing vibe.
Speaker 5: I think I don't like to put a lot of
Speaker 5: stock into listicals or lists of things. I'm very anti
Speaker 5: high fidelity that way. But going back to that list
Speaker 5: of Slovak films of the century from film dot Sk
Speaker 5: to Hannak is in there in the first spot, with
Speaker 5: three twenty two in the third spot with pictures from
Speaker 5: the Old World. I didn't realize that The Sun as
Speaker 5: a Net was by a Slovakian filmmaker, because that, to
Speaker 5: me has always been I've been told that's one of
Speaker 5: the first new wave films, Like that's what really helped
Speaker 5: kick off the movement. So many of these films on
Speaker 5: this list from sixty seven, of course, with like Return
Speaker 5: of the Dragon, but then you get quite a few
Speaker 5: films from sixty nine, so like saying as far as
Speaker 5: like they are in this wrong place at this wrong time,
Speaker 5: or like you get you know, Christoph Rocky at sixty seven,
Speaker 5: you get Birds, Rifins and Fools at sixty nine, you
Speaker 5: get Celebration in the Botanical Garden also in nineteen sixty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 5: all these great films all coming out right at the
Speaker 5: wrong time to actually find their audience because they're about
Speaker 5: to get centered and just shut down completely. It is remarkable,
Speaker 5: like you said that Hanik was able to continue on
Speaker 5: and do his thing. But in a much different way.
Speaker 5: But I think that pictures of the Old World might
Speaker 5: even be moreb versave than this film.
Speaker 6: I'm not a drug person, but when I watch these movies,
Speaker 6: I want to get a way back machine and go
Speaker 6: back and just smoke some the reefer in sixty nine
Speaker 6: and create something amazing.
Speaker 5: It was so fun to watch, and I just love
Speaker 5: again the idea of these visual rhymes. I mean, even
Speaker 5: when you just talked about using the napkin to capture
Speaker 5: the chicken, I'm like, Oh, it's kind of like blindfolding
Speaker 5: that horse before they hit it over the head.
Speaker 6: They take the time to be nice before something awful happens.
Speaker 6: I hadn't thought about it, but it goes along with
Speaker 6: are they being kind in a way of, Oh, we're
Speaker 6: not going to tell him that he might have cancer
Speaker 6: because that would be stressful, so we'll just tell me
Speaker 6: has to come in for another exam or another test.
Speaker 6: Is that kind of like putting the blindfold over as well.
Speaker 7: One of the other rhymes I noticed was between those
Speaker 7: kind of gold painted bodies, where at one point you
Speaker 7: see the bodies trembling a bit, and then it cuts
Speaker 7: to the elderly man's handshaking I thought that was a
Speaker 7: very nice little juxtaposition of I guess it's like these
Speaker 7: kind of like primal nearly nude bodies and then this mantane.
Speaker 7: That was just a nice kind of juxtaposition of youth
Speaker 7: and age. And yeah, there's a lot of those little
Speaker 7: touches like that.
Speaker 6: With the gold dancers, it seemed I don't know if
Speaker 6: I was just ready into it too much, but it
Speaker 6: almost seemed like they were purposely past their prime, like
Speaker 6: just age wise, body wise, but they were still obviously capable.
Speaker 6: They were doing amazing things, even if perhaps more slowly
Speaker 6: than they had done them in the past. But isn't
Speaker 6: that like they sprayed gold on them? Oh, it's a
Speaker 6: good show, isn't that what everything.
Speaker 3: Is going on? There?
Speaker 6: Just spraying a little something on it, putting water in
Speaker 6: the orange juice. It's fine.
Speaker 5: And you get that scene at the cemetery where it's
Speaker 5: like all the cracked faces too. It feels like everything
Speaker 5: is not repair either, being done in black and white.
Speaker 5: There are so many things where it just feels like
Speaker 5: this is dirty, you're disused. And sometimes in the cemetery scene,
Speaker 5: there's this big oval and I swear it looks like
Speaker 5: rather than a sculpture. It almost looks like a person
Speaker 5: sticking their face out of it. I was just like,
Speaker 5: what am I looking at right now? And I just
Speaker 5: or that beautiful shot of the crosses where you get
Speaker 5: all the Jesus Jesus ie. I'm not sure is Jesus
Speaker 5: a Greek or Latin? I don't know, but all the
Speaker 5: different jesus Is on crucifixes going off into the distance,
Speaker 5: and just how rude the guy who's running the place
Speaker 5: is and that he's like, oh, yeah, here's your mother's
Speaker 5: a grave and he's like, no, it's not.
Speaker 6: He didn't know where his mother's grave was, had he
Speaker 6: not been to that town since his mother. That was
Speaker 6: just it was one of those things that's just dropped
Speaker 6: in your lap with no explanations. I don't know if
Speaker 6: maybe there was a tradition or something that I wasn't
Speaker 6: quite good, so I don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, the only other traditional thing that I was seeing
Speaker 5: was the whole idea of buying the fish and keeping
Speaker 5: the fish. I kept wondering, is this Christmas time? Because
Speaker 5: I kept thinking of the cremator. Yeah, if you're sensitive
Speaker 5: to animal cruelty or animal death, you're not going to
Speaker 5: have a good time with this one.
Speaker 7: Yes, Teaching checkers labac cinema to students needs a lot
Speaker 7: of you need a lot of trigger warnings. I think,
Speaker 7: especially in regard to the treatment of animals. I think
Speaker 7: if you've seen some of these movies a few times,
Speaker 7: it's easy to forget and then you show it to
Speaker 7: somebody and then you realize, oh, no, there's a really
Speaker 7: horrible scene. Even in something like Valeria in a Week
Speaker 7: of Wonders, does that little scene with the pole cat
Speaker 7: isn't there?
Speaker 4: Which is in the Chicken?
Speaker 5: Going back to the landscapes and stuff, Like I said,
Speaker 5: everything seems so run down, but then you're talking about
Speaker 5: that influence of literature subtitle that comes up twice, and
Speaker 5: the first time we see that, it's it's a shot
Speaker 5: from I believe from a car moving across in this
Speaker 5: landscape that they're showing. It reminded me of It reminded
Speaker 5: me a little bit of Iceland where a volcano was
Speaker 5: and you get the steam coming up because it feels
Speaker 5: like they're going across but it's a very flat field,
Speaker 5: but all of the smoke coming up, and I'm just like,
Speaker 5: I don't know what I'm looking at it doesn't look good.
Speaker 7: I just love the sort of texturing of the imagery, really, because,
Speaker 7: as you say, there is a lot of rundown imagery,
Speaker 7: and there's a lot of cracks and crumbling buildings, and
Speaker 7: just as there is in pictures of the old world.
Speaker 7: And I guess, on the one hand, that does represent
Speaker 7: this sense of decay. And yet I think his whole
Speaker 7: esthetic embraces this love of grain and of texture, and
Speaker 7: the image itself is grainy and in a beautiful way.
Speaker 7: And I love the way that when you see like
Speaker 7: the snow coming down, it really it looks it's animated. Surely,
Speaker 7: isn't it that it's not even like real fake snow.
Speaker 6: The animation gave it just a charm that I love,
Speaker 6: though some parts sounded really jazzy, and it was like wow.
Speaker 6: Sometimes when I'm watching older films, I feel like those
Speaker 6: kids in the reaction videos who were like, we're gonna
Speaker 6: watch a video from the nineties, and how different can
Speaker 6: that be? And then they're shocked. They're so shocked that
Speaker 6: Salt and Pepper were saying about sex or something, and
Speaker 6: they're like, wow, I thought they were more like puritanical
Speaker 6: in the nineties so I guess I feel like I
Speaker 6: shouldn't be surprised when I hear jazzy things in an
Speaker 6: Eastern black film from sixty eight. And yet if it
Speaker 6: had been dubbed well and you just showed full scenes
Speaker 6: of this to someone, they would have no idea that
Speaker 6: it was a Czechoslovakian. It looks like something from what
Speaker 6: we're familiar with as sixty eight or so, except for
Speaker 6: the blown out buildings.
Speaker 5: Gerhardt is the composer, and I think get a lot
Speaker 5: of jazz stuff.
Speaker 7: You mentioned the role of Schweink in this, and yeah,
Speaker 7: of course frank Meyer was also involved in Pictures of
Speaker 7: the Old World and helped to construct that amazing kind
Speaker 7: of allegorical contraption. And yeah, I really love the way
Speaker 7: that I think he worked with a lot of the
Speaker 7: most interesting people from Checkers that art scene of the time.
Speaker 7: So I guess in relation to the music, in relation
Speaker 7: to the sort of visual artist that he was employing,
Speaker 7: he not only is a great artist in himself, HANNAHK,
Speaker 7: but he's also I think he's also collaborating with other
Speaker 7: great artists and giving them something of a representation too.
Speaker 7: And yeah, you get this lovely fusion between different artists
Speaker 7: and different art forms. And yeah, I guess that too
Speaker 7: is ahead of its time as well, isn't it. I
Speaker 7: guess it's idea of like multimedia forms, where you're mixing film,
Speaker 7: you're mixing photography, you're mixing like plastic arts. And some
Speaker 7: of the images they're really like assemblages, aren't they really
Speaker 7: like the things in the Grizzily example, but like the
Speaker 7: in the slaughter House for example. And yeah, he clearly
Speaker 7: had quite a very refined awareness. I think of other
Speaker 7: art forms.
Speaker 6: Great visuals with him swirling around and just wearing those boots,
Speaker 6: and that does such a marvelous job of capturing freedom,
Speaker 6: like whether it's lovers in a field or even bucking
Speaker 6: the system at your employment. He does a good job
Speaker 6: of just always showing the rebellious heart.
Speaker 5: Yeah, those jawbones or that collection of eyes or I'm
Speaker 5: not sure what that is that hanging is that otters?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I couldn't. I was thinking, is it tongue maybe?
Speaker 7: But it looks synthetic though, doesn't it really? So I
Speaker 7: couldn't quite Yeah, I paused that a few times, but
Speaker 7: still couldn't quite. Yeah, I couldn't quite identify it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the very frank sexuality. I'm talking like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, this is nineteen sixty nine and you know,
Speaker 5: people are people are still having sex and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of flirtation going on. I forgot that he also
Speaker 5: flirts with a woman in a restaurant as well. He
Speaker 5: keeps doing this thing where he's like nodding at her
Speaker 5: and waiting for her to nod back, and you know,
Speaker 5: like I said, he's flirting with that girl on the motorcycle.
Speaker 5: And then yeah, the relationship with says Nick as well,
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, Like I said, I wasn't sure if
Speaker 5: that was her being pregnant by him or not, but yeah,
Speaker 5: they definitely have a relationship. I don't think it's the
Speaker 5: same type of relationship that Marta and her boy toy have,
Speaker 5: but yeah, it's it's very frank when it comes to that,
Speaker 5: and like the affair of Marta and Josephabrum's character, it's
Speaker 5: very out there and I'm just like okay, And they
Speaker 5: seem to be having a really good time until the
Speaker 5: other woman comes into the picture, but until then it's
Speaker 5: you know, they're having a lark, even out in that field,
Speaker 5: running around with the car circling them, and then you
Speaker 5: get some of those still images, and there's that image
Speaker 5: of her with the big fake mustache and she seems
Speaker 5: to be having the time of her life.
Speaker 6: I was thinking of how the cuckolding is alluding to
Speaker 6: the communism of You're going to give me everything that
Speaker 6: I need and I'm going to use you as a
Speaker 6: stepping stone, and so I'll be having a wonderful time,
Speaker 6: but you won't. Oh. I guess I hadn't really thought
Speaker 6: about that. But he was right to merge those things
Speaker 6: because I don't think in the short the short story
Speaker 6: I didn't get Obviously it did take place during communism,
Speaker 6: but I really didn't get that much heaviness on that
Speaker 6: aspect of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, please tell me a little bit more about the
Speaker 5: short story, because I did not have a chance to
Speaker 5: read then, and I know you two did.
Speaker 6: Oh God, Mike, it makes me feel so good that
Speaker 6: we read something you didn't, which.
Speaker 4: Is my fault because I was too late.
Speaker 7: It would have been fair, because I think sometimes it's
Speaker 7: the most frustrating thing when you get this tantalizing nugget
Speaker 7: that just comes like an hour before you're recording something,
Speaker 7: and it's so Yeah, I totally get the pain of that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, tell me more about the short story.
Speaker 5: I'm so curious.
Speaker 6: It was very much the core of the story between
Speaker 6: a guy getting diagnosed, but I think in the story
Speaker 6: he knew he had cancer, right that. I don't think
Speaker 6: it was ambiguous at least I don't know. I just
Speaker 6: read it. I should know.
Speaker 7: There's definitely nothing. I don't think there's anything about gallstone.
Speaker 7: So yes, I don't think it. I think it is cancer.
Speaker 7: I don't think that really resolves either in regard to
Speaker 7: the illness. And what I found quite interesting was how
Speaker 7: focused it was on the story of Marta really and
Speaker 7: so basically that story is the same, and the sort
Speaker 7: of the true jectory of her character is the same,
Speaker 7: where she dies in a car crash with the lover,
Speaker 7: or the lover gets injured but he survives. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 7: the lover is quite different because in the story the lover,
Speaker 7: I think he's described as like a young author. He's
Speaker 7: like a budding writer, rather than I think Abraham's character
Speaker 7: is meant to be a student. Isn't here, although he
Speaker 7: seems to have a job as well, But definitely he's not,
Speaker 7: as far as I can tell he's not meant to
Speaker 7: be a writer, and the lover in the story is
Speaker 7: much more sympathetic. He's much more he's really grief stricken
Speaker 7: at the death, and he's much more sincere, it seems,
Speaker 7: in the relationship. And yeah, he is presented much like
Speaker 7: I would say, less sympathetically in the film, which is interesting.
Speaker 7: That's the part of the film that is most closely
Speaker 7: based on the story. The character of Silka is also there,
Speaker 7: and the colleague that he has, who's also being I think,
Speaker 7: who's also in a sort of a rather dire marital situation,
Speaker 7: and the one with whom he goes to buy the
Speaker 7: Teddy Bear at the beginning.
Speaker 4: So that stuff is there.
Speaker 7: But yeah, there's as you say, I don't think there's
Speaker 7: really any references to politics or to Louco's past, and
Speaker 7: definitely no Vladco as far as I can make out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the film added so.
Speaker 6: Much Now it's more like a slice of well, I
Speaker 6: don't know what the timeline was, but like a few
Speaker 6: days of introspection as he's going through the motions of
Speaker 6: his life in his way, his ex wife gets killed,
Speaker 6: I mean, after he's diagnosed with cancer. That's basically a
Speaker 6: much smaller bite than the movie is.
Speaker 5: I'd love how they have to point out that she
Speaker 5: was killed, but the car is Okay, do you want
Speaker 5: to sell me your car?
Speaker 7: That's been the story, but the film, I think the
Speaker 7: film takes that a little bit. I think the film
Speaker 7: plays a bit more again with that is that comedy
Speaker 7: of official dermin of just really callous.
Speaker 4: I guess they're police policemen, aren't they, I think?
Speaker 7: And yeah that I think the film gets more painful
Speaker 7: comedy out of that than the story does.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's more more interested in the car and whether
Speaker 7: it can be resold.
Speaker 5: And I forgot that Joseph Abrams got the ie trauma
Speaker 5: from that as well. It's the same eye that was
Speaker 5: uncovered by those sunglasses as the eye that is bandaged
Speaker 5: later on, which I was like, okay, it kind of
Speaker 5: reminds me of Chinatown a little bit, with all of
Speaker 5: the bad eye type of things like broken glasses, you know,
Speaker 5: spoilers for Chinatown, Evelyn Molray getting shot through the eye,
Speaker 5: like all of those things to go all the way
Speaker 5: back when we're talking about playing with the form, I
Speaker 5: was surprised that there's no end to this, you know,
Speaker 5: I always count on seeing Qunich at the end of
Speaker 5: all of these movies. And then that moment and after
Speaker 5: the credits are over, when we see a person on
Speaker 5: a bicycle and there's a wall it looks like an
Speaker 5: apartment building that's being held up by speaking of crumbling infrastructure,
Speaker 5: it's being held up by like these giant poles or
Speaker 5: logs with rocks underneath. I'm like, wow, that looks like
Speaker 5: that whole thing's going to collapse. I mean, that might
Speaker 5: be the building that they're talking about later on in
Speaker 5: the movie. Is that building we see at the beginning
Speaker 5: and you get that still frame, like the movie doesn't
Speaker 5: want to start at that point, like it is a
Speaker 5: still frame. The person on the bicycle is sitting there
Speaker 5: for a while before finally starts to move, and you
Speaker 5: know that kind of like I was saying, like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's easy to censor this movie because it is so
Speaker 5: odd at times. I mean, there could have been something there.
Speaker 5: I don't think there was, but you know, like later
Speaker 5: on when the one thug at the beginning comes up
Speaker 5: to that woman that you're talking about, Angela with the
Speaker 5: the very yeah, the very weird paper eye thing, like
Speaker 5: he goes up to her, and the whole movie stops
Speaker 5: there too, and I'm like, okay, it's not just a
Speaker 5: cut away to a still image, just the whole thing
Speaker 5: just stops and then it carries on again. I'm like okay.
Speaker 5: And that was closer to an area of censorship. But
Speaker 5: like I said, I think that apple being put in
Speaker 5: there is what covered up the you know, the the
Speaker 5: graffiti that they wanted to hide. And that there's a
Speaker 5: character later on in the film that he meets I'm
Speaker 5: trying to remember where it is, but that that was
Speaker 5: also censored. And with that I couldn't tell what was
Speaker 5: being censored because, like I said, that Mannheim Print has
Speaker 5: German subtitles. I don't read German, unfortunately, but I could
Speaker 5: hear and even in the interview about that, they're like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, he talks about the Beatles, and I could
Speaker 5: hear beatles being said in you know, check, but I
Speaker 5: couldn't read what the subtitles were saying in German, So
Speaker 5: shame on me. I don't know if you picked up
Speaker 5: anything from that, Jonathan, but it was all Greek to me.
Speaker 6: I could tell at the beginning the censored part when
Speaker 6: they had the German subtitles that they were talking about
Speaker 6: to thank you, I got the talking part.
Speaker 5: Watching this really makes me want to see more of
Speaker 5: Hannock's work. I love this whole thing of him coming
Speaker 5: from this documentary world and being able to bring that
Speaker 5: to this, and then I'm so curious about some of
Speaker 5: his other narrative works just because it was a I
Speaker 5: want to say it was a little while before he
Speaker 5: made another narrative film after this, But what a fascinating guy.
Speaker 5: And he's still around, he's still kicking. Tried to get
Speaker 5: an interview with him, but unfortunately he does not speak
Speaker 5: English and he's in his nineties I think, And yeah's
Speaker 5: apparently he's not one for doing a whole lot of
Speaker 5: interviews right now, so I completely understand maybe when he hits.
Speaker 6: One hundred he'll have a change to heart. Speaking of
Speaker 6: his other films, vyz Va Do teach scha, he said
Speaker 6: that he met a writer who had written up accounts
Speaker 6: of schizophrenic patients, and so he recorded some things about them,
Speaker 6: but he didn't want to film the actual patients, like
Speaker 6: he didn't want to film actual schizophrenics, just where they
Speaker 6: were and things they were involved with, which I guess
Speaker 6: that's novel. He went on to say that he was
Speaker 6: talking about a psych hospital we went too, that they
Speaker 6: would let if the people thought they were royalty, they
Speaker 6: would let them walk around in costumes all day. But
Speaker 6: they also had one section that was very private that
Speaker 6: was called Hell. They had a section for the men
Speaker 6: in a section for the women. I don't know if
Speaker 6: it's because the schizophrenics believe they were in hell, or
Speaker 6: if it was just hell for the staff alluded to.
Speaker 6: So I don't know what about this is contained within
Speaker 6: the film, but I'm very curious just on that. Boy,
Speaker 6: I don't know if you could raise curiosity any more
Speaker 6: than that to see a movie.
Speaker 5: Apparently that one is called an English and appeal made
Speaker 5: into silence that rolls off the tongue almost as easily
Speaker 5: as the sources of the sea attract the diver. The
Speaker 5: short story that three twenty two is based on.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I admire the propensity in more in European cinema
Speaker 7: for longer titled. I think English language titling tends to
Speaker 7: go for the more snappy, succinct titles, and sometimes a
Speaker 7: longer title is.
Speaker 4: Fun, isn't it.
Speaker 7: I think I like the fact that the fruit of Paradise.
Speaker 7: For instance, in check is we eat the I think
Speaker 7: we eat the trees of the We eat the fruit
Speaker 7: of the Trees of Paradise, which I think is Yeah.
Speaker 7: I guess it's easier to make that kind of long
Speaker 7: title in check because tends to be fewer wor needed
Speaker 7: to say more. But yeah, we tend to shorten things
Speaker 7: in English language distribution. Yeah, I would really recommend Day
Speaker 7: of Joy. I think that's a really really great example.
Speaker 7: I think of his colarage aesthetics and of just this
Speaker 7: sense of just pure anarchic bliss. And he made a
Speaker 7: documentary in I think in nineteen ninety called paper Heads.
Speaker 7: So I think if anybody, if you are enamored of
Speaker 7: those masks that you see in the street, in this
Speaker 7: film there's a lot more of those in paper Heads.
Speaker 7: And I guess that was the film where because it
Speaker 7: was made just as communism or just after Communism ended,
Speaker 7: where he was able to say everything explicitly. And this
Speaker 7: is similar to the short film by schwank Meyer called
Speaker 7: The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. It's got a similar
Speaker 7: vibe to that, where it's just this kind of cathartic
Speaker 7: release of just that kind of anger about the oppression. Yeah,
Speaker 7: this is a film that's kind of contrasting, it's juxtaposing.
Speaker 7: You get these images of people in the street with
Speaker 7: these huge papya mache heads, of communist leaders, with documentary
Speaker 7: footage and testimonies of people who suffered under the regime.
Speaker 7: And Yeah, that's a really quite quite harrowing but also
Speaker 7: very esthetically still very striking film.
Speaker 6: It reminds me speaking of the masks and artistry. I
Speaker 6: think one of the most horrifying moments of three twenty
Speaker 6: two is at the end when vlad Coat is actually
Speaker 6: telling him this is an apple, this is a meadow.
Speaker 6: Oh God, as an artist, how horrifying that you would
Speaker 6: have to hand a person in your art and explain
Speaker 6: that's an apple, that's a meadow, that's a tree. God, Like,
Speaker 6: how bid? I so wanted to see more of those
Speaker 6: photo of those drawings.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 5: I guess this is taking place at Christmas because you're
Speaker 5: talking about the trees, and isn't there a Christmas tree
Speaker 5: on like a piece of paper like hanging up and
Speaker 5: he kind of draws over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Interesting, Yeah, I totally forgot about that perfect movie for Christmas.
Speaker 5: I think the real miracle is that not more people die.
Speaker 5: I'm surprised that it's just the wife that gets killed,
Speaker 5: because it feels like, you know, so many people make
Speaker 5: it out of this film unscathed, you know, and we
Speaker 5: even have I was surprised that he didn't die at
Speaker 5: the end of this because of the the whole tit
Speaker 5: for tat thing that movies love to do, you know.
Speaker 5: I think about Parenthood, you know, or some of the
Speaker 5: other films where it's like, okay, if somebody dies, and yes,
Speaker 5: I know that Marta dies, but I was thinking if
Speaker 5: Lauco dies, then we would get the shots of cys
Speaker 5: next baby. But I guess this next baby is taking
Speaker 5: you know, because there's always that, you know, one person dies,
Speaker 5: one person is born kind of thing in movies. And
Speaker 5: or to die is Sysnick has her baby, and then
Speaker 5: we see all those babies, and yeah, once you start
Speaker 5: seeing those babies, in fact it's twins, I believe she
Speaker 5: gives birth too, or maybe not, but because the nurse
Speaker 5: is picking up the two babies, I assume that those
Speaker 5: were Sysniics, but maybe not. Because they show a ton
Speaker 5: of babies, and like you were saying before, Jonathan all
Speaker 5: those babies with the numbers. They all have the numbers
Speaker 5: on it. It's just like, welcome to the world. Here's
Speaker 5: your new number. And just that this whole movie is
Speaker 5: called three twenty two and which is coded for you know, cancer,
Speaker 5: but also coded for Lauco. It's like, here's your new number,
Speaker 5: you know, just like you're saying, like Vladgo's numbers on
Speaker 5: his back and we see that right from.
Speaker 1: The get go.
Speaker 6: And boy, those babies must have been made of wrought
Speaker 6: iron the way the nurse was like, whoop them up?
Speaker 7: And it was like, oh, I think there's another little
Speaker 7: reference to three twenty two, isn't there? When I think
Speaker 7: the I believe it's the young nurse and she's talking
Speaker 7: on the phone about sweaters and I think think at
Speaker 7: one point three twenty two is a reference to the is.
Speaker 4: It the price?
Speaker 7: But definitely it's in some way it's related to these
Speaker 7: sweaters that she wanted to buy. And yeah, that was
Speaker 7: like an interesting twist on the use of numbers.
Speaker 5: That what a great film. I am so glad to
Speaker 5: have watched this. I'm just really thrilled because sometimes you
Speaker 5: never know. It's not that we've ever had a dud
Speaker 5: on check Timber. But sometimes it's just like wow, this
Speaker 5: is really snow moving, or you know, it's just not
Speaker 5: connecting with me nearly as much as I would like
Speaker 5: a film too. But this one, holy cow, it was
Speaker 5: just it grabbed me from the get go and I
Speaker 5: was with it all the way through. And then having
Speaker 5: this conversation, I'm getting so much more out of this
Speaker 5: me too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I was a bit worried that I would be a
Speaker 7: bit overwhelmed and I would lose my thread, which I
Speaker 7: do anyway, but I guess especially in regard to a
Speaker 7: film like this where there's just so many things happening,
Speaker 7: and yeah, in this conversation has been really great because
Speaker 7: it's drawn things out that I didn't see, and yeah,
Speaker 7: it's something to go back to and go back to.
Speaker 6: I think it's wonderful when you see a film like this,
Speaker 6: you're like, oh, you want to discuss it with someone,
Speaker 6: and who are you going to discuss it with? Yes,
Speaker 6: So thank you guys for being here to discuss.
Speaker 5: So let's go ahead and take a break and play
Speaker 5: a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 9: Associates all the way, Elsie, everybody hearing the height Manti,
Speaker 9: would you eat this?
Speaker 4: You are?
Speaker 9: Yeah, what's actually coping up?
Speaker 1: Saying we have no.
Speaker 9: Thanks distens Pati.
Speaker 3: Jesuists at the book and it's easy.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 5: We are wrapping up our abbreviated Checktember next week with
Speaker 5: a look at Frantic Check Flockel's atal Hyde. If you
Speaker 5: want to hear more of me discussing Blaco, please be
Speaker 5: sure to pick up the new second run Blu ray
Speaker 5: of his film Valley of the Bees, which features Robert
Speaker 5: Blissimo and me on the commentary. Until then, I want
Speaker 5: to thank my co hosts, Jonathan and Angela. So, Angela,
Speaker 5: what is keeping you busy?
Speaker 6: Ma'am still working on scripts, hoping to get something finished
Speaker 6: and out into the world.
Speaker 5: And Jonathan, what new and exciting projects are coming our
Speaker 5: way from you?
Speaker 1: Sir.
Speaker 7: I've just written the essay for the one of the
Speaker 7: essays I should say for the release of Adela Hasn't
Speaker 7: had Stuff yet, which is now available from Deaf Crocodile
Speaker 7: in a really beautiful edition, so I think that's out now.
Speaker 7: And then I've also got a couple of things in
Speaker 7: the pipeline with second Run, which I think haven't been
Speaker 7: announced yet, but I think those will be out. I
Speaker 7: think one is going to be out the end of
Speaker 7: this year and then the other beginning of next year.
Speaker 4: And I think the.
Speaker 7: Title is probably not a big surprise for given the
Speaker 7: kind of things that I'm usually working on and usually
Speaker 7: interested in.
Speaker 4: Yes, please look out for those well.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, folks for being on the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks to everybody for listening. I was doing some looking
Speaker 5: up of numbers the other day and apparently the Chechchambers
Speaker 5: I was are lowest rated stuff. So thank you, especially
Speaker 5: to all of you people who are listening to this,
Speaker 5: because you're getting the good stuff here. So thank you
Speaker 5: for indulging and coming in and hearing us talk about
Speaker 5: this movie, which is pretty obscure but is so much
Speaker 5: fun and I hope that you have fun watching it.
Speaker 5: If you want to hear more of me shooting off
Speaker 5: my mouth, check out some of the other shows that
Speaker 5: I work on. They are all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com.
Speaker 5: Thank you especially to our Patreon community. If you want
Speaker 5: to join the community, visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth.
Speaker 5: Every donation we get helse of Projection Booth take over
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 3: It it.
Speaker 1: It, it, it it.
Speaker 3: M M.
Speaker 1: Let's they're gonna be.
Speaker 3: Let get a day.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's gonna let's letts.
Speaker 2: H come back, come.
Speaker 1: Come. That's consist.
Speaker 8: Tell me a little, a little dotting cop, the cop
Speaker 8: of co co cons the complay.
Speaker 2: A little bottle, a little about it
Speaker 1: And sad